Yves Schemeil

Bringing International Organization In: Global Institutions as Adaptive Hybrids

How can an international organization be made adaptable? Having been designed to fulfil a specific mandate, international organizations should disappear from the world stage once .the initial conditions that led to their establishment no longer exist: their constituents (governments or activists) will not support them when their mandate becomes obsolete or their added value is reduced. Nonetheless, they survive external shocks, resource traps, and even the growing indifference of their founding fathers. The explanation lies in their successful resistance to constituents’ control; counter-intuitive adaptation to external change; unplanned expansion through mandate enlargement; and a snowballing albeit unintentional trend to build up networks. Overall, the relative success of international organizations can be measured as a global balance between performance and resilience, exploitation and exploration, autonomy and cooperation. To reach that balanced stage they must be altogether dualistic (coupling the technical with the political); adaptive (converting slack into innovation); organic and ambidextrous (setting new challenges while pursuing current activity). Since they combine components that come from local, national, regional and transnational recipes for survival and performance, they are complex hybrids made up of public agencies, private firms, third sector associations, and expert, activist, or lobbying interest groups.

Towards a New Political Economy of State Industrialization in the Arab Middle East

Over recent years, scholars and politicians have grown to recognize the increasing obsolescence of models and patterns applicable to the development crisis. This crisis affects both ‘liberal’ capitalist systems and state-controlled ‘socialist’ systems, and can be analyzed on two levels. On the theoretical level, the development crisis is one aspect of the crisis of paradigms in social sciences, especially in economics. New ways of thinking originate with the denial of all those dogmatic approaches which have flourished in the realm of economic development for the last three decades. However, we cannot be satisfied with a predominantly empirical investigation devoid of theoretically explicit background. On the empirical level, some sweeping situations emerge; development processes, either unpredicted by, or contradictory to theoretical forecasts have arisen.

Democracy Before Democracy

Was democracy invented by the Greeks to replace the anarchy and imperial rule characteristic of earlier Near Eastern societies? Although what was explicitly borrowed from antiquity by modern political thinkers looks Athenian, there was democracy before the polis. Egyptian and Mesopotamian politics relied on public debate and detailed voting procedures; countless assemblies convened at the thresholds of public buildings or city gates; disputed trials were submitted to superior courts; countervailing powers reminded leaders that justice was their responsibility. This was not full democracy, but the Greek version was not perfect either. In this article, “archeopolitics” is used to contrast this efficient form of pluralistic regime (“hypodemocracy”) with truly egalitarian ones (“hyperdemocracies”) and group interests’ polyarchies.

Delegation without Borders: On individual rights, constitutions and the global order

Political and economic rights are envisaged as the outcome of an ongoing bargain between citizens and their rulers. Over the long run, this constitutive process shapes the development of both the economy and the state. Globalization, however, corresponds to a period where both the market and civil society extend far beyond the borders of the initial political compact. Hence, citizens may not only ask that cross-border transactions be made easier; they may also challenge the institutional cohesion and integrity of the classical, Westphalian state, i.e., its legal and judicial order, and its bureaucratic capabilities. We are proposing a schematic description of how this political process may gradually exit the national perimeter and deliver four possible models of international or global governance, depending upon the potential structuring of coalitions between the potential winners of the globalization both in the elite and in society, and the losers; national games being ultimately arbitrated by the international competition among elites, but also by the possible formation of global coalitions of citizens and merchants.

D'une sociologie naturaliste à une sociologie politique : Robert Park

Yves Schemeil : Von einer naturalistischen Soziologie zu einer politischen Soziologie : Robert Park. ; ; Die Schule von Chicago bildete sich zwischen 1920 und 1940, um einen atypischen Soziologen, Robert Park. Philosoph, Journalist, begeisterter Reisender, versteht Park die Gesellschaft als eine naturliche Gruppe in dauerndem Krisenzustand, wobei diese Krise, paradoxerweise, zur Grundung der sozialen Ordnung fuhrt. Die von ihm untersuchten politischen Objekte (Streiks, Kriege, Revolutionen, Einrichtungen) sind fur ihn aile zweiseitig : Unordnung und Ordnung, Spontaneitat und Kontrolle. Das Politische wird somit auf der hierarchischen Axe der Konflikte bestimmt, im Gegensatz zum geographischen Raum der durch Wettbewerbsmechanismen geregelt oder entregelt wird. Die Geographie nahrt eine naturalistische Soziologie wahrend die Geschichte zu einer Soziologie des Politischen fuhrt. Der Wechsel kommt dann durch nicht einzuordnende oder nicht eingeordnete Individuen (Vagabund, Prophet, Kunstler...) innerhalb spontaner sozialer Gruppen (Menschenmengen) oder wenig organisierten Gruppen (Banden, Nachbarschaft...).