http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/other_areas_of_interest/events/event?id=255905
International Legitimacy Seminar Programme
The Timeless Appeal of Technocracy in Global Governance
Jens Steffek, (Technical University, Darmstadt)
Wednesday 23rd Jan at 2pm
Raeburn Room, Old College
Abstract:
My presentation is about the rise and fall of the doctrine that international relations should be managed by technical experts, bureaucrats and lawyers, rather than by politicians and diplomats. Praise for technocratic governance has been a persistent theme in the discursive (self-)legitimation of international organizations (IOs) of the functional type, and it was put forward by practitioners and academics alike. Scrutinizing historical evidence from the entire 20th century, I argue that the appeal of technocratic international governance must be understood in the light of modernization theory. The ‘organization’ of international relations through bureaucratization, legalization and the turn to scientific expertise was part of an encompassing project of societal rationalization, which first the Western industrialized countries and successively most other parts of the world embarked on. Typically, proponents of technocratic international governance drew on three themes when legitimating IOs: technical competence, efficient problem-solving and impartial defense of the public interest against political rent-seeking. Recent popular resistance against IOs, evident especially in the European Union, may be interpreted (at least in part) as a backlash caused by the unanticipated consequences and unfulfilled promises of this technocratic utopia.
Biography:
Jens Steffek is a Professor of Transnational Governance and the Managing Director of the Institute for Political Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt. His research interests include the politics and history of international organizations, theory of international relations, transnational social actors and theory of democracy. He was a guest at the WZB in the Global Governance Research Unit in February 2014, where he worked on a book manuscript themed “Global Machineries: International Organizations as Public Administration.”
This event is free, open to all and no registration is required.