online
With Leonard Seabrooke, Professor, International Political Economy & Economic Sociology, Copenhagen Business School & Alexander E. Kentikelenis, Assistant Professor, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University
Meeting number: 121 676 5483
Password: uXFRM3W5rm6
Globalisation is underpinned by international organisations —intergovernmental, non-governmental, or private—that develop policy scripts to diffuse around the world. We present an integrative model for understanding how boardroom dynamics within them impact the content of global scripts: we argue that board members balance dual roles as state representatives and socialised professionals when they interact and articulate their policy positions. To document these processes, we focus on the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund, a body that decides on economic policy issues impacting the lives of billions. First, at an individual level, we trace the education and career trajectories of all 727 board members—appointed by states—between 1980 and 2009. We find that they are homogeneous in terms of training, but heterogeneous in terms of professional backgrounds. Second, we examine how the aforementioned attributes of Board members impact a key aspect of their boardroom behaviour and demonstrate differences in what they talk about. Finally, at the boardroom level, we show how interactions of these professionals—cum—state representatives shape organisational output. Our findings reveal that global script-writing is driven by professionalisation and elite socialisation dynamics in apex communities, even in intergovernmental contexts where the primacy of state interests is assumed to dominate.
Leonard Seabrooke, Professor, International Political Economy & Economic Sociology, Copenhagen Business School
Alexander E. Kentikelenis, Assistant Professor, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Bocconi University
Negar Mansouri, PhD candidate, International Law, the Graduate Institute
Annabelle Littoz-Monnet, Professor, International Relations/Political Science and Director, Global Governance Centre, the Graduate Institute
Please register for the event in order to receive the draft paper.