Prophets of international technocracy

This chapter is focused on the emergence of technocratic internationalism. The first section shows how praise for rational public administration developed in philosophy. It discusses Henri de Saint-Simon’s ideas about the virtues of expert government; the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill; and how German philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel idealized Prussia’s efficient bureaucracy. From these philosophical foundations, the chapter proceeds to the professionalization of public administration that in the 19th century took place in all industrialized countries and some of their colonies. The trend spilled over to the international level in the form of the ‘international public unions’, expert bodies with administrative tasks which ignited the imagination of technocratically inclined visionaries. Having sketched the historical context, the second part of the chapter presents the first programmatic proposals for bureaucratic international governance. They were tabled in the 1880s, when international lawyers moved from an analysis of these public unions to a programmatic vision of international relations managed by these bodies. The discussion zooms in on the Russian law scholar Pierre Kazansky and the American political scientist Paul S. Reinsch, whose respective works offer clear examples of how colonialism influenced early thinking about international organizations.

The public face of interest group lobbying on immigration: Who responds to and who ignores what they say

A main avenue for influencing public policy available to unions and business is public opinion campaigning. As groups with substantial credibility in the minds of the public, unions and employers have the potential to move immigration attitudes and, thereby, have a long-term indirect influence on immigration policy. The article asks, first, who is (not) convinced by arguments from business or labour leaders and second, what messages are most convincing. We present the results of a survey experiment in three very different immigration regimes and interest group environments (Canada, the UK and Germany). The results suggest that the net effects of public arguments are small, but vary widely across demographic groups.

The Representation Of Interests In The Mechanism For The Legal Regulation Of Environmental Relations: Certain Aspects

The article is aimed at studying the legal means (ways) of representing (formalizing) interests in the mechanism for the legal regulation of environmental relations. The conclusion is reached that it deems reasonable to pose a question about an optimal correlation between interests, i.e. about their sound compromise, not a balance between them, since the latter requires balancing them out which is neither factually, nor legally possible. One characteristic feature of environmental law is its simultaneous use of a permit-based way of the legal regulation by granting the corresponding rights and introducing prohibitions. It contributes to developing a rigid model of the behaviour between the subjects of environmental relations. One of the criteria determining the degree of the efficiency of the mechanism for the legal regulation of a certain type of relations is, among others, taking a full account of the interests of the subjects of this type of relations by means of representing (formalizing) these interests in legislation, their juridization. There exist several ways aimed at formalizing environmental interests: 1) permits, concerning only citizens and public unions, i.e the powers provided for by the environmental rights of the subjects of environmental law; 2) obligations - prescriptions binding on persons to be fulfilled, designed for state authorities, subjects of economic relations, citizens and their unions; 3) proscriptions. All of the components of the environmental law mechanism described in the article are complex in terms of their procedure and, in fact, constitute the public law mechanism being aimed at ensuring mostly public environmental interests. Furthermore, its implementation will definitely involve influencing private, often nonenvironmental interests, which should also be taken into consideration. This is what constitutes the very purpose of the environmental law mechanism as a comprehensive coherent system of normatively established measures and requirements, actions and processes aimed at gradually and effectively achieving the objectives of environmental law. This objective lies in developing environmental law and order as a guarantee for the fulfillment of the constitutional environmental rights and nature conservation, including the objective of conserving biodiversity. Considering the dynamic nature of the development of environmental and other relations with regard to the possibility of the direction of the interests of the subjects of these relations being changed, it deems necessary to reconsider the nature and content of those legal means that constitute the environmental law mechanism.

Policy Feedback as Political Weapon: Conservative Advocacy and the Demobilization of the Public Sector Labor Movement

Scholars have shown that once in place policies can foster greater political participation. Indeed, politicians often deliberately design policies to shore up political support among their allies. But can political actors engineer the reverse effect, crafting policies that demobilize their rivals? Drawing on the example of conservative cross-state advocacy against public sector unions, I describe the strategy of policy feedback as political weapon, or when actors design policies to politically weaken their opponents. I then document that the passage of conservative network-backed legislation led to large and enduring declines in public sector union density and revenue. I further show that by curbing the power of public unions, the passage of conservative network-backed bills dampened the political participation of public sector employees. My findings emphasize the importance of considering how actors use policy to demobilize political opponents and explain why public unions are now on the defensive in state politics.

The social-democratic roots of global governance: Welfare internationalism from the 19th century to the United Nations

Welfare internationalism was and still is one of the most powerful justifications for establishing international organizations. It suggests that public international organizations should cater to the material needs of individuals, rather than solve conflicts among states. In this article, we trace the origins of welfare internationalism, challenging the dominant narrative that depicts it as a projection of the British welfare state or the American New Deal to the globe. We show that welfare internationalism emerged earlier and combined ideational elements of very different origins. Notions of professional colonial administration migrated to the international context and dovetailed with a cosmopolitan interpretation of 19th-century public unions as caretakers of citizen interests. Reform socialist approaches to the social question inspired domestic and international developments simultaneously, leading to the foundation of the International Labour Organization, which became a crucial venue for the promulgation of welfare internationalism. We thus document how international theorists and practitioners of the early 20th century established a new perspective on international affairs, emanating from individuals and their needs. That perspective came to rival the traditional conception of international politics as intergovernmentalism and delivered important building blocks for the (self-)legitimation of the League of Nations and the United Nations.