Globalization is underpinned by international organizations—intergovernmental, non-governmental, or private—that develop norms to diffuse around the world. This article presents an integrative model for understanding how boardroom dynamics within international organizations impact the content of global norms: we argue that these processes are determined, initially, by board members’ education and careers—both a function of the dominant norm apparatus of globalization—and, subsequently, by boardroom interactions between these individuals. To document these processes, we focus on the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a body that decides on economic policy issues impacting the lives of billions. First, we trace the education and career trajectories of all 727 board members—that is, state representatives—between 1980 and 2009. We find that they are homogeneous in terms of academic training, but heterogeneous in terms of professional backgrounds. Second, we document how the aforementioned attributes of Board members impact the way they behave in the boardroom, and—by extension—organizational output. Our findings reveal that global norm-making is driven by professionalization and elite socialization dynamics in apex communities, even in formal intergovernmental contexts where the primacy of state interests is commonly assumed to dominate
Co-organised by Sciences Po, MaxPo & Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics.
Monday 25 November 2019, 12.30-2.30 pm
Sciences Po, LIEPP’s Conferences Room, 254 boulevard Saint-Germain, 75007 Paris
More information available here.
