Sub-Plenary 1-3

The Return of the State: Pathways for Research on Societal Governance in Times of Crisis

Organizer:
Paul S. Adler, University of Southern California, USA
 
Chair:
Christine Beckman, UC Santa Barbara, USA

Panelists:
Zlatko Bodrožić, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
Sigrid Quack, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Elke Schüßler, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany
Jette Steen Knudsen, Tufts University, USA
 

The sub-plenary will feature four scholars in dialogue: Zlatko Bodrožić, Elke Schüßler, Sigrid Quack, and Jette Steen Knudsen. Christine Beckman will chair the session and facilitate the dialogue and audience Q&A.

Zlatko Bodrožić  will build on his recent work with Paul Adler that distinguishes four systems in which the state plays very different roles – Oligarchy, Localism, Authoritarianism, and Democratization – and identify these systems’ relative capacity to address grand challenges such as climate change. Oligarchy, as governance by private enterprise, limits state action to what is profitable for dominant firms: faced with a challenge such as the climate crisis, such limits will hobble our response and spell disaster. Localism, as governance by relatively autonomous local communities, enhances participation, but only at the local level: it therefore has only limited capacity to deal with the wider externalities at the root of the climate crisis. Authoritarianism, as governance by ac state elite, with high state capacity but low participation of citizens, might promise the most rapid response to grand challenges, but it affords limited bottom-up innovation and is likely to be handicapped by escalating social conflicts. Democratization, as governance by citizens supported by an enabling state with high capacity, might be initially slower due to the involvement of a wider variety of actors, but this involvement could help avoid social conflicts and yield more creative solutions.
 
Elke Schüßler argues that, on the one hand, state agency is needed to develop policies that restrain the dominance of the financialized market logic in governing economic exchanges while strengthening alternative logics that are more in line with environmental values and human rights. On the other hand, she draws on cultural institutionalism and argues that the capacities and transformative agency of state actors greatly varies across liberal-capitalist societies. Drawing on her research on digital platform and global supply chain regulation, she provides examples for different forms of state and other individual and collective agency to reflect about possibilities for strengthening alternative societal logics in an economy increasingly disrupted by crises. She hereby also discusses changes in the logic of the state itself, where democratic governance is no longer taken-for-granted.
 
Sigrid Quack sees three dimensions along which the return of the state is currently being discussed: regulation, industrial policy and geopolitics. Drawing on her research on financial, labor and environmental standards, she proposes a typology of organizational forms in which public, private and civil society actors cooperate in standard-setting. She concludes by discussing the implications of an increased politicization of standard-setting that goes far beyond the realm of regulation.
 
Jette Steen Knudsen argues that governments play a critical role in shaping norms and expectations for how corporations act. Conversely, governments are also the focus of much corporate political activity. In recent years, we have seen an intensified return of the state as regulator of corporate sustainability. For example, extensive legislation shaping corporate social due diligence in global supply chains as well as requirements for ESG investing have emerged in many countries around the world. She discusses how these new regulatory pressures for business sustainability change the relationship between the state and corporations.