New Organizational Leadership: Nonstate Actors in Global Economic Governance

States and international organizations have found irresistible cause in a globalizing world to coopt nonstate actors (NGOs, private standard setters and so forth) to manage the manifold problems arising under their stretched mandates and resources. The pooling of capacities in the pursuit of common goals seems perfectly sensible. Yet although the strategy of cooptation has become a policy of choice, policy makers often lack full knowledge of its implications. As Philip Selznick first showed, cooptation can have unintended consequences, shifting leadership from one organization to another. We place this fertile insight in a better specified analytical framework. That is, one capable of explaining when and how leadership shifts occur and where the status quo leaders will remain at the helm. Using original interview data and structured focused comparisons to test the framework, we reveal dramatic variation in leadership changes following the cooptation of outside actors in global financial and environmental governance.

Any Nearer to Victory in the Fifty Years War?:Assessing the European Commission’s Leadership, Weapons and Strategies towards combating Cartels

Some 50 years after its creation EU competition policy remains firmly entrenched as one of the most developed examples of supranational governance within the European Union. Although there has been a marked increase in interest among political scientists in competition policy in recent years there are still gaps in terms of overall coverage. One area that has been largely overlooked centres on cartels. Cartel policy has emerged as a highly salient issue and main priority of the Commission's competition policy since the late 1990s. Certainly, the recent restructuring of the EU cartel enforcement regime, the imposition of ever higher fines and a determined EU Competition Commissioner have fuelled growing media attention while new notices and regulations increasingly occupy the interests and minds of practitioners. The European Commission has constantly extended its activities on the competition policy front and its increasingly aggressive strategies to combat cartels provides political scientists with a fascinating case study of governance in action and illustrates the ways – such as leniency programmes, higher fines, enhanced and better equipped resources as well as internal reorganisation in which the European regulator is pursuing such conspiracies. This article traces the evolution and development of EU cartel policy since its inception and assesses the Commission's strategies and considers just to what extent the European Commission is winning its war against business cartelisation.

The African National Congress and its Critics: 'Predatory Liberalism', Black Empowerment and Intra-Alliance Tensions in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by centralized, neo-liberal policymaking that perpetuates, and in some cases exaggerates, socio-economic inequalities inherited from the apartheid era. The African National Congress (ANC) leadership’s alignment with powerful international and domestic market actors produces tensions within the Tripartite Alliance and between government and civil society. Consequently, several characteristics of ‘predatory liberalism’ are evident in contemporary South Africa: neo-liberal restructuring of the economy is combined with an increasing willingness by government to assert its authority, to marginalize and delegitimize those critical of its abandonment of inclusive governance. A new form of oligarch power, combining entrenched economic interests with those of a new ‘black bourgeoisie’ promoted by narrowly implemented Black Economic Empowerment policies, diminishes prospects for broad-based socio-economic transformation. Because the new policy environment is failing to resolve tensions between global market demands for increasing market liberalization and domestic popular demands for poverty-alleviation and socio-economic transformation, the ANC leadership is forced increasingly to confront ‘ultra-leftists’ who are challenging its credentials as defender of the National Democratic Revolution which was the cornerstone in the anti-apartheid struggle.

Cross-Border Environmental Governance and EC Law

This article examines the nature and scope of emerging cross-border participatory rights under European Community environmental law. It reviews the legal and political forces that have stimulated the development of such rights and also the specific nature of the rights conferred by three major legislative initiatives: the Community Directives on Environmental Impact Assessment, Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, and the Water Framework Directive. The article concludes with a case study on Ireland which assesses the likely significance of these cross-border participatory rights for transboundary environmental governance in Ireland.