Post on 03-Jun-2020
'Bringing the individual back in’ – International Relations and the First Image Subject:
International Relations, ECPR-Workshop, University of St. Gallen, 12-17 April 2011
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Private Individuals in International Relations:
Conceptualizing Social Entrepreneurs as a New Type of Actor
Abstract
Private individuals like Microsoft founder Bill Gates, rock star Bono or micro-credit pioneer
Muhammad Yunus have become significant global players. The term ‘social
entrepreneurship’ points to their transformative role and meets with a young trans-disciplinary
field of research. Scholars identify people who provide examples of the kind of impact that
individuals can have within a globalized world (and how such impact may be achieved). The
emergence and increasing number of private individuals in IR is a simple fact. In IR research,
however, there have only been loose and disputed attempts to bring the individual back in. In
this context, the paper conceptualizes social entrepreneurs (SEs) as a new, exclusive type of
actor by combining SE and IR research.
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Dr. Lena Partzsch
Social-Ecological Research Group GETIDOS
University of Greifswald
Soldmannstr. 23, 17489 Greifswald/Germany, phone +49-3834 864677
eMail: lena.partzsch@uni-greifswald.de
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1. Introduction
When 40 US billionaires committed to voluntarily donate at least 50 per cent of their net
worth to philanthropy in August 2010, they received a great deal of attention. Among them
were the investor Warren Buffet and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Individuals from around
the world are increasingly giving to projects serving the public good beyond their home
country. Their increasing significance in terms of material as well as ideational contributions
has been widely recognized. The term ‘social entrepreneurship’ points to the transformative
role of individuals and meets with a young trans-disciplinary field of research (Mair et al.
2006; Nicholls 2008; Ziegler 2009). What is social entrepreneurship and why should IR care
about it?
Social entrepreneurs (SEs) are private agents who tackle problems of public concern,
including issues of IR. In this paper, I differentiate between SEs in a wide sense and in a
narrow sense. Private donors and celebrities are individuals who use their material resources
and publicity to take agency on behalf of others by pursuing persistent (social, ecological,
economic) problems. I consider them to be SEs in a wide sense. SEs in a narrower sense are
individuals whose social impact is neither based on wealth nor on publicity (at least before
their success) but simply on their personal commitment to a new idea of how to improve
society. Their increasing relevance is closely linked to the emergence of private authority in
global governance (Bruehl et al. 2001; Hall and Biersteker 2002). Research on private
authority so far has been focused on the emergence of new complex actors: (1) civil society
organizations (CSOs) with public aims and (2) transnational corporations (TNCs) with private
self-interests (e.g. Fuchs 2005; Partzsch 2007). This categorization, however, neglects that
private individuals who participate in international negotiations often face different
constraints than state delegates. Corporative top-down actors act to a large extent on behalf of
the individuals on the top, and not vice versa.
Such private entrepreneurs have become donors and now, in a similar attempt, search for
individuals who take agency on behalf of others and pursue public goals (such as poverty
eradication or environmental protection) with “entrepreneurial zeal” and “the courage to
innovate.”1
1 http://www.schwabfound.org/sf/SocialEntrepreneurs/Whatisasocialentrepreneur/index.htm, accessed 8 September 2010.
International (non-governmental) organizations like the Skoll Foundation (formed
by Jeffrey Skoll, founder of eBay), the Schwab Foundation (formed by Klaus Schwab,
founder of the World Economic Forum), and Ashoka (formed by Bill Drayton, see below)
support SEs in a narrow sense. They award single individuals who have already been
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successful in a local or regional context, help them scale up their ideas and in this way
establish SEs as a new type of global player. They create the image of charismatic heroes who
provide examples of the kind of impact that individuals can have within a globalized world
(and how such impact may be achieved). The goal is an Everyone a Changemaker world,
where private individuals are able to solve any social – local, national or even international –
problem (Bornstein 2004; Drayton 2006).
The most prominent example of such a SE is Muhammad Yunus, whose idea of micro-credits
has had transformational impact on the financial markets of developing countries and serves
as reference for international organizations and programs such as the UN International Year
of Microcredit 2005 (Grenier 2008; Stein 2008, 2; Ziegler 2009, 8). There are many more SEs
in diverse policy fields. John Bird founded The Big Issue, a street newspaper sold by
homeless people and designed to allow them to earn a wage (Dacin et al. forthcoming, 12-13).
The paper is produced and sold in several countries and, according to UN-HABITAT, has
improved the living conditions in urban centers around the world.2
This paper deals with the emergence of individual global players such as Gates, Bono, Yunus
and Bird. It conceptualizes SEs as a new exclusive type of actor in IR. I am less concerned
with the endpoint of change processes provoked by the SEs; I am interested instead in a
mechanism of change – social entrepreneurs and their strategies – which has research value
regardless of the often controversial type of endpoint achieved by the change.
2. Social Entrepreneurs
Social entrepreneurship has provoked a specific field of research, which is grounded in
different disciplines. While scholars of economics and business studies are in the majority, the
discourse on SEs is also inspired by disciplines like sociology, history and anthropology (see
table 1). These diverse perspectives lead to many definitions of social entrepreneurship. From
a political science perspective, I define SEs as private agents who tackle problems of public
concern and cause transformational change (Cho 2006; Stein 2008). SEs are people who take
agency on behalf of the public without being explicitly mandated to do so, including donors
and celebrities. Apart from a few exceptions (e.g. Easterly 2006, chapter 11; Mair et al. 2006),
SEs are defined as single persons – who in practice and research are usually explicitly named.
SEs in a narrower sense are people who address social problems with innovative solutions and
entrepreneurial means. Views differ, however, on what can be considered an innovative
2 http://www.unhabitat.org/content.asp?typeid=19&catid=379&id=324, accessed 25 February 2011.
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solution: should it be a fundamentally new idea or only an idea applied to a specific context?
Also, what can be considered entrepreneurial - for instance, do SEs need to (re-) finance their
activities through market sales or may they (also) receive public means.
Table 1: The trans-disciplinary research field of social entrepreneurship Research discipline
Scholars Percentage (number)
Economics and business studies
Beth Battle Anderson, James E. Austin, Gordon M. Bloom, Jerr Boschee, Anne Clifford, J. Gregory Dees, Geoff Desa, Sarah E. A. Dixon, Bill Drayton, Doug Foster, Holm Friebe, Paola Grenier, Pamela Hartigan, Helen Haugh, Daniel Hjorth, Kai Hockerts, Suresh Kotha, Michal Kravcik, Herman B. Leonard, Johanna Mair, Ignasí Martí, Geoff Mulgan, Alex Nicholls, Ernesto Noboa, Francesco Perrini, Jeffrey A. Robinson, Christian Seelos, Clodia Vurro, Jane Wei-Skillern, Rowena Young, Muhammad Yunus
69% (31)
Sociology Ion Bogdan Vasi, Eva Illouz, Ezequiel Reficco, Richard Schwedberg
9% (4)
History Rob Boddice, Krzysztof Stanowski 4,5% (2) Anthropology Alex Jacobs, Kate Ganly 4,5% (2) Others
Philipp Albers (cultural studies), Albert Hyunbae Cho (political science), Jed Emerson (unknown disciplinary background), Judy Korn (educational science), Sally Osberg (literature studies), Rafael Ziegler (philosophy)
13% (6)
Sources: Own compilation based on authors of volumes by Mair et al. 2006, Nicholls 2008
and Ziegler 2009.
Muhammad Yunus serves as a prominent example of a SE to many scholars (Grenier 2008,
131; Stein 2008, 2; Ziegler 2009, 8). Yunus founded the Grameen Bank, which provides
credits of very small amounts and allows poor people to access the financial sector. In March
2011, the central bank of Bangladesh dismissed him from his post at Grameen Bank, saying
he had been wrongly reappointed. However, through his efforts, he has transformed social
realities first in his home country Bangladesh, now worldwide. In 2006 Yunus and the
Grameen Bank received the Nobel Peace Prize. While the bank first got international donor
support, it now refinances itself by loan repayments and accrued interest. Today the bank has
more money in deposits than it lends to its 4.5 million borrowers without collateral. It lends
out half a billion dollars a year, in loans averaging under 200 US$, and maintains a 99 per
cent repayment record (Yunus 2008, 44). The Grameen Bank has inspired international
organizations such as the World Bank and the UN, as we can see in the UN’s International
Year of Microcredit 2005. Moreover, it cooperates with TNCs on specific credits. For
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instance, Grameen Phone is a joint venture between the Grameen Bank and Telenore, a
Norwegian telecompany, where customers receive credits from the Bank to conclude mobile
phone contracts (Muhammad 2009, 36-37). In this way, Yunus and Grameen address the lack
of communication infrastructure and perform a task formerly considered to be public.
John Bird founded the street newspaper The Big Issue, which allows homeless people to earn
a wage instead of begging, thereby changing their public role and perception (from beggar to
vendor) and helping them to reintegrate into mainstream society. The Big Issue was first sold
in London in 1991; Bird has now expanded across the UK and has lent The Big Issue
trademark to SEs throughout the world. The Big Issue received the UN Habitat Scroll of
Honour Award in 2004 for improving the living conditions in urban centers around the world.
The street newspaper refinances itself through advertisements and sales. For scaling his idea,
Bird received donations from TNCs – The Body Shop in particular (Dacing et al.
forthcoming, 13). Profit made by the newspaper is invested in The Big Issue Foundation,
which exists to support vendors in gaining control of their lives by tackling the various issues
that lead to homelessness.
SEs like Yunus or Bird can serve as role models who take social responsibility. Yunus
himself speaks of social entrepreneurs as a new type of person
“who is not interested in profit maximization. He is totally committed to make a
difference in the world. He is socially-objective driven. He wants to give a better
chance in life to other people. He wants to achieve his objective through creating and
supporting sustainable business and enterprises. Such businesses may or may not earn
profit, but like any other business they must not incur losses.” (Yunus found in Ziegler
2009, 8).
Most scholars of global governance distinguish between two types of non-state actors –
NGOs as civil society actors and TNCs (e.g. Fuchs 2005; Hummel 2001). Transnational
corporations (TNCs) are complex, corporative actors, which own or control production or
provide services in more than one nation-state (Beisheim et al. 1999, 305). They typically aim
at maximizing their profit, or rather their shareholder value. TNCs tend to be organized
hierarchically, i.e. there is top-down leadership. Corporations are hence able to act
independently from the interests and preferences of the majority of the individuals of whom
they are composed. This allows them a high degree of efficiency and effectiveness – for
example in political negotiations (Scharpf 2000, 105-106). Non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) are commonly used as a synonym for civil society organizations (Hummel 2001, 22;
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Social Entrepreneurship
State
Karns and Mingst 2004, 212). They can either have an aggregated (bottom-up) or corporate
(top-down) structure. NGOs are neither assigned by the state nor are they part of the
institutional political systems (like political parties); however, they run political activities that
are related to institutional politics. While NGOs – at least in a textbook case – pursue public
goals, TNCs are driven by their private self-interest and profit-maximization.
State, business and civil society actors can be broadbrushly assigned by their resources –
respectively, taxes, commercial activities and donations (Linder and Vaillancourt Rosenau
2003, 11). Forasmuch as SEs finance themselves through commercial activities like business
companies do (in addition to donations) while pursuing public goals at the same time, they
can be considered a hybrid of both types of non-state actors, business and civil society. Of
course, a few NGOs also run commercial activities (Oxfam with its charity shops that sell
second-hand clothes, or Greenpeace with its merchandizing products); however, for these
NGOs, market activities have only a supplemental character in order to finance their advocacy
work in political processes. SEs try to more directly impact societies through their market
activities “and sidestep these processes in a monological effort to circumvent grid-locked
institutional politics” (Cho 2006, 53). For instance, the Grameen Bank has direct impact on
financial markets and the poor, instead of doing political advocacy work in the name of the
poor.
Chart 1: Social Entrepreneurship between state, market and civil society
Most scholars locate the term ‘social entrepreneur’ in the setting of New Labour, either
explicitly (Cho 2006; Grenier 2008 and 2009) or implicitly (e.g. Drayton 2006; Mair et al.
2006). Accordingly, the term has mainly been shaped in the UK (Grenier 2009, 178-181). It is
part of third-way rhetoric (Giddens 1998) that tries to bring together economic and social
welfare (and has generated such dichotomous word combinations as social entrepreneur or
collaborative competition). Sometimes social entrepreneurship is also declared to be an even
further variant of state-market relation, or fourth stage (Goldsmith 2010): after public-private
Civil society Business
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partnerships failed, the profit as well as non-profit driven private sector should unfold its
potential to bring about social change. The market is the center of attention again, while a
fundamental dichotomy of social and economic benefit continues to be denied. Social
entrepreneurship is considered to represent a more ethically and socially integrating
capitalism (Dacin et al. forthcoming, 3). In this spirit, Yunus argues that social
entrepreneurship is a new variant of capitalism:
“It is time to move away from a narrow interpretation of capitalism and broaden the
concept of the market by giving full recognition to social business entrepreneurs. Once
this is done, social business entrepreneurs can flood the market and make it work for
social goals as efficiently as it does for personal goals.” (Yunus 2008, 41-42).
There is little research done that goes beyond examining SEs as such and linking them with
other discourses (Dacin et al. forthcoming, 3; Mair et al. 2006, 2). Explanations and
conceptualizations of SEs are predominantly normative with regard to what would be
desirable (Dacin et al. forthcoming, 3). Empirical studies are mostly anecdotal and targeted to
support a specific initiative (Mair et al. 2006, 2). Against this background and facing the
current growth of research and public discourse on social entrepreneurship, SE research
should urgently be linked to further research disciplines (see also Dacin et al. forthcoming, 5).
In the following I will try to do this by classifying SEs as a new type of actor in IR.
3. Bringing the individual back in international relations
Although most IR scholars deny any explanatory power to the first image (Waltz 1959/2001),
individuals have not been neglected throughout. Within IR research, there are basically three
concepts that refer to political actions of individuals: leadership, citizenship und
entrepreneurship (Stein 2008, 4). With reference to the principal-agent approach, leaders who
take part in international negotiations can be described as agents. In the case of state
delegates, citizens’ communities constitute their principals. Entrepreneurs, like leaders, take
agency on behalf of others but, different from state delegates, they are not explicitly hired by
citizens (or those affected) (see chart 2).
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Citizens or those affected (principal)
Chart 2: Individuals in international relations
3.1. Leadership by state representatives
In political science ‘leadership’ refers to people in power, be they high officials such as
elected officeholders, administrators in government agencies or high-ranking politicians such
as party leaders. When asking what a leader is, scholars disaggregate complex actors and pay
attention to individuals in guiding positions. The central question is “Who negotiates in IR?”
In IR research, leadership is normally not assigned to individuals but to complex actors:
pioneer states or special international organizations. There have been only a few attempts “to
bring the individual back in” (Young 1991, 281). In such an attempt, Young explicitly defines
individual leadership against the background of regime theory:
“Leadership (…) refers to the actions of individuals who endeavor to solve or
circumvent the collective action problems that plague the efforts of parties seeking to
reap joint gains in processes of institutional bargaining.” (Young 1991, 285; see also
Young 1999)
According to Young, regime negotiations can only be successful if certain types of
individuals come together and find agreement. The individuals he means are agents who are
imbued with authority to act on behalf of a collective or corporate actor, normally
representatives of national governments. Young describes three types of individual
leadership: structural, entrepreneurial and intellectual. The structural leader tries to bring
material resources into bargaining leverage and to pressure other negotiators to agree to his or
her suggestions. In contrast, the entrepreneurial leader has negotiation skills that are similar to
a mediator (but with his or her own interests) in setting certain issues, formulating
compromise and building up acceptance. The intellectual leader as a thought leader provides
the ideational basis for negotiations.
Leader (agents) Entrepreneurs (agents without principal)
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According to Young, individual leadership does not increase but preconditions the success of
international negotiations. As an illustrative case, he provides the example of negotiations on
the reduction of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs): during the mid-1980s, when the dangers
associated with stratospheric ozone depletion were still subject to considerable scientific
controversy, American negotiators tried without success to induce Britain, France, Germany
and others to accept plans for a comprehensive reduction in the use of CFCs. The result was
the 1985 Vienna convention, a framework agreement containing little substantive content. By
1987, however, new scientific evidence had strengthened the case for restricting all major
uses of CFCs and Dupont, as the largest producer of CFCs, was convinced. According to
Young, structural and intellectual leadership came together at this stage and Richard
Benedick, negotiating on behalf of the US, was able to turn the tide. His threats to restrict
access to the US market led to the acceptance of across-the-board cuts in the production and
consumption of CFCs. He had major influence on the negotiations to the Montreal protocol,
which considerably concretized the Vienna agreement.
Putnam (1988) points to the logic of two-level games: there are negotiations within each
entity (state, international organization, etc.) about the position that the entity is going to take
in international negotiations; the initial negotiations make up the first level, the international
negotiations make up the second. Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that
parties regularly differ in their ability to focus on specific instances of institutional bargaining.
While Young (1991, 285) emphasizes that much depends on the individual negotiator and his
or her capacity to mediate between the two levels, as well as to strategically deploy the other
level in each case, Andrew Moravcsik (1999) contradicts this assumption. He shows for the
five most important treaty-emending negotiations of the European Community (before 1999)
that the interventions of ‘supranational entrepreneurs’ were generally late, redundant, futile
and sometimes even counterproductive. According to Moravcsik, only a two-level bargaining
theory attentive to the dynamics of states-society relations, rather than a theory focused on
interstate coordination problems, explains the (intermittent and rare) variation in the
effectiveness of supranational entrepreneurship. Tora Skodvin and Steinar Andresen (2006,
25) offer a kind of compromise by singling out entrepreneurial leadership as primarily
associated with individuals. According to them (along with Young), this is a leadership mode
in which personal leadership capabilities and skills constitute crucial determinants of success.
With regard to the comparison of political leaders and private individuals in IR, we need to
realize that the rules of the two-level game significantly restrict the leeway of negotiators who
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represent a complex entity and who negotiate on the account of others, compared to those
(private) individual negotiators who are only accountable to themselves.
3.2. Citizens and those affected If we disaggregate complex actors of IR, we first see individuals who are political leaders and
participate in international negotiations. Second, there are the individuals who are represented
by the leaders (see chart 2). In the Westphalian model of the sovereign nation-state, these
individuals are nation-state citizens. However, while the nation-state continues to be the
central political community, it is losing significance. With processes of economic and cultural
globalization, the nation-state decreasingly shapes people’s identity and does not necessarily
serve as the only political community anymore. We need to raise the question of (new)
political sovereign or, put differently, the group question “Who are we?” (Nye 2008, 46).
Individuals consider themselves decreasingly as national, and increasingly as world, citizens
or cosmopolites (Held 2010; Stein 2008). At the same time, new transnational networks of
those affected emerge and serve as communities of political reference, independent from the
nation-state (Wolf 2002, 42-45).
International politics is decreasingly organized according to territorial, and increasingly to
sectoral, regimes and negotiation systems (Wolf 2002, 42-45). International cooperation has
generated more than 200 environmental agreements and various institutional structures for
monitoring, enforcing and strengthening them (Carter 2007, 242); these agreements are
increasingly negotiated and adopted by non-state actors (Bruehl et al. 2001; Partzsch 2007).
The World Commission on Dams, for example, brought together state and non-state
representatives to negotiate new guidelines for large-scale dam constructions (Dingwerth
2005). The demos or principal in these cases can be defined by “their awareness of being
affected by its decisions” (Wolf 2002, 44). Those who make the decisions are thereby
postulated to be identical with those who are affected by them (Wolf 2002, 43). Affected
individuals quasi replace individual citizens and constitute communities based on a functional
rather than territorial differentiation. In each particular case, this replacement provokes
questions. Those NGOs or networks participating in international negotiations are not always
accountable to the people whose interests they claim to represent (Holzscheiter 2010).
There are only a few democratic models that try to complement the Westphalian model of
sovereign nation-states by consensual processes of such transnational, functional demoi (Wolf
2002, 44; Stein 2008, 6). Among these is the deliberative supra-nationalism that – in contrast
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to cosmopolitan democracy – denies any possibility of shifting structures of the nation-state to
the international level (Joerges/Neyer 1997; Schmalz-Bruns 1999). It does not take a
perspective that aims for an institutionalized world politics; it basically assumes that the
political sphere which exists in parallel. The World Social Forum, which has taken place
annually since 2001, impressively symbolizes a successful networking of civil society groups
across borders and their capability to at least show alternative ways of creating globalization
(Brunnengraeber 2005, 342). A global civil society and sphere of politically involved
individuals has emerged (Kaldor 2003; Rucht 1999).
Table 2: Leaders, citizens and entrepreneurs - examples
Individuals in IR Example
Leader Richard Benedick negotiating the Montreal Protocol on behalf of the US
Citizens and/or those affected US citizens and/or those affected by ozone depletion; citizens of conflict states and/or medical personnel and those wounded in war
Entrepreneur Swiss banker Henry Dunant whose ideas inspired the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1863 and the 1864 Geneva Convention
3.3. Norm and policy entrepreneur
If individual citizens take action not based on self-interest but personal commitment to
improve the life of others, we can conceptualize them as entrepreneurs. Martha Finnemore
and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) introduced the term ‘norm entrepreneur’ (or ‘moral
entrepreneur’). These individual entrepreneurs are considered to play a significant role in the
process of international norm formation: „Norms do not appear out of thin air; they are
actively built by agents having strong notions about appropriate or desirable behavior in their
community” (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 896).3
3 The term ‘norm entrepreneurship’ originally refers to individuals but is also applied to complex actors in IR research, e.g. to TNCs that diffuse moral ideas and values through corporate social responsibility (CSR) measures (e.g. Flohr et al. 2010). The same holds true for policy entrepreneurs that are considered to be NGOs (e.g. Huitema/Meijerink 2009).
Like Young (1991) and Skodvin/Andresen
(2006, 25), Finnemore/Sikkink (1998, 893) emphasize the role that individual actors play in
the two-level game, the two-level norm game: only because of entrepreneurial efforts,
domestic norms become international norms. Different from Young’s leaders, the norm
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entrepreneurs are private individuals, not state delegates.4
We face a similar situation with regard to policy entrepreneurs (e.g. Baumgartner/Jones 2002;
Huitema/Meijerink 2009; Kingdon 1984/2003; Mintrom 1997, also called public
entrepreneurs, Ostrom 1965). While norm entrepreneurs deal with the formation of norms and
moral values, policy entrepreneurs provoke significant policy change. Policy entrepreneurs
are individuals either situated within the political system, such as state servants or elected
representatives, or people from outside, such as NGOs and the sciences (Huitema/Meijerink
2009, 371; Mintron 1997, 741). If they are state servants or elected representatives, they are
identical to the political leaders described above. Different from Young’s entrepreneurial
leaders, who represent a complex entity, policy entrepreneurs basically represent their
personal ideas and goals for which they try to bring about political change and that may
considerably differ from the entity they work in. Especially at an early stage of their efforts,
they might not represent common perceptions.
In contrast to the leaders described
above, entrepreneurs do not act on account of others but, at least to a large extent, act on self-
account.
An example of a norm entrepreneur given by Finnemore and Sikkink (1998, 896-7), is the
Swiss banker Henry Dunant, among others. Prevailing norms that medical personnel and
those wounded in war be treated as neutrals and noncombatants are clearly traceable to his
efforts. After a transformative personal experience at the battle of Solferino in 1859, Dunant
helped found an organization to promote this cause (what became the International
Committee of the Red Cross) through an international treaty (the first Geneva Convention).
Finnemore and Sikkink (1998, 897) also name Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
in the US and Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst in England as norm
entrepreneurs who took the initial leadership to the international campaign for women’s
suffrage.
There are some indications that norm as well as policy entrepreneurs are of particular
relevance in the beginning of a change process at the international level: Finnemore and
Sikkink (1998) describe three phases of international norm formation, the norm life cycle.
Norm entrepreneurs have the most significant role to play in the first phase of norm
emergence when they need to convince a critical mass of states, so-called norm leaders. They
call attention to issues or even create issues, in a sense framing, by using language that names,
interprets and dramatizes (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 897). The new norms never enter a
4 Not explicitly, but following the illustrative cases.
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vacuum and entrepreneurs need to respect existing norms in order to be successful (although
to challenge existing logics of appropriateness, they may need to be explicitly inappropriate,
Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 897-8). For instance, the Red Cross had to persuade military
commanders that the protection of wounded was compatible with their war aims
(Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 899). In a second phase, the norm cascade, convinced states need
to persuade further states. The aim is that norms are internalized by actors and achieve a
taken-for-granted quality that makes conformance possible in the third stage, norm
internalization.
Similar to what Young (1991, 293) describes with regard to leaders, Finnemore and Sikkink
(1998, 898) do not assume that entrepreneurs are driven by material self-interests. To the
contrary, they see them as acting out of empathy, altruism and idealism: „Ideational
commitment is the main motivation when entrepreneurs promote norms or ideas because they
believe in the ideals and values embodied in the norms, even though the pursuit of the norms
may have no effect on their well-being” (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 898). The motives of
leaders, receiving accolades from their peers in particular (Young 1991, 293), are used by
entrepreneurs especially in the second phase when states accept norms, among other reasons,
because they want others to think well of them (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 903).
On the one hand, IR scholars assign international norm formation and policy change to
particular individuals; on the other hand, they also realize the need for organizational
platforms, which are sometimes only founded in order to support specific norms, as in the
case of many NGOs (Greenpeace, the Red Cross, etc.). “Entrepreneurs may act individually,
but often they create organizations or networks for propagating their ideas” (Elgstroem 2000,
459-60, similar in Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 899; Huitema/Meijerink 2009, 376). The
organization that offers a platform to the individuals also influences them by prescribing a
certain way of using information, knowledge and expertise (Finnemore/Sikkink 1998, 899;
Huitema/Meijerink 2009, 376).
In summary, in IR the individual appears classically at first as a representative of a complex
actor (agent) and, second, as the smallest unit of a political community of citizens or those
affected (principal). Third, IR scholars identify individual entrepreneurs who are not
mandated by anyone but have their own private agendas of how to address social problems.
Different from SE research, IR scholars conceptualize these entrepreneurs in terms of their
influence on (international) political or norm-setting processes. Norm and policy
entrepreneurs are not considered to circumvent institutional politics. This is a major
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difference from SEs who are conceptualized to more directly impact and change society
through the market (while being anything but apolitical as they tackle problems of public
concern, see Cho 2006; Stein 2008). Besides, IR research has only dealt with individual
entrepreneurs as an exception. To the contrary, SE research describes individual agency as a
widespread phenomenon that deserves to be recognized and fostered. In the following, I bring
together these two strengths of research by conceptualizing SEs as a new type of actor in IR.
4. Multiplication of private individuals in international relations
We have seen that private entrepreneurs are nothing new at the global level and that they have
been recognized to a certain extent by IR research. However, the number of entrepreneurs
with international norm, policy or social causes has multiplied in the last two decades and
their impact has largely increased compared to the examples provided by Finnemore/Sikkink,
which date back a century. Their escalating relevance is closely linked to processes of
economic globalization. Individual businessmen who only recently made their fortune in a
globalized economy, such as Gates and Skoll, make up a first category of private individuals
in IR. These donors’ activities are based on their material resources. Celebrities, who receive
attention because of their publicity, form a second category. I consider both, donors and
celebrities, as SEs in a wide sense. Through international support organizations like Ashoka
and the Skoll Foundation, these people work towards an Everyone a Changemaker world;
whereas those people who are neither rich nor famous (at least before their success), but
mainly driven by a personal cause and a new idea of how to improve society, work towards
becoming influential global players. These people make up a third category, and I consider
them as SEs in a narrow sense.
4.1. Donors, celebrities and social entrepreneurs in a narrow sense
Individuals emerge in IR on the basis of their material resources, their celebrity and their
personal commitment. Aside from George Soros, Warren Buffet and the Gates have probably
received the most attention as international philanthropists whose relevance for IR is clearly
based on their material resources. These donors belong to the richest people of the world (see
table 3). With a start-up capital of 94 million US$, Bill Gates set up a foundation in 1994, first
named only after himself and later renamed also after his wife to “Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation.” The couple has invested more than 28 billion US$ of their private net worth into
14
the foundation. Buffet announced in 2006 to prospectively give 99 per cent of his net worth of
currently 47 billion US$ to the Gates Foundation.5
Table 3: Forbes List of the World's Billionaires
Rank Name Citizenship Age Net worth
($bil)
Residence
1 Carlos Slim Helu &
family
Mexico 70 53.5 Mexico
2 William Gates III United States 54 53.0 United States
3 Warren Buffett United States 79 47.0 United States
4 Mukesh Ambani India 52 29.0 India
5 Lakshmi Mittal India 59 28.7 United
Kingdom
6 Lawrence Ellison United States 65 28.0 United States
7 Bernard Arnault France 61 27.5 France
8 Eike Batista Brazil 53 27.0 Brazil
9 Amancio Ortega Spain 74 25.0 Spain
10 Karl Albrecht Germany 90 23.5 Germany
(…)
Source: www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_The-Worlds-
Billionaires_Rank.html, 20 January 2010.
Having first a clear priority on the two issues of global health and community needs in the
Pacific Northwest, the Gates Foundation has constantly amplified its scope of activities.
While the Foundation first gave grants to public libraries in the US to provide free computer
and internet access, the Foundation now runs the Global Libraries program in order to narrow
the digital divide on a worldwide scale. Where the money goes to in particular depends
originally on the interests and experiences of the Gates. For instance, after the Gates visited
infants with life-threatening malaria in Mozambique in 2003, they announced to give 168
million US$ to the Manhiça Health Research Centre in southern Mozambique (compared to
5 http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/0,1518,710192,00.html, 8 September 2010.
15
200 million US$ anti-malarial spending by Mozambique government). The Foundation’s
efforts in malaria vaccine research have continually intensified since then.6 This flexibility
and spontaneous capability to act marks a major difference in IR between private individuals
and representative negotiators (leaders) who are bound to instructions of their national
governments. In addition, their material background allows the Gates to directly improve
social realities on the ground, like narrowing the digital divide or improving health services in
African countries. The Gates’ Global Health Program, with an over-all budget of 13 billion
US$ since 1994 (see chart), does not necessarily outrange the World Health Organization
(WHO), with its annual budget of close to 5 billion US$ in 20097; however, the Gates can
potentially prove the interpretation by SE research of entrepreneurs bypassing grid-locked
institutional politics to be true (in fact, they started to cooperate with the WHO). Private
donors like the Gates do not need to influence state actors like the health ministry in the first
place, which gives them an advantage over conventional NGOs and norm or policy
entrepreneurs, previously analyzed by IR research.8
Chart 3: The Gates Foundation’s global investments (1994-2010)
Source: www.gatesfoundation.org/about/Pages/foundation-fact-sheet.aspx, 30 October 2010.
6 http://www.gatesfoundation.org/about/Pages/foundation-timeline.aspx, 8 September 2010, and The Economist 25 September 2003 (http://www.economist.com/node/2084799, accessed 25 February 2011). 7 http://www.cfr.org/public-health-threats/world-health-organization/p20003, 25 February 2011. 8 To the contrary, politicians try to influence the Gates Foundation. For instance, Joaquim Alberto Chissano, former president of Mozambique, has joined the foundation’s Global Development Program as a program advisory panel member in 2009.
16
As private donors can impact societies to a large extent independently from institutional
politics, some SE scholars discuss whether private commitment is capable of replacing state
agency (Stein 2008, 21; Cho 2006, 54). The Gates Foundation’s annual budget of 1.5 billion
US$ in 2007 is comparable to the aid provided by small nation-states like Denmark, $2.56
billion (Stein 2008, 22). Since its formation in 1994, the Gates Foundation spent more than 16
billion US$ for social projects outside the US (see chart 3). In this regard, however, we should
not neglect that the accumulation of financial assets owned by people like Buffet, Gates or
Soros is linked to processes of economic globalization and a neoliberal reorganization that are
not resulting from a weakness of the nation-state. To the contrary, these processes are bound
to the state and would not be possible without it (Brand et al. 2000, 140). If donations to
foundations are tax deductions like in Germany, every multi-billion donation implies a loss of
a multi-billion-tax income to the state. The nation-states weaken themselves by disclaiming
tax income.
Further, we should consider that private individuals do not take philanthropist actions in a
legal vacuum. If the Gates take action in Mozambique, they need to observe the national law.
Moreover, different from NGOs, which may depend on political support, foundations that
place their capital in stocks depend on the market. The Gates Foundation in particular came
under criticism for their silent investments in controversial oil and chemical corporations.
This criticism might also apply to Klaus Schwab and Jeffrey Skoll who launch foundations in
support of SEs but invest their foundations’ capital in the conventional market. Ashoka
Germany only recently changed to the GLS Bank, a bank operating with an ethical
philosophy based on an anthroposophical initiative (while Ashoka continues to accept money
from conventional banks, see Ashoka 2010, 31).
Conflicts between moral claims and real doings of private individuals are probably even more
controversial with regard to celebrities, my second category of private individuals in IR.
Besides private donors like the Gates, many celebrities have recently appeared on the global
stage. Cooper introduces the term ‘celebrity diplomat,’ which he applies to individuals with
“communications skills, a sense of mission, and some global reach” who “enter into the
official diplomatic and operate through the matrix of complex relationships with state
officials” (Cooper 2008, 7). Oxfam, a NGO fighting against poverty and injustice, has a staff
17
member only dedicated to finding celebrities who as individuals in IR work to support
Oxfam’s goals.9
One of the first world celebrities that engaged for a cause was the French film star Brigitte
Bardot (Nadeau 1996). At the end of the 1970s, Bardot stood up against the Canadian seal
hunt and wearing fur. The fact that she was still posing nude for an ad series of a mink fur
farmers association in 1969 provoked doubts about her motives, which are usually interpreted
as based on self-interest rather than animal welfare. The campaign allowed BB to reposition
herself as the middle-aged woman dedicated to a cause when she had retired from her acting
career.
More recently, Bono, Sting and Bob Geldorf have become the “triumvirate of good
conscious” (Frank 2010). Bob Geldorf rose to prominence as an Irish rock singer in the late
1970s and has become widely recognized for his activism, especially anti-poverty efforts
concerning Africa. Sting became popular as a lead singer of the band The Police and has
established a foundation for rainforest protection and help of the Kayapo, a native people in
Brazil. Bono, vocalist of the Irish rock band U2, has become the most illustrative example of
a celebrity who uses his publicity for political and social causes beyond national borders. He
gets involved with virtually anything. Among his favorite causes are poverty eradication and
third-world debt relief; for instance, he joined the Jubilee 2000 campaign for third-world debt
relief (see chart 4).
Celebrities use their publicity to direct media attention to social and political causes. The
Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief highly benefitted from Bono’s support. Celebrities
shake hands with politicians and, in some cases, join the game in diplomatic back rooms
(Busby 2007; Cooper 2008, 8). In September 2000, Bono met with US Senator Jesse Helms
and convinced the conservative head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support
developing country debt relief (Busby 2007). Bono further claims to be responsible for the
fact that the U.S. Bush government tripled aid for Africa after he had travelled to Africa with
Paul O’Neill, then US Secretary of the Treasury (Frank 2010). In 2002, after the Jubilee 2000
campaign, Bono moved to establish his own organization, DATA. DATA stands for Debt,
AIDS, Trade, Africa and aims to help focus public attention on how to beat AIDS and
extreme poverty in Africa by working with politicians, the media and celebrities.10
9 http://www.portfolio.com/careers/job-of-the-week/2008/07/27/Celebrity-Wrangler-Lyndsay-Cruz, 30 October 2010.
Justifying
this obviously exclusive approach on the one hand, and conflicts between his moral claims
10 http://data.d202.org/about/faq.html#faq1, 20 February 2011.
18
and his own wealthy lifestyle on the other hand, Bono states: “A poor cannot help the poor”
(found in Frank 2010). Different from donors like Gates, who obviously bypass institutional
politics by giving their net worth to philanthropy and financing social activities on the ground
(besides political advocacy work), celebrities tend to not give their own money. Instead they
use their publicity in order to pressure politicians to increase public spending for the poor.
They speed up (and not circumvent) processes of institutional politics (see chart 4).
- - -
Chart 4: Celebrity diplomacy: Bono talked to then IMF director Horst Koehler in 2000
(Source: Wikipedia, 30 September 2010) while Melinda and Bill Gates take action on the
ground by financing health care in Africa (Source: http://www.faz.net/m/%7B0D11BD56-
DF62-4B0D-BB9C-C824757E14AA%7Dg225_4.jpg, 25 February 2011).
- - -
While agency of private individuals in IR is obviously exclusive in both cases, donors and
celebrities, this is prima facie not the case for SEs like Yunus and Bird, who are the main
people discussed in SE research. At least before their breakthrough, SEs in this narrow sense
can neither rely on considerable material resources like the Gates or Buffet, nor on a celebrity
status like Bono, Sting or Geldorf. It seems that their activities and success are simply based
on their personal commitment to a new idea of how to improve society (micro-credits to
eradicate poverty; street newspapers to improve urban living conditions). However, in the
following I will show that private donors very much stand behind the international success of
such individual SEs. Private entrepreneurs such as Jeffrey Skoll and Klaus Schwab actively
search for and support these individuals who take agency on behalf of others and pursue
public goals. They award single individuals with new ideas and in this way actively create
SEs as a new type of global player.
19
4.2. International support of social entrepreneurs
The largest organization in support of SEs is Ashoka, an US based non-profit NGO. Bill
Drayton founded Ashoka in 1982; since then, Ashoka has assigned more than 2,500
“individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems”11
“Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will
not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry."
all over
the world (see table 3). The organization is closely linked to the management consultancy
McKinsey, a former employer of Drayton. In Germany, for instance, Ashoka uses the
consultancy’s office space and employees work for Ashoka in their sabbatical on a voluntary
basis. Further partners and financiers are especially the Gates Foundation as well as
transnational corporations such as Nike or Citibank. In 2009, Ashoka’s annual budget was 41
million US$ (Ashoka 2010, 31). Ashoka selects SEs on a worldwide scale, offers them
fellowships, consultancy and network support. The knockout criterion in the selection process
is a new idea, hence the claim that social entrepreneurs are innovative for the public (1).
Drayton points out in a very prominent quote that such a new idea should indeed have
transformative impact on society:
12
Besides the new, transformative idea, further criteria for fellow selection are: (2) creativity,
(3) entrepreneurial quality, (4) social impact of the idea, and (5) ethical fiber.
13 If assigned as
a SE, Ashoka fellows receive financial support of 15,000 to 20,000 US$ per year over three
years and ideational support in the form of consultancy and coaching for the rest of their lives.
The money should allow the fellows to retreat from their original jobs and to spend more time
implementing their specific idea.14
In the last decade, social entrepreneurship has attracted the interest of private individuals who
have only recently become significant global players themselves – like Jeffrey Skoll, founder
of eBay, and Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (Dacin et al.
forthcoming, 2; Mair et al. 2006, 3). These new global players have established NGOs and
foundations similar to Ashoka – such as the Skoll Foundation, the Schwab Foundation (whose
board members include Yunus, among others), Echoing Green and the Draper Richards
Foundation. Like Ashoka, they assign and support individuals as SEs committed to a public
11 www.ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur, 25 January 2011. 12 http://www.skoll.com/aboutsocialentrepreneurship/index.asp, accessed 15 March 2011. 13 http://www.ashoka.org/support/criteria, last accessed on 15 October 2009. 14 http://switzerland.ashoka.org/news/releases, 10 November 2010.
20
cause, ranging from river restoration to the empowerment of disabled people to art projects
(see table 3).
Table 3: Support of social entrepreneurs Ashoka Skoll-
Foundation Echoing Green
Swab-Foundation
Draper Richards-Foundation
Number of fellows
2,500 73 450 150 30 NGOs
Number of countries
70 43 40 40 Only US-based NGOs
Type and amount of support
15.000- 20.000 US-$ for three years on average, ideational
Up to one million US-$, special credit conditions, ideational (e.g. invitation to Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship)
60.000 US-$ or 90.000 US-$ for a partnership of two people for two years
Ideational (e.g. invitation to World Economic Forum)
100.000 Euro for three years, ideational
Source: Own compilation based on information from the homepages of the respective
foundations in October 2010.
Their selection criteria sound similar to, and as vague as, those of Ashoka. All of these
organizations have in common an emphasis on the innovative and transformative potential of
SEs for societies (the Skoll Foundation explicitly refers to Drayton’s above quote on its
homepage). According to the Schwab Foundation, SEs combine the characteristics
represented by Virgin founder Richard Branson and Catholic sister Mother Teresa,15 while the
Skoll Foundation puts them in line with Hull-House founder Jane Addams, educational
reformist Maria Montessori and microfinance initiator Muhammad Yunus.16
15 http://www.schwabfound.org/sf/SocialEntrepreneurs/Whatisasocialentrepreneur/index.htm, 7 September 2010.
The Draper
Richards Foundation is the only organization that does not assign individuals but rather NGOs
as SEs, and these NGOs need to be newly founded. The fellows of all the other organizations
must prove to already have a certain success and diffusion of their innovation when applying
for fellowship support. Moreover, the Draper Richards Foundation supports only non-profit
NGOs. All the other organizations not only admit a profit-seeking interest to the SEs, they
16 http://www.skollfoundation.org/aboutsocialentrepreneurship/index.asp, 30 September 2010.
21
even consider commercial activities to be an essential part of social entrepreneurship (through
which social activities are refinanced). Especially the Skoll Foundation, in contrast to the
Richard Draper Foundation, attaches importance to a profit-seeking business model. A further
difference between the Draper Richards Foundation and the other supporters is the former’s
focuses on US-based SEs (which may, however, take transnational action) while the latter
supports SEs from developed as well as developing countries, regardless of their nationality.
My inquiry has not shown any SE who gets support from two different support organizations.
However, it does happen that different individuals from the same organizational platform
receive awards. For instance, Michal Kravčík, Martin Kovác and Eugen Tóth from Slovakia
aim to establish a new water paradigm with a more decentralized infrastructure and
management (opposing large-scale dam construction, discussed by the World Commission on
Dams (WCD)); all three have been individually assigned fellowships for this idea by
Ashoka.17 Kailash Satyarthi has been assigned an Ashoka fellowship for founding Rugmark,
an Indian organization fighting child labor in the carpet industry.18 Nini Smith, based on this
initiative, launched Rugmark Foundation USA to educate consumers and persuade them to
seek out the Rugmark (or now Good Weave) label, and has since become a Skoll fellow (their
efforts are comparable to programs of the International Labor Organization (ILO) against
child labor).19
Fellows of the Skoll Foundation can receive up to one million US$ (so Smith received much
more financial support than Satyarthi).
20 Moreover, the Skoll Foundation supports its fellows
ideationally by allowing them to participate in, among other things, the annual Skoll World
Forum on Social Entrepreneurship (Oxford).21 In this vein, the Schwab Foundation does not
pay out any material means and supports its fellows only ideationally by inviting them to the
World Economic Forum (Davos), offering them “unique opportunities (…) to connect with
corporate, political, academic, media and other leaders.”22
17 http://www.ashoka.org/search/fellows?page=1&country=LO, and http://www.waterparadigm.org/indexen.php?web=./home/homeen.html, 25 February 2011.
This support is an essential
contribution to the perception of the fellows as legitimate global players: „Membership of
Schwab provides certain legitimacy, but attending the [World Economic Forum] with a
national president can make a profound difference to how a social entrepreneur is viewed in
his or her home country” (Grenier 2008, 135).
18 http://www.ashoka.org/node/2841, 25 January 2011. 19 http://www.skollfoundation.org/entrepreneur/nina-smith/, 25 January 2011. 20 http://www.infodev.org/en/Article.319.html, 10 November 2010. 21 http://www.skollfoundation.org/approach/investment-strategy/, 10. November 2010. 22 http://www.schwabfound.org/sf/AboutUs/Whatdowedo/index.htm, 25 January 2010.
22
Furthermore, the support organizations contribute to generating identity for the SEs
themselves. They market their activities as success stories. People committed to a cause
hardly consider themselves a SE before being recognized as such (Grenier 2008, 129). “This
new definition [as SE], and the security such a role definition brings along, altered my entire
way of relating to and presenting me to clients and partners,” states Ashoka fellow Judy Korn
(Korn 2009, 47). Through networking activities in particular, the support organizations create
an identity generating community of SEs. They create an aura of celebrity and brand image
(Dacin et al. 2010, 12, 15).
While the people assigned as SEs usually first implement their innovative solutions in a
concrete local context – micro-credits in Bangladesh or the new water paradigm in Slovakia –
the support organizations aim to diffuse and scale-up their experiences in order to activate a
more fundamental, worldwide change – UN International Year of Microcredit 2005. In this
process, the SEs move from their local context and become global players. Frequently, they
are brought together with TNCs; for instance, the Grameen Bank cooperates with Danone,
one of the largest food-product corporations, Telenore, a Norwegian telecompany, and Veolia,
the world’s largest private water supplier (Muhammad 2009, 36-37).
By assigning single individuals as new SEs, organizations like Ashoka create the image of
charismatic heroes who provide examples of the kind of impact individuals can have within a
globalized world: “Ashoka envisions an Everyone A Changemaker world. A world that
responds quickly and effectively to social challenges, and where each individual has the
freedom, confidence and societal support to address any social problem and drive change.”23
Moreover, as already outlined above, in difference to norm and policy entrepreneurs, whose
influence is assessed in terms of influence in (international) politics, SEs are presented as
having direct impact on society, circumventing institutional politics. Upon closer inspection,
these assumptions (lonely hero, no need for politics) need to be questioned. Social
entrepreneurs in a narrow sense may be successful by themselves at an early stage of their
initiative (norm emergence) but, at least when it comes to scaling and norm cascade,
The supports organizations neglect the SE’s surrounding field and the significance of their
organizational platforms, whose significance scholars on norm and policy entrepreneurship
have continually emphasized (e.g. Grameen Bank has almost 25,000 employees and continues
its business after Yunus’ retreat in March 2011; The Big Issue is member of The International
Network of Streetpapers).
23 http://www.ashoka.org/visionmission, 28 January 2011.
23
institutional state politics tend to become a target of SEs, having implemented their new idea
in one place and aiming for its diffusion (Yunus provoked the UN to create the International
Year of Microcredits after implementing his idea in Bangladesh). Put differently, SEs, as
much as norm and policy entrepreneurs, tend to be particularly relevant at the beginning of an
international change process.
5. Conclusions
“I am a citizen and as a citizen I have the duty to do what I can,” stated Sting when asked
why he became involved with rainforest protection and the Kayapo cause (found in Frank
2010). In fact, social entrepreneurs are more than ordinary citizens or cosmopolites: they are
not only part of a world demos, they take agency on behalf of others when addressing
problems of public concern. While IR research analyzed individual agency – either in the
form of leadership or of norm or policy entrepreneurship – in terms of influence on
institutional politics, we need to realize that these new social entrepreneurs circumvent
institutional politics to a large extent, at least at an early stage of their action and success.
Private capital allows donors like the Gates to change things on the ground without public
means. SEs in a narrow sense, like Yunus and Bird, prove to be able to cause transformational
change through the market (and volunteers).
SEs take agency on behalf of others without being elected or hired by a citizenry or those
affected, i.e. they intervene at least to a large extent on self-account. Bill and Melinda Gates
take agency on behalf of others when they as US citizens transform the healthcare system of
African countries. They decide exclusively and largely independently from national leaders
(e.g. national health minister) or international organizations and programs (e.g. WHO,
UNDP). Bono demands debt relieve on behalf of the developing countries although he
himself is from Ireland. Yunus and Bird offer opportunities to marginalized people who
usually have no alternative (although publicly financed alternatives do exist in different
places; for instance, micro-credits for water access compared to free public water supply).
SEs provide examples of the kind of impact that individuals can have within a globalized
world. While Ashoka envisions an Everyone A Changemaker world, upon closer inspection,
this is not an inclusive everyone but in fact a very exclusive someone world (ironically,
Ashoka even trademarked this slogan). Only some people are able to become changemakers.
Individual agency in IR fundamentally depends on material resources, celebrity status and the
support of respective platforms and coalitions. The World Social Forum might symbolize an
24
inclusive, emancipator forum of (world) citizens or those affected (including the Kayapo who
represent themselves here),24
eventually constituting a political community beyond the nation-
state. The World Economic Forum, the Skoll Forum and diplomatic back room talks, to the
contrary, are exclusive events where entrepreneurs act on behalf of others without being
explicitly authorized to take agency by these people. While Sting or Klaus Schwab as world
citizens would be more or less ordinary participants among some ten thousand others at the
World Social Forum, Schwab especially enjoys an exclusive position at the hierarchically
organized World Economic Forum. The same holds true for Jeffrey Skoll at the Skoll Forum.
Different from those politicians and state negotiators who they meet, these people are not
subject to the rules of the two-level game. They can mainly follow their own interests and
priorities without being held accountable. Therefore, IR research should not dispatch
individual agency in IR as part of an idealistic every citizen’s world but consider the actual
significance of these some new powerful individuals.
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