SimmerlReinhold_A Post-Structuralist Reading of Authority

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Paper presented at the ECPR Graduate Conference

Bremen, 04.-06.07.2012

A Post-Structuralist Reading of Authority:

Developing a Concept for the Study of Global (Dis-)Order

By

Georg Simmerl and Friederike M. Reinhold

Content

1. IR and the study of global order ......................................................................................................... 1

2. The IR debate on authority .................................................................................................................. 3

3. Authority: A post-structuralist reading .......................................................................................... 6

3.1. The constitution of social (dis)order in the (post)modern condition ...................... ................ 7

3.2. Speech-act theory and the concept of performativity .................... ...................... ...................... .. 11

3.3. From performativity to authority ................... ...................... ...................... ...................... .................... 14

4. Conclusions: Taking the post-structuralist reading back to IR ........................................... 19

4.1. Adressing the theoretical debate on authority in IR .................... ...................... ...................... ..... 19

4.2. The role of authority in the formation of global political order .................... ..................... ...... 22

References ........................................................................................................................................................... I

Authors

Georg Simmerl

(Humboldt University Berlin): [email protected]

Friederike M. Reinhold(Humboldt University Berlin): [email protected]


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A Post-Structuralist Reading of Authority 1

1. IR and the study of global orderAbove all, the discipline of International Relations (IR) is concerned with studying the global

political order. Until the late 20th century, most IR theories understood the global polity as an

internationalorder: a system of sovereign states which is - in the absence of an overarching

authority in form of a supranational leviathan - anarchic by nature (e.g. Waltz 1979). However,

from the 1980s onwards, the traditional conception of the international order as international

system increasingly became subject to theoretical challenge (e.g. Milner 1991). More and more

IR studies understand world politics now as an overlapping web of hierarchical, heteronomous,

and hegemonial relations of rule (Onuf & Klink 1989: 170). New forms of governance,

arrangements that transcend state borders and blur the hitherto existing distinction betweenthe domestic and the international realm, are identified as indicators for a significant change in

the political order (Rosenau & Czempiel 1992). 1 Thereby, governance beyond the nation-state

has become a rapidly growing research field within IR and multi-level governance a common

analytical term to catch global order nowadays.

Within the traditional understanding of the anarchic international system, the concept of

authority did not play an important role simply because political influence was held to be non-

existent outside the nation-state. That perspective, however, changed significantly with the

paradigm shift described above. Several scholars have meanwhile revitalised the concept of

authority as analytical tool to investigate how state and non-state actors interact in the

hierarchical processes of rule-based coordination that are understood as core components of

global order in the era of globalization (e.g. Cutler et al. 1999; Hall & Biersteker 2002; Grande &

Pauly 2005; Lake 2009, Lake 2010; Zrn et al. 2012).

Regardless of the popularity of the concept, authority remains a vague and elusive idea in IR.

This comes without surprise, since the use of the concept is similarly blurry in political

philosophy and other branches of social science. Across the disciplines, there is neither

agreement on the core characteristics and key sources of authority nor on what precisely

distinguishes it from related concepts such as power and legitimacy. In IR, some do not regard

legitimacy as necessarily constituent to authority (e.g. Zrn et al. 2012), while others argue that

authority derives from the fusion of power and legitimacy in the sense that a legitimate claim is

what distinguishes power from authority (Ruggie 1982; Milner 1991; Hurd 2007; Hall &

1The newness of this development is relative. Cutler et al. (1999) but also Risse and Lehmkuhl (2007)

have shown that private actors were already executing state functions during colonial rule and within the

guild system.


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Biersteker 2002). Despite their differences in this respect, the majority of IR studies on authority

remain on an abstract macro-level, exhibit a liberal preoccupation with individualism, mostly

lack consistent meta-theoretical frameworks and thereby miss the opportunity to show how

authority works in concrete in global politics. Due to these severe limitations, the existing

conceptualizations in IR cannot provide convincing answers to the empirically relevant

questions of how authority is constituted, how and why some actors have acquired authority

while others have not and how this is related to global political order in general.

To overcome these deficits and to introduce an empirically applicable account of authority, we

want to craft a conceptualization that is based on post-structuralist social theory in this paper. 2

Drawing on the historical diagnosis of the (post)modern condition (see Lyotard 1984) which

makes politics a continuous struggle for hegemony in the face of radical contingency and

political steering a decentralized but precarious endeavour, this approach starts from the idea

that social ordering takes effect on the micro-level of social interaction and that authority is thus

best understood as a communicative social relationship between a commander and a specified

group of subordinates. Arguing that authoritative relationships are constituted by historically

sedimented discursive structures and actualized through successful performative (i.e. reality-

creating) speech acts, we develop a non-individualist conceptualization that provides a nuanced

view on the complex interplay of discursive structures and performative action in authoritative

relationships and identify concrete mechanisms through which authority works. In specific,authority is conceptualised in this paper as an enacted social relationship which allows a

speaker the sustained transmission of meaningful interpretations over a prolonged period of

time to a specified audience without provoking resistance. This transmission is (temporally)

made possible by discursive structures which unite speaker and audience and create habitual

and unquestioned acceptance. However, since meaning cannot be controlled by the speaker, the

audience can also contest and undermine a social relationship of authority. This

conceptualization takes the politics of authority seriously because it replaces universalized

standards externally defined by the observing scientist with a speech-act-based examination of

concrete relationships and systematically includes the possibility of contestation and change. In

this line of reasoning, authority is always precarious and can exist only temporally, at best.

2A direct engagement of post-structuralist IR theory with the concept of authority has been missing so far. This

lack is surprising since the discussion about what an author is (Foucault 1979), or better said: the death of the

author (Barthes 1977), has been central to post-structuralist literary criticism and provides interesting points of

departure for a reading of the associated concept of authority.


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The following is first and foremost a theoretical discussion of authority and its relationship to

social ordering. While the utility of analysing global politics with this approach is only briefly

discussed in detail at the end of the paper, we argue that the most important input of such a

post-structuralist conceptualization of authority for international theory building lies in its built-

in meta-theoretical assumptions. It is namely its scepticism towards the possibility of

encompassing political steering which makes a post-structuralist reading of authority much

more appropriate for studying the blurry processes of global governance and allows at the same

time for a more responsible and politically engaged examination of the (steadily or finally)

emerging political (dis)order beyond the state.

The remainder is structured into three chapters. Chapter 2 sets out with an in-depth discussion

of the current IR debate on authority which was just touched upon in this introduction. Tracing

the major lines of argumentation, we identify conceptual shortcomings within the respective

positions of the debate and outline important points of departure for a post-structuralist reading

of authority. Corresponding to this overview, we develop our post-structuralist

conceptualization of authority in chapter 3. At first, we outline a post-structuralist (mainly

Foucaultian) understanding of the constitution of social order to lay down the meta-theoretical

underpinnings of our conceptualization. Following Foucaults postulation to take the micro-level

seriously, we then picture communicative micro-interactions with the help of speech-act theory

and the concept of performativity. The latter allows us to show how authority concretely worksand to pin down its empirical potential in the final section of chapter 3. The paper finally

concludes by discussing the potential benefit of our alternative conceptualization with regard to

theory-building in IR and empirical research on authority in the study of global (dis)order in

chapter 4.

2. The IR debate on authorityMirroring the debate in political philosophy, the IR discussion of authority revolves around its

relationship to the notions of power and legitimacy (cf. Friedman 1990: 56). The focus on this

question is propelled by the fact that most IR studies declare to follow in one way or another the

classical sociological understanding of authority articulated by Max Weber (1922: 122 - 124)

who defined authority as the capacity of an actor to generate obedience for a command among a

specified group of subordinates derived from one of three sources of legitimacy (tradition,

charisma or bureaucratic-legal rationality). Despite this common point of reference, it is possible

to detect roughly two camps within the IR studies on authority. The fusionists define authority

explicitly as a combination of power and legitimacy (see Ruggie 1982; Cutler et al. 1999; Cutler


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1999; Hurd 2007; Lake 2010) while the separatists try to conceptually distinguish authority

from legitimacy (see Barnett & Finnemore 2004; Koppell 2008; Avant et al. 2010; Zrn et al.

2012). We will briefly discuss both approaches in order to identify the critical aspects a post-

structuralist reading of authority needs to address.

Already in 1982, John Ruggie has quintessentially formulated the fusionist approach to authority

by defining the concept as fusion of power with legitimate social purpose (1982: 382). In this

line of reasoning, authority represents a form of (decision-making) power that is deemed

legitimate by the subordinates, and therefore obeyed. There are two pitfalls to this argument

associated with one another. Firstly, irrespective of the literal definitions they employ, fusionists

tend to focus solely on legitimacy as conceptual lever which makes authority and legitimacy

basically indistinguishable and breeds ignorance for the role power plays in the constitution of

authority. This tendency is most evident in the work of Ian Hurd (2007). The overemphasis on

legitimacy leads to the second weakness of the fusionist approach. Fusionists tend to understand

legitimacy as a universally valid entity that the researcher can positively identify legitimacy is

either there or not, with obedience (better said: compliance) of the subordinates being the best

indicator for its existence.3 In effect, this approach replaces a close examination of the

constitutive processes leading to obedience (and thereby, authority) by simply imputing some

externally defined standard of legitimacy into the heads of all subordinates. The acts of

submission are then treated as consequence of a reasoned and wilful decision affirming thestandard of legitimacy defined by the researcher without even addressing the problem that

acts of submission are usually neither an expression of will nor is authority directly justified by

the commander. David Lakes approach reveals this inconsistency by defining authority as a

social contract in which a governor provides a political order of value to a community in

exchange for compliance by the governed with the rules necessary to produce that order (2010:

589). In this social contract-argument, any relationship of authority is by definition legitimate

because it ultimately derives from the reasoned acceptance of individuals. The deeper

intellectual roots of this approach are obvious: it is a liberal ex-post-rationalization of the status-

quo making use of the universal narrative that the sovereign individual creates sovereign

authority by consent. An important counterpoint to this liberal version is provided by Claire

Cutlers neogramscian account of the fusionist argument (1999). On the one hand, she takes into

3 Hurd is aware of this positivist pitfall and tries to circumvent the problem by defining legitimacy in

purely subjective terms as an actors normative belief that a rule or institutionought to be obeyed (Hurd

2007: 7). However, as soon this conceptualization is applied empirically, the old problem of not being able

to look inside peoples heads resurfaces and can only be solved by a positivist operationalization of

legitimacy as instances of compliance.


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account the role power plays in the constitution of authority by emphasizing that authority is a

product of both consent and coercion. On the other hand, Cutler makes clear that the legitimacy

making authority possible has no universally valid content but rests on historically specific,

hegemonic discourses.

In contrast to the fusionist stance, the separatist camp understands authority largely as a

discrete capacity of an actor that needs to be distinguished from legitimacy. In the words of

Jonathan Koppell authority represents institutionalization of power, nothing more (2008:

178). It remains unclear, however, what distinguishes authority from power, or how these

concepts relate to each other in case they overlap. Nevertheless, there are also more fine-grained

versions of the separatist argument. Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, for example, define

authority as the ability of one actor to use institutional and discursive resources to induce

deference from others (Barnett & Finnemore 2004: 5).4 What becomes clear in this account is

that authority can also be understood as a practice that generates acceptance and prevents

direct opposition by employing certain resources. However, just as it is the case with most parts

of the fusionist camps, there is also an individualist fallacy associated to the separatist account.

The focus on authority as capacity of the commander makes it harder to grasp conceptually the

interactional aspects between commander and subordinates. But if authority is understood as

social relationship (Avant et al. 2010: 9) then it cannot be just the discrete ability of an actor

but must reside in between commander and subordinates.Taken together, both the fusionist and the separatist stance provide important points of

departure but exhibit also severe limitations which we want to overcome with our post-

structuralist reading of authority. What we aspire in the following is a non-individualist

understanding of authority as a specific social relationship between a commander (speaker)

and a specified group of subordinates (audience). Within this kind of relationship, a

commander can conduct certain practices (for example, giving orders or establishing scientific

facts) which are unquestionably accepted by the subordinates, i.e. immediately recognized as

authoritative. In this regard, we build on Barnett and Finnemores concept of authority as being

expressed in concrete practices and treat these practices as actualizations of structural features

of the relationship. More specifically, and similar to Cutlers argument, we argue that the

practical enactment of authority works only within the confines of historically specific

discursive structures uniting both commander and subordinates. These discursive structures

4 In a similar vein, Zrn et al. argue that international institutions exercise authority in that they

successfully claim the right to perform regulatory functions like the formulation of rules and rule

monitoring or enforcement (2012: 70).


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constitute the relationship of authority and need to be actualized in the practices of the speaker

in order to provoke habitual and unquestioned recognition by the audience. While we hold that

legitimacy tends to be a underspecified lump-concept which does not capture the moment of

unquestionedacceptance so distinctive for authority and instead invariably invokes the liberal

illusion of wilful and reasoned submission by each individual subordinate, we do not dismiss the

fusionist stance altogether. Since the meaning of practices within relationships of authority is

not determined by the sovereign speaker but created in between speaker and audience,

contestation and critique are always possible. Contestation uncovers the contingent nature of

the discursive structures constitutive for a relationship of authority. Although prolonged

contestation is thus antithetical to unquestioned acceptance and makes authority precarious by

definition, it may in effect also create the condition for a reflexive treatment of authority which

can be called legitimation. By making the audience aware of the real possibility to resist in any

instance, preceding contestation can make possible a reflexive acceptance of situational

authoritative practices dismissive of a generalized duty for submission beyond the concrete

instance. In the next chapter, we will spell out in detail the meta-theoretical underpinnings of

this post-structuralist understanding of authority and specify its conceptualization.

3. Authority: A post-structuralist readingIt stands out that most of the IR studies discussed above engage with authority beyond the

nation-state without explicitly referring to a consistent meta-theoretical framework. If anything,

these studies implicitly employ some atavistic remains of mainstreamed IR theory most

fashionable today an ad hoc fusion of thinly constructivist and rationalist assumptions devoid of

any further discussion of possible inconsistencies. However, to avoid the circular and

inconsistent argumentations of individualist accounts and to make an understanding of

authority as a social relationship possible, it is necessary to investigate the relationship between

the individual and social order more carefully. Therefore, we will locate our discussion of

authority in world politics firmly within a post-structuralist (mainly Foucaultian) understanding

of the constitution of social order. In the following, we will thus examine how the constitutive

processes of social (dis)order can be understood from a post-structuralist perspective at first

and will locate our concept of authority within this reading in the final section of the chapter.

The link between these two steps is speech-act theory in general and the concept of

performativity in specific, which we will explicate in the middle section.


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3.1.The constitution of social (dis)order in the (post)modern conditionConventionally, social order is defined by dichotomously distinguishing it from its negativity,

disorder. In this line of reasoning, disorder denotes chaos while order points towards an

encompassing and patterned stability. In contrast to this understanding, the starting point for

our examination of the constitution of social order is the acknowledgment of the (post)modern

condition (see Lyotard 1984) which is a historical diagnosis of the present condition of human

society that has decisive ramifications for how to theorize social order.5

In effect, the

(post)modern condition reflects a circumstance in which stability cannot be so easily

distinguished from chaos. Its defining characteristic is the impossibility of establishing

universally accepted knowledge claims which leads to the paradoxical situation that every

social question is undecidable in principle but object to political contestation in practice (see

Laclau 1996).6

The (post)modern condition is marked by the crisis of the grand narratives of

modernity (such as Enlightment and Rationalism) and gives thus rise to the pluralisation of

identities and societal sub-fields. Any centralized steering of society as a whole and thus

encompassing authority is impossible because there is no single communicative centre able to

define meaning. In the (post)modern condition, politics becomes thereby a struggle for

hegemonic articulations which temporally suppress and cover the radical contingency of social

relations. To achieve hegemony, articulations have to integrate different subject positions by

demarcating them from an antagonistic outside (Laclau & Mouffe 2001: 93 - 148).

That hegemony is attainable implies that societal ordering is possible in the (post)modern

condition albeit in a decentralized and temporally restricted manner. To understand how

societal ordering works in the (post)modern condition, we have to take a closer look at the role

the grand narratives of modernity play. Although being arguably in crisis and having lost the

status of unchallenged truths, the grand narratives of modernity can still be considered as

5 We bracket the post in (post)modern to indicate that the (post)modern condition is by no means

antithetical to modernity. To the contrary, examining the (post)modern condition places modernityfirmly on its feet (Dyrberg 1997: 16). It takes modernity and its contradictions seriously by stepping

beyond the intellectual horizon set by modern principles (Laclau 1996: 85). What it tries to delineate is, in

fact, the possibility of a modernity without foundationalism [] in which the key terms of operation are

not fully secured in advance (Butler 1997: 161).

6 For post-structuralists, this radical contingency of any social question derives from the inherent

limitations of (written) language in establishing the meaning of a word, thereby complicating mutual

understanding. While structuralist semiotics started from the assumption that a sign determines a stable

relationship between signifier and signified, post-structuralism holds that this relationship is fluid and

dynamic since the signified to which a signifier refers is itself just in the position of another signifier (see

Derrida 1976).


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discursive structures which have a constraining and directing effect on the subjectivation of

individuals and the hegemonic struggles of societal organization at large.

The grand narrative which is the most central discursive structure for the workings of social

ordering in the (post)modern condition and which needs thus be understood in effects and

theoretical premises is Liberalism (see Foucault 2008). At its very heart, Liberalism constructs a

specific relationship between the individual and the representation of the social totality by the

liberal state. The specific relationship revolves in two respects around the concept of

sovereignty the sovereignty of the individual subject and the sovereignty of the state as

aggregated political body. The sovereign individual vested with reason is the alleged hero of

Liberalism. As exemplified in liberal social contract theories, this autonomous subject makes

wilful and reasoned decisions for subordination in order to found the sovereignty of the social

whole. While Liberalism holds that the constitutive power and reason that makes the social

possible resides in the individual, the sovereign state created by collective decision functions as

the legitimate centre of power in society that ensures its unity by reasonably regulating it. It

should be clear that, in this regard, Liberalism is first and foremost an ex-post rationalization of

existing domination. Just as any other theory of right, the essential role of Liberalism from

medieval times onwards was simply to fix the legitimacy of power ( Foucault 1980: 95). Since

every really existing individual is always already enmeshed in discursive structures that form its

identity, circumscribe what can be considered as rational and justify the status quo of the givensocial order, the individual cannot be the logical starting point for examining the constitution of

social order, like liberal accounts argue. However, although modern narratives cannot fully

realize the formation of the social totalities they articulate, it is their continuous re-production

as discursive structures which constrains contingency, plays a central role in the constitution of

many subject positions and has thus ordering effects.

What this means for the constitution of social order can, however, only be grasped from a

perspective which moves beyond the very liberal ways of thinking itself. On the one hand, such a

perspective does neither start from the assumption of the autonomous subject and its discrete

capacities nor from the ultimate pre-givenness of social order but examines the contingent

processes of how individuals and social order constantly constitute each other. On the other

hand, while remaining attentive to regulatory institutions as important locus of the production

of ordering effects, such a perspective moves also beyond an understanding of the state as

centre repressively organizing society as a whole based on an uncontested monopoly of


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legitimate force.7

In the (post)modern condition of radical contingency, the production of social

order and therefore also the possibility and performance of authority - is more diffuse and

complex. The key to developing such perspective is a post-structuralist concept of power, as

outlined in the later writings of Michel Foucault.

For Foucault, power is a decentred social phenomenon which permeates all of society (Foucault

1980: 119). As an encompassing web of relations, power is not only restricted to its juridico -

discursive representation8

(Foucault 1990: 81) but is also contained and expressed in the local

activities of individuals. On the one hand, this means that, since the state is not the single site of

politics, all societal relations are effectively political. On the other hand, this encompassing

nature makes clear that power is both repressive and productive at the same time (Foucault

1990). Power is not just about punishment and coercion, but also about constituting and

expressing the identity of individuals. In fact, it is the fusion of both of these aspects which

illuminates how power creates social order in what Foucault terms governmentality (Foucault

2008): the decentred exercise of a restricted and normalizing political rationality by regulatory

institutions finds its mirror expression in the self-disciplining practices of individuals who adopt

the subject position of a docile citizen. Power does neither reside in an autonomous individual

nor is it monopolized by regulatory institutions. It is precisely the decentred interaction of these

components that generates ordering effects in society (see Dyrberg 1997: 105 115). In this

sense, the social foundation of the possibility of governance in the (post)modern condition

resides at the same time in the governors and the very individuals being governed. It is this

micro-context of governmentality in the (post)modern condition where we will locate the

concept of authority as a social relationship at the end of this chapter.

Governmentality itself is only the logic in which power brings about ordering effects in

(post)modern society. The precise form this order takes is circumscribed by discursive regimes

of truth which define what counts as true and false, thereby regulating the dispersion of the

7 According to Foucault, this narrow understanding of how power works in society derives frommodernitys pre-occupation with pre-modern concepts, such as the king as the embodiment of the state:

Political theory has never ceased to be obsessed with the person of the sovereign. Such theories still

continue to busy themselves with the problem of sovereignty. What we need, however, is a political

philosophy that isnt erected around the problem of sovereignty, nor therefore around the problem of law

and prohibition. We need to cut off the Kings head: in political theory that has still to be done (Foucault

1980: 121).

8 While this term is usually identified with the state, it should be clear that Foucaults discursive

understanding of regulation is not confined to the institutions of the sovereign nation-state but applies to

non-state institutions fulfilling regulatory functions based on law as well. Therefore, I will in the following

use regulatory institutions (and not the state) as a synonym.


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statements that can possibly be made and the forms of knowledge that can become dominant

which in turn inform regulatory action and condition the subjectivation of individuals. Regimes

of truth is basically the term Foucault uses in his later works for what we have earlier described

as discursive structures.

According to Foucault, the fusion of the power relations represented by governmental and self-

governing practices with specific regimes of truth is then the basic principle of social order:

power/knowledge, the continuous production of knowledge through power, and power through

knowledge (Foucault 2008: 19). (Neo)Liberalism is just the latest historical form of a

power/knowledge dispositif which is upheld by a rationalist regime of truth that structures a

self-restraining art of government (Foucault 2008). However, the discursive structures lying at

the heart of this power/knowledge-complex are not fully determining social order i.e. they do

not exert structural power by invariably manifesting power techniques, subject positions and

forms of knowledge. Instead, they constrain the possibilities for both regulatory action and

individual self-identification. They are socially efficacious as long as they are re-articulated but

remain open to variation and contestation. Thus it seems more appropriate to ascribe

structuring power to discursive structures in a Foucaultian understanding of the constitution of

social (dis)order.

What can now be taken away from this discussion? There are basically two major points which

are critical. First, the basic feature of the (post)modern condition is radical contingency whichopens up the space for both the pluralisation of identities and the permeation of politics as

struggles for hegemonic interpretations in all of societys plural sub-fields. For the stabilization

of social orders through hegemonies, the grand narratives of modernity still play an important

role irrespective of how temporal and incomplete this suppression of contingency may be. To

understand the structuring power that these discourses exert on political struggles, we have to

move to the second critical point: approaching the constitution of social order with a Foucaultian

understanding of power as encompassing social phenomenon. In this reading, governmentality

defines the rationality in which power operates in (post)modern societies: a double-process of

subjectivation and (institutional) regulation which constitute each other. The power relations

between self-governing citizens and self-restraining regulators play out within discursive

structures (specific regimes of truth). Institutionalized knowledge forms together with these

power relations a complex of power/knowledge, of which (Neo)Liberalism is the prevalent

example in contemporary society.

Taken together, the insights into the substantive workings of liberal governmentality in the

(post)modern condition and the theoretical move beyond modern ways of analysing social


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ordering suggested in this section are both central ingredients for constructing a post-structural

approach to authority.

3.2.Speech-act theory and the concept of performativity

As already implied in Foucaults concept of power, a post-structuralist reading of social ordering

should not only focus on the macro-level, but needs to start from the (re-)production of social

order at the very micro-level of social interaction. To examine these micro-interactions, we will

conceptualize the generic social situation as a speaker-audience relationship and analyse these

situations with the concept of performativity based on the speech-act theory formulated by John

Austin. Overall, speech-act theory will be the decisive theoretical tool to construct a post-

structural account of authority which is empirically applicable, while performativity is the

central concept which allows us to link this reading of authority with the ideas about social

ordering in the (post)modern condition explicated in the last section.

As the title How to Do Things With Words (Austin 1975) of his seminal William-James-Lectures

suggests, Austin develops a theory of how utterances do not just express an idea or describe a

pre-given fact. Utterances and other meaningful (non-verbal) practices create social reality and

are hence a form of action: speech-acts. To ascertain how speech-acts realize a reality-

constituting effect, Austin identifies a specific dimension of any language use: performatives.

The defining feature of performatives is that they cannot be judged true or false but can only fail

or succeed in making the audience accept what they say.9

Austin distinguishes between

illocutionary and perlocutionary acts as aspects of any speech-act.10

The illocutionary act

immediately realizes what it says in saying it (I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth). The

perlocutionary act, in contrast, is the realization of a certain effect (beyond the actual utterance)

by saying something for example, making the audience do a certain action or provoking a

certain mental reaction (for example, intimidation) as consequence of a statement. However,

since perlocutions presuppose a successful illocutionary act and their success could only be

judged if the intention of the speaker was known, they are oftentimes treated simply asperlocutionary effects.

9 In the beginning of his lectures, Austin distinguishes performatives from constatives which can, in

contrast, be assessed to be true or false. However, over the course of his lectures, Austin has to admit that

this initial distinction does not hold and that all utterances have to fulfil the felicity conditions he

identified for successful performatives in order to do what they say which means that every utterance

contains a performative aspect and cannot be simply judged true or false (Felman 1983). This twist to

Austins lecture series corresponds with the post-structuralist ideas about contingent truth regimes and

the impossibility of objective truth we outlined in the last section.

10 For reasons of simplicity, we will leave out the locutionary act.


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Within the post-structuralist perspective on the constitution of social order outlined in the

preceding section, the concept of performativity can help to clarify how discursive structures

and individual utterances relate to each other in the (re-)production of social order. More

specifically, performativity, as practice, illuminates how discursive structures constrain

utterances while, at the same time, utterances reify and possibly modify them. In this sense,

performative practices can be considered the moment when discursive structure and the intentions

and identities of the agent collapse into each other.

Performativity makes sense of this process in two respects. First, following Austin explication of

performative speech-acts, performativity highlights that utterances create social reality. This

happens - as Austins definition of illocutions emphasizes in the very moment these speech-

acts are uttered. Performative speech-acts represent the attempt of a speaker to establish and

make socially efficacious his or her interpretation of a given social situation. If adopted by the

audience, performative speech-acts break down the distinction between word and world.

This reality-effect of successful performatives, however, depends on certain preconditions.

Austin already noted that performative speech-acts work because they rely on conventions

shared by speaker and audience (Austin 1975: 14 15). This condition relates back directly to

the role of discursive structures in the constitution of social order identified in the preceding

section. Performative speech-acts create social reality by actualizing and interpreting the

discursive structures that already unite speaker and audience. Secondly, performativity does notonly highlight the fundamental role of single speech-acts in the (re-)production of social order

but stresses also how this effect is achieved: it is a performance, as already indicated by the

terms speaker and audience. In order to convey an interpretation to the audience, the

speaker needs to enact a certain social role. This understanding of social interaction, which

alludes in a way to dramaturgic action, is especially helpful for analysing modes of political

representation in complex societies since a lot of the political interaction that takes place there is

public and mediated at the same time but does not emerge from direct conversations.

Furthermore, the understanding of speaker-audience interaction as (theatrical) performance

reaffirms the creative and critical potential for agency in these situations. Despite the

dependence on shared conventions and the enactment of social roles, performative interaction

provides leeway for creativity and variance: both for the speaker, since performative action

allows for playing variations on the discursive structures that constitute the social situation at


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hand, and for the audience, since recognition of the performative is not predetermined or

inevitable. The possibility of criticism and contestation is always given.11

As soon as we move beyond Austins formalist speech-act theory and consider concrete and

examinable social situations, it becomes all the more critical to openly dismiss the tacit

assumptions of Liberalism inherent to Austins approach (see Butler 1997: 48). Predominantly,

this concerns the idea of the individual as sovereign speaker and creator of meaning. First, since

any speaker is always already enmeshed in a web of language preceding her own existence

(Derrida 1976) and resides therefore in the sedimented history of the performative (Butler

1997: 159) himself, the instance of a performative speech-act cannot be considered a sovereign

creation of the speaker but is a form of citation. Furthermore, although the speaker is himself

inscribed by a sedimented history of preceding performatives, her performances are not simply

about realizing a pre-constituted identity. The very performative practice is what brings

identity into existence, but only in a temporal manner that cannot be controlled by the speaker.

This leads to a second critical point. As already outlined before, the audience plays a crucial role

for making performatives work. Thus, although a speaker may want to establish a certain

interpretation or may have intentions to affect the social situation at hand in a certain way, these

aspects cannot be the logical starting point for examining performativity. Performativity is a

joint product of speaker and audience - starting with the utterance, realized by the way the

audience understands it and finished by the subsequent reactions to the initial statement. Theperlocutionary effects of performatives the reactions to the speech-act - can therefore also not

be derived from the speakers intentions or the initial utterance but emerge from a social

process of intersubjective meaning-construction in-between speaker and audience. This

becomes even more complicated when considered against the backdrop of the (post)modern

11 To capture the possibility of contestation and reflection, Searle and Habermas have decisively refined

Austins approach by introducing the concept of the propositional sphere to speech-act theory. Whereas

the illocutionary dimension is restricted to communicate substantive content, the propositional

dimension pictures the relational level (Krmer 2001: 79). The propositional sphere is thus not identicalwith the perlocutionary effect but corresponds to it as perlocutionary acts contain the propositions to

induce a certain interaction. The conceptual benefit of the illocutionary/propositional distinction

essentially lies in establishing the theoretical possibility of reflexivity. Distinct from substantive

communicative action on the illocutionary level, the discourse on the propositional level provides the

chance to contest the Geltungsansprche of an utterance (Habermas 1984). This reflexive mechanism

allows for the questioning of dominant discursive structures that are otherwise maintained through

illocutionary acts. While we cannot immediately employ Habermas and Searles ideas for our post-

structuralist framework, their concept of the propositional sphere makes the important point that

performative speech-acts are not only the source of the constitution of reality but also of the

transformation of the actual. We will implicitly refer back to these ideas when drawing on Butlers

position for illuminating the possibility of contestation and critique in a relationship of authority.


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condition. While the speaker may want to address a certain audience, he or she can often hardly

control which audiences really take notice in this highly differentiated and plural situation, what

sense is made of his or her utterance in the various audiences and which effects the utterance

creates (see also Arendt 1958). Therefore, while it is important to specify the audience when

examining the workings of a concrete performative speech-act, one has to be aware of the

multiple chains of interpretation that are set in motion by it, which finally lead to social effects

that are unpredictable and uncertain at the point of utterance.

Taken together, the establishment of a certain interpretation by a successful performative

speech-act can be considered an instance of the joint production of social reality by a speaker

and an audience which takes place in a concrete social situation circumscribed by discursive

structures. This idea will be the starting point for developing a post-structuralist concept of

authority in the next section.

3.3.From performativity to authorityThe previous discussion of performativity has provided a specification of a post-structuralist

perspective on social ordering on the micro-level. Taking this micro-perspective as a starting

point helps to spell out a post-structuralist undestanding of authority. If societal ordering

depends on successful performative speech-acts, then authority has to be associated with

making performatives in a speaker-audience-encounter possible. To locate more specifically the

role of authority in the constitution of social order in the (post)modern condition, it is necessary

to clarify the relationship between performativity and authority.

A first point of reference is the existing debate on the nexus between performativity and

authority which has so far been largely structured by an intervention of Pierre Bourdieu (1991)

who tried to demarcate his sociological approach from linguistic idealism. According to

Bourdieu, linguistic idealism searched for authority only inside language, i.e. in the speech-acts

themselves. Although Bourdieu explicitly associates this internalist position only with Austin,

Habermas and the broader structuralist tradition following de Sausurre, it is often argued thatthis critique was also directed at Derridas account of performativity, who holds that the success

of performatives depends on citation and reiteration which finally leads to the de-

contextualization of utterances and the steady creation of new meanings (Derrida 1988). In

contrast, Bourdieu favours an externalist position which argues that authority comes to

language from the outside (Bourdieu 1991: 109). He argues that the capacity to achieve

performatives derives from the linguistic capital the speaking person has acquired on the

linguistic market (Bourdieu 1991: 51). However, Bourdieu does not stand in the stark

opposition to the internalist position he initially claims. This becomes clear when taking a closer


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look at the way he conceptualizes authority. While Bourdieu holds that performativity is a form

of symbolic power which constitutes the given through utterances (Bourdieu 1991: 170), he

defines authority as the paradigmatic form (Bourdieu 1991: 111) of performativity

represented by a type of official language uttered on behalf of a public institutions (Bourdieu

1991: 106 113).12 Here it becomes obvious that Bourdieu cannot escape defining authority,

like the internalists do, with reference to a certain type of discourse - although he claims that

this is ultimately only a representation of authority backed up by a public institution which thus

constitutes the source external to the speech act. At the same time, in focusing on the official

discourse of authority, Bourdieu tends to restrict his account to what Foucault termed the

juridico-discursive representation of power the legalized and status-quo oriented discourse

of the state. Beyond these inconsistencies in his opposition to the internalist reading, Bourdieu

provides important insights for a definition of authority. In line with the argument that

performativity is a joint product of speaker and audience, the French sociologist states that

the language of authority never governs without the collaboration of those it governs, without

the help of the social mechanisms capable of producing this complicity (Bourdieu 1991: 113).

Bourdieu specifies this constitutive social mechanism of authority by pointing out that

submission to authority is first and foremost habitual. It is not necessarily based on

understanding and awareness, it has nothing in common with an explicitly professed,

deliberate and revocable belief or with an intentional act of accepting a 'norm' (Bourdieu 1991:51) but it is a type of unquestioned acceptance, a disposition activated by symbols, rituals and

specific discourses actualized in the practice of the authoritative speaker. That Bourdieus ideas

on authority and performativity are in fact accessible for a post-structuralist reading is outlined

by Judith Butlers account of performativity (1997) and her mediating critique of Bourdieus

approach (1999). In principle, Butler follows Derrida in locating citation at the core of

performativity but, at the same time, she shows how this idea can be related to Bourdieus

central argument of habitual recognition: a performative provisionally succeeds (and we will

suggest that success is always and only provisional) [] because that action echoes prior

actions, and accumulates the force of authority through the repetition or citation of a prior and

authoritative set of practices. It is not simply that the speech act takes place within a practice,

but that the act itself is a ritualized practice. What this means, then, is that a performative

12Bourdieu treats the language of authority as limiting case of legitimate language(Bourdieu 1991: 131).

Throughout his argument, the notions of authority and legitimate language are indistinguishably

interlinked, which makes him also part of the fusionist camp identified with regard to IR accounts on

authority in chapter 2.


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works to the extent that it draws on and covers over the constitutive conventions by which it is

mobilized (Butler 1997: 51). Butler shows here that authority derives from historically

sedimented discourses which are actualized by the speaker and, as argued by Bourdieu, make

unconsidered and habitual recognition by the audience possible in so far as the ritual remains

covered and is not contested. According to Butler, the sources of this relationship are both social

and linguistic, which are in fact indistinguishable, thus making Bourdieus alleged insistence on

an externalist and non-linguistic account of authority largely superfluous (Butler 1999: 124

126).13 Furthermore, Butler insists, in contrast to Bourdieu, that speaking with authority is also

possible for people outside official positions, which is central for critical agency and the

possibility to subvert the existing social order backing up official positions by asserting these

discourses (Butler 1999: 122 124).

Drawing on Butlers mediating position while taking Bourdieus ideas seriously helps to clarify

the relationship between performativity and authority. In very general terms, authority is a

social relationship between speaker and an audience which makes successful performative

speech-acts possible. This social relationship is constituted by discursive structures

sedimented and unquestioned conventions shared by speaker and audience which

circumscribe the range of possible speech-acts that are immediately and habitually recognized

by the audience as representations of authority.14 Since these discursive structures cannot be

defined in theory but are historically- and audience-specific, any concrete analysis of authoritymust be based on awareness for the genealogy of constitutive discursive structures and examine

the contingent history of the present.

However, even a genealogical awareness for the historicity of constitutive discourses does not

completely solve the central problem of clarifying how authority as social relationship and

performative speech-acts relate to each other. Even if authority can be conceptualized as a social

relationship constituted by latent and historically sedimented discursive structures in theory, it

expresses itself and can only be empirically analysed in the form of (a series of) performative

speech-acts. Furthermore, in order to prevent simply reifying the discursive structures

constitutive of the status-quo authorities and to retain the theoretical possibility of new ways of

13 Bourdieu has stated that his insistence on a purely externalist account of authority was an attempt to

counter the purely internalist position of linguists and accepted the mediating critique of Butler (see

Wver 2000: 286).

14 This principle argument is also made by non-post-structuralist Friedman who notes that the "concept of

authority can thus have application only within the context of certain socially accepted criteria which

serve to identify person(s) whose utterances are to count as authoritative" (1990: 71).


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speaking authoritatively or critical agency seizing existing discursive structures of authority, it

must be prevented to understand authority as an unchangeable macro-entity. In contrast,

authority is thus better understood as an enacted social relationship that manifests itself in

successful performative speech-acts.

With the help of speech-act theory, it is possible to clarify how authority works in practice.

Hence, we will return to the concepts illocutionary act (doing something in saying it) and

perlocutionary effect (effect of speech-act beyond actual utterance) which together form a

performative speech-act. As outlined above, authority is immediately and unquestionably

recognized by the audience. This means that authority works through the illocutionary act as

soon as something is uttered by the speaker in a relationship of authority, it is recognized by the

audience as authoritative. If any part of the audience contests or rejects what is said consistently,

it cannot be considered to be a relationship of authority with the totality of the initial audience

anymore. To be recognized as authoritative, the speech-act has to actualize the sedimented

discursive conventions (symbols, specific discourses, etc.) which already unite speaker and

audience. These discursive conventions concern primarily the question howstatements have to

be uttered to be recognized as expression of authority within the confines of which rationality?,

in which discursive mode (legalised, scientific, etc.)?, utilizing which symbols?, which social role

has to be performed? and so on. The actual content of illocutionary acts, in contrast, is in no way

predetermined by the discursive structures constitutive for the authority relationship. Theillocutionary act can be a certain political argument, giving an order or stating a scientific fact.

Despite being self-referential in its representation, authority is not self-referential but

purposeful in its use. In the most general terms, authority is used by the speaker to establish a

certain interpretation of social reality performatively. The consequences of speech-acts within a

relationship of authority are indeterminate in principle and can be conceptualized as

perlocutionary effects. The audience can, for example, be convinced by an argument to take a

certain course of action or intimidated into compliance by an order. When considering the

various perlocutionary effects, it is important to note, however, that, in a post-structuralist

understanding, these effects are created both by speaker and audience. Although the actual

utterance is shaped by the intentions and interests of the speaker, the perlocutionary effect

takes place in between speaker and audience and can thus neither be derived from the

speakers intentions nor fully controlled by him or her. A relationship of authority does not give

the speaker the sovereignty to determine the course of action. To be able to speak of a

relationship of authority, however, the performative speech-acts have to be successful


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consistently (i.e. create habitual and unquestioned recognition) and must not create the

perlocutionary effect of principled contestation and resistance by the audience.

As outlined before, consistent contestation and critique undermines initial relationships of

authority since they make habitual acceptance and unquestioned recognition impossible by

denaturalizing its constitutive discursive structures. Contestation is a constant feature of social

life because meaning cannot be defined unilaterally by a sovereign speaker therefore, the

potential for critical agency on the side of the audience can never be fully eradicated. However,

practiced contestation does not necessarily stand in opposition to relationships of authority but

can also bring about a reflexive treatment of them. While preceding contestation and critique

dismiss any generalized submission and thus unquestioned acceptance, they can reveal the real

possibility of refusal in any instance to the audience, thus making possible a reflexive acceptance

of situational authoritative practices. In this regard, while being antithetical to authority in its

initial sense (as a generalized social relationship), contestation is the precondition for its

reflexive treatment (as situational acceptance of single authoritative practices) and can

therefore be considered a possible process of legitimation.

To conclude, this pot-structuralist clarification of the concept of authority makes it possible to

locate authority within the constitution of social order in the (post)modern condition. As

outlined in section 3.1, political steering is precarious in this condition in principle due to the

multiplication of identities and societal subfields which expose the radical contingency of sociallife. Nevertheless, specific discourses (especially modernist narratives) have ordering effects in

shaping the action of regulatory institutions and the subjectivation of individuals alike. Within

the confines of these uniting discourses, it is possible to establish a relationship of authority as

defined above, at least temporally. In this regard, authority is a social relationship which allows

for a sustained transmission of meaningful interpretations over a prolonged period of time to a

specified audience without provoking resistance. The qualification specified audience is

important because it prevents making authority a diffuse macro-concept without any use

beyond legitimating a certain political actor or order and orients the examination toward

concrete instances.15 The unspecified term over a prolonged period is necessary because the

(post)modern condition makes any relationship of authority precarious and its sustained

existence unlikely. Due to the constant possibility of contestation and critique, authority can only

be provisional at best. That is also why in the present historical situation, authority appears

mostly in the form of decentralized political steering through the logic of governmentality self-

15 This qualification goes back to Max Weber and is often overlook by liberal IR accounts of authority

declaring to be based in Webers conceptualization.


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restrained regulatory intervention and self-disciplining practices of individuals having been

socialized into the position of docile subordinates made possible by the dominant

power/knowledge dispositif of (Neo)Liberalism.

4. Conclusions: Taking the post-structuralist reading back to IRIn the previous chapter we developed a post-structuralist perspective on social ordering which

suggests an understanding of authority as a communicative social relationship between a

speaker (commander) and a specified audience (subordinates). Central to the approach was

the idea that the (re-)production of social order manifests itself in successful performative

speech acts which maintain and affirm authoritative relationships. It is the performative

interaction between speaker and audience that constitutes reality through its illocutionarydimension. Doing something in saying something does only work, however, if both speaker

and audience are embedded in the same discursive structures and thus build interpretations

upon corresponding states of knowledge. In other words, a shared normative web as point of

reference which is unquestioned by all protagonists is the necessary condition for a

performative speech act to be successful and, in extension, authority to work. In this setting we

locate authority as a social relationship between speaker and audience which allows for a

sustained transmission of meaningful interpretations over a prolonged period of time to a

specified audience without provoking resistance. Such a conceptualization of authority implies

the following characteristics: (1) authority does not describe discrete capability assets on side of

the commander but resides in the interaction of commander and subordinates; (2) authority is

constituted by historically sedimented discursive structures; (3) it works through the

illocutionary dimension of speech-acts which actualize these discursive structures and are thus

immediately and unquestionably recognized by the subordinates as authoritative; (4) authority

features a self-constituting mechanism and allows for the performative creation of social reality

through the transmission of interpretations from speaker to audience if contestation is not

articulated.

Having briefly summarized the basic ideas of a post-structural reading of authority, we should

now turn to the actual purpose of the theoretical exercise and take the abstract idea back to

theory (4.1) and empirical research on global order (4.2) in IR.

4.1.Adressing the theoretical debate on authority in IRIn what way does the post-structuralist approach addresses the pitfalls in contemporary IR

accounts on authority and benefits IR theory? Let us briefly recall what we identified as major


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shortcomings across the fusionist and separatist camps. First of all, we criticized the

individualist underpinnings that characterise most approaches. Treating the individual as

sovereign being which is only bound by rational reasoning, these scholars do not only neglect

the constraints given by social structures but also ignore the productive power that lies in social

interaction itself. The affirmation of authoritative relations cannot be traced back to individual

decisions which in aggregation found authority. Rather, and this is at the heart of the post-

structural reading as outlined above, authority has to be treated as a social relationship

constituted by historically sedimented discursive structures.

A second pitfall we detected concerns the central debate on the relationship of authority, power

and legitimacy a dispute which is not restricted to IR research: most of the controversy about

the nature of political authority in political philosophy and social science arises from the dispute

over the relation between the notions of authority, power and legitimacy (Friedman 1990: 59).

Against this backdrop, it is important to take a look where the post-structuralist reading

positions itself with regard to the various issues at stake in this debate. By emphasising that the

structuring power of discourses constitutes and constrains authoritative relationships which,

through the feedback loop of performative speech-acts, stabilize the existing social order, the

post-structural reading clearly overcomes the seperatists ambiguity on how the concepts of

power and authority relate to each other. The post-structuralist conceptualization implies that

an awareness for the genealogy of the historically sedimented discursive structures should bethe starting point for IR studies on authority. Furthermore, it is obvious that the notion of

legitimacy does not play a central role in our conceptualization of authority. This stands in

contrast to most fusionist accounts which postulate that legitimacy is a constitutive element of

authority. As outlined in chapter two, most fusionists simply treat compliance as indicator for

legitimacy, and thus equalize this concept with acceptance. We believe that such a

underspecified and simplifying use gravely overstretches the concept of legitimacy, making its

conceptual value redundant. If it does not matter whether or not an authoritative relationship is

questioned or habitually accepted, any chance to challenge authority on normative grounds is

precluded from the outset. The post-structuralist reading avoids this fallacy by implicitly

distinguishing between unquestioned acceptance constitutive of authoritative relationships and

the possibility of reflexive acceptance of singular authoritative practices, which is made possible

by encompassing contestation de-constructing of the hegemonic discursive structures

constitutive for relationships of authority. Whereas unquestioned acceptance is thus a necessary

element of authority, the possibility of reflexive acceptance points to steady moment of

transformation and contestation in authoritative relationships. As such, the dual design of


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acceptance conceptually captures the constant possibility of emancipatory agency within the

speaker-audience interaction - despite its embedding in discursive structures. As Butler (1997)

has argued, performative speech-acts are not only the source of the constitution of reality but

also of the transformation of the actual. By detaching the symbols from its context, by alienating,

parodying and dramatizing, the protagonists can interpret the underlying structures in a

genuine manner. 16

The systematic inclusion of the possibility of contestation makes our post-structuralist

conceptualization of authority a tie-in for IR studies onpoliticisation. The empirical observation

of increasing politicisation in global affairs highlights the precarious and provisional nature of

authority beyond the nation-state in light of the (post)modern condition. Drawing on Zrn et al.

(2011: 6), politicisation can be understood as making a matter an object of public discussion

about collectively binding decisions. Politicisation in this reading involves the reflexive

examination of the process of deciding as well as of the content of the collectively binding

decision (Zrn et al. 2011: 6). When politicisation addresses an entire decision-making process

and its underlying meanings and knowledge, it can be said to induce contestation about existing

discursive structures in the sense of our conceptualization. If discursive structures are

contested, unquestioned acceptance by the subordinates which is constitutive to maintain an

authoritative relationship is no longer guaranteed. Politicisation has thus the capacity to

undermine and even destroy authoritative relationships in their existing form. It is however aprocess ofcreative destruction: Politicisation provokes change and can give situational birth to

authoritative practices reflexively accepted by the audience. Discussing tie-ins of the post-

structural reading of authority and the concept of politicisation, it is also important to recall that

while each authoritative relationship is bound to a specific audience, contestation is also

possible from without the targeted audience. Examinations of authority and politicisation have

to take this into account and should orient towards concrete instances. In this regard, the

conceptual feature of specific speech-acts actualising authority is of great benefit for empirical

research, since specific speech-acts represent empirically examinable instances of authority and

hereby allow a precise analysis. Studies of politicisation benefit in a similar manner. Tracing

speech-acts can help to picture to what extent acts of politicisation are at work. The nexus of

authority and politicisation will be taken up again in the section below. There, we turn back to

16 How speech-acts can turn into acts of resistance has been nicely shown by Butler with the change in the

meaning of the term queer. The term was initially thought as offending title for homosexuals. By

parodying citation, the addresses however succeeded in withdrawing the stigmatic character and

converted the term into a positive connoted symbol of identity (Butler 1993).


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our initial outset and discuss briefly how the post-structural concept of authority makes sense of

empirical observations of political order in the age of globalisation.

4.2.The role of authority in the formation of global political order

At the beginning of the 21st century, political ordering in the global realm acquires complex

forms. In contrast to the traditional conception with states being the principal actors, the

contemporary political order is characterized by complex multilevel decision-making that

involves a multitude of actors. Although the state still plays a significant role in ordering todays

global system17, private actors such as Transnational Corporations (TNCs) and Non-

Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as well as hybrid governance arrangements are said to

have increasingly assumed governance functions that were traditionally reserved to state

authority (Cutler et al. 1999; Hall & Biersteker 2002).18 Besides theses new forms of governance,

also international organizations and courts at a national and international level have become

distinct governing authorities that characterize and shape the new world order. 19 The post-

structuralist understanding of authority stays abreast of these changes as it offers a concept that

goes beyond the juridico-discursive representation of power and captures various kinds of

speaker-audience relationships possibly involving governmental and non-governmental actors

on either side and encompassing formal and informal relationships. Whereas, for instance,

governmental representatives are the audience of the United Nations Security Council in case of

the counter-terrorism blacklisting provisions, transnational companies orchestrate consumers

and producers behaviour in the field of food and agricultural, while governments again remain

17 To what extent the state is losing political influence due to processes of globalization is subject to

constant debate. Whereas Governance without government (Rosenau & Czempiel 1992) was the

dominating vision for a long time, recently a more differentiated view has prevailed: The state is seen as

remaining a significant player although the way he executes governance functions is drastically changing

(Djelic & Sahlin-Andersson 2007).

18 TNCs in particular are said to have acquired great political power and governing authority (Strange1997; Fuchs et al. 2009). By setting standards and developing codes of conduct, they establish rules and

norms of large extent in particular policy fields. There is a large body of empirical evidence that shows the

substantive role private actors nowadays play in the field of regulation. Findings on private standard

setting in the forest sector (e.g. Cashore 2002) as well as studies on international standard setting in

accounting (e.g. Botzem & Quack 2007) are among the most prominent ones.

19Goldstein and Steinberg (2009) for example have shown a significant shift of regulatory authority to the

World Trade Organizations Dispute Settlement Body. Similarly, Stefan Talmon (2005) has revealed the

United Nations Security Councils actualrole as the Worlds legislator. Finally, the studies of Karin Alter

(1998) and Jonas Tallberg (2002) take the example of the European Court of Justice to illustrate how

jurisprudence has evolved as an independent player in limiting the nation states scope.


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in an authoritative position with regard to issues of national security vis--vis the military in

liberal states. The examples point out that the ordering effect of particular authoritative

relationships is limited to a specific audience - a central argument of the post-structural

understanding of authority. This shows that the conceptualization developed in this paper nicely

grasps what scholars have referred to as the diffusion of political authority (Rosenau 2007)

leading to a global ordering that is highly fragmented and complex.

A brief (and thus necessarily superficial) discussion of an empirical case exemplifies the

potential a post-structuralist reading of authority for analysing the blurry and unsteady

processes of global governance has. Against the backdrop of the prominence of (neo-)liberal

narratives in both World Bank/IMF and governments in many developing countries, from the

1960s onwards the Bretton Woods institutions only granted loans if the receiving state adopted

so called structural adjustment programs (SAPs) which were designed to sharpen a states

market-orientation. In the beginning, the measures demanded by World Bank and the IMF were

unquestionably accepted since neo-liberal discipline was seen as guarantee for economic

prosperity by the targeted governments at that time which exemplifies the status of the so

called Washington consensus as discursive structure in these relationships. 20 In the 1980s

however, people outside the targeted governments realized that in many cases the SAPs come

along with massive human rights violations. Monumental infrastructure projects such as the

building of huge embankment damns in Brazil destroyed the livelihood of hundred-thousands ofpeople and caused severe environmental damage. In these times, people affected by the policies

started to organise themselves in transnational advocacy networks in order to raise awareness

for the SAPs harmful effects. They increasingly questioned whether market-orientation and

economic prosperity should be the only objectives guiding state action and suggested instead to

take into account environmental sustainability as social vision. While re-iterating the World

Banks wording of objective, vision and prosperity, the networks succeeded in undermining

unquestioned acceptance in the authoritative relationship between World Bank and target

governments. But these forms of contestation did not only lead governments in developing

countries to increasingly oppose the orders by World Bank and IMF. Environmental

sustainability and social health were even mainstreamed into the World Banks institutional

language. Although it can thus be said that the acts of politicisation challenged existing

interpretations, they did not change the discursive structures genuinely. Nevertheless, these

developments underline the importance of the most decisive feature of the post-structural

20 The fact that economic prosperity was the only objective concerned already indicates the extreme neo-

liberalzeitgeistat that time.


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conceptualisation: Taking into account the way discursive structures constitute relationships of

authority and thus regulate global order while remaining attentive to the possibility of

contestation and transformation.

This short scratch on how the post-structural concept of authority can illuminate processes of

social ordering in global politics is certainly of preliminary nature. We only summarised complex

processes and did not employ in concrete what is arguably the biggest advantage of the post-

structural concept of authority: the focus on performative speech-acts as manifestations of

authoritative relationships which leads to a built-in empirical orientation. What should have

become clear, however, is that our post-structuralist conceptualisation promises to be a valuable

tool for analysing the emerging global order in a politically engaged and responsible manner.

Instead of simply reifying functionalist myths of encompassing political steering, it lends itself to

investigate the manifold and blurry relationships of authority in global politics and makes their

precarious and unsteady nature obvious. Furthermore, in making the reproduction of

constitutive discursive structures and their contestation a systematic aspect of research on

authority, it prevents an underspecified use of the lump concept of legitimacy and provokes

the researcher instead to question his or her own role in these processes. Any IR study which

starts from the assumption that the global order is emergent i.e. not fully consolidated and

subject to constant contestation must acknowledge that knowledge production about this

process, and especially about the political struggles associated with it, becomes then an integralpart of the constitution of this very political order. Therefore it is all the more critical to

conceptualize authority in a way that does not foreclose debate about politics beyond the state

and which systematically includes the possibility of resistance. In this regard, a post-structuralist

reading of authority in global politics takes its own object of study more seriously than many

others.


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A Post-Structuralist Reading of Authority I

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