Seminar; Administrative Sovereignty: An Idea in the Past?

Trachtenberg School students are invited to join a conversation hosted by GW’s Elliott School in connection with the ASPA conference on March 7, 11:30-1:00 p.m., 1957 E Street, NW, Room 505.

Speakers:

• Kim Moloney PhD, Murdoch University, Australia
• Derick Brinkerhoff PhD, George Washington University, US
• Heidi Smith,  Universidad Iberoamericana
• Bokgyo Jeong, Kean University

Abstract:

• This Seminar draws upon the January 2019 publication of the Oxford Handbook of Global Policy and Transnational Administration. This 40-chapter, 53-author, and 765-page Handbook co-edited by Diane Stone (University of Canberra; University of Warwick) and Kim Moloney (Murdoch University) is no rehash of a disciplinary past. Instead, this Handbook declares that not only are European Union studies a ‘tributary’ of any study of global policy and its transnational administration but that the traditional administrative sovereignty of the state can no longer be assumed. With a multiplicity of global and regional actors creating, influencing, and implementing policy in multiple contexts, now is the time to explore their administrative impact. With the mayors of large cities acting as paradiplomatic actors, management consultancies influencing administrative contexts, global regulatory expansion (and consolidation), increasingly powerful non-governmental organizations and foundations, and a multiplicity of institutionalizing international and regional organizations, the administrative state is no longer our globe’s key administrative actor. This volume asserts that the past’s key public actor (e.g. state) is increasingly outnumbered by private actors with global influence. Thus, this new global policy arena (as opposed to a global public policy arena) must be understood and reconceptualized via its interaction with transnational administration. Moreover, and as noted in this Seminar, the transparency and accountability of global policy actors and their transnational administration are hampered by underdeveloped global administrative law (and international administrative law) arenas and thus, raising new questions about this emergent global order and our abilities to encourage its actors to be transparent and accountable.