Powerful Individuals in a Globalized World

Abstract

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, made media headlines at the end of last year when he announced his intention to donate most of his Facebook shares to charity. This article deals with the significance and potential of individuals, such as Zuckerberg, in a globalized world, to determine global policy agendas. Philanthropists who head global foundations are the most apparent. While philanthropists' involvement in international relations is based on their capital, celebrities increasingly use their fame to do political advocacy, and social entrepreneurs are sometimes able to initiate change based on new ideas. Contributing to the existing literature, the article compares the characteristics of these three categories and discusses their relevance against the background of the increasing delegation of authority to private actors in global governance. When dealing with non-state actors in global governance, scholars have simply assumed these actors to be collective entities. In consequence , we have missed the fact that power has not only shifted away from state actors but also increasingly concentrates on very few individuals who possess respective resources of power. The individualization of global policy processes therefore causes new problems of democratic accountability and legitimacy. Policy Implications • Policy makers may strategically use powerful individuals and their resources, for example, celebrities' fame to boost public support for decisions made. • When collaborating with powerful individuals, for example in partnership boards such as the Global Fund, policy makers should be aware that these individuals often do not represent collective entities and have greater leeway and flexibility in negotiations. • The rise of very powerful individuals leads to new democratic challenges. We need new mechanisms of accountability for celebrities, philanthropists and social entrepreneurs participating in global governance. • Media-makers should scrutinise whether and when powerful individuals formulate only their personal viewpoints or speak on behalf of others, such as marginalized people in the global South.

Role model advocacy for sustainable transport

“…For example, these contradictions come into even sharper focus through the actions of celebrity green entrepreneurs like Richard Branson (Prudham, 2009). Partzsch (2016) observes that, in the past two decades, power has shifted from state actors towards philanthropists, celebrities, and social entrepreneurs, creating problems for democratic accountability and legitimacy. Anderson (2011) offers a more ambivalent account of the situation through her critical review of media coverage of climate/environmental issues and the potential role of celebrities in moving the broader public to action.…”

Knowledge-Based Social Entrepreneurship and The Creation of Social Enterprises’ in South East Asia: Indonesian Cases

“…These two models are made because the actors, resources, scale, strategy and entrepreneurial processes of these two models are different, but both shares the same tangent point in the context of sustainability and identity formation through the development of independence, albeit employing different strategies. The next equation lies in the ideology or moral philosophy of its entrepreneurial initiator (the "great man" school) [22]. On the other hand, the two cases we studied involve revolutionary system changes, thus traditionally belonging to Social Engineering typology.…”

“…This naming refers to the emergence of individual or collective actors who play an entrepreneurial function at the community level as well as global. As theorized by [22], "due to globalization and the increase of private authority, some individuals with a transformational orientation have now obtained new resources of power that allow for the novel non-state and non-collective agency." Therefore she suggests three categories of individual agents increasingly relevant to global governance: i.e.…”

“…This effort is done by company-based entrepreneurship and relationships with existing small and medium enterprises (SMEs). CSE is a synthesis of social entrepreneurship and Corporate Entrepreneurship, a concept developed by [22] as "the process of extending the firm's domain of competence and corresponding opportunity set through innovative leveraging of resources, both within and outside its direct control, aimed at the simultaneous creation of economic and social value." [27].…”

The Strategizing of Policy Entrepreneurs towards the Global Alliance for Climate‐Smart Agriculture

“…In these collaborative processes an important role is assigned to agency (Harting et al., ; Huitema and Meijerink, ; McNamara, ; Meijerink and Stiller, ; Termeer and Bruinsma, ). Studies have shown that exploring global policy dynamics from a micro agency‐centered perspective sheds light on the crucial role of actors in the dynamics through which constellations like GACSA get operationalized (Braithwaite and Drahos, ; Partzsch, ). Such a micro perspective allows us to understand how actor's activities are influenced by contextual developments, and how these activities in turn transform or reproduce macro‐level patterns in the policy process (Torfing, ) thereby increasing insight in the mechanisms underlying policy development.…”