The new spirit of technocracy? : ordering practice in United Nations peacebuilding

Resource Information

The work The new spirit of technocracy? : ordering practice in United Nations peacebuilding represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in European University Institute. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The new spirit of technocracy? : ordering practice in United Nations peacebuilding

Title remainder

ordering practice in United Nations peacebuilding

Statement of responsibility

Christian Bueger

Creator

• Büger, Christian

Contributor

• European University Institute, Department of Political and Social Sciences

Subject

• Peace-building -- International cooperation | History -- 21st century
• Technocracy
• United Nations -- Peacekeeping forces

Language

eng

Summary

Whether global order is drifting towards democratic or technocratic modes of governing is a contested issue. This thesis takes up the challenge of investigating how trends towards global democratization or technocratization play out in the field of United Nations peacebuilding. To do so the thesis argues that democratic optimism and technocratic pessimism should not be evaluated as competing paradigms, but as panoramas whose interplay needs to be investigated in empirical research. A pragmatist standpoint, conceptualized as 'critical optimism' is taken and a framework drawing on sociological theories of practice developed. To scrutinize democratizing and technocratizing tendencies the study of everyday ordering practices in different organizational sites is proposed. In adopting an interpretative research strategy three sites are scrutinized empirically: The United Nations Peacebuilding Commission, the United Nations Peacekeeping Best Practice Section and the Afghanistan Compact and its Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board. The interplay of different political practices at these sites is reconstructed. The discussion reveals the importance of democratic and technocratic ideas, yet demonstrates that no clear-cut tendency towards one mode can be observed. Instead, different practices work in parallel, sometimes support each other and sometimes conflict with each other. Taken together, the importance of scrutinizing the difficile interplay of practices is highlighted and the significance of taking pluralist standpoints in studying the social life of world politics is demonstrated. The thesis makes three core contributions to the literature. Firstly, the thesis is one of the first attempts at seeking a dialogue between critical and liberal theories of global governing, otherwise often seen as competitors. Secondly, through its development of theory it makes a contribution to the debate on how sociological frameworks drawing on theories of practice can be used to study the international. Thirdly, its empirical results contribute to the research agenda on how peacebuilding is organized in practice

Member of

• EUI PhD theses

Cataloging source

IT-FiEUI

Date time place

Defence date: 3 December 2010

Dissertation note

Thesis (Ph. D.)--European University Institute (SPS), 2010.

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

theses

Series statement

• EUI PhD theses
• EUI theses