LIST OF PANELS

This panel extends the debate on global policy processes and transnational administration that started in the 1st ICPP conference in Grenoble and which provided the momentum behind a symposium of papers that will appear in Public Administration.  The second conference we hope will fuel a new publication currently in negotiation with Oxford University Press. We draw upon policy studies and public administration scholarship to ask if there are signs of global public policy and transnational administration emerging which need to be understood through the lens of this scholarship and not only that of global governance and international relations.  Would a change in the lens signify new findings and insights in the changing face of public administration and public policies processes globally? In this panel we ask policy and public administration scholars to focus on and analyse policy power, decision-making processes and implementing authority that operates above and beyond the state and is executed by transnational policy actors. Whilst there are notable exceptions, public policy and public administration studies have tended to undertake analysis of the capacity of public sector hierarchies to globalise national policies rather than to ask if there is transnational policy-making and administration above and beyond the state.   We seek conceptually informed papers that identify and interrogate (i) global policy processes, (ii) the constitution, character and effectiveness of global programs and partnerships, (iii) the emergence and nature of transnational public administration.   The co-chairs of this panel will not be accepting papers with a specific focus on European public policy or other regional policy processes in order to encourage a discussion of the global, inter-regional or transnational levels of policy and administration.  However, papers that address the transnational policy initiatives of regional organisations and the way they feed in to global public policies will be considered.

The aim of this panel is to extend the debate on global policy processes and transnational administration that started in the 1st ICPP conference in Grenoble. The first event provided the momentum behind a symposium of papers that will appear in Public Administration.  The second conference we hope will help fuel a new publication in negotiation with Oxford University Press. We draw upon policy studies and public administration scholarship to ask if there are signs of global public policy and transnational administration emerging which need to be understood through the lens of this scholarship and not only that of global governance and international relations.  Would a change in the lens signify new findings and insights in the changing face of public administration and public policies processes globally? We propose a couple of working definitions with which to frame discussion albeit recognising that these definitions are neither ‘settled’ understandings nor completely separable. Global (Public) Policy (GPP) is a set of overlapping but disjointed processes of public-private deliberation and cooperation among both official state based and international organisations, often with non-state actors, around establishing common norms and policy agendas for securing the delivery of global public goods or ameliorating transnational problems. Transnational (Public) Administration (TPA) refers to the regulation, management and implementation of global policies in areas and by actors beyond the boundaries of the state but often beneath the global level.  In these definitions of global (public) policy and transnational (public) administration is that we place ‘the public’ in parentheses.  Traditionally, the rights and responsibilities of ‘the public’ have been associated with a Westphalian sovereign order.  In the absence of a sovereign power at global, regional (notwithstanding some supra-national functions of the European Union-EU) and transnational levels, the notion of the public as a ‘community of fate’ is often lost from analytical sight.  When we drop the ‘public’ it is also in recognition that authority has become more informal and privatised. In this panel we ask policy and public administration scholars to focus on and analyse policy power, decision-making processes and implementing authority that operates above and beyond the state and is executed by transnational policy actors. Whilst there are notable exceptions, public policy and public administration studies have tended to undertake analysis of the capacity of public sector hierarchies to globalise national policies rather than to ask if there is transnational policy-making and administration above and beyond the state.   We seek conceptually informed papers that identify and interrogate (i) global policy processes, (ii) the constitution, character and effectiveness of global programs and partnerships, (iii) the emergence and nature of transnational public administration.   The co-chairs of this panel will not be accepting papers with a specific focus just on European public policy or other regional policy processes in order to encourage a discussion of the global, inter-regional or transnational levels of policy and administration.  However, papers that address the transnational policy initiatives of regional organisations and the way they feed in to global public policies will be considered.