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Seit den 1990er-Jahren erfahren multinationale Unternehmen sowohl in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung als auch im (politik-)wissenschaftlichen Diskurs mehr Aufmerksamkeit. Dabei versteht vor allem die Global Governance-Forschung im Bewusstsein neuer Erwartungen an und stärkerem Engagement von Unternehmen diese zunehmend als politische Akteure und betont, oftmals normativ motiviert, das Potenzial und den Mehrwert, der in einer stärkeren Integration von Unternehmen in Strukturen des globalen Regierens liegt. Die hier angelegte Debatte um die Rolle und Verantwortlichkeit multinationaler Unternehmen sowie die Art und Weise, wie das Phänomen wissenschaftlich aufgearbeitet und diskutiert wird, markieren die inhaltlichen Ausgangspunkte dieser in der pragmatistischen Tradition begründeten Rekonstruktion. Dabei wird im Anschluss an die Auseinandersetzung mit Unternehmen als wirtschaftliche, rechtliche, historische und politische Akteure ein eigener Akteursbegriff entwickelt, der es erlaubt, von Unternehmen selbst artikulierte Bedeutungen und Grundüberzeugungen als Ausdruck sozialer, kreativer und letztlich kontingenter Handlungen zu rekonstruieren. Mithilfe dieser Perspektive werden jene Bedeutungen und Überzeugungen von Shell in Nigeria und ExxonMobil in Indonesien illustriert, welche in Reaktion auf Krisen die Rolle des jeweiligen Unternehmens definieren und in ihrer Gesamtschau implizieren, dass zumindest Shell und ExxonMobil nicht vorschnell als global governors und nachhaltig integriert in Strukturen globalen Regierens (miss-)verstanden werden sollten.

By championing certain actors over others, International Relations (IR) theory conventionally avoids questions of agency and does not, at least in theoretical terms, discuss which entities can develop capacities needed to act in world politics. Whether it is states, institutions, or individuals, we simply "locate" agency in particular entities, which then exist and act as global governors qua definition. In other words, agency is determined by a priori claims and we rarely reflect the dispositions needed to be(come) an actor in the first place. Even global governance, despite its impetus to consider agency beyond the state, has not engaged in such a discussion, at least not in theoretical terms. In order to initiate such a discussion, the paper draws on the distinction between substantialism and relationalism. After reviewing how agency has been framed in IR, the paper outlines three general dispositions of agency and relates those to the two ontological perspectives. Based on this theorization, the paper contents that IR's lack of reflection and its substantialized notions of agency, whether in rationalist or constructivist appearance, remain problematic. As such, there is potential to conceptualize agency in world politics not as an inherent disposition of entities but rather as emerging from social relations between them. Such a framework compels researchers to not just assume discrete actors but to focus on relational processes through which their agency emerges in the first place and sustains over time. Reconstructing these processes reveals their political nature and allows us to consider who should govern the world.

AbstractThe intellectual engagement with multinational enterprises in International Relations has found a new home within the narratives of global governance and corporate social responsibility. Both narratives seem to agree that the role of business has changed as state capacities to provide governance assumingly have diminished and, based on broader social and political responsibilities, enterprises began to participate more actively in the provision of collective goods. Increased participation alone, however, does not reveal how corporate actors define and make sense of their responsibilities and their roles within global governance. In fact, focusing on corporate responsibilities and corporate governance contributions does not consider enterprises as actorsin their own rightwho actively interpret and respond to changes in their normative environments. To fill this gap, the article proposes a framework that conceptualizes corporate agency as inherently social and creative. This framework, which can be applied to different contexts, is illustrated by reconstructing interpretative frames and self-understandings advanced by Shell in response to its crisis in Nigeria during the 1990s. Based on this reconstruction, Shell failed to develop and communicate a clear understanding of its social responsibilities, and its overall integration into global governance is likely to remain an ambiguous process in which uncertainty and indeterminacy prevail.

AbstractMore than 20 years after global governance was introduced to the discipline of International Relations (IR), confusion about its conceptual status remains. In fact, how to even speak and think global governance—whether as a description of world politics, as a theoretical perspective to explain it, or as a normative notion to be realized through global policy—remains debated. This state of confusion affects debates within the Political Science subfield of IR as well as dialogue between different disciplines beyond IR. More specifically, the article argues that the current state of confusion exists not because of a lack of debate but rather because of different understandings of global governance that were attached to the concept during its emergence and which are still advanced and reproduced within debates today. These different understandings have their origin in certain real-world and disciplinary dynamics and constitute global governance in present discourse as a "condensation symbol" of different meanings. It is argued that precisely because of this status, global governance has obtained its "celebrity status", within and beyond IR. By structuring different understandings of global governance and by reconstructing real-world and disciplinary contexts of emergence, the article goes beyond stating the obvious and provides a discussion of various sources and consequences of the confusion surrounding global governance. On the basis of this state-of-the-art overview, it is argued that to realize the full potential of global governance in IR and ensure interdisciplinary dialogue beyond it, one needs to engage with the concept and its immanent confusion in a reflective and cautious way by becoming aware of different meanings attached to it instead of arbitrarily reducing the concept to a single meaning to define its conceptual status. This article is published as part of a thematic collection on global governance.