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Purpose– The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether the global policy on sustainability, United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), is in alignment with the complexity of the sustainability landscape utilizing complex adaptive system (CAS) theory and theory of change.Design/methodology/approach– An original Complex Adaptive Policy System (CAPS) framework is used as a qualitative instrument with a constant comparison of 11 CAS themes in analyzing 117 UNGC speeches listed on the Global Compact Web site.Findings– Although this study is intended as a preliminary study, the findings raise important questions regarding the long-term impact of the Global Compact as a global policy on sustainability.Research limitations/implications– The limitations of the study include the preliminary study design and limited source of information. Future research should include a comprehensive evaluation of the UNGC to yield specific recommendations for aligning policy with the landscape.Originality/value– The study offers an original systems framework to evaluate public and private organizational polices on sustainability.

ABSTRACTAs the state has become more susceptible to global pathologies, public policy scholars have found increasingly common ground with their IPE cousins. The development of these relatively young fields of study – increasingly they are sub-disciplines – has been commensurate but rarely intersecting. Yet contemporary maelstroms of global politics, economics, health, and security, span borders with ease, and increasingly force us to recognise, reconsider, and reconceptualise the overlapping realms of the national and international. In so doing, we must overcome the disciplinary distinctions. In this article, we traverse the prominent in-built disciplinary imperatives and methodologies that have kept these two disciplines from concerted inter-operability or, at least, interchange of theories and concepts. To do so, we begin by presenting a brief overview of the conceptual pedigrees and trajectories of these disciplines, before drawing attention to the prominent prevailing overlaps, 'trespasses' and tensions as they specifically relate to policy convergence and diffusion, and policy transfer. We proceed to specify a reconciliation of these tensions through, in the third section, a brief study of the growth of global administrations, administrators, and administrative spaces. This, we contend, stands as a paradigm case of how reconciled IPE/public policy concepts can produce enhanced theoretical and substantive insights into the transnationalising political world.

At a time when changing world orders, new actors, and new technologies transform global policy regimes, this DIIS Working Paper argues that a methodology for studying such regimes ethnographically seem to be emerging across various disciplines. The purpose of the paper is twofold: firstly, we seek to contribute to the dialogue on ethnographic and practice-oriented approaches that is growing across disciplines, from anthropology to political science and International Relations, and provide some common ground for this dialogue. Secondly, by reviewing an extensive literature, we focus on methodological discussions concerning how to approach the highly complex global policy processes that are currently developing. What are the appropriate empirical scale(s) and units of analysis of a global political ethnography? How do we identify sites, encounters, situations and materials where ethnographic approaches can generate different and maybe more critical insights than more conventional approaches? And how are the voices and practices of actors operating at different scales and in different sites balanced and connected in the policy analysis?

First published online: 3 October 2021 ; As the state has become more susceptible to global pathologies, public policy scholars have found increasingly common ground with their IPE cousins. The development of these relatively young fields of study – increasingly they are sub-disciplines – has been commensurate but rarely intersecting. Yet contemporary maelstroms of global politics, economics, health, and security, span borders with ease, and increasingly force us to recognise, reconsider, and reconceptualise the overlapping realms of the national and international. In so doing, we must overcome the disciplinary distinctions. In this article, we traverse the prominent in-built disciplinary imperatives and methodologies that have kept these two disciplines from concerted inter-operability or, at least, interchange of theories and concepts. To do so, we begin by presenting a brief overview of the conceptual pedigrees and trajectories of these disciplines, before drawing attention to the prominent prevailing overlaps, 'trespasses' and tensions as they specifically relate to policy convergence and diffusion, and policy transfer. We proceed to specify a reconciliation of these tensions through, in the third section, a brief study of the growth of global administrations, administrators, and administrative spaces. This, we contend, stands as a paradigm case of how reconciled IPE/public policy concepts can produce enhanced theoretical and substantive insights into the transnationalising political world.

A distinctive feature of the contemporary period of globalization is a powerful trend towards marketization in many regions of the world. The term "marketization" refers both to market ideologies and market-oriented reforms. A market ideology reflects the belief that markets are of superior efficiency for the allocation of goods and resources. In its most extreme form, this belief is associated with the commodification of nearly all spheres of human life. Market-oriented reforms are those policies fostering the emergence and development of markets and weakening, in parallel, alternative institutional arrangements. During the last decades of the twentieth century, the dominant market-oriented reform mix has included macroeconomic stabilization, privatization, deregulation, liberalization of foreign trade and liberalization of international capital flows (Simmons et al. 2003).Since the early 1980s, market ideology and market-oriented policies have spread fast and wide around the globe. Markets, the argument goes, are better at allocating resources and producing wealth than bureaucracies, cartels or governments. Furthermore, the global diffusion of marketization has had an impact well beyond the traditional boundaries of the economy. Marketization implies a redefinition of economic rules of the game but also a transformed perspective on states, regulation and their role. Marketization is questioning all forms of protective boundaries and barriers and having an impact, as a consequence, on social and also cultural and legal policies (Collectif Dalloz 2004; Thornton 2004). [First lines]

A distinctive feature of the contemporary period of globalization is a powerful trend towards marketization in many regions of the world. The term "marketization" refers both to market ideologies and market-oriented reforms. A market ideology reflects the belief that markets are of superior efficiency for the allocation of goods and resources. In its most extreme form, this belief is associated with the commodification of nearly all spheres of human life. Market-oriented reforms are those policies fostering the emergence and development of markets and weakening, in parallel, alternative institutional arrangements. During the last decades of the twentieth century, the dominant market-oriented reform mix has included macroeconomic stabilization, privatization, deregulation, liberalization of foreign trade and liberalization of international capital flows (Simmons et al. 2003).Since the early 1980s, market ideology and market-oriented policies have spread fast and wide around the globe. Markets, the argument goes, are better at allocating resources and producing wealth than bureaucracies, cartels or governments. Furthermore, the global diffusion of marketization has had an impact well beyond the traditional boundaries of the economy. Marketization implies a redefinition of economic rules of the game but also a transformed perspective on states, regulation and their role. Marketization is questioning all forms of protective boundaries and barriers and having an impact, as a consequence, on social and also cultural and legal policies (Collectif Dalloz 2004; Thornton 2004). [First lines]