Practice theory and the politics of hybrid global governance

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• Department of Political and Social Sciences
• GGP: Global Governance Programme

The SPS Department together with the Global Governance Programme's 'Europe in the World' Research Area, host a lecture with Vincent Pouliot.

In this lecture, Professor Pouliot explores how the study of practices – ie, established ways of doing things – can help understand ongoing transformations in global governance. He documents the rise of a new, transprofessional logic of policymaking premised on hypermobility, geographical but also functional. In the gray zone of institutional change that characterises contemporary global governance, the rise of a global "consultocracy" is reshaping the contours of agency and representation – away from bureaucracy or diplomacy toward a distinctive, managerial logic of stakeholderism, whose politics thrive on heightened fluidity.

Speaker bio

Vincent Pouliot is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. His forthcoming book, co-authored with Jean-Philippe Thérien, is entitled Global Policymaking: The Patchwork of Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Pouliot is also the author of International Pecking Orders: The Politics and Practice of Multilateral Diplomacy (2016, winner of the inaugural Hedley Bull Award) and International Security in Practice: The Politics of NATO-Russia Diplomacy (2010); as well as the co-editor of Theorizing World Orders: Cognitive Evolution and Beyond (2021), Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics (2015) and International Practices (2011), all from Cambridge University Press.