Mauro F. Guillén

Bio: Mauro F. Guillén is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Organizational analysis & New institutionalism. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 3229 citations.

What is agency

Abstract: This article aims (1) to analytically disaggregate agency into its several component elements (though these are interrelated empirically), (2) to demonstrate the ways in which these agentic dimensions interpenetrate with forms of structure, and (3) to point out the implications of such a conception of agency for empirical research. The authors conceptualize agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its “iterational” or habitual aspect) but also oriented toward the future (as a “projective” capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a “practical‐evaluative” capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment).

“Let's Argue!”: Communicative Action in World Politics

Abstract: This article introduces a mode of social action and interaction that has so far been largely overlooked in the U.S.-dominated international relations debate between rational choice and social constructivism that focuses mainly on the differences between instrumental rationality and norm-guided behavior. Drawing on insights from a theoretical debate within the Germanspeaking international relations community, I suggest that actors have a third mode of social action at their disposal: arguing and deliberating about the validity claims inherent in any communicative statement about identities, interests, and the state of the world. Arguing and truth-seeking behavior presuppose that actors no longer hold fixed interests during their communicative interaction but are open to persuasion, challenges, and counterchallenges geared toward reaching a reasoned consensus. The preconditions for argumentative rationality, particularly a “common lifeworld” and the mutual recognition of speakers as equals in a nonhierarchical relationship, are more common in international relations than is usually assumed. Arguing processes are more likely to occur the more actors are uncertain about their interests and even identities, the less they know about the situation in which they find themselves and the underlying “rules of the game,” and the more apparently irreconcilable differences prevent them from reaching an optimal rather than a merely satisfactory solution for a widely perceived problem (“problem solving”). Moreover, arguing is likely to increase the influence of the materially less powerful, be it small states or nonstate actors such as INGOs. I illustrate these claims empirically with two plausibility probes. The first concerns the East–West talks leading to a negotiated settlement of the Cold War in Europe and German unification within NATO. The second case focuses on the implementation of international human rights norms into domestic practices of Third World states.

The Paradox of Redistribution and Strategies of Equality: Welfare State Institutions, Inequality and Poverty in the Western Countries

Abstract: the structure of welfare state institutions. (2) A trade-off exists between the degree of low-income targeting and the size of redistributive budgets. (3) Outcomes of market-based distribution are often more unequal than those of earnings-related social insurance programs. We argue that social insurance institutions are of central importance for redistributive outcomes. Using new data, our comparative analyses of the effects of different institutional types of welfare states on poverty and inequality indicate that institutional differences lead to unexpected outcomes and generate the paradox of redistribution: The more we target benefits at the poor and the more concerned we are with creating equality via equal public transfers to all, the less likely we are to reduce poverty and inequality. Social scientists and social reformers have long debated how the welfare state and social policies should be designed so as to best reduce poverty and inequality. This debate involves two different issues. One question concerns whether social policies should be targeted or universal, that is, should they be organized for the poor only or should the welfare state include all citizens? In the context of nontargeted programs, another question concerns the level of benefits: Should benefits be equal for all, or should they be related to previous earnings and in

The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations

Abstract: International Relations scholars have vigorous theories to explain why international organizations (IOs) are created, but they have paid little attention to IO behavior and whether IOs actually do what their creators intend. This blind spot flows logically from the economic theories of organization that have dominated the study of international institutions and regimes. To recover the agency and autonomy of IOs, we offer a constructivist approach. Building on Max Weber's well-known analysis of bureaucracy, we argue that IOs are much more powerful than even neoliberals have argued, and that the same characteristics of bureaucracy that make IOs powerful can also make them prone to dysfunctional behavior. IOs are powerful because, like all bureaucracies, they make rules, and, in so doing, they create social knowledge. IOs deploy this knowledge in ways that define shared international tasks, create new categories of actors, form new interests for actors, and transfer new models of political organization around the world. However, the same normative valuation on impersonal rules that defines bureaucracies and makes them powerful in modern life can also make them unresponsive to their environments, obsessed with their own rules at the expense of primary missions, and ultimately produce inefficient and self-defeating behavior. Sociological and constructivist approaches thus allow us to expand the research agenda beyond IO creation and to ask important questions about the consequences of global bureaucratization and the effects of IOs in world politics.

The Institutionalization of Institutional Theory

Abstract: Excerpt] Our primary aims in this effort are twofold: to clarify the independent theoretical contributions of institutional theory to analyses of organizations, and to develop this theoretical perspective further in order to enhance its use in empirical research. There is also a more general, more ambitious objective here, and that is to build a bridge between two distinct models of social actor that underlie most organizational analyses, which we refer to as a rational actor model and an institutional model. The former is premised on the assumption that individuals are constantly engaged in calculations of the costs and benefits of different action choices, and that behavior reflects such utility-maximizing calculations. In the latter model, by contrast, 'oversocialized' individuals are assumed to accept and follow social norms unquestioningly, without any real reflection or behavioral resistance based on their own particular, personal interests. We suggest that these two general models should be treated not as oppositional but rather as representing two ends of a continuum of decisionmaking processes and behaviors. Thus, a key problem for theory and research is to specify the conditions under which behavior is more likely to resemble one end of this continuum or the other. In short, what is needed are theories of when rationality is likely to be more or less bounded. A developed conception of institutionalization processes provides a useful point of departure for exploring this issue.