Governing differentiation: On standardisation as political steering

Abstract

The introduction of Luhmann’s System Theory to International Relations has been long overdue. In the last few years, articles by Donnelly (2012) and Buzan and Albert (2010) have started to discuss the application of the concept of differentiation to International Relations theory, and an edited book by Albert et al. (2010) has examined how systemic thought can reinvigorate the study of world politics. This article welcomes and continues these developments by proposing a Luhmannian reinterpretation of the evolution and functioning of governance via standards. The article argues that standardisation — involving the proliferation of standards but also of standardised instruments such as rankings, indicators and benchmarks — can be understood as a mechanism of political steering in a growingly differentiated (world) society. By considering standardisation as a systemic adaptation of the political system to a multifunctional environment, this article contests conventional economistic and power-based explanations where the ‘standardisation turn’ in global governance is a mere consequence of neoliberal globalisation, power struggles among states or some type of hegemonic logic. In this manner, the article suggests that Luhmann’s Systems Theory can provide a more encompassing framework to understand the operation of standards as an extension of politics beyond territory, and to frame the challenges of governing an increasingly complex world.

Keywords

Functional differentiation governance International Relations theory Luhmann sociology standardisation steering systems theory

In recent years, there has been an expanding interest in International Relations (IR) theorising in the work of Niklas Luhmann and his Systems Theory (ST). At the forefront of these efforts have been articles on differentiation published in the European Journal of International Relations by Donnelly (2012) and Buzan and Albert (2010), preceded by the edited collection on new systems theories and world politics by Albert et al. (2010), and the introductory conversations between Luhmann’s ideas and IR theory in Albert and Hilkermeier (2004). These and other works have served to outline the potential ST has for describing global processes beyond methodological nationalism and to reinterpret the implications of complexity in diverse issue areas such as international relations history, international law, global civil society, global finance and security (Albert and Buzan, 2011, 2013; Buzan, 2004; Donnelly, 2009; Jaeger, 2007; Kessler, 2009, 2012; Teubner, 2004). There has also been a relevant integration of ST with neo-Marxist International Political Economy which has still not been properly addressed by the IR literature (Daly, 2004; Jessop, 2008, 2012). Nonetheless, the introduction of Luhmann’s ST and its complex conceptual repertoire to IR remains in its initial phase. This is not an easy task as Luhmann proposes a theoretical universe that:

radicalises and binds together so many basic notions of the social sciences in a way so dramatically different from established use that taking out facets of it is often a demanding … exercise in terms of building bridges to other approaches. (Albert, 2010: 51)

This article supports and expands these efforts by illustrating the insights ST can provide in relation to the phenomenon of standardisation in global governance. The article is organised in four sections. The first section provides a simplified outline of the historical trajectory of standardisation and presents current conceptual debates. The second introduces a number of ST concepts necessary to re-problematise the challenges of achieving collective coordination in conditions of globalisation. The third integrates these concepts through the notion of steering and approaches standardisation as a mechanism of political steering in a complex society. The fourth section concludes.

Standards, experts and transnational regulation

Within IR, scholarly interest in standardisation has been mostly a development of the last decade. Until the mid-1990s, global governance was mainly understood from the perspective of international regimes and the activities of international organisations (Finkelstein, 1995), and standardisation remained an obscure technical arena of peripheral political importance. However, in the 1990s, scholars started to pay increasing attention to the role of private actors in the governance of international affairs and to private processes of rule-making (Börzel and Risse, 2005; Graz and Nölke, 2008; Hall and Biersteker, 2002; Kirton and Trebilcock, 2004; Pattberg, 2005; Risse, 2006). These investigations are at the intersection of diverse areas of scholarship concerned with the establishment and diffusion of international norms, integrating findings from economics, sociology, history and political science. Relying on this literature, it is possible to provide a general outline of the evolution of standardisation as a basis for the theoretical debates explored in the following sections.

International standardisation as a political project started in the second part of the 19th century when actors from industrialised countries, mainly in Western Europe and North America, set out to devise voluntary standards regularising different aspects of industry and trade: from communications and transport, to hygiene and labour (Boli and Thomas, 1997; Loya and Boli, 1999; Murphy, 1994; Turmann, 1922). By 1914, over 30 International Public Unions had been created, such as the Telegraphic Union (1865), the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (1875) and the International Association of Labour Legislation (1900). These early international standard-setting bodies shared a deliberative consensus-seeking orientation, supported by a strong humanist vision where the standardisation of science and industry was part of humanity’s quest for progress and peace (Charnovitz, 1997; Murphy, 1994). Interest about the applications of electricity, such as cable telegraphy, led to a series of International Electrical Congresses since 1881, and ultimately to the creation of the International Electrotechnical Commission in 1904 (Büthe, 2010). This organisation inaugurated a ‘model for transnational standardisation’ which would be later adopted by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) (Boli and Thomas, 1997: 184). The model consisted of a central non-governmental organisation (NGO) orbited by national standardisation bodies and coordinating deliberations among large networks of voluntary participants — mostly practitioners and experts (Hallström, 2004; Loya and Boli, 1999; Murphy and Yates, 2009). Expert-based standardisation was applied in other non-industrial areas, such as nature preservation, the measurement of poverty and the design of professional codes of practice (by the Rotary Club, for instance) (Charnovitz, 1997; Gundaker, 1922; Veit-Wilson, 1986). States played a limited role during this formative period (Boli and Thomas, 1997). However, this changed after the First World War, as it became tragically clear that the regulation of industry and labour had become a major national and security concern, favouring corporatist models of state–group relations (Charnovitz, 1987; Murphy, 1994).

This situation outlined two lasting approaches to standardisation. On the one side, technical standardisation remained ‘primarily an internal matter for firms or the domain of private sector technical bodies’ at national and international levels (Mattli and Büthe, 2003: 1). On the other hand, labour, environmental and more public issue-areas were dealt with through centralised rule-making bodies, with greater governmental involvement and high diplomacy, and more prone to jurisdictional problems, political disagreements and limited application (Fung, 2003; Hassel, 2008; O’Rourke, 2006; Shaffer and Pollack, 2009; Standing, 2008). However, by the late 1970s and 1980s, this distinction started to change, as the activities of firms, particularly in the USA, came under renewed public and civil scrutiny (Vogel, 1975). Overlapping with the advance of neoliberal forms of governance and new public management, this triggered a wave of self-regulation initiatives by firms and other private organisations (Bartley, 2007; Hood, 1995; Jenkins et al., 2002; Kolk et al., 1999). By the 1980s, organisations such as the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES), an environmental NGO, developed independent environmental standards and codes of practice through arrangements that included industry representatives, civil society and academics (Clapp, 1998). In 1992, ISO started working on an environmental management standard, expanding from its traditional focus on technical norms to ‘“soft” standards with significant public policy relevance’ (Clapp, 1998: 308). Private standards initiatives proliferated in the next decade — following organisations like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) created in 1993 and the Fair Labour Association in 1996 — convening a variety of public and private actors to participate in rule-making, monitoring and certification (Bartley, 2003; Hassel, 2008; Nadvi and Waltring, 2004; O’Rourke, 2006; Vogel, 2010). By the end of the millennium, the expansion of private authority and market-based regulatory approaches was such that Power (1999) coined the term ‘Audit Society’ and Gereffi et al. (2001) pointed to a new ‘NGO–Industrial Complex’.

At the same time, there were significant concerns for issues of participation, transparency and accountability in new governance mechanisms (Barnett and Duvall, 2004; Hall and Biersteker, 2002; Koenig-Archibugi and MacDonald, 2012; Rosenau and Czempiel, 1992; Ruggie, 2008). Claims about the legitimacy deficit in global governance led to an increasing reliance on hybrid models of standard-setting, which combined conventional public actors with a wider range of interested parties and experts (Boström and Hallström, 2013; Gilbert et al., 2011). For example, in 2000, the United Nations (UN) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) launched the Global Compact, an initiative aimed to ‘weave universal principles into global corporate behavior’ based on networked collaboration by firms, international organisations and civil society (Rasche et al., 2012; Ruggie, 2002: 35). A few years later, the ISO set up an expanded working group — including experts from labour, NGOs and consumer organisations — to define the ISO 26000 guidance standard on social responsibility (published in 2010) and covering issues of human rights, labour practices and environmental protection (Hallström, 2008; Ward, 2012).

In recent years, the disorganised expansion of private and hybrid initiatives led to the emergence of higher instances of coordination in a number of issue-areas. This is represented by groups such as the Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling Alliance (ISEAL; an association of private standard-setters), the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC; a coalition of regulators, investors, companies, standard-setters and NGOs with the mission of creating a global reporting framework) and the W3C Consortium (an international community of experts, firms and academics developing protocols and guidelines for the Internet) (Abbott and Snidal, 2009; Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2009; Murphy and Yates, 2011; Vincent and Camp, 2004). These networked bodies aim to facilitate convergence among different regulatory frameworks, and to define best norms and practices that would not progress under more bureaucratic arrangements. Murphy and Yates (2011) see in these initiatives a combination of 21st-century social movements with early 20th-century ‘evangelical engineers’, integrating the progressive vision of the former with the technocratic orientation of the latter.

The spread of standardisation over technical and non-technical areas changed the perception among scholars that standardisation referred to activities ‘shrouded in secrecy’ (Mattli and Büthe, 2011) and occupying a ‘marginal role in global regulation’ (Kerwer, 2005: 612). Over the last decade, this phenomenon was acknowledged as a ‘pervasive trend in contemporary world politics’ (Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2009: 708) that ‘penetrates many aspects of individual and organisational life’ (Botzem and Dobusch, 2012: 737) and presents a challenge to its ‘traditional topology’ (Davis et al., 2012: 100). Many authors now consider standard-setting bodies as integrating a ‘power triangle’ alongside states and markets governing the coordination of socio-economic affairs (Higgins and Hallström, 2007: 686). However, this consensus on the relevance of standardisation does not extend so neatly to theoretical explanations about its causes.

From a political science perspective, Mattli and Büthe (2003) identify two main types of explanation for the trajectory of standardisation: realist and social institutionalist. These differ on whether standardisation is a function of the distribution of state power or whether it is guided by a techno-scientific logic of correspondence. Thus, Drezner (2007: xii) considers that ‘great powers remain the most important actors in establishing the rules of the global economy’, while the Stanford School of sociology (i.e. the World Culture school) argues that the technical expertise of private actors and epistemic communities can trump the competitive struggle among states (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Djelic and Quack, 2012; Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson, 2006; Loya and Boli, 1999; Meyer, 2000). The latter is a view shared by many scholars of neoliberal institutionalism and liberal transnationalism in IR who argue that (Bernstein and Cashore, 2007; Rosenau, 2006; Ruggie, 2004), greater interdependence among nations fosters ‘the need for systematic comparisons and benchmarks and thus make[s] it necessary to increase coordination across regions and countries’ (Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson, 2006: 4). More inclusive is Botzem and Dobusch’s (2012) distinction between functionalist explanations, susceptible to game-theoretic analyses and underlining the coordination effects of standards (Abbott and Snidal, 2008; Mattli and Büthe, 2003; Scharpf, 1991; Spruyt, 2011), and sociological explanations, concerned with the operation of norm legitimacy. This camp also covers critical perspectives where, for example, Foucauldian arguments conceive standardisation as a form of neoliberal governmentality casting a mantle of legitimacy, objectivity and neutrality over otherwise exclusive technocratic arrangements (Boström and Hallström, 2013; Davis et al., 2012; Fougner, 2008; Higgins and Hallström, 2007; Porter, 2011). A similar view is held by neo-Marxists, who frame private standardisation as a reflection of neoliberal hegemony and the advance of managerial techniques in public policy (Cerny, 2008; Gibbon and Henriksen, 2012; Guthman, 2007; Murphy, 2000; Sklair and Miller, 2010). In this regard, while (liberal) constructivists consider standardisation as a somewhat benevolent, or at most neutral, continuation of Weberian rationality, critical authors treat it as an ideological instrument of capitalist governance limiting more inclusive and democratic alternatives.

At first glance, functional and sociological explanations appear to end in quite diverging models: from negotiations reflecting economic interests and/or power struggles by states, to expressions of a pervasive world culture transcending interests and economic calculations. However, from a broader structural perspective, this is not so much the case. Both camps conceive the expansion of standardisation as a product of a dominant instrumental rationality — in one case explicit, in the other implicit. Standardisation is, then, a product of rational negotiations or of a rational capitalist ideology. This article considers that such a conception does not reflect appropriately the structural effects that the increasing interconnectedness and complexity of a globalised world has on governance mechanisms. To illustrate this point, this article offers an ST reinterpretation of the historical trajectory of standardisation and a re-problematisation of its efficacy as a mechanism of transnational steering. The article thus proposes that an ST approach articulates alternative explanations by considering standardisation not as the product of an overarching rationality, but as the coexistence of multiple ones.

Politics in a functionally differentiated world

This section continues the discussions about differentiation outlined in Donnelly (2012), Albert and Buzan (2011) and Buzan and Albert (2010), on the premise that ‘globalisation is leading toward a functionally differentiated international society’ (Donnelly, 2012: 169) characterised by the interaction of multiple, increasingly autonomous, social systems. This section refrains from providing an exhaustive introduction to Luhmann’s theory as excellent primers can be found in recent publications (Albert and Buzan, 2011; Albert and Hilkermeier, 2004; Albert et al., 2010; King and Thornhill, 2003).

Differentiation refers to the structural process through which society handles complexity by subdividing into multiple subsystems. Drawing from Husserl’s phenomenology, Luhmann understood differentiation not only as the fundamental process of social ordering, but as the main condition for intelligibility and the reproduction of communication: it is through differentiation that society becomes populated with meaningful semantic structures (Luhmann, 1990a, 1991, 2007). Moreover, Luhmann considered differentiation an evolutionary achievement, with society reflecting a progression from one social type to another following a process of complexity-absorption. This historical process resulted in three principal forms of differentiation, which were amply discussed in Buzan and Albert (2010): segmentary, where the social system subdivides into equal subsystems; stratificatory, where subsystems subdivide in unequal ranks or hierarchies;¹ and functional, where subsystems are unequal not in relation to rank, but in relation to the function they perform for the formation of subsystems (Luhmann, 1990a, 1990b).

In the tradition of classical sociology — found in Weber, Habermas and Bourdieu — Luhmann considered the main characteristic of modern society to be its functional differentiation; that is, its operation through multiple function systems such as the economy, politics, science, law, religion, mass-media, education (Aron, 1999; Luhmann, 1986, 1989, 1990b). Furthermore, he considered that the types ‘of morality, values, law and normative culture that are possible depend upon the respective form of differentiation’ (Luhmann, 1990a: 423). Thus, the primary form of differentiation conditions the possibilities of society as a whole, the formation of norms and secondary patterns of differentiation (Luhmann, 2007). Buzan and Albert (2010) saw value in this model, considering that it provided a structural taxonomy capable of accommodating different strands of IR theory: political segmentary differentiation (Realism), economic core–periphery differentiation (World-Systems Theory), economic functional differentiation (Marxism), political stratification (English School, Marxism), political functional differentiation (Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism) and so forth.

However, Luhmann was far from being an IR theorist. He was rather the main representative of the sociological stream of systems theory, a body of thought inquiring about the self-organisation of complexity that developed, often independently, in fields such as mathematics, biology, philosophy, linguistics, cybernetics, computer science, psychology and management science (Ball, 1978; Forrester, 1968; Luhmann, 1983; Meadows, 2008; Meadows, 1957; Sterman, 2000; Varela et al., 1974; Von Bertalanffy, 1972). In the social sciences, the work of Talcott Parsons (1949, 1971) in sociology, Karl Deutsch (1951) in political science and Morton Kaplan (1957) in international relations proposed that society could be considered as a self-organised system whereby:

the more complex and readjustable the constituent parts of a society become, the greater the coherence and freedom of each of its subassemblies, the greater should be the society’s possibilities of itself achieving greater coherence and freedom in the course of its history. (Deutsch, 1951: 251)²

These ideas inspired Luhmann’s version of ST:³ he considered that modern society was hyper-integrated and better capable of handling environmental complexity than any social arrangement in history, precisely because it had achieved a high level of functional differentiation (Luhmann, 2007: 490). But going further than his predecessors — and the classical societal models commonly applied in IR (Lawson and Shilliam, 2010) — he radicalised the autonomy of function systems. In his theory, each function system provides a separate but nonetheless total representation of society: ‘every function system together with its environment, reconstructs society’ (Luhmann, 1990b: 107, italics in original). This means that there is not such a thing as ‘Society’ as a unified entity: society exists as a unitas multiplex where each function system is a semantically, though not materially, closed entity. Luhmann also differed from Parsonian functionalism in considering that no specific function was necessary for society’s reproduction but, depending on the historical context and pattern of differentiation, each played a more or less relevant role in society’s capacity to manage complexity and uncertainty (Luhmann, 2007: 252). This accentuated as society became more complex to a point where ‘politics cannot be substituted for the economy, nor the economy for science, nor science for law or religion nor religion for politics, etc., in any conceivable intersystem of relations’ (Luhmann, 1989: 109). The implications of this are substantial. Mainly, ST proposes that modern society lacks a functional hierarchy: society has no centre, nor can it be ordered from ‘a central position of extreme authority’ (Luhmann, 1989: 431). Subsequently, Luhmannian functional differentiation rejects that some degree of cultural unity or Habermasian understanding is necessary to keep society together.⁴ Integration, in Luhmann’s words, ‘has nothing to do with consensus’ (1996: 344).

In addition to primary forms of differentiation, society handles complexity by generating different types of social systems operating within and across functions. At the most fundamental level, there are interactions: social systems limited by the presence of persons. However, modern society is mainly characterised by the prevalence of a second type of social system: organisations. Organisations (or bureaucracies) are social systems based on the generation of decisions and delimited by membership (Luhmann, 1996, 2007). Luhmann saw the emergence of organisations as an evolutionary development that compensated the loss of authority in the transition from stratified to functional society, enabling an enormous amount of decision-making with limited reference to external authority (2007: 665). This historical development allowed modern society to achieve high levels of social coordination — understood as control by decisions (Luhmann, 1996: 345) — in comparison to stratified or segmented societies. Hence, functionally differentiated society is possible because it is an organised society.

This model can encompass both functional and sociological models for coordination and governance in conditions of globalisation. Thus, in a first instance, collective coordination is enabled through the expansion of ingroup–outgroup differentiation, either by extending organisational hierarchies or creating collective actors that augment the level of predictability within the group and enable game-theoretical behaviour (Scharpf, 1991, 1994). This mechanism is visible in the transition from fragmented political entities to unitary states, from small firms to large conglomerates, from competing companies to cartels, and so on (Huntington, 1973). However, as Scharpf recognised, modern society cannot function depending purely on extended interaction (Luhmann, 2000a). Coordination is a problem when the number of actors and variables increases exponentially as organisations cannot decide about everything all the time. In this situation, functional differentiation complements organisation and group differentiation by creating ‘boundaries of irrelevance’ that protect a privileged type of interaction while safely ignoring others. This means that ‘in societies with fully developed functional differentiation … political, economic, scientific or artistic games can be played side-by-side according to their own specific logics’ (Scharpf, 1991: 298). The result of this is that most (but not all) organisations show a primary functional orientation, such as economic firms, state agencies, educational institutions, judicial bodies and so on (Luhmann, 2007: 667).

Nevertheless, modern society is not uniformly differentiated. Thus, while politics constitutes a separate function system, internally it remains structured in a segmented pattern based on territorial jurisdictions in the form of states, which are ordered often in stratified arrangements in relation to each other. Globalisation entails that this political system co-exists with and is coupled to function systems that are no longer delimited by legal/territorial distinctions (Albert and Buzan, 2011; Donnelly, 2009, 2012; Kessler, 2012; Luhmann, 1989, 2000b, 2007). This is not only in relation to the economy: other function systems have become ‘global’ — such as science, religion and art — and others could be moving in this direction, such as the mass media and the Internet (Luhmann, 2000b).⁵ This is problematic for traditional political and international relations theories as it poses a limit on hierarchical control and regulation: society is just too complex to be planned (Luhmann, 2007: 94). In this manner, ST underlines a fundamental asymmetry in the internal structure of function systems such as the economy and science, and that of politics. Segmentation forces the political system to translate global developments into ‘national’ solutions, as it is not possible for states to match the functional differentiation of their environment (Luhmann, 1989, 1997a, 1998). In other words, governments respond to the problem of complexity by raising barriers of irrelevance on the premise of national interest. However, these barriers cannot prevent irritations stemming from the structural interdependence of function systems: in a globalised world, states (and other organisations) are ‘forced’ to pay attention to a greater variety of events. Luhmann saw in the increasing inability of states to govern the economy a clear expression of systemic conditioning. Due to this, political intervention in a complex function system such as the economy had become not only reactive, but iterative, forcing governments to adopt measures and then ‘hope’ for the economy to respond (Kessler, 2012; Luhmann, 1998). As a result, his diagnosis on the efficacy of politics under globalisation was grim, stating that ‘a political theory that does not adjust itself to the realities of functional differentiation will oscillate between overestimation and resignation concerning political possibilities and try to conduct politics with promises and disappointments’ (1989: 85). Moreover, he considered that failure to understand the implications of the poly-functionality of the modern world had resulted in explanations where ‘good intentions cannot be realised because somewhere something is directed at them which frequently ends up in mythical explanations in terms of capitalism, bureaucracy or complexity’ (1990b: 107). Luhmann used this argument in the 1970s to criticise the welfare state and collectivist systems. In his view, welfarist models in a globalised economy would only contribute to further erode the authority of the state as they commit governments to conditions they cannot guarantee (1990c). More generally, he considered any de-differentiating political project — where a political logic substitutes a different social function — problematic for the reproduction of social order, potentially leading to the breakdown of internal logics, lack of trust, unpredictability and systemic paralysis (King and Thornhill, 2003). Historical examples of this are available, for instance, in the destructive consequences of communist and fascist programmes aiming for the total politicisation of economy, science, religion and family relations. Expectedly, this position earned Luhmann a barrage of criticism from Left and Right of the political spectrum, accusing him of being economically neoliberal, politically anti-liberal and morally agnostic (King and Thornhill, 2003). Ulrich Beck considers that Luhmann’s political view can be synthesised in the formula ‘silence decontaminates’ (2009: 8).

Beyond Luhmann’s orthodoxy, this article argues that his model of functional differentiation is useful to understand standardisation as a form of ‘politics beyond territory’ and to explore the challenges of collective coordination in a functionally differentiated world. This can be done by reworking the concept of standardisation through the notion of steering.

Steering society: The political function of standardisation

Steering is a concept that enjoys a certain recognition within IR literature, as it has been used to describe forms of coordination based on indirect state intervention associated with decentralisation, private governance and new public management (Jessop, 1998; Pierre, 2000; Rhodes, 1996; Rosenau and Czempiel, 1992). Additionally, diverse scholars have indirectly referred to steering when discussing new forms of transnational regulation, sub-politics and non-state authority (Barnett and Duvall, 2004; Biermann et al., 2009; Finkelstein, 1995; Jessop, 2003; Keohane and Nye, 2000; Rosenau, 2006). In more general terms, Luhmann understood steering as the operation of minimising the difference between the current state of a system and a desired one, and, as such, an operation occurring within all function systems (1997a). However, he also considered that the political system was the only social system with the specific function of establishing collective coordination across systems (1989). This was enabled through a particular medium of communication, power and its different symbolic substitutes: hierarchies, history, status and contractual rules (Guzzini, 2004; King and Thornhill, 2003; Luhmann, 2005).⁶ However, due to functional autonomy, power cannot substitute the operation of other systems — it cannot set a price, find the cure for cancer or define what is beautiful: it can only produce certain irritations to orient systemic behaviour, such as grant funding to certain research institutes or cap prices through law. The autonomy of function systems entails that society is too complex to be understood through input–output models where A intervenes in B, and B produces a result which is caused by A’s intervention. Rather, autonomy implies that systems are structurally coupled to each other in a system–environment relationship: B responds according to its logic and perceptions of A’s intentions, with A’s and B’s logics independent of each other. The model is of co-relation and co-evolution (Luhmann, 1991).

According to this model, political decisions are always a form of steering, albeit this aspect is accentuated by globalisation, posing the question of how a segmented political system can influence autonomous function systems (Kerwer, 2004; Luhmann, 1997a; Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008). The possibility of politically steering other systems becomes then dependent on the design and implementation of specific signalling mechanisms to transmit irritations but which leave those irritations to be processed in accordance with these other systems’ own logics (Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008). This article considers standardisation as a mechanism of political steering and standards as a medium of communication of political power in a poly-functional context.

Many theorists have noticed the link between functional differentiation and the advance of standardisation. Scott Lash (2003) and Ulrich Beck (1992) treat standardisation as a structural adaptation of power relations to the conditions of ‘second modernity’, the informational era that has superseded the industrial one. The growing interdependence and velocity of social, economic and political relations have led to the displacement of regulation based on prescriptive norms and bureaucratic mechanisms (organisations) for constitutive rules and institutions that do not define outcomes but condition them: standards, platforms, operating systems, communication protocols, indexes and intellectual property rights (Beck, 2009; Hansen and Porter, 2012; Lash, 2003; Latour, 2003).⁷ The concept of constitutive rules also reverberates with that of ‘reflexive law’ elaborated by German legal scholars,⁸ where the legal system adjusts to functional differentiation by fostering ‘mechanisms that systematically further the development of reflexion structures within other social subsystems’ (Teubner, 1983: 275, italics in the original; see also Arthurs, 2008). These ideas are also present in the work of Bob Jessop, where standardisation responds to the adaptation of the political system to the environment shaped by a hyper-communicated global economy. Jessop points to three systemic political solutions to the problem of collective coordination: de-accelerating the environment to match existing political capabilities; laissez-faire; and compressing decision-making cycles (2012: 212). The first option involves the creation of ‘political time’ by slowing down the pace and mobility of world markets and other functional processes to the rhythm of political decision-making. The second alludes to cases where states withdraw from short-term calculation while trying to control medium- and long-term decisions and flows. The third turns to fast-track decision-making and reflexive norms, privileging fast movers and fast policy making while limiting the scope for democratic deliberation, consultation and negotiation.

Luhmann considered that the insufficient ‘organised absorption of uncertainty’ had led to changes in the relationship between function systems and organisations — from a hierarchical conception to a networked one — where there was an increasing tendency by organisations to decide not to decide (2007: 670). Standardisation, then, emerges as certain organisations decide to simplify decision-making by generating constitutive norms that can be appropriated by other function systems as boundary conditions. The difference with conventional regulatory mechanisms is that standards externalise application to other systems, organisations and levels. Thus, in order for standards to provide steering, they need to be sensitive to the conditions of operation of these other systems. If this sensitivity is low, standards are perceived as an exogenous (political) intervention, eroding boundaries of irrelevance and generating uncertainty and conflict.

Murphy and Yates (2011) have noted that over the last century the greatest conflicts in standard-setting have been over changes in who should participate in the process and the level at which consensus should be formed. The appropriate degree of politicisation in standard-setting assumes, then, the form of an unresolved tension between expert-based and participatory democratic models of standardisation (Botzem and Dobusch, 2012; Hahn and Weidtmann, 2012; Murphy and Yates, 2011). A conventional use of Habermas’s theory of communicative action in IR has been to provide a theoretical justification for inclusive and dialogic multi-stakeholder mechanisms of norm-making based on ‘ideal speech’ conditions (Habermas, 1984, 2008) in order to increase ‘input legitimacy’ (Boström and Hallström, 2013; Hahn and Weidtmann, 2012; Murphy and Yates, 2011; O’Rourke, 2006; Risse, 2006). However, Luhmann considered the idea of making governance more effective by incorporating more actors ‘a grandiose mistake’ (1997a: 54), as it failed to acknowledge the effects of functional differentiation. Standards can steer other function systems only when they are accepted as legitimate under the logic of these other systems, not if conditions of political (state-based) legitimacy are met. Moreover, Luhmann considers Habermasian propositions inapplicable in a global world: real communications have become too complex and fast for ideal speech situations to emerge (Bausch, 1997; Rasch, 1991; Teubner, 1989). In this situation, greater participation results in the legitimacy–effectiveness trade-off: it increases the challenge of collective action and makes consensus more difficult (Bernstein, 2004). Lack of consensus or delays incentivise additional political intervention, fostering the emergence of new regulatory initiatives, and further eroding legitimacy.

This process triggers what Jessop calls ‘growing scalar complexity’: as new scales, organisations and temporalities emerge and gain institutional relevance, there are efforts to link and coordinate them, leading to further complexity, scales and temporalities, and new coordination efforts (2008). One manner in which this process is stabilised is through expert-based standardisation where norms aim to reflect functional logics; the model represented by the International Electrotechnical Commission and ISO. The historical trajectory of international technical standardisation supports this model: the process was commonly initiated and advanced by epistemic communities at the front of a technical field or commercial enterprise, leading to self-organisation and the scalar expansion of norm-making initiatives. As shown by Spruyt (2011) and Mattli and Büthe (2011), the functional logic of this process often clashed with the interests of political authorities (for instance, the US government), which could delay or prevent its progress. Nonetheless, the higher the functional specialisation of a field, the greater is the chance of institutionalisation of knowledge-based standards. This rather straightforward link between specialisation and standardisation explains why international standards advanced more rapidly in those areas that became specialised earlier in time (communications and industry) and/or that were strongly coupled to consolidated function systems, such as the economy and science. This is visible nowadays in many technical issue-areas, from international accounting standards (Botzem, 2012) and forestry (Cashore et al., 2007; Overdevest, 2009) to internet governance (Mueller et al., 2007).

However, in non-technical issues, scalar complexity is hedged differently. Low functional specialisation means low boundaries of irrelevance and higher politicisation. In these cases, standardisation tends to evolve facing recurrent political deadlocks. The lack of specialisation grants more space for political intervention in the form of prioritising national interests or claims about democratic deficits (Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2009; Koenig-Archibugi and MacDonald, 2012). In this situation, the political system resolves the legitimacy–effectiveness dilemma by increasing semantic flexibility. This takes the form of softening the prescriptive content of standards. This is commonly identified as a weakness by certain authors, on the basis that soft norms are complicit with marketisation and prevent the application of more legitimate (state-centred) hard law mechanisms (Newell, 2008; Sklair and Miller, 2010). However, from an ST perspective, reducing the prescriptive content of a standard can enable its selective appropriation by a function system, and facilitate internationalisation.

This is evident in the evolution of labour and social standards over the last 50 years, which have moved from an international regime based on over a hundred ILO conventions and recommendations to be enforced by states, to basic labour standards serving as symbolic reference to a myriad of private and public initiatives, claims by civil society, and corporate programmes (Alston, 2004; Arthurs, 2008; Hassel, 2008; Nadvi and Waltring, 2004; Standing, 2008). The situation is similar in global environmental governance, where: ‘the UN climate change process is seriously damaged, while aggregate climate policy [comprising regional, national, subnational and local policies as well as non-state initiatives] is making significant progress’ (Dimitrov, 2010: 18). In fact, labour and environmental issues are generally addressed by a consistent group of hybrid governance initiatives invoking a general conception of human rights and sustainability. In the process, these initiatives increasingly refer and connect with each other, displaying significant ‘coordination dynamics’ (Bartley and Smith, 2010; Perez, 2013: 290): for example, since 2005, the ISO 26000 Working Group has signed Memoranda of Understanding with the ILO, the UN Global Compact, the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation and the Global Reporting Initiative (Diller, 2012; Ward, 2012).

It is interesting to note that the tension between participatory and expert-based standard-setting has led to the emergence of instances of meta-governance, such as ISEAL, IIRC and W3C, which define general principles to regulate particular areas of standardisation. In 2004, ISEAL published a ‘Code of Good Practice for Setting Social and Environmental Standards’, recommending, for instance, to identify all affected stakeholders and provide them with participation (2012). By comparison, in 2012, W3C committed to OpenStand’s ‘modern paradigm of standards’, which considers that standards should be ‘chosen and defined based on technical merit’ and their success ‘determined by the market’ (OpenStand, 2013). In light of these developments, some authors consider that certain areas of transnational rule-making have started to behave as autonomous systems — referred to as constellations, organisational fields or communities of practice — which increasingly define their own conditions of membership, regulatory procedures and legitimacy requirements independently from those ordering state, juridical or market systems (Bartley, 2011; Bartley and Smith, 2010; Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2009; Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson, 2006). For instance, criticism about the market orientation of the certification industry led some initiatives to abandon this mechanism altogether. This is the case for the UN Global Compact and the ISO 26000 standard: the latter expressly prohibits not only the certification of the standard, to avoid marketisation, but also its use as customary law, to prevent politicisation (Murphy and Yates, 2010; Ruggie, 2001; Ward, 2012).

ST indicates that functional autonomy is an expected, though contingent, outcome of systemic functioning: specialisation leads to organisation and ingroup–outgroup differentiation, rising scalar complexity, meta-governance, and growing specialisation (functional differentiation). Still, certain authors argue that private governance needs to operate under the ‘shadow of hierarchy’ in order to be effective (Börzel and Risse, 2010); that is, that standards need to be embedded in hierarchical structures. Under this argument, this is not necessarily incorrect — the political system remains largely ordered according to stratified structures and institutions — but rather incomplete. It assumes that standards rely exclusively on political authority, which is not the case in a functional society. Standards and other governance mechanisms operate in many cases in the ‘shadow of the market’ (Jessop, 2012), and, as Esmark (2009: 368) notes, under the shadow of other function systems such as science, law and even love, based on the selective appropriation of ‘governance mediums, programmes, and scripts’. In some cases, they might be even operating under their own shadow.

Functional differentiation limits the capacity of the political system to control how this appropriation happens, and at the same time prevents the political system from overtaxing itself with justifications for the results of steering. A technological standard produced by a firm can, then, be translated as a price differential by the economic system, as aesthetically pleasing by art, as an intellectual property violation by the legal system, as valuable information by the mass media and as a game-theoretical outcome by IR scholars — or be selectively ignored; there are no guarantees.⁹ Normative flexibility can also make standards susceptible to commoditisation and marketisation, a common point made by critical scholars. Higgins and Hallström (2007: 700) note the apparent contradiction that ‘standards adapt well to the neo-liberal way of doing business (and regulation), even when they replicate existing non-commodiﬁed forms of regulation’. But this contradiction only emerges from assuming that there can be non-commodifiable standards. From an ST perspective, it is not that standards adapt to market conditions, but rather that they are adapted by the autonomous logic of the economic system. No standard, as a mechanism of steering, can enter a function system without being translated into system-specific terms.

This raises a question about the extent to which standardisation constitutes an effective mechanism of societal steering, as there can be no overarching consensus about the direction society should be steered to, or about the problems ‘it’ faces. This is an issue Luhmann addressed through his theory of ecological communication (1989, 1993a; Miller, 1994). The answer he provides can be disappointing: there is no guarantee that a functionally differentiated society can collectively respond to ecological dangers, as a problem detected by one system could find little resonance in another (1989: 116). The same applies to standardisation. Standards are just a medium of communication; they do not specify results. However, this article proposes that standards do provide a major advantage in a globalising context. Standards enable selective and reversible decisions without defining functional commitments, which is particularly convenient for the political system. Hence, they facilitate political ‘loose talk’ (Luhmann, 1989: 120): standards are free to propose aspirations, objectives and norms that do not necessarily derive from functional possibilities (the end of poverty, environmental sustainability, fair labour practices). In doing so, they expand communication and irritations among systems, enhancing societal awareness for a growing variety of concerns, and precluding systemic indifference.

The definition of problems and the selective adoption of standards as solutions — and related conflicts about legitimacy, participation and expertise in standard-setting — proceed according to what Michel Callon denominates ‘trajectories of problematisation’. In these trajectories, a certain issue is divided into partial issues or themes to be analysed separately by different systems and ‘the questions (political, economic, etc.) it leads are both distinct from and interdependent on one another’ (Callon, 2009: 543). Thus, a standard can be technically valid, economically convenient (for some) and politically illegitimate (for others). Standards are not neutral political tools. As was mentioned, functional differentiation at the primary level does not imply the disappearance of regional and organisational asymmetries within and across function systems. Different states, firms and organisations have different influence over these trajectories of problematisation, just as they have different levels of economic development, technical knowledge, juridical sophistication, military power, lobby capacity and so on (Luhmann, 2007). But there is no assurance that a particular method of standard-setting, for example, multi-stakeholder consensus, is better, fairer or more legitimate than another, say, rough technocratic consensus: this is the point made by Luhmann against Habermas. There is no encompassing multifunctional legitimacy mechanism in a functionally differentiated world. Normative judgements and discussions about effectiveness depend, as this article has indicated, on specific historical circumstances and complex relationships within and across social systems that are not completely stabilised via consensus, game-theoretical decisions or power distributions, as any function system is greater than the organisation of its parts.

This explains why standards are often accepted as legitimate by organisations guided by different functional codes. Some organisations accept standards based on ingroup communications: they participate in standard-setting activities, consensually agree on new practices and/or share a generic technical vision. Modern organisations are particularly suited to diffuse standards given their capacity to operate across systems. However, as indicated by Scharpf, group differentiation is a limited form of coordination for a complex society. Functional differentiation allows for standards, as organisational decisions, to be simplified and transmitted through the code of function systems: as political commands, market incentives, scientific advances, technical requirements, ethical principles and so on. This in turn facilitates the decision-making processes of other organisations (including governments) coupled to multiple function systems. Thus, for a large part of the 20th century, the idea was for international labour standards to be translated as legal requirements by states. A century later, it is for markets and the media to do most of the irritating.

ST indicates that it is not so much understanding among equals that leads to the acceptance of standards, in the style of Habermas, but precisely the persistence of functional and organisational asymmetries in societal communication.¹⁰ These asymmetries — of knowledge, of information, of power — are selectively perceived by organisations which decide to act (or not) according to their own programmes (Luhmann, 2007: 668). In this regard, ST can accommodate theoretical explanations that model organisational decision-making based on a dominant functional premise. Perhaps primarily (given the consolidation of the economic system and science), the legitimacy of standards is evaluated according to rational economistic calculations, but in other cases power-based logics, or even ethical considerations, prevail. Nonetheless, whether these chains of selections and decisions (and indecisions) lead to societal progress, or to specific benefits for certain organisations, remains a different matter altogether. Luhmann’s theory is thus neither social constructivist, where standards emerge from the struggle among groups, nor essentialist, where there are optimal formulations regarding how standards should be designed and operated. Rather, debates about effectiveness and appropriateness are solved through contingent, complex and historically situated networks of problems (Callon, 2009). But each ‘solution’ feeds further complexity and irritations into society: debates lead to new debates, decisions to new decisions and both to higher instances of scalar complexity, with ‘markets thus revamped, political devices and procedures rearranged, and research and innovation collectives redesigned’ (Callon, 2009: 546). As steering is necessarily an incomplete process that cannot be fully stabilised, this fuels the dynamic evolution of governance institutions and discourses.

These analyses appear to leave the political system facing two difficult alternatives (or a combination of them). A first option is for governments to accept the advance of functional differentiation and learn to ‘trust’ technical expertise. This proposition is not new. It reverberates with the argument by Beck (1992) where trust in technical knowledge is fundamental for modern (risk) society to subsist. It is also compatible with the vision of the Stanford School where the new ruling elites are those mastering increasingly technical, knowledge-based and instrumental world models (Meyer, 2000: 241). Luhmann’s pessimistic view on international political coordination also fits here, with his claim that greater awareness of the limitation of control will lead either to decision-making embracing the notion of risk or to the administration of disappointments (1993b). The alternative is some sort of soft politicisation of global governance accompanying the advance of differentiation, and the proliferation of decentred power configurations beyond, below and alongside states — often referred as ‘neo-medieval’ or patchwork governance (Jessop, 2004; Kerwer, 2004; Kessler, 2009; Rosenau, 2006; Teubner, 2004). The result is governance operating as a heterarchic system of rule in the shadow of different systems; something considered a negative, positive or unavoidable development depending on the ideological extraction of the author. These political configurations would increasingly rely on reflexive norms and spontaneous standard-based mechanisms susceptible to diverse functional interpretations, but also, given normative flexibility, to hypocrisy and hybridisation (Meyer, 2000; Teubner, 2004). The steering capacity of standards would then be dependent on, to the limits of the possible, the correct political arbitrage of the ‘loose coupling’ between national, international and functional structures (Kerwer, 2004; Luhmann, 2007).

Conclusion

The article has provided an ST reinterpretation of the historical trajectory of standardisation and a re-problematisation its efficacy as a mechanism of steering under globalisation. The article proposes that the spread of governance via standards should be seen not as a sort of limitation of the political, but rather as its extension beyond territorial forms in a world characterised by the intertwinement of global markets, global communications, cosmopolitan principles, national interests and rapid technological development. Given this context of complex interdependence, quite likely to accentuate in the following decades, the article considers that ST can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the emergence, operation and limitations of different mechanisms of transnational coordination and integration.

This approach frames standardisation as part of a historical process associated with the specialisation and autonomisation of different logics. Standard-based governance does not emerge as a consequence of economic globalisation or neoliberal hegemony, nor does it reflect the consolidation of a global culture: it is a political adaptation to a multifunctional environment. The argument avoids an axiomatic aggrandisement of hard law and democratic participation as the positive benchmark for legitimate global governance. In so doing, it nuances the relationship between standardisation and liberalism. Certainly, considering steering as the minimisation of political interference resonates with a Jeffersonian distrust of governmental involvement in individual affairs and private economic activity. However, an ST perspective does not ideologically assume that this ‘has’ to be, as a result of natural individual rights or the efficiency of markets (though money is an exceptional steering mechanism). What ST emphasises is that if the premise of functional differentiation is accepted, the politicisation of complex systems can lead to uncertain and unforeseen outcomes from the perspective of collective coordination, as ‘the more politics depends on co-operation and development of consensus the greater is the probability of delays, of new unexpected initiatives and of long-since obsolete bodies of regulation’ (Luhmann, 1989: 82). It does so by bringing to the fore the tension between two functional logics which have not been reconciled by liberal political thought: one normative and policy-oriented, and one knowledge-based and aimed towards innovation (Kerwer, 2004). Additionally, this approach to governance and standardisation highlights the limitations of political explanations defined in exclusive territorial terms, and the systemic restrictions the political system faces in a functionally differentiated environment. This is not an endorsement of conservative postures and a ‘there is no alternative’ type of scenario. Rather, the article advances a dynamic understanding of the complexity of modern society. It also points to further areas of research; for instance, regarding the manner in which the political system perceives certain environmental irritations as problems, and about the extent to which governance represents a non-territorial subsystem of the political.

Luhmann noted a relationship between increasing differentiation, the increasing complexity of social systems and the development of self-simplifying devices that make possible the use of a system as a premise of its own operations (1990b: 167). This means that a complex world becomes more complex partly because of our attempts to understand and govern it, and, when it does, increasingly general tools are required to apprehend it. This logic, present in standardisation, is as pervasive as unavoidable: a Sisyphean effort that feeds on its own incompleteness. Because of this, the ST approach proposed in this article does not intend to provide a map for more efficient or fairer global governance, but rather provides an enhanced conceptual sensitivity for the social whole (Albert and Buzan, 2013) and the possibilities (and consequences) of steering it. In this sense, ST reminds IR theory that ‘one cannot return to paradise’ (Luhmann, 1997a: 52), and that expectations of understanding a complex world through linear and hierarchical paradigms would likely lead to disappointment. Surely, this is not enough for those seeking to control, predict and optimise political decision-making, or aiming to protect specific national interests. Luhmann warned that in his theory ‘there are no solutions for the most urgent problems, but only restatements without promising perspectives’ (1990b: 187). His ideas however contribute to a higher level of intelligibility of a complex world society; which is after all, the first goal of any social theory.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dimitrios Stroikos and Mathias Albert for valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. Also, my sincere thanks to the EJIR editors and to two anonymous reviewers for their insightful recommendations.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biography

Alejandro M. Peña (PhD, MEng, MSc, MA) is Lecturer of International Relations at Brunel University’s Department of Politics and History. He is also Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of International Politics at City University London. His research focuses on private governance, new constructivist approaches to IR theory and state–society relations in South America.

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