Connecting the formal and informal: How technology provides new opportunities for democratization

Thesis Statement: New technologies are priming informal groups to form bonds.  These bonds are based on cultural factors such as beliefs, ideas, identities, and legitimating principals.  Through this process, informal groups play a role in political transformation, especially by increasing pressure on national governments to become more transparent and accountable.

“Sociologists often take the broadest view of business groups and include both formal ownership groups as well as more loosely connected informal groups… [the latter posing a] core theoretical puzzle of what non-contractual ties bind these voluntary groups together (see Granovetter, 2005)” (Schneider, 2009; Smelser & Swedberg, 2005).

I will examine what non-contractual ties bind voluntary informal groups together.

“Ideationalists stress the autonomous role of cultural factors—such as beliefs, ideas, identities, and legitimating principles—in political transformation (Hegel, 1990; Gorski, 2003)” (Nexon, 2005).

I will examine how cultural factors — such as beliefs, ideas, identities, and legitimating principles — play a role in political transformation.

Historically: “how organized labor has attempted to influence privatization policies” (Paczynska, 2007)

“informal workers have had to alter their organizing strategies in ways that are reshaping the social contract between state and labor” (Agarwala, 2008)

As an alternative, I will describe how both formal organized labor and informal workers have organized to reshape the relationship between the state and labor without using (i.e. prior to) new technologies.

“There are those who claim that globalization represents new opportunities for democratization through the emergence of new actors and technologies that increase pressure on national governments to become more transparent and accountable (Held, 1995; Falk, 1999; Held, 2006)” (Pratt, 2004).

I will examine new technologies that increase pressure on national governments to become more transparent and accountable.

Conclusion Statement: New technologies can help enable informal groups to form bonds.  These bonds are based on cultural factors such as beliefs, ideas, identities, and legitimating principals.  Through this process, informal groups play a role in political transformation, especially by increasing pressure on national governments to become more transparent and accountable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agarwala, R. (2008). Reshaping the social contract: emerging relations between the state and informal labor in India. Theory and Society, 37(4), 375-408. doi:10.1007/s11186-008-9061-5

Falk, R. A. (1999). Predatory globalization: a critique. Wiley-Blackwell.

Gorski, P. S. (2003). The disciplinary revolution: Calvinism and the rise of the state in early modern Europe. University of Chicago Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1990). Philosophy of History. Peter Smith Pub Inc.

Held, D. (1995). Democracy and the global order: from the modern state to cosmopolitan governance. Stanford University Press.

Held, D. (2006). Models of democracy. Stanford University Press.

Nexon, D. (2005). Zeitgeist? The new idealism in the study of international change. Review of International Political Economy, 12(4), 700. doi:10.1080/09692290500240438

Paczynska, A. (2007). Confronting change: Labor, state, and privatization. Review of International Political Economy, 14(2), 333. doi:10.1080/09692290701203714

Pratt, N. (2004). Bringing politics back in: examining the link between globalization and democratization. Review of International Political Economy, 11(2), 311. doi:10.1080/0969229042000249831

Schneider, B. R. (2009). A comparative political economy of diversified business groups, or how states organize big business. Review of International Political Economy, 16(2), 178. doi:10.1080/09692290802453713

Smelser, N. J., & Swedberg, R. (2005). The handbook of economic sociology. Princeton University Press.