The Synchronization of National Policies ─ Ethnography of the global tribe of moderns

The Synchronization of National Policies shows how it is possible that there is remarkable uniformity in the policies that the nation-states adopt, although there is no world government. Mainstream research attributes such global governance to the influence of leading countries, to functional requirements created by capitalism and technological development, or to international organizations. This book argues that to understand how national policies are synchronized we need to realize that the global population forms a single global tribe of moderns, divided into some 200 clans called nations.

While previous research on the world culture of moderns has focused on the diffusion of ideas, this book concentrates on the active role of local actors, who introduce global models and domesticate them to nation-states. In national policymaking, actors justify new policies by international comparisons, by the successes and failures of models adopted in other countries, and by building and appealing to the authority of international organizations. Consequently, national policies are synchronized with each other. Yet, because of the way such domestication of global trends takes place, citizens retain and reproduce the understanding that they follow a sovereign national trajectory.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, World Culture Theory, globalization, international relations and political science.

Pertti Alasuutari, PhD, is Professor of Sociology at the University of Tampere, Finland. He has published widely in the areas of social theory, cultural and media studies, and social research methodology. His current research focuses on the role of knowledge production in global governance. His books include National Policy Making (Routledge 2014),Researching Culture: Qualitative Method and Cultural Studies (Sage 1995),An Invitation to Social Research (Sage 1998), Rethinking the Media Audience (Sage 1999), andSocial Theory and Human Reality (Sage 2004). He is co-editor of the European Journal of Cultural Studies and he has published in numerous international scientific journals.