Powerful Individuals in a Globalized World
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Author | Lena Partzsch |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12367 |
Powerful Individuals in a Globalized World
Lena Partzsch
University of Freiburg
Abstract
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, made media headlines at the end of last year when he announced his inten-
tion to donate most of his Facebook shares to charity. This article deals with the significance and potential of individuals, such
as Zuckerberg, in a globalized world, to determine global policy agendas. Philanthropists who head global foundations are the
most apparent. While philanthropists’involvement in international relations is based on their capital, celebrities increasingly
use their fame to do political advocacy, and social entrepreneurs are sometimes able to initiate change based on new ideas.
Contributing to the existing literature, the article compares the characteristics of these three categories and discusses their rel-
evance against the background of the increasing delegation of authority to private actors in global governance. When dealing
with non-state actors in global governance, scholars have simply assumed these actors to be collective entities. In conse-
quence, we have missed the fact that power has not only shifted away from state actors but also increasingly concentrates on
very few individuals who possess respective resources of power. The individualization of global policy processes therefore
causes new problems of democratic accountability and legitimacy.
Policy Implications
•Policy makers may strategically use powerful individuals and their resources, for example, celebrities’fame to boost public
support for decisions made.
•When collaborating with powerful individuals, for example in partnership boards such as the Global Fund, policy makers
should be aware that these individuals often do not represent collective entities and have greater leeway and flexibility in
negotiations.
•The rise of very powerful individuals leads to new democratic challenges. We need new mechanisms of accountability for
celebrities, philanthropists and social entrepreneurs participating in global governance.
•Media-makers should scrutinise whether and when powerful individuals formulate only their personal viewpoints or speak
on behalf of others, such as marginalized people in the global South.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, made
media headlines at the end of last year when he announced
his intention to donate most of his Facebook shares –hold-
ings currently worth more than US$45 billion –to charitable
purposes. In an open letter to his daughter, Zuckerberg
announced investing the shares for medical research and
internet expansion (Facebook, 2015). The first Facebook
comment on the news is from Bill and Melinda Gates,
whose foundation, as the largest charity in the world, has
the same priorities. Three hundred sixty thousand comments
have followed so far, 1.5 million Facebook users have liked
the news and major print media, news portals and channels
have reported about it (as of February 2016). This article
studies the significance and potential of individuals, such as
Zuckerberg and the Gates, to determine global policy agen-
das. I argue that individual agency is increasingly possible in
a globalized world and that this causes a new democratic
challenge.
In a first step, I elaborate the question of when and why
individual agency increasingly matters and refer to two core
lines of literature on individuals in global politics: first, on
political leadership (Hermann et al. 2001; Skodvin and
Andresen 2006) and, second, on policy entrepreneurship
(Kingdon, 1984; Narbutaite Aflaki et al., 2015). Building on
this existing literature, I argue that due to globalization and
the increase of private authority, some individuals with a
transformational orientation have now obtained new
resources of power that allow for novel non-state and non-
collective agency. My purpose is not to prove prior studies
wrong or right. Instead, I show that previous arguments are
not valid for novel types of individuals: In the globalized
world, some individuals have gained resources that allow
them to exercise power in a new and discrete way.
In a second step, I suggest three categories of individual
agents increasingly relevant to global governance: Celebri-
ties, philanthropists and social entrepreneurs. Celebrities
have fame, philanthropists possess capital and social entre-
preneurs provide new ideas to realise global policy change.
Bill and Melinda Gates, Bono and Muhammad Yunus serve
as illustrative examples of these categories for the purpose
of this article. While these categories are not novel and the
examples are well known, the originality of this contribution
is to compare their characteristics and discuss their rele-
vance against the background of earlier debates on
Global Policy (2017) 8:1 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12367 ©2016 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 8 . Issue 1 . February 2017 5
Research Article
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