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How is authority legitimated when global policy leads to the delegation of implementation and monitoring tasks to private actors? This paper shows that putting private actors at the forefront of compliance gives them significant interpretation autonomy, with knock-on effects for how rule-making authority is legitimated. I show that actors can mobilize to claim expertise based on their practice in, and input to, transnational administration and that professional associations are important arenas for establishing and legitimating these claims. The paper explores these dynamics through an empirical focus on the global anti-money laundering regime. Revolving around the Financial Action Task Force, the regime to tackle illicit finance has been a highly political process with a global reach. Yet it relies heavily on financial institutions to put systems in place that control the flow of money. This puts private compliance officers at the forefront of transnational administration. The paper shows that compliance officers have responded to the demands of this role by professionally organizing. Focusing on the largest professional association, the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists or ACAMS, a US-based association with a global program and membership, the paper explains that professionalization mechanisms have helped demarcate practice boundaries and support the expertise claims of private sector employees. By becoming the experts, these officers can claim pragmatic authority over what global policy rules and standards mean and how they can be implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Revolving doors' is a well‐suspected phenomenon of skills and knowledge transfer between the private and public sectors. It is thought to be especially notable among elites in transnational policy networks, where mobility can accrue status. In this article, we investigate revolving doors in the area of international financial governance. We target policymakers linked to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) and the International Monetary Fund's Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP). We test for revolving doors by examining the career histories of those working with the BCBS on the development of the Basel II accord, and staff on policy teams for financial systems monitoring via FSAP missions. Using sequence analysis, we trace career histories between 1971 and 2011 to observe the extent of revolving doors. Revolving doors are observed in club‐like elite policy communities but are less prevalent in policy teams in intergovernmental organizations. We find that revolving doors are important in establishing intellectual capture in how an issue is treated within transnational policy networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supranational organisations can only confront politico-economic issues that are recognised as important. Typically, issues gain recognition either when they provide an external shock to the system, shaking political actors into action, or when they are framed as important in policy networks concerned with developing the appropriate scientific approach. Ideally political and scientific actors align in creating pressures to recognise the issue as salient and to mobilise organisational responses. Issues differ in their capacity to be driven by both political and scientific pressures, creating crisis management, technocratic, and reform agenda outcomes. Here we explore a further variation, where pressures around an issue are insufficient, creating a policy vacuum. We examine one such policy vacuum in Europe: demographic change. This issue belongs to no particular Directorate-General in the European Commission, but is subject to policy frames from DG EMPL and DG ECFIN. Without sufficient political and scientific pressures, no particular policy position is occupied and advocated despite recognition of the issue's importance. We discuss the role of policy vacuums and the need for their identification in political economy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union has been confronted with crises across a range of policy areas. Crises have typically been viewed as providing impetus for further integration but are now straining the European project. This research agenda piece proposes a framework to understand crises and distinguish how they are comprehended as 'fast-burning' and 'slow-burning' phenomena. Those who view crises as fast-burning typically rally material and ideational resources to address issues with high political intensity. When a crisis is perceived as slow-burning, the key concern is with how the issue is framed and how social expectations are changing. Thinking of fast- and slow-burning crises permits analytical distinctions in how authorities and social actors view crises and how they consider actual conditions and future narratives. The framework assists in specifying how authorities and expert and civil society groups develop policy programmes and frames, as well as changes to European societies' experiences and expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professionals compete and cooperate over how states should govern their population. Declining fertility rates in advanced economies have led to debates about how to enable those of reproductive age to have more children and to have them earlier. This springs from political and socio-economic concerns about fulfilling desired fertility rates, maintaining high levels of human capital, and supporting fiscal and pension systems. This article investigates professionals addressing declining fertility through assisted reproductive technologies (ART), including doctors, demographers and economists. These professional groups have their own bodies of knowledge on how they view fertility, fecundity and the role of women in social reproduction. They can also cooperate to create ‘issue linkages’ on ART across their professional ecologies. The article discusses how professionals apply their bodies of knowledge to the political economy of fertility. Professional bodies of knowledge directly inform how women and men are treated on fertility issues and the policy options available. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research Highlights and Abstract Concepts from domestic and comparative politics can be applied in a transnational context; the article develops the notion of 'transnational veto players' to explain the practice of financial reform., Understanding the nature of constituency in a transnational context is important for explanations of actor preferences and the mode of policy that ensues., While actors involved in global standard-setting in finance have formal defined constituencies, when operating in a transnational setting their interactions render their constituencies diffuse, including peers and other interlocutors., In transnational settings, actors act as veto players by defining and delimiting the pool of ideas available for reform., 'Too big to fail' has been highlighted as an important target for reform but the resulting changes in the regulatory treatment of large financial institutions do not alter their core functions., Policy processes in transnational settings are shaped by actors whose approval and consent are required for reform to take place. These 'transnational veto players' frame and delimit policy options. The concept of 'transnational veto players' is developed through an empirical analysis of global reforms in the regulatory treatment of large financial institutions deemed 'too big to fail'. Actors debating and developing policy on 'too big to fail' may have formal defined constituencies, as regulators, academics or lobbying organisations, but in their transnational interactions they are also informed by a diffuse constituency of peers through their multiple associations within policy communities. These interactions determine which policy ideas are permissible and how they are adopted. The 'too big to fail' case shows how reform activity to curtail the risks posed by large financial institutions may also inadvertently strengthen their position as transnational veto players. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing complex transnational problems requires coordination from different professionals. The emergence of new actors and issues has been addressed by those interested in studies of organizations through concepts and methods that highlight the importance of communities, fields, and networks. These approaches are important in identifying the sources of what becomes established, but less geared to identifying interactions that are emergent. This article extends a linked ecologies approach to emergence, arguing that interaction on transnational issues should first be understood by how they are conceptually linked by actors and organizations. A linked ecologies approach asks us to displace locating known actors within structures and instead pays attention to professional interactions on how ‘issue distinctions’ are made, the relationship between issue distinctions and professional tasks, and who and what are included and excluded. A linked ecologies approach provides a fruitful way of identifying actors and distinctions on issues that are emergent. These conceptual and methodological points are demonstrated through a study of how medical experts, demographers, and economists forge issue distinctions in relation to low fertility in advanced industrialized countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]