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In Discreet Power, Christina Garsten and Adrienne Sörbom undertake an ethnographic study of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Accessing one of the primary agenda-setting organizations of our day, they draw on interviews and participant observation to examine how the WEF wields its influence. They situate the WEF within an emerging system of "discretionary governance," in which actors craft ideas and entice formal authorities and top leaders in order to garner significant sway. Yet in spite of its image as a powerful, exclusive brain trust, the WEF has no formal mandate to implement its positions. It must convince others to advance chosen causes and enact suggestions, rendering its position quite fragile. Garsten and Sörbom argue that the WEF must be viewed relationally as a brokering organization that lives between the market and political spheres and that extends its reach through associated individuals and groups.They place the WEF in the context of a broader shift, arguing that while this type of governance opens up novel ways of dealing with urgent global problems, it challenges core democratic values

Drawing on 24 interviews with policy professionals in 10 Swedish member-based civil society organizations (CSOs), and observations of policy professionals in three of these, we investigate CSOs from the perspective of their policy teams. This paper theoretically addresses how policy professionals relate to the members in whose name they work. This article extends the literature on civil society professionalization by conceptualizing the conflicts pertaining to policy professionals' work in CSOs and ways of managing these conflicts. We argue that, ordinarily, CSO policy professionals working to influence public policy respond to conflicting logics and myth-like institutional demands for strong and direct influence of member interests by maintaining face and investing in the myth of member centrality. Based on how policy professionals address these issues, we suggest that organizations respond to conflicting institutional pressures and myths via decoupling strategies, discreetly avoiding member concerns while investing in the membership myth, ultimately fostering organizational hypocrisy. Conceptually, the paper contributes by connecting the literatures of civil society professionalization and new institutional theory to the burgeoning literature on policy professionals.

Abstract
This article aims to expand both the analytical gaze of diplomacy studies and anthropological interests in the field of transnational think tanks, advocacy and policy advice. Drawing on ethnographic data from three such organisations, it investigates secrecy practices, focussing on how such practices amount to discreet diplomatic efforts. In a variety of ways, secrecy is utilised as a resource in foreign relations and diplomacy; it is a means to leverage status and influence. Although outwardly striving for transparency, think tanks use secrecy practices in their effort to establish themselves as actors of consequence in foreign relations and diplomatic circles. The practices of secrecy are part and parcel of the power games such organisations play, in which all participants learn and master what to discuss and what to keep silent about. These practices, however, pose a clear challenge to matters of accountability and transparency.

This paper is based on ethnographic work in organizations that form part of what we term the Future Industry – e.g. think tanks, consultancies and governmental bodies – involved in the charting, description and analysis of future scenarios. That is to say, an industry explicitly aiming for organizing the future. In the paper we analyze this industry, which we see as serving and feeding into, the emotional streams of contemporary politics and economics. In the interest of selling beliefs of the future, we suggest that it attempts to make its customers sense the pros and cons of the particular future it puts forth. The paper argues that the mapping and selling of futures to a large extent involves the voicing of "problems" and the presentation of "desirable futures", the cultivation, articulation and management of fear, anxiety, and hope, as well as a reliance on metrics, reason, and evidence, are central components. ; Global Foresight:Anticipatory Governance and the Making of Geo-Cultural Scenarios

AbstractThe credibility of think tanks is grounded in their image as independent experts. In order to gain authority to act, think tanks must be seen as independent, but in order to exert influence and gain funding, think tanks are forced to compromise this independent image. We focus on how think tanks handle this independence paradox. How do think tanks use different resources to construct an independent image? The aim of the article is conceptual, as we develop a theoretical model of the independence paradox. This conceptual work is based on empirical analysis of attempts by think tanks in Poland and Sweden to create independence while maintaining influence. The two desirables central for think tanks, independence and influence, force them to make strategic choices about their relations with various actors. We conclude that the processes of keeping distance and arranging proximity are at the core of the independence paradox.

Departing from an organizational perspective and using the cases of Socialist International and four European trade unions, this paper illustrates why political parties and trade unions have difficulty acting globally. The analysis shows that international or transnational organizations for national parties or trade unions are established as meta-organizations, and herein lies the key to explaining their problems in becoming global actors. The national embeddedness of their members results in broad agendas and quests for national solutions, which divides and weakens leadership. Comparing these meta-organizations to a more successful global political organization, Amnesty International, reveals that its organization is quite the opposite: a centralized leadership, a narrow agenda, not working for the immediate interests of its members or finding solutions to the issues it raises. The paper concludes that if this form of organization is necessary in global politics then there is little room for political parties and unions on a global arena.

Commonly, the relationship between corporations and non-for profit organizations, such as foundations, think tanks and private research institutes, is analyzed in terms suggesting that when acting as funders corporations set the frames for the non-for profit organization who, in turn, not only mimics but also serves as to broadcast the views of its funder. Drawing on the case of the Swizz based foundation/think tank World Economic Forum and its corporate funders we scrutinize this relationship. We show that as an organization interested in global policy making it is of vital importance for the Forum to construct its own agency, not merely giving voice to its funder's views, and that it will do so drawing on the resources that the funders provide. Moreover, we submit that as organizations all partaking actors will endeavor to construct their own agency, oftentimes by drawing on the resources of others. In so doing, actors may have both overlapping and divergent interests. Evoking the Lévi-Strauss concept of the bricoleur, we analyze how the various and multifaceted priorities of corporations will not only be filtered by the Form, but it will also make use of the resources at hand for organizing forth own policy messages. The result is a complex and dynamic web of actors and voices.