Читать книгу Global Political Cities - Kent E. Calder - Страница 14

Conventional political analysis often begins with leadership. In the information-centric global political city of the twenty-first century, however, the first institutional structure to consider is the advisory-analytical complex that surrounds the leadership itself and that gives it the tools to operate efficiently. As the world becomes increasingly integrated and volatile, the complexity of problems, and the speed with which their configuration changes, makes timely access to accurate information increasingly vital to decisionmaking. The idea industries that set policy agendas are thus increasingly vital, for both local and national governments. These cosmopolitan groupings include universities, think tanks, lobbyists, and multinational institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the United Nations. Such bodies incorporate substantial, often interlocking interpersonal networks.

Idea-industry networks include a special concentration of university and think tank analysts, many with previous government experience.¹⁵ Such analysts often play critical roles in policymaking through their expertise on the details of policy and the rationales thereof. Government policymakers and their staffs, by contrast, often lack sufficient time to assimilate such information themselves, giving idea industries in many cases an influential political dimension. Idea industries can thus often provide important input into, or be major actors in, the political decisionmaking complexes that are characterized here as penumbras of power.¹⁶