openHSU – Research Showcase

In the early post-Second World War period, Migros of Switzerland was the first European retail business to adopt the American supermarket model. Its success, however, has not only been a matter of technological and logistical innovation. Migros’ founder, Gottlieb Duttweiler, was convinced that consumer education was part and parcel of a new style of selling consumption. This conviction was at the basis of a strategy entering foreign markets and of exporting the Migros model abroad. Similar to post-World War II economic rehabilitation programs, Duttweiler pursued an indigenous modernization agenda, based on a new principle of “rational consumption”—he did not hesitate to label this as a genuine version of entrepreneurial development aid. Against the backdrop of the establishment of Migros’ activities in Turkey, this article discusses the participation of entrepreneurs in the international development policies after the Second World War. The history of Migros Türk sheds light not only on the entrepreneurial approach to modernization policy, which was often different to that adopted in government programs, but also on how this influenced critical consumerism inside and outside Switzerland over the long term.

Scholars and pundits focusing on the changing international order and its possible fragmentation often pay little attention to the manifold relationships between international organizations (IOs). Neglecting inter-organizational relationships, we argue, biases discussions towards doomsday predictions and reinforces the perception of global fragmentation. In this Forum, we address these biases by bringing together two strands of IR scholarship: power rivalry/transition and regime complexity. We do so by introducing the concept of organizational (dis)entanglements. An examination of how more and less powerful national and international policymakers engage and disengage IOs, highlights processes of reinforcing, muddling through, or undermining various ongoing order-making initiatives. The individual contributions examine organizational (dis)entanglements by highlighting actors’ various multilateral order-making attempts across IOs, global and regional ordering dynamics through IOs, and the roles international bureaucrats play in these processes. These contributions help identify new directions of inquiry in the study of IOs and international order by, for example, demonstrating that actors can engage with competition and cooperation simultaneously. Not all ordering attempts are equally likely to radically change global politics.