Paul Stubbs Ekonomski institut, Zagreb FPZG, 13.02.2014.

The author rejects the mainstream political science conceptual apparatus and approaches what seems to be an old and well-researched topic from a relatively rarely employed socioanthropological perspective much better positioned to capture the complex geometry of social practices and relations operating in between, on the edge and across borders

I like your analysis, since it is rich, historically accurate and a contribution to the understanding of a special phenomenon in the history of foundations. I am sure it will help researchers in the future.

Already the first pages are full of misunderstandings, or even mistakes ... Can't read more, really. Sorry.

!! Ultra-nimble

players in global governance

arenas !! Personalize bureaucracy, privatize information & juggle roles/ representations !! Blur official and private roles !! Mix ideological and material agendas !! Facilitated by NPM-sub-contracting/ ICT/ Sparsely governed spaces !! Often marked by performative truthiness and rhetorical tactics

1.! 2.! 3.!

The reproduction of neo-liberal hegemony and/or governmentality Hagiography heroic philanthropy Insider gossip Using interview and documentary sources to explore divergent understandings and interpretations in the mess of everyday micro-politics, new organisational forms, and interpersonal disagreements

The prescriptions, practices, and interventions of the Soros flexians in the post-Yugoslav space cannot be reduced to a single imperative or motivation, but have to be seen as themselves generating, occupying and transforming new and emergent spaces of power involving the possibility of spaces of agency and of politics

!!the

break-up of Yugoslavia and the wars in the early 1990s; !!changes in Croatia and Serbia under (and after) Tuman and Milo!evi in 1999-2000; !!austerity, new movement activism, and the crisis of the EU in the periphery and semi-periphery.

!! 1968

-> Praxis -> UJDI -> OSI linkages and interruptions !! High degree of autonomy to local Boards + Soros direct involvement in political issues !! Jazz structure improvisation and flexibility in rapidly changing environments !! High profile support for independent media !! Complex and changing relation to dominant regimes

So-called Croatian patriots took money out of the country and we went abroad to get money to bring in to Croatia. I remember in a bank near Graz where I went a few times to get money and once I was in a line with then Prime Minister Mate!a and from one bag he deposited a lot of money and I took a similar amount back. And of course it was a situation which was open to abuse. But the fact is that the standards for accounting for expenditure were completely different. It would be like I would say Stubbs wants to do research on this and that. He needs 5,000 USD and you would get it and you would sign something. And lots of intellectuals did this. And they made research that no one read, and that was that. We were all one family and we all knew each other. I give you, you give me and so on. And as far as I can estimate with most people it worked fine. All of it was more or less with people giving their word

!! Intermestic

flex nets donors NGOs antiregime intellectuals new think tank partnerships (Croatian Legal Centre) !! Slovakia Croatia Serbia Georgia Get out the vote campaigns (USAID) !! Global OSF policy as the new magic word !! New managerialism and fiscal discipline !! New strategic partnerhips (UNDP, World Bank, ...)

The turn to policy, coinciding as it did with a turn to more ordered managerialist practices actually expanded the political opportunity structures for the Open Society flexians. Emerging think tanks performed policy work which has been widely recognised to have been both materially well rewarded and generally ineffective in terms of real change. In many ways the Foundations were key players in a contradictory intermestic modernisation project at once emphasising the backwardness of the region, or at least its political leadership, in relation to an imagined West and, at the same time, arguing that only domestic intellectual elites could understand the context and translate the (universal) values of modernity into locally or nationally implementable schemes.

in the Soros geography this East-West line of thinking within Europe is becoming more and more irrelevant and people are thinking more in terms of North-South, core-periphery, periphery of the periphery, creditor-debtor. It is moving towards an understanding that on the socio-political level, there is this new energy developing, and that the organisation is trying to engage with that in a meaningful way. And how that will play out is a question mark, but this is something that is no longer just something that is being mentioned by a few radicals but is becoming a principle

!!A

shared critique of NGOization? !!New left sensibility and new partnerships? (HBS, Rosa Luxemburg stiftung, ...) !!More than a reworking of liberalism? !!Legacy in radical cultural politics, alternative social programmes? !!Impact on narratives, actors and rights? !!OSIFE ...

!! Into

the archives and/or across the region? !! Historical sociology of activism scripts that develop during a time of formative social action tend to be relatively resilient, even in the face of changing political, institutional and historical conditions !! Study of new flexible assemblages of governance !! New action research for new movements and new times?