Security

Chapter 5 analyzes two billionaires within transnational diaspora politics, whose ethnonational identity generates security concerns for communities abroad. The Jewish-American casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has been financing a free newspaper, Israel Hayom, which has become the most widely read daily in Israel, staunchly supporting Benjamin Netanyahu and the “entrenchment–expansionism” position vis-à-vis Palestine. His interventions in the Israel–Palestine conflict ran counter to the majority views of American Jewry and undermined President Obama’s foreign policy. The second case examines whether the hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam helped to fund the insurgency of the LTTE (“Tamil Tigers”) in his former home state Sri Lanka. While the case once produced spectacular headlines, upon closer inspection the political agency of Rajaratnam appears as very limited. He seems to have largely conformed to the demands put on the Tamil diaspora by the LTTE, and the U.S. government’s anti-terrorism policies restricted his options severely.

Individuals in International Relations

Chapter 2 reviews how International Relations (IR) scholarship has been treating individual agency, especially within the dominant theoretical frameworks, Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism. Various analytical perspectives, such as the “levels-of-analysis,” foreign policy analysis, and the transnational relations approach, have reserved room for the analysis of individuals in world politics. But concerns about academic discipline formation and real-world relevance have led to a widespread neglect of individual actors. While James Rosenau’s research and the integration of social theory into IR offer fruitful ways of thinking about individual agency, they often overemphasize the structural situatedness of actors fulfilling social roles. Revisiting the structure–agency debate, the chapter takes inspiration from Margaret Archer’s sociological insights in order to propose that agency should be analyzed as a variable with an intrasubjective and an intersubjective dimension, which always requires contextual specification. Power, it is argued, should be seen as a disposition, and its exercise vis-à-vis other actors as an intentional project.

The Political Agency of Billionaires

Chapter 4 develops arguments and hypotheses about the political agency of billionaires, in terms of capacities, goals, and power. It draws upon insights from the “structure-agency” discussion and the political sociology of elites. While all billionaires control vast amounts of money, only few of them venture into world politics. A billionaire’s motivation to act transnationally may stem from material interests or a sociopolitical identity whose commitments reach across national borders. Wealth can be a highly fungible power resource, but its activation depends on what can be purchased, which is regulated by laws and norms. Entrepreneurial success in business can foster self-efficacy beliefs as well as social and cultural capital, yet whether this can be put to use in politics is contingent upon the political field that a billionaire is trying to enter. Further analysis thus needs to take the specificities of a billionaire’s international actions into account. This chapter is developing the analytical tools for the following case studies (chapter 5), which are structured around three goals that are often assumed to drive the international behavior of states: security, wealth (economy), and esteem (social entrepreneurship).

Economy

Chapter 6 presents two cases of billionaires whose pursuit of wealth in the global economy has broader political consequences. It looks at how Charles and David Koch have tried to limit climate change mitigation in order to protect the fossil fuel–based business interests of their conglomerate Koch Industries. The Koch brothers spread climate change skepticism via the funding of think tanks and public advocacy, and they finance campaigns boosting politicians that oppose climate change mitigation. In Rupert Murdoch’s case, his News Corporation has been his main political resource. He has used the opinion-shaping power of his media empire to extract favors from politicians abroad, especially in the UK, but also in Australia, by offering support (or threatening hostility) during election times.

Social Entrepreneurship

Chapter 7 examines two cases of how billionaires use philanthropy to promote social change in foreign countries. Through the massive funding of research and public–private partnerships, Bill Gates, via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has advanced international vaccination programs to fight communicable diseases. His influence on agenda-setting and policy implementation in the governance of global health can be seen in the World Health Organization’s declaration of a “Decade of Vaccines.” The second case is George Soros, whose attempts to build open societies as a “stateless statesman” are extremely wide-ranging. The chapter focuses on his efforts to promote human rights and democracy, putting the spotlight on his role in regime change during the so-called “Rose Revolution” in Georgia (2002–4).

The Structural Context for Billionaires

Chapter 3 describes how, over the past decades, structural changes within the material, ideational, and institutional realms have expanded the opportunities for individuals to become extremely rich and to engage in politics. At the material level, post-1950, globalization has amplified the benefits of those who succeed in “winner-take-all” markets, which is further supported by the peacefulness that developed countries have enjoyed after the Second World War. Neoliberalism is the ideology behind globalizing markets, privatization, and deregulation, and its celebration of entrepreneurship is turning the self-made billionaire into a normative role model. At the institutional level, states have been highly involved in facilitating economic globalization, reducing many barriers that curbed business before. The shift from the welfare to the competition state, which includes the liberalization of trade, the protection of foreign investments, and tax havens, favors capital. Oftentimes, it will be argued, the same structural transformations that promote opportunities for individual wealth accumulation also provide openings in world politics for individuals to exercise power, as private authority has gained legitimacy within global governance.

Analytical Conclusion

Chapter 8 evaluates the prior findings in order to address three major questions. First, is it more appropriate to see billionaires as “super-actors,” or as a global “super-class”? It finds limited applicability of the “transnational capitalist class” concept, and substantial evidence of individual agency. Institutional logics also appear as relatively weak within the political organizations created by billionaires, because these institutions are so dependent on the volatile resources provided by their sponsors. Second, what is the relative power of billionaires within the international system? States continue to set the legal framework for transnational politics. Yet, as outsiders coming from abroad and from business, billionaires can gain power via disruptive innovation and flexible alliance-building, using their wealth and their entrepreneurial skills. Counterfactual reasoning identifies substantial capacities for “making a difference” in world politics to most of the billionaires in the book’s case studies. Finally, what does the power of billionaires mean for the liberal norms of legitimate political order? With billionaires as transnational actors, the tensions inherent in modern liberalism get magnified: individual freedom clashes with collective self-determination, private property subverts the public sphere, and territorially bounded conceptions of the demos conflict with cosmopolitan ideals. Billionaires like to see their actions in terms of output legitimacy, but this cannot make up for a basic lack of accountability.

Introduction

Chapter 1 introduces billionaires as the prophets of the neoliberal age, whose entrepreneurship is increasingly shifting from business to other social realms, including politics. Several examples illustrate how the political agency of billionaires goes beyond the national level, and why it is of interest for the study of world politics. It delineates the specific focus of the book: how billionaires, as private actors, can shape public policy across borders, transnationally or within global governance. It discusses the neglect of billionaires as political actors, especially in International Relations, describes the methodological challenges of studying the ultra-wealthy, and explains why the book’s case studies concentrate on billionaires that are U.S. citizens. An outline tells the reader the direction of the inquiry, the main questions, and the major arguments that are being pursued in the following chapters.