Research & Projects
Research & Projects
Ranjan, P., Johnson, M., Bernard, M., et al. (2024). “Exploring the role of ‘intermediaries’ between non-operating landowners and tenant farmers in promoting conservation on rented farmland.” Environmental Management. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-024-01936-y.
Popovici, R., Ranjan, P., Bernard, M. et al. (2023). “The Social Factors Influencing Cover Crop Adoption in the Midwest: A Controlled Comparison.” Environmental Management. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-023-01823-y
Bernard, Mazie, Jason Berteotti, Tyler Girard, and Pria Wakefield. “Bad Reputation: The Domestic Costs of Bargaining with Unreliable Foreign Leaders.” (Manuscript available upon request)
Bernard, Mazie. “The Politics of Gendered Knowledge in Global Economic Governance: The Evolution of Gender Strategies at the World Bank.” (Manuscript available upon request)
Bernard, Mazie. “AI, Algorithms, and Aid: Trust in Digital Tools for Development.” (Manuscript available upon request)
Bernard, Mazie. “Capitalizing on Care: Multilateral Development Banks and Gender-Inclusive Reproductive Projects.”
Bernard, Mazie, Tyler Girard, Erin Hannah, and James Scott. “Agenda-Setting at the World Trade Organization.”
Bernard, Mazie, Tyler Girard, and Nicole Mahon. “Descriptive Representation, SOGIE Mainstreaming, and Global Economic Governance.”
The central research question addressed in this project is: how are new economic ideas created, integrated, and changed in global economic governance? In answering this question, I conceptualize three forms of ideational conflict and change – emergence, adaptation, and rejection – among international organizations (IOs) and the role of expert staff in the institutionalization of gendered economic ideas. I focus specifically on gender experts, who wield significant power and authority in global governance and policymaking. Despite recent scholarship on epistemic practices associated with gender experts, this literature has only recently shifted toward explaining the variation in when, why, and what types of gendered ideas are embedded within global economic governance (Gerard 2023; Scott and Olivius 2023; Weaver 2010).
My theoretical intervention synthesizes insights from research on ideas and expertise in global governance, the epistemic power of IOs, and feminist IPE to explain how different types of ideas about gender and economic development are produced and become influential in global policymaking. I argue that the emergence, adaptation, and rejection of gendered economic ideas among IOs reflects the success or failure of three interrelated practices that enable the ongoing refinement of gender expertise: (1) the shift in weight from a supply of gendered knowledge to a demand for gendered knowledge in governance fields; (2) the elevation of lived experiences as a source of authority in knowledge production; and (3) the refinement of gender 'masking' practices to depoliticize radical or subversive ideas about gender.
This study uses three qualitative case studies of different economic governance fields – digital inclusion, development finance, and global health – to disentangle each stage of gendered knowledge production in global economic governance. In the digital inclusion field, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and International Telecommunication Union are leading efforts to coordinate activities in this new field, but the simultaneous integration of gendered economic ideas is uneven. In the development finance field, the dominant gendered economic ideas at the World Bank have shifted dramatically over time. In the global health field, the World Health Organization has rejected or sidelined gendered economic ideas despite their relevance to the organization’s mission. Empirically, I use evidence from a comprehensive discourse analysis of public-facing IO documents, relational elite interviews of IO experts, and participation at flagship IO events. Together, this evidence sheds light on the politics of economic ideas and their impact within the IO architecture and global economic policymaking.