Acknowledgements
This book is the product of several projects that have accompanied me for quite a long time. I wonder whether I shall be able to do justice to all the people and institutions that have contributed to bringing it to fruition. Let us start with the funding body without which nothing would have been possible. The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) awarded me several grants, in particular for a project called Standards and International Relations, which allowed me to build a wonderful team with Christophe Hauert, Eva Hartmann, and Nafi Niang. The SNSF also made it possible for those lines to be read online for free by anyone with access to the Internet, thanks to a commitment to take Open Science seriously. The University of Lausanne, via its programme Vivre Ensemble dans l’Incertain, also gave me a splendid opportunity to gain a sweeping understanding of the arcane world of standard-setting processes by funding the INTERNORM project, designed to support the involvement of civil society organisations in standards-setting procedures related to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The project was conceived as an interactive knowledge pool of academic skills and experience gathered by civil society organisations, in particular trade unions, consumer associations, and environmental protection associations. Besides representatives from associations that took part in the project, Christophe Hauert, Danielle Bütchi, Alain Kaufman, and Marc Audétat spared no energy in the steering committee to bring the experiment to fruition. At the University of Lausanne, it is not only state-of-the-art infrastructure and an outstanding campus on the lakeshore facing the Alps which give me a unique working environment; the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, the Institute of Political, Historical and International Studies (IEPHI), and the Centre of International History and Political Studies of Globalization (CRHIM) provide an inspiring and convivial intellectual environment and have supported me in many ways, including generous research and matching funds to complete this book. As honorary visiting professor at City, University of London, I was also able to spend almost a year expanding on research for the book, writing early drafts, discussing with old colleagues, and meeting new ones. At Cambridge University Press, I would like to thank John Haslam for his support, all the people who helped with the production, as well as the two reviewers whose comments on the book have greatly improved its quality.
In addition to those already mentioned, the following deserve special mention: Jean-Marie Chenou, Claudio Brenni, Nils Moussu, Christelle Genoud, Sylvain Maechler, and Yannick Perticone as teaching assistants and colleagues; Patrick Csikos, Pablo Diaz, Maude Gex, and Pierre-André Blanc as research assistants; Charlie Dannreuther, Patricia Goff, Roger Haydon, Nicole Helmerich, Rahel Kunz, Giovanni Magravitti, Stefano Pagliari, Ronen Palan, and Kees van der Pijl read various parts of the manuscript or earlier versions of the project; Gilles Allaires, Larry Busch, Jean-Pierre Chanteau, Michel Damian, Eve Fouilleux, Oliver Kessler, Anna Leander, Matthieu Leimgruber, Luis Lobo-Guerrero, Allison Loconto, Anastasia Nesvetailova, Andreas Nölke, Pascal Petit, Amin Samman, and Christian du Tertre provided insightful exchanges on numerous aspects closely or loosely related to the power of standards.
Moreover, many invitations gave me the opportunity to test arguments and push further parts and prior versions of the chapters of the book. With no order of preference, and following an inverted chronological order, my warm thanks go to the following: Michèle Rioux, from the Centre d’études sur l’intégration et la mondialisation de l’Univesité du Québec à Montréal; Matthew Paterson, from the Department of Politics at the University of Manchester, and before that for another invitation to the Research Network in International Political Economy of the University of Ottawa; Arnaud van Waeyenberge, from the Centre Perelmann de Philosophie du Droit, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB); Jean-Philippe Thérien and Frédéric Mérand, from the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales de l’Université de Montréal (CERIUM); Werner Raza, from the Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE); Gabriel Siles-Brugge, at the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence Seminar of the University of Manchester; Auriane Guilbaud and Laurent Jeanpierre, from the Laboratoire des Théories du Politique (LabToP) of the Centre de Recherches Sociologiques et Politiques de Paris (Cresppa); Niilo Kauppi, from the research centre Sociétés, Acteurs, Gouvernement en Europe, Université de Strasbourg; Eve Fouilleux, Allison Loconto, David Demortain, and Pierre-Benoît Joly, from the Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés (LISIS), Paris; Thomas Lamarche and Christian du Tertre, from the Laboratoire Dynamiques Sociales et Recomposition des Espaces (Ladys), Paris; Marie-Laure Djelic, formerly at École Supérieure des Sciences Économiques et Commerciales (ESSEC), Paris; Klaus-Gerd Giessen, from the Université Clermont Auvergne; Jacquie Best, from the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa; Magdalena Bexell and Catia Gregoratti, from the Department of Political Science, Lund University; Alfred Tovias, from the Davis Institute & Department of lnternational Relations, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Marcel Djama, from the Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales (IDDRI), Paris; Saulo Tarso Rodrigues and Manoel Randolfo, from Federal University of Cuiabá and Unirondon Universit, Brazil; Patrick Le Gallès and Pierre Lascoume, from the Centre d’Études Européennes et de Politique Comparée, Science Po Paris; and Christian Joerges, from the Centre for European Law and Politics, Universität Bremen.
Moreover, I would like to thank everyone who accepted my requests for interviews and facilitated access to various fields of observation. The book would simply not exist without the generosity they showed in the time shared with me. Among all of them, a special thank you goes to Urs Fischer from the Swiss Association for Standardization (SNV), as well as Dana Kissinger-Matry and Reinhard Weissinger from ISO.
Finally, this book also owes much to my friends and family, who endured me and provided support and understanding all through the ups and downs of the long gestation of the project. My mother, Liesl Graz, did not just introduce me to the wider world early in life with my late father; she gave invaluable and timeless help in editing the language of every single chapter. My fantastic wife, Myriam Bickle Graz, was always on my side, even when I was absent for research trips, sabbatical leave, conferences, prolonged writing nights, incomprehensible monologues, and any other unfathomable behaviour. And my three children, Arthur, Zoé, and Gaspard, showed incredible tolerance towards the amount of time that this book has taken out of their life, before seeing it for real and hopefully making some sense of why power may not be where one expects it. For all their love, I dedicate this book to them.
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