Studying Power: Qualitative Methods and the Global Elite

http://qrj.sagepub.comQualitative Research

DOI: 10.1177/1468794107071421 2007; 7; 63 Qualitative Research

Joseph A. Conti and Moira O’Neil Studying power: qualitative methods and the global elite

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A B S T R A C T The qualitative study of global elites is a challenging task andin this article we demonstrate that the difficulties of elite research can behandled in a more transparent and productive manner by engagingfeminist methodologies. Drawing on one author’s recent experiences inthe field interviewing well-placed actors involved with the disputesettlement mechanism of the World Trade Organization, we argue thatfeminist methodologies allow the successful navigation of the authorityrelationship in the process of studying elites. Critical examination ofresearcher positionality and the micropolitics of the research encounterleads to a reconceptualization of the concept of ‘studying up’ as itobscures the complexities of the power relationships in both researchand social life. We conclude with a call for deeper qualitative attention toglobal elites that is informed by feminist methodologies.

K E Y W O R D S : feminist methodology, global elite, studying up, World TradeOrganization

IntroductionThis article can be described as a methodological confession story in which wewrite openly about various methodological questions and hurdles that arise inattempting to study qualitatively those people who inhabit the highest strata ofglobal power. Some of the difficulties related to studying elites are obvious andwell documented in the literature on elite research – locating and funding travelto interview a hyper-mobile social group, gaining entrée into elite settings, mod-ifying dress and appearance, and mastering specialized forms of knowledge inorder to successfully complete interviews. Other issues were less expected – inparticular, the strategic contest over authority during the research process andthe feelings of despondency that resulted from being ‘talked down to’ by infor-mants. These are significant methodological difficulties that have dramaticeffects both on the manner in which research is practiced and the character ofknowledge claims that it produces.

A RT I C L E 63

Studying power: qualitative methodsand the global elite

DOI: 10.1177/1468794107071421

Qualitative ResearchCopyright © 2007SAGE Publications(London,Thousand Oaksand New Delhivol. 7(1) 63–82

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J O S E P H A . C O N T I A N D M O I R A O ’ N E I LUniversity of California, Santa Barbara



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We draw on one author’s experience in the field interviewing well-placedactors involved with the dispute settlement mechanism of the World TradeOrganization (WTO). After its first 10 years, the WTO continues to attract muchinterest, critique and controversy. The unprecedented sanctioning capacity ofthe WTO includes the jurisdiction to determine that national, state and localregulations are illegal, and the economic leverage to strongly encourage coop-eration with its legal, proscriptions. Aside from military alliances, the WTO isone of the most powerful international agreements in existence – powerfulenough to, at times, make even the most affluent nations adhere to its rules.While it has become the center-piece of a highly complex global neo-liberaltrading system and is increasingly considered among business elites and policymakers as the primary forum for continuing the ‘development project’ (McMichael,2004), the ways in which the WTO functions continue to be under-studied,even as its effects are intensely debated. As such, the WTO presents a uniqueopportunity to study a new and important class of elites with tremendous andfar-reaching influence.

The pool of informants included employees of the WTO Secretariat andmember nation trade delegations, private attorneys and former WTO appellatejurists. Almost all are lawyers; some hold academic appointments as well.Some are current or former diplomats. While these persons are not the world’srichest, they occupy a critical site in the political and legal structures of theglobal economy. Through their decisions to litigate, the specific strategies andevidence that they deploy, and their skill and judgment, they influence how theWTO regulates inter-state relations. In turn, their actions influence the dailyactivities of millions of people around the globe. These global bureaucrats –global because of the transnational nature of their work and the breadth oftheir impact – are elites demanding scholarly attention.

The qualitative study of these elites, however, was a challenging and attimes daunting task. We demonstrate that the difficulties of elite research canbe handled in a more transparent manner by engaging feminist methodolo-gies. Feminist researchers insist on a rigorous, thorough and transparentexamination of the role of the researcher in the production of knowledge andan analysis of ‘micropolitics of research’ at all stages of the process (Bhavnani,1991). We demonstrate that the use of feminist methodologies leads to recon-ceptualization of how power operates in the research setting and, more specif-ically, leads to redefinition of the dominant conceptual tool used whenstudying elites: ‘studying up.’ We argue that researchers ought to adopt qual-itative and feminist approaches to studying elites and demand more complexunderstandings of power, both in the research process and in the wider lens ofscholarly inquiry.

Q UA L I TAT I V E M E T H O D S A N D T H E E M P I R I CA L S T U DY O F E L I T E SC. W. Mills (1956, 1957, 1963) provides the classic empirical works of study-ing elites in the sociological tradition. He describes the ‘power elite’ as those

Qualitative Research 7(1)



people at the very top of American society, whose ‘facilities of power are soenormously enlarged and so decisively centralized ... that the powers of quitesmall groups of men, which we may call elites, are now of literally inhumanconsequences’ (1963: 28). Building on Mills, Domhoff (1967, 1990) arguesthat it matters ‘who rules:’ that is, it matters which individuals occupy specificinstitutional locations and, in particular, the state. This is in contrast toapproaches which privilege structural relationships between states and classes(Poulantzas, 2000; Skocpol, 1979) as well as to pluralist approaches that denythe efficacy, if not the existence, of powerful elite groups (Dahl, 1961). As such,qualitative methods are well suited to the Mills-Domhoff approach.

Qualitative and ethnographic study of elites has been more common in theanthropological tradition which embraced a broader definition of elites in a vari-ety of social contexts and is more focused on elite culture and subjectivity. LauraNader’s (1972) call to ‘reinvent anthropology’ by ‘studying up’ echoed Millswhen she wrote: ‘The study of man [sic] is confronted with an unprecedented situation: never before have so few, by their actions and inactions, had the powerof life and death over so many members of the species’ (p. 284). Gendered lan-guage aside, the call to ‘study up’ generated new ethnographies of organizationsand work as well as qualitative interview studies that focused on elites (Forsythe,2001; Hertz and Imber, 1995; Jackall, 1988; Schwartzman, 1993).

The call to ‘study up’ has been reinvigorated by globalization (see, for example,Bonacich and Appelbaum, 2000; Burawoy, 2000; Dezalay and Garth, 1996,2002; Holmes and Marcus, 2005; Sklair, 2001). The qualitative study of globalelites, however, creates new methodological difficulties for researchers, as well asposing new questions about how elites can and should be studied. What are themethodological and epistemological issues when studying the powerful in this ageof globalization? This question takes us to the central conundrums of studyingglobal power and also to a better way of analyzing that power with feministmethodologies. The challenges of studying global elites heighten demands fortransparency in the research process – a demand most fully considered in feministmeditations on research.

F E M I N I S T M E T H O D O L O G Y A N D S T U DY I N G P OW E RFeminist methodologies provide valuable insights that are crucial in the study ofglobal power. In one of the classic statements of feminist methodologies, SandraHarding (1987) argues that feminist methodology is a theory of research ratherthan a specific method or technique for gathering information. Harding estab-lishes three central features of a feminist methodology – it centers women’sexperiences, produces research for women and incorporates reflexivity into theprocess of knowledge production. Reinharz and Davidman (1992), on the otherhand, recognized research methods as feminist if they were carried out by self-identified feminists, published in journal articles and/or books that identifiedas feminist, or if the research was conducted in a feminist organization.Despite the clues provided by these authors, what constitutes feminist methods

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remains debated (see, for example, Bloom, 1998; Dankoski, 2000; DeVault,1996; Naples, 2003). There are, however, two central motifs that can be gleanedfrom the diverse literature on feminist research that are both crucial to studyingelites and not as well developed in the non-feminist literature: researcheraccountability to knowledge claims and critical examination of the micropoliticsof research.

Feminist methodologies discount notions of an objective observer whose voiceis absent and whose position is not made central to all aspects of the researchprocess (Collins, 2000; Haraway, 1988, 2004; Harding, 1987, 1991; Hardingand Hintikka, 2003; Hartsock, 1983). Harding (1987) explains:

The best feminist analysis goes beyond these innovations in subject matter in acrucial way: it insists that the inquirer her/himself be placed in the same criticalplane as the subject matter, thereby recovering the entire research process forscrutiny in the results of the research. That is ... the researcher her/himself mustbe placed within the frame of the picture that she/he attempts to paint. (p. 9)

Haraway’s (1988) definition of feminist objectivity similarly demands atten-tion to the positionality of the researcher. Feminist objectivity ‘is about limitedlocation and situated knowledge, not about transcendence and splitting ofsubject and object. It allows us to become answerable for what we learn to see’(p. 254) – that is, accountability means that ‘analyses cannot be complicitwith dominant representations which reinscribe inequalities’ and that theresearcher must be accountable for their knowledge claims (Bhavnani, 1994:29). Researchers must strive to understand both the complex subjectivitiesand social locations of themselves and interviewees in the research process.This understanding, in turn, must underpin the representations of intervie-wees and knowledge claims in the documentation of the research.

Similar to feminist researchers, non-feminist scholars who study elitesargue that this type of research requires that researchers take into accounttheir own subject positions. George Marcus (1983), for example, claims thatelite theory and research, more than any other tradition in the social sciences,is shaped by the political outlook and ideological position of the researcherwithin the scholarly community. He argues that the political stance of theresearcher must be acknowledged and managed such that it avoids overshad-owing the empirical claims. In contrast, for feminist researchers, this trans-parency in the positionality of the researcher leads to a realization that allknowledge is partial and, to use Donna Haraway’s term, ‘situated.’ Feministresearchers argue, unlike Marcus, that the empirical claims are not diminishedby the normative stance of the researcher so long as she is ‘answerable forwhat she learns to see.’

Feminist researchers also focus on and make central the complex workingsof power in the research process. Feminist interventions into social sciencewere borne out of the absence and exploitation of women in social scientificresearch and a political desire to expose, critique and challenge social inequal-ity. The attention to power in the social world encompassed all arenas – even




the research process itself. Nancy Naples (2003) begins her treatise on feministmethods with the following question: ‘How does a researcher negotiate thepower imbalance between the researcher and the researched?’ (p. 3). Bhavnani(1994) asserts that part of a feminist research agenda is serious acknowledge-ment, transparency and, more importantly, analysis of the micropolitics ofresearch projects. Because of the potential impact of power – both that of theresearcher and their informants – analysis of the micropolitics of the researchprocess is not simply an afterthought but central to the documentation and dis-semination of the research.

Several non-feminist researchers consider the power dynamic in theresearch process when they note that gaining access to elite settings andbreaking through networks of gatekeepers can be very difficult (Fitz andHalpin, 1994; Hertz and Imber, 1995; Marcus, 1983; Odendahl and Shaw,2002). Indeed, the manner by which contacts are made is in itself an effect ofelite power. Upon gaining access to such settings, researchers who have suc-cessfully studied elites describe how the interviews are often shaped by theinterviewees’ sense of authority and, in response, how they devise strategiesfor mitigating that authority (Fitz and Halpin, 1994; Hirsch, 1995; Odendahland Shaw, 2002). Feminist research takes the examination of power in theresearch process a step further by arguing that the power dynamic betweenthe researcher and elite informant not only shapes the interview process butdefines how knowledge is created – that is, the relationship between power,epistemology and methodology is transparent and made explicit in feministresearch projects.

Employing these central techniques of feminist methodologies – a criticalexamination of Joe’s (Conti – joint author) position in the interview process, ofhow power operates in interviews, and of how power shapes what we are ableto learn – lead us to question the dominant terminology used to define thepower relationship between researcher and researched in the study of elites:studying or researching ‘up’ (Nader, 1972, 1977; Walford, 1994). There havebeen significant theoretical and empirical gains in the study of power that arenot adequately reflected when the power relationship in the research processis theorized as up or down (see, for example, Foucault, 1977; Gordon, 1997;Gramsci, 1992; Lukes, 2005). Conceptualizing power as simply hierarchical andrigidly determined by various systems of inequality in which people are objec-tively placed does not reveal the way that these systems are interlocking, non-additive and often contradictory. The reification of sociological categories, suchas race, class or gender, as discreet realms of social relations subsequently per-mits our ranking of individuals on those scales and furthers the false assump-tion that we can identify degrees of power as a stable function of such ranking.We argue instead that power struggles ‘congeal’ in specific social practices andbecome institutionalized as the settings in which individual subjects arelocated and exercise their agency. Diffuse power relations become organizedinto reproducible, hegemonic networks of power (which can then be mistakenas stable possessions of elites by scholars) (Domhoff, 1990; Mann, 1986).




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Understanding power not as an intrinsic property of an individual but asflowing from complex relationships between individuals, organizations andinstitutions has significant methodological impact for those studying power.Clearly, some individuals are embedded in social contexts that enable power toflow through them along the lines described by C. W. Mills: the decisions ofthe power elite are of disproportionate impact compared to non-elites. Weargue, however, that close attention to the power dynamic in the interviewhighlights both the limits and possibilities of the ‘power’ of both the elite andthe researcher. Feminist meditations on the research process provide the con-ceptual space for these critical reflections on power in research.

Are the methods used to study elites different or more difficult than study-ing those people who are excluded from the institutional and personal net-works of power? We argue yes and no; studying those in positions of powerinvokes similar types of methodological problems as studying those excludedfrom power networks: problems of access, problems of authority in the inter-view setting, problems related to language, style and cultural capital. Whenstudying elite power, these methodological problems take on different, difficultdimensions and pose new problems for conducting research. In the followingsection, Joe recounts his ‘tales of the field’ conducting interviews with well-placed actors involved in the WTO dispute settlement process (Van Maanen,1988). We begin with a brief summary of his project and how he came to seequalitative methods as necessary. Then we characterize the power relationshipin the interview, describe strategies to address that dynamic, and suggest howattention to power and social position affects the knowledge gained from theresearch.

Tales of the fieldI became interested in how the WTO operated during the lead-up to theprotests at the 1999 ministerial meeting held in Seattle, Washington.Working with a non-profit organization writing short, activist-oriented arti-cles about the Seattle meetings, I became dissatisfied with what I considered,with much hubris, the low level of understanding among progressive politi-cal groups of how the organization operated in practice. I felt this was a polit-ical liability for those wanting an alternative to corporate-led, neoliberalglobalization. Over the next few years this interest developed into a full-blownresearch project.

I designed my project as an exposé on power in the legal architecture of theglobal economy by evaluating how the WTO dispute settlement system isaffected by inequalities between member nations. In particular, I wanted toknow if rich nations held advantages such that they fared better than lessaffluent nations. An initial statistical analysis of WTO dispute case outcomes,however, highlighted the limitations of that approach for evaluating deeplyinstitutionalized power inequalities. As an illustration, nearly 40 percent of




WTO cases between 1995 and 2000 were resolved informally or otherwiseabandoned. First, I hypothesized that this outcome was the product of aggres-sive litigation strategies – an orientation towards ‘winning’ a case in the dispute –that sought to cultivate ‘dispute fatigue’ in poorer member nations without theresources for complicated and protracted litigation. Alternatively, this outcomecould stem from dispute settlement procedures that encourage diplomatic com-promise – a more moderate orientation towards ‘settlement’ of the case in dis-pute. The data on outcomes were fundamentally unable to address this question.The key difference between the two theories was an orientation or an attitude ofWTO members about the process of dispute settlement. The outcome variablecould not speak to questions of intentionality or goals but only to patternswhich aggregate and flatten the human activity involved in producing theevents subsequently coded as ‘outcome.’ Resolving this question required ascer-taining the attitudes of the people making decisions as to whether and how theyaddress disputes over trade issues. I needed to speak to the people involved tounderstand why they chose specific litigation strategies.

After being awarded a research grant, I began an expansive travel scheduleto interview WTO jurists and appellate jurists, WTO legal staff, representativesof different national trade delegations, private practice WTO lawyers, formernegotiators of the WTO treaty text, academic observers and non-governmentalobservers of the WTO. Drawing on three contacts obtained through personalnetworks, I found the rest of the sample through purposive ‘snowball’ sam-pling and by directly contacting trade ministries. All of the interviews wereconducted in English although many respondents spoke English as a second orthird language. The interviews covered a number of topics including: strate-gies for initiating disputes, strategies for responding to complaints, the politicsof retaliation, the organization of national trade bureaucracies, personal rela-tionships between national delegates, the character of WTO legal culture, therole of private law firms, the fairness of the dispute system to developing coun-tries and the international politics of legal disputing, as well as the dispute casehistories of particular member nations.

While I submitted my project for a human subjects’ evaluation, I wasexempted from the more rigorous requirements of protecting my ‘subjects.’The elite status of my interview sample removed institutional requirements forensuring confidentiality. Neither did any of the organizations in which myinformants were employed require formal vetting of my project or agreementrequiring confidentiality. Agreements on confidentiality were negotiated in anad hoc fashion at the beginning of each interview and, as a result, I haveremoved identifying information about the interviewees.

P OW E R A N D AU T H O R I T Y I N T H E R E S E A RC H P RO C E S SThe route between identifying a potential informant and actually beginningan interview established the initial power relationship between me and theinformant. As Odendahl and Shaw (2002) noted, access to elites can be difficult




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to obtain and ‘typically requires extensive preparation, homework, creativityon the part of the researcher, as well as the right credentials and contacts,’ notto mention a little luck (p. 306). The difficulty I had making appointments con-firmed their observation. While I used personal networks to generate initialinterviews and some subsequent interviews were obtained through referrals,a number were generated through cold-calling trade missions and other gov-ernment agencies. I began my search for interview contacts by faxing a letterof introduction and request for interviews to numerous trade ministries. Ireceived no response from any of the faxes. Emails were similarly ignored. Imanaged to make some tentative appointments over the phone (‘call me againwhen you get into town’) but the cost of international calls and my own lim-ited language skills placed constraints on using the phone to make contacts.More than a few attempts at calling ended in voicemail boxes with no returncall. While most emails were ignored, one exchange with a former high rank-ing government trade official stands out. After generous responses to my ques-tions, the email exchange ended even though he had offered assistance inreferring me to other people. He did not respond to subsequent emails. And inan even more humbling instance attempting to solicit an interview, I wasdenied the interview and told to call back when I ‘had better questions.’

My attempts at contacting potential interviewees highlight the initialauthority relationship between me and my desired subjects. For instance, theemail exchange left me wondering whether I had somehow insulted him orwhether he had come to the conclusion that my inquiries were a waste of time.Perhaps he would not recommend me to his colleagues out of some sense thatI was confused or otherwise sub-par. This feeling of inadequacy became recur-ring as I faced, in a variety of settings, the glare of my respondent’s gaze thatquestioned my legitimacy. I took steps to avoid these feelings and eventuallywas able to get informants to talk with me about how they do their work.

Throughout the processes of arranging and conducting interviews, a subtlestruggle played out between me and my interviewees. Prior to each interviewI prepared a set of questions as discussion prompts. As Hertz and Imber (1995)suggest, a semi-structured interview seemed most appropriate not only tofocus their responses on the specific topics of interest but also to accommodatethe short amount of time offered to me for the interview. After shaking myhand, one government official began our interview with, ‘What can I tell youin 45 minutes?’ The respondent began our interview and took control of its dura-tion. Even still, the appropriateness of the questions that I asked was not given;he retained the authority to judge my questions. I described my project andlisted a number of topics that I was interested in talking about. His firstresponse was that I had a very broad topic. In return, I offered a more pointedquestion about what kind of work his office does in relation to the WTO:

Joe: Ok ... so maybe we can start there, with the … R: So, well that’s a focused question.




The respondent shaped the types of questions that were appropriate for hisanswers. I left the interview feeling embattled and insecure about the worthi-ness of my topic. In another similar instance, instead of an answer to my ques-tion about the responsibilities of the informant’s job, she asked, ‘So, this is yourPhD?’ I was forced to wonder, no doubt defensively, ‘Aren’t these questionsgood enough for a PhD?’

The issue of limited time available for interviews was a recurring problem.In at least one instance, I was denied an interview based on the ‘lack of time.’In other instances, interviews were kept far shorter than I would have desired.Additionally, my interview sample was largely composed of attorneys who arepaid by the hour. After concluding an hour and a half interview with a part-ner in one of the world’s top 10 largest law firms, the friend who had arrangedthe interview remarked, ‘Wow, you got a thousand dollars worth of his time!’Lawyers tend to view time as money because it is standard practice to bill bythe hour. Purchasing such expensive time for an interview was clearly out of thequestion for me so I was dependent upon the ‘donation’ of time from my subjects.

Interviewing legal specialists contributed to the character of the powerdynamic in the interview in other ways. These attorneys are hired in their pro-fessional capacities to provide answers and sound legal advice and are paid tobe authorities in their areas of practice. As interviewers, we have been trainedto let our subjects be the authority, to cultivate a sense of equality within theresearch setting such that the interviewees will be honest and forthcoming(Hermanowicz, 2002). In my experience, there was no ‘letting’ involved; my‘subjects’ were quite confident in their position of authority and would notreadily grant it to me.

The interviewees asserted authority through the context that they estab-lished for the interview. I always interviewed them in their offices and theygenerally sat behind their desks (the exceptions are two when we both adjournedto a sitting area). A number of interviewees refused to be recorded. The inter-views were often interrupted or suspended as other issues and events com-peted for their attention. Many of these interruptions are endemic to busyoffices. For example, nearing the end of one interview, the respondent’s supe-rior interrupted to chastise him for ignoring his duties during the interview. Iwas denied basic interactional courtesies – such as saying ‘excuse me’ whenentering a closed door unannounced and offering an introduction. This inter-ruption abruptly ended the interview and the informant remarked:

R: yeah. It’s my boss.Joe: Ok, well uh, I really appreciate your time.

This example hints at the constraints placed on this particular elite by the hier-archical organization of the government agency in which he is employed. Hemay be a central figure in the litigation of disputes for his country at the WTO,but he still has a boss.




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In other more common instances, the respondent himself would interruptme with an addendum to his previous reply. Here the interruptions shift frombeing symptoms of busy offices to being indications of the respondent’s senseof prerogative:

R: You know, if you look at um, I be-, I’m not sure that there’s any govern-ment now which is not hiring or benefiting in some way from outsidelegal council in the context of WTO disputes.

Joe: Really. So, I was under the impression –R: Now, often you know, they ask, you know the government may be ask-

ing the law firm for, or working through a trade association and askinglaw firm for a specific, for advice on specific issues, or specific dimensionof the complaint, or something like that.

In a similar vein, this respondent had his own agenda for what he wanted tocover during the interview:

Joe: Uh, you mentioned that um, the personal relationshipsR: mm-hm,Joe: w- you mentioned were very important in the negotiations.R: mm-hm,Joe: and that someone suggested those negotiations that- those personal

relationships changed, um, rel- perhaps there’s less trust now, thanthere used to be. Um, I have two questions. One is, why- why is there lesstrust,

R: mm-hm,Joe: And the other is, how does that impact um, the [Dispute Settlement

Body],R: mm-hmJoe: because the [Dispute Settlement Body] is- while it’s more about law, and

litigationR: mm-hm Joe: it still is a kind of negotiation,R: mm-hm, mm-hm, mm-hm. So, let me finish, track 1 and track 2.Joe: Oh, oh, I’m sorry.R: No, no, no. Because- because the answer will be related into that.

Despite his insistence that his multi-‘tracked’ answer would eventually address thequestions that I posed, they never did. My apology offered for my interruption ofhis protracted answer is indicative of the authority relationship in this interview:he was providing answers and my questions were, to some degree, secondary.

Informants also ‘multi-tasked’ or did other things during the interview thatadded another dimension to the authority relationship. For instance, onerespondent took a call while I waited in front of him:




They wanted to give the U.S. ((-phone rings-)) a solution which could be done by theWhite House itself. ((pause)). Hello. Hello Sophia, how are, fine thank you. How’syour back? ((pause)) Ha ha ha. (inaudible) By god! (inaudible). I don’t think so, notthat I, since I am from [my home country], I can’t find, I can’t, I won’t like somecriticism of your guys, just that, ((laughs)) it’s just that the moment you told me it’sa teacher who’s telling you, I’m sure that uh….

At this point, I turned off the tape recorder and waited. I was late for anotherinterview yet could not just leave. On another occasion, the ‘multi-tasking’ wasmore disconcerting as his behavior demonstrated a disregard of decorum thatmight be extended to a person of similar or higher social status. In my fieldnotes I wrote:

He also had the compulsive habit of wrapping his right hand around the tip of hisnose so as to disguise – so it appeared to me – the insertion of this thumb into hisnostril to clear some offending blockage. Later I shook that hand.

The persistent questioning of my legitimacy, the difficulties pinning infor-mants down for an interview, frequent interruption and disregard took its tollon my self-esteem. Casper (1997) writes about her feelings of outrage stem-ming from interviewing a doctor who read his mail during the interview. Incontrast, my experience interviewing elites produced feelings of self-doubt anddespondency. Preparing for interviews and even sending letters solicitingpotential informants became an incredible burden as I continually had to over-come feelings of inadequacy and misdirection.

S T R AT E G I E S TO D I F F U S E AU T H O R I T YEventually I devised a set of strategies for dealing with the dismissiveness of myrespondents and my own insecurities, especially when recruiting intervieweesand beginning interviews. These altered the authority relationship in the inter-view at least enough to allow the completion of the interview and, at times, toproduce significant sociological insight. This partly involved strategic dress andpresentation of self. At considerable expense, I upgraded my wardrobe to includesuits and ties of a quality exceeding that required for academic conferences. I alsoutilized self-effacing humor and jokes about my youth. For instance, when I firstmet a respondent in person I would offer him my business card and remark, ‘nowyou and my mother have one.’ This served to emphasize my junior status andmarked my deference to them. Another component centered on describingmyself and my project as explicitly sociological and as distinct from how legal orinternational relations scholars approach studying the WTO.

This tactic of invoking disciplinary distinctions between relatively legitimatemodes of knowledge seemed to offer a way of diffusing the expectations ofinterviewees as to the content of my questions. In some cases, I believe that therespondents took enjoyment in trying on their ‘sociological hat’ (or at leastwhat they imagined to be a sociological perspective) and even recognized theirown use of sociological knowledge in their daily work at the WTO:




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R: I think that the importance of of of this is that, well, I don’t know anythingabout sociology, but, in my perspective, the intra-personal relationshipamong the negotiator

Joe: mm hm.R: is very important for negotiations. I was told by an, uh, by uh, by an old

negotiator, that there are too many differences between the currentnegotiators, and the old-times negotiators; and of course, we alwaysdoubt old-time comments, no? But, I think- this is- this is important, thi-this guy was saying, that, before there was more trustful relationship,among the- the Geneva based officials.

In another example, a representative of a Southern nation considers why hisgovernment, to his disappointment, always complies with WTO rulings:

Yeah, I mean, I’m still studying and, uh, since you are researching and you areSociologist I thought I could, maybe, read your dissertation later and find wheremy stream of thoughts takes a more logical and, uh, involved study of this issue,because I do it, as a-, when- where- when I get time, I don’t have, uh, I mean I don’thave, I don’t work full-time on this kind of a fascinating issue. I cannot. But, I, uh,actually disappointed, frankly, that, uh, we did not look at these options.

While discussing what a sociologist might be interested in brings them intoa realm that they are somewhat less sure of, it did not completely neutralize theauthority relationship in the interview. For instance, after telling a respondentthat I was a sociologist intent on understanding the ‘social world’ of the WTO,the respondent challenged the sociological character of a question, determin-ing that it was ‘not a sociology question.’ Similarly, feminist geographer KimEngland (2002) in her study of female bank managers noted that her inter-view subjects felt entitled to define what constitutes a ‘geography question.’

Joe: The question is, is the jurisprudence of the WTO advanced enough ordeveloped enough that you sort of get a sense of how it will play, a casemay play out? Or when it’s better to say, not get involved or settle early,and those sorts of things?

R: Well, that’s not a sociology question, you are in my area. Ha ha ha.

On other occasions the invocation of sociology had the unanticipated andundesired effect of amplifying the perception that I might be a threat. The on-going wake of the 1999 Seattle protests and their continuation in Cancunseemed to have induced a kind of defensiveness over what the WTO does andhow it does it. On a few occasions and without any prodding from me, thoseprotests were brought up by my subjects, I believe, as a way to gauge my biasesand motivations for conducting this research. In each of these instances, Iresponded in such a way as to downplay my own political identity:




Joe: Um, being on a college campus, there’s a lot of, uh, there’s a lot of uh, Iguess misdirected understandings of uh

R: Right.Joe: WTO. So, R: So, uh, Joe: yeah, ((laughs)) An- and that I mean, you know, and honestly that’s

probably the reason that I R: yeahJoe: got into this, cuz I didn’t understand a lot of the arguments that were

being made.

By referencing ‘college campuses’ I positioned myself towards the center of thepolitical spectrum and distinct from anti-WTO protestors. Like Walford(1994), I feared that an honest display of my politics could lead to an earlyending of the interview if not provoking defensiveness in the respondentthroughout. I attempted to contain perception of me as a threat to the work-ings of the WTO and in the process subtly manipulated the interviewee. Thispolitical identity management had, like the strategic use of sociological knowl-edge, particular effects on the knowledge claims the interviews produced.Putting the interviewees at ease about my political motivations resulted in adeeper understanding of power in the WTO than could have been achievedthrough a direct political confrontation.

I M P L I CAT I O N S O F S T R AT E G I C I N T E RV E N T I O N I N T H E P OW E RR E L AT I O N S H I P I N T H E I N T E RV I E WInformants responded to my display of sociology as a form of legitimate knowl-edge which permitted new perspectives on the WTO and the informants them-selves. Sometimes the informants articulated their own sense of what might besociological about their work. For instance, one respondent discussed the dis-pute resolution process as an inter-personal negotiation involving conflicts inpersonalities. In the following passage, he describes the process as being like a‘soap opera’ involving some degree of ‘schizophrenia’ or insanity:

R: uh-huh. So, going to that way, all the people the same people ... withwhich the ... issues, so you see them in very va- in a variety of uh, b- sce-narios. So it is like, like a soap opera.

Joe: ((laughs))R: and a little bit of schizophreniaJoe: ((laughs))R: because, you have, you’re an ally of somebody, or- you have to work

together as a team- on a team basis with somebody, Joe: mm-hm




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R: and then sometimes you’re against this person in some- some othercases, now, so depending on th- the structure …. Eh-, once I’m an activemember, and I’m demanding you to do something, and then you’redemanding me to do the same thing in another case,

Joe: mm-hm,R: So, the aggressive I am, will give you enough information as to be

aggressive to me; or this skillful am I, or the technical th- the high tech,uh, am I, and on on legal reasoning, the same legal reasoning you- youcan use exactly legal reasoning against me in in one year or somethinglike that.

The respondent described a non-rationalized process where formal legal andpolitical ‘national interests’ are intersected by personality, education andtraining. Another interviewee recounted how he frequently bumped intomembers of other trade delegations in the halls or in the WTO cafeteria anddiscussed ongoing trade issues between their countries. This informant, how-ever, cautioned me against placing too much emphasis on the importance ofinter-personal relationships in producing specific outcomes of the dispute set-tlement process. In both accounts the strategic deployment of sociology andthe respondents’ understanding of the character of the sociological inquiryproduced a unique perspective on how the World Trade Organization operates.In the first instance, my laughter betrayed a shared understanding of somehyperbole in his characterization of trade negotiations as a soap opera. Itseemed that the respondent stretched to conceive of WTO processes through asociological lens and ended up with something that we both, in the moment,found somewhat incredulous. After all, this is the WTO, which we have alreadydescribed as ‘one of the most powerful international agreements in existence’and which has brought hundreds of thousands of people, on various occa-sions, into the streets in protest. Now an insider describes its inner workings as‘soap opera.’ Both examples illustrate the significance of interpersonal rela-tionships. What appears as discrete cases in a quantitative data set are, fromthe perspective of the informant, repeated and on-going interactions with col-leagues, the character of which affect how the informant approaches hiswork. While comparison to a ‘soap opera’ may or may not be hyperbolic, sucha narrative is an important reminder that these elites are enmeshed in compli-cated and on-going social relationships that shape the way they approach liti-gation at the WTO. These features only emerged through strategicinterventions into the power relationship in the process of interviewing.

In a much more significant context, one respondent described why his country –to his exasperation – tended to comply with WTO rulings:

It never occurred to policy makers at high levels that, uh, facing your damnation andjust suffering it is an option. ... Now, this is what I said was interesting and thereforeI tried to dig into the reasons, and uh, I found that uh, we as a, ((clears throat)) as anation of minds, of people, of- of- people whose nature is, uh, if you- if you can find




certain commonality in the- in the diverse, uh, uh, you know, communities that constitute [my country], we as a nation are a very complying kind. We- we, uh, wewant to respect international relations, international law.

Uh, I in fact went into some early readings uh from ... from the first PrimeMinister’s times, and I realized that, uh, uh, after independence one of the mainpolicy was, uh, to determine how would the world characterize us –look at that-look at [us] as a nation – Was that we should be considered as a credible, respected,international, uh, player, in everything. And trade certainly did not count any-where, uh, in the kind of credible deal that we were looking for. Trade could be, ifI may use the term, trade could be sacrificed on the altar of ... this credibility. Thiswas not only policy makers in terms of the executive guys, and the bureaucracy,but, even the parliament.

His throat clearing prior to his use of the phrase ‘nation of mind,’ hinted atunease with a purportedly sociological concept. In this narrative of aspirationsfor national legitimacy, there is a theory of a trade delegation’s orientation todispute settlement in the WTO that could never be captured through a statisti-cal analysis of outcomes. Indeed, the concern for legitimacy is powerful andpervades most decisions made by trade counsel. Several lawyers reported thatit was highly embarrassing for Geneva-based officials to lose a dispute at theWTO. And the risk of political embarrassment of superiors always played arole in the decisions as whether to litigate a dispute. As these examples demon-strate, intervening in the authority relationship in the interview produces specific and significant insights.

Strategic management of my political identity also had important implica-tions. First and most important, it enabled the interviews to proceed withoutprovoking a defensive posture from the informants. Diminishing any percep-tion of me as a threat allowed the informant to be more forthcoming, at timesallowing their personal perspectives and feelings to emerge. In several cases,the respondents revealed the ‘distance’ between the goals and practices of theWTO and their personal rationales for working with the organization. Thisinformant described how overwhelmed he was by all of the work that he wasrequired to do despite having few resources with which to do it. I asked howresource limitations affected participation in the WTO:

R: Uh, I think we do a good job of it. ... And uh, we flout all, uh, labor laws.We are supposed to work for eight hours a day. We work for twelve hoursa day. We are not supposed to work on weekends, we work on weekends.We forego, of course, holidays in Europe, we don’t think about the other,we think about [holidays at home], keep working in August, that’s ...

Joe: so you’re quite dedicated,R: yes ((almost a whisper)).

His response to my questioning of his dedication suggests that perhaps he was lessthan dedicated or that, yes indeed, he was dedicated but he wasn’t necessarily




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happy with what that meant for him personally. This speaks to the differencebetween the duties and bureaucratic structure of his trade mission and himself asan individual, carrying those duties out. He remained a person within the bureau-cratic structure of his office and that of the WTO.

In many cases, such personal perspectives were revealed after specificrequests for confidentiality. When I asked one highly placed informant how hebecame involved with the WTO he responded:

I personally was not at all interested in [the WTO]. I was interested in commercialeconomic law, but from a very different perspective, from the perspective of thenew international economic order in the 70s and 80s. ... I have some standing asan international lawyer on the international level so people, in fact, said ‘but whyare you interested in this role?’ And I said I’m not interested, I was drafted, partic-ularly that it’s very badly paid.

He continued:

There are two strategies if you are an international lawyer and you manage to geta certain visibility and you are on the margins. [Some do] it by criticizing from theoutside, throwing stones at the windows. I did some of that as well, but I think it’svery important when in a way there are very few arenas open. I think that theThird World now, most countries are in the WTO and those who are not in wantto get in so if they have to defend their interest, they have to defend them inside notoutside. But the worst part is that I am convinced that many countries have rati-fied these treaties without really reading them thoroughly or at all perhaps so theyhave contracted obligations without understanding very well their implications.

He later described the limited latitude that he had in his official duties that per-mitted him to favor Third World interests at the WTO. In comparison to theprior example, the institutional position of the informant was not only thehierarchical organization and bureaucratic requirements (such as volumes ofpaperwork) of a trade ministry, but the historical structure of the global econ-omy and the legal organization of world trade.

My strategic deployment of socially legitimate knowledge and political iden-tity management altered the authority relationship in the process of inter-viewing. While perhaps agreeing with some or all of the goals of the WTO, theinformants were never mere agents of the WTO; neither could they fully directthe WTO to their own ends. Careful attention to and strategic intervention inthe micropolitics of the interview permitted a view of the informants as eliteactors embedded in vast bureaucracies and deep historical social structures.

Discussion and conclusionJoe’s experiences interviewing people involved in the WTO dispute resolutionprocess demonstrate the importance of qualitative methods and the benefits ofemploying techniques of feminist methodologies in the study of global elites.Qualitative research informed by feminist methodologies lead to understandingdiscrete disputes as on-going and repeated personal and inter-governmental




interactions. These on-going interactions shape how counsels approach litigationat the WTO, highlight the complexity of the relationships in which informantswere embedded, and provide insight into how deep historical structures of theglobal economy are mediated and reproduced through the WTO. The WTO is nota monolithic machine; rather, it is a complex social forum that is daily reproducedthrough the activities of many people engaged in WTO disputing for a variety ofpersonal, professional, and organization rationales and goals. Some informantsexplained how they exercised their personal commitment to improving the situa-tions of the Third World by working on the ‘inside’ of the WTO; several feared thatthe Third World may have entered the WTO without a clear appreciation of itsimplications for them. Another informant linked the desire of his country – a post-colonial state emerging as a Third World trading power – for national legitimacyto specific approaches to the WTO dispute settlement system. These perspectiveson the WTO emerged when Joe invited his interviewees to think about the opera-tion of the WTO from a sociological standpoint. Initially, this was a strategy Joeemployed to diffuse the power relationship in the interview but it permitted anuanced vision into how power operates not only in the WTO but in the interna-tional economy regulated by the WTO.

While Joe found it appropriate to conceal the identities of the respondents,his sense of accountability to them did not manifest in absolute honestyabout his own motivations out of a fear that it would compromise the entireproject. In the practice of studying elites there is less need to protect elitesfrom the power of the researcher (Cookson, 1994; Hertz and Imber, 1995).As we have described, the authority relationship in the interview must bestrategically managed. In doing so, a premium is placed on tracking theeffects of such interventions on knowledge claims. This accountability to theknowledge claims requires that researchers also afford ‘complex personhood’(Gordon, 1997) even to the most powerful. Recognizing and portraying inter-viewees as complex and even sympathetic human beings disrupts easy oruncomplicated links between the social realm of the WTO and the impacts ofthe WTO as an organization. At the same time, these portrayals carry impor-tant political consequences and at times feel anathema to scholars who arecommitted to social justice.

The demand to retain the complex personhood of the informant challengesdominant notions of how power operates when studying elites. Employingfeminist methodology to understand how power operates in the interview andhow it shapes the production of knowledge suggests that ‘studying up’ distortsand reifies the complex power dynamic in the interview and in the social worldmore generally. ‘Studying up’ obstructs an analysis of the complex agency andsubject positions of all people involved in the research process. First, this ter-minology denies the agency, responsibility and accountability of theresearcher. By assuming a hierarchy of power of up or down, the researchercan lose sight of their own role in the research process including the ability tointervene in the power dynamic of the interview. Second, understanding




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power in the research process as rigidly hierarchical obscures the gaps andcontradictions between an interview subject’s personal beliefs, ideas and livedexperience, and the institutional space that they occupy. Conceptualizingpower as ‘possessed’ by an individual, as implied by the ‘studying up’ termi-nology, over-estimates the agency of elites and obscures tensions between suchelites and the institutional contexts in which they operate.

Evaluating the dispute resolution process of the WTO with qualitative meth-ods that were informed by feminist meditations on the research process hasstill other implications. While Joe conducted the interviews, both authorsengaged in a dialogic process of investigating the power dynamics of the inter-view. This joint project initially began when Joe returned from his first researchtrip to Geneva demoralized and despondent from his first encounter withglobal elites. What started as a form of colleague-to-colleague therapy trans-formed into a methodological inquiry of what it means and what it takes tostudy global power. The deployment of feminist methodologies not only servedto uncover a more complex understanding of power and accountability in theresearch process, but also served as a form of auto- and community therapyfor the researchers themselves.

Applying qualitative and feminist approaches has tremendous benefits thataid the researcher in the process of doing research and generates nuancedunderstanding of the complex and multi-layered operations of power. Tales fromthe field can build community and provide training for future researchers,which is desperately needed as social research continues to grapple with thescale and complexity of social relationships in this age of globalization. Associal scientists we must continue to study, expose and critique power, and needto use all of our collective knowledge and resources, particularly qualitativeand feminist methodologies, to do this in a globalizing world.

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JOSEPH A. CONTI AND MOIRA O’NEIL are Doctoral Candidates in the Department ofSociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The interviews described inthis article are part of Joseph’s dissertation work, which has been supported by theNational Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant (#0402260), theAlbelina Suarez Educational Trust, and the University of California Institute on GlobalConflict and Cooperation Doctorial Fellowship. We would like to thank the anonymousreviewers at Qualitative Research, Ingrid Li, Richard Appelbaum, Kum-Kum Bhavnaniand Sheigla Murphy.Address: Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara,California 93106–9430, USA. [email: [email protected];[email protected]]




Studying Power: Qualitative Methods and the Global Elite

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