Competitization: the proliferation of competition as a multidimensional process

ABSTRACT Various scholars have noticed the increase of competition in the last decades and its essential role in contemporary social life. Their studies show the great variety of fields affected and are valuable contributions to understanding this process. However, they also represent a wide range of different conceptualizations and understandings of what exactly the increase of competition is and which aspects of social life it affects. Thus, to allow for a better understanding of this process and the commonalities and differences between the approaches that examine it, this paper presents a framework to grasp different dimensions of competitization, that is, the increase of competition in different social fields. Drawing on the basic elements of competition and the literature on the increase of competition, it discusses four dimensions of competitization: competitization by scarcity, by mechanism, by imaginary and by agency. Three main examples are used to demonstrate these dimensions: competitization in academia, market competitization and competitization in the form of rankings.

While these studies, despite their large number, only represent a small selection of examples of the increase of competition, they show the wide variety of fields affected by the increase in competition and are valuable contributions to understanding this process.However, they also represent multiple, diverse conceptualizations and understandings of what exactly the increase of competition is and which dimensions of social life it affects.Is it about an increase of efforts to organize competition and the proliferation of competitive formats?Is it a matter of an intensifying discourse about competition and a growing competitive worldview?Or is it about the intensification of competitive behavior?There is a lack of a systematic analysis of these different aspects of the increase of competition and their respective relations.
Thus, to better comprehend this process and the commonalities and differences between the approaches that examine it, this paper aims to understand these aspects as different dimensions of the process of competitization, 1 that is, the increase of competition in different areas of social life.The theoretical point of departure in this paper's conception of competitization is the emerging field ofin a broad sense 2constructivist competition research, which assumes that competition is neither universal nor emerges necessarily, but that it is constructed (Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse 2021;Hearn 2016;Stark 2020a;Tauschek 2013;Werron 2015;Wetzel 2013).
In order to systematically distinguish between different dimensions of competitization, I proceed from an understanding of competition as being composed of four basic elements, which, in different forms, is shared by many of the approaches mentioned above (e.g.Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse 2021;Simmel 1995;Werron 2015): Scarcity of a good, a specific competitive mechanism of allocation, at least two competitors and an opportunity to perform.First, without scarcity, there is no rival good to compete for.Non-rival goods, such as air, can be consumed by one consumer without preventing simultaneous consumption by others, making competition impossible.Thus, as an essential element of competition, there must be a scarce good, whether commodities, attention, social prestige, recognition, prizes, grants, or jobs.Second, there must be a competitive allocation mechanism, namely rewarding the party that best meets certain criteria.Following Georg Simmel (1995), social situations where actors desire the same good but there is no allocation mechanism should instead be described as a matter of struggle.In these cases, efforts to obtain the scarce good are not meant to meet the allocation criteria, but simply to take possession of the scarce good.Third, without at least two competitors who perceive the respective situation as a competition and also see themselves as competitors, there is no motivation for them to enact the competition and the allocation rules remain an empty institution.Finally, without the opportunity to perform, such as over a lack of control and decision-making opportunities, it is impossible to actively compete.Rather, this case involves a simple comparison of static quantities, such as body sizes, which is not a competition.Hence, competitors must have competitive agency in order for competition to exist.
Based on these four basic elements and the literature on the increase of competition in different social fields, I distinguish four dimensions of competitization: competitization by scarcity, competitization by mechanism, competitization by imaginary, and competitization by agency (see Table 1).

Dimensions of competitization Summary Scarce good competitization by scarcity
Competitization by scarcity refers to the process of competitization via the introduction or intensification of scarcity.

Mechanism of allocation competitization by mechanism
Competitization by mechanism grasps the increase of a specific competitive mechanism of allocation, particularly the reward of the party that meets certain criteria best.

Competitors competitization by imaginary
Competitization by imaginary is concerned with the increase in the extent to which actors perceive and understand social situations as competitive and themselves and others as competitors.

Opportunity to perform competitization by agency
Competitization by agency is concerned with the increase of the competitors' competitive agency, that is, their (technological) capacity to make decisions, to control and to act competitively.
These dimensions of competitization can be mapped to the four basic elements of competition: Competitization by scarcity refers to the scarce good; competitization by mechanism refers to the mechanism of allocation; competitization by imaginary refers to the competitors; and competitization by agency refers to the opportunity to perform.Thus, this paper's multidimensional framework of competitization allows for distinguishing between and examining how the four basic elements of competition get constructed in the process of competitization.In doing so, the paper builds on the idea of the constructed nature of the elements of competition developed most notably by Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse (2021), elaborates on how each element is constructed, and provides thoughts on the relations between these dimensions of competitization. 3 It is important to emphasize that the construction of each element does not need to take place simultaneously.For example, scarcity and the competitors' agency may be established long before introducing a competitive allocation mechanism or a competitive imaginary.This approach to understanding competitization has three advantages, which I elaborate upon in the conclusion.First, starting from the four basic elements of competition, many cases of the increase of competition described in the literature mentioned above do not introduce any full-fledged competition; for example, in certain rankings, where the ranked entities do not see themselves as competitors, or in the case of competition between universities that do not have centralized decision-making structures and thus cannot enact competition.However, as this paper argues, it makes sense to consider these cases where no full-fledged competition is introduced for an analysis of the broader process of competitization which, as the examples of the increase of competition in different social areas at the beginning show, is comprehensive and occurs in many areas of social life at the same time.Thus, understanding competitization as a multidimensional process allows for analytically distinguishing between different dimensions of competitization and identifying cases that do not introduce all dimensions while keeping these cases in the same framework.Second, I do not claim any necessary relation, such as causality or a specific temporal sequence, between the four dimensions of competitization, but appeal for empirical work to address these relations; for example, by examining if one dimension usually precedes the other three or if they are all constructed simultaneously.For example, scarcity is often the prerequisite and precedes the other dimensions.The other dimensions may also have specific relations, like when a competitive allocation mechanism triggers a competitive imaginary or competitive agency.Thus, distinguishing between these four dimensions of competitization and combining them within one framework enables clarifying how they relate to each other by empirically studying their interplay.Third, the increase of competition is often understood as the onesided extension of competition in the economic realm to other, non-economic realms.Many of the scholars cited in this paper refer to this form of increasing competition, although the specific vocabulary (commodification, marketization, economization) may vary.Nevertheless, it is important to consider that many studies do not identify increasing competition in relation to commodities, but instead to non-commodified goods; for example, material goods like grants, trophies or subsidies, and immaterial goods such as visibility, attention, top positions in rankings, prestige or recognition (see also Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse 2021, 8).Still, while there are differences between market competitization and competitization in a broader sense, it seems useful to discuss them within one framework, as they refer to similar phenomena.Thus, this paper does not necessarily consider competitization as economic, but instead examines it in a variety of realms.By understanding market competitization as a specific form of competitization, the paper takes a new look at the processes mentioned above such as commodification, marketization, and economization, and argues that these concepts cannot grasp competitization as a comprehensive process that affects a great variety of social fields, including the economic field, simultaneously.
To illustrate the different dimensions of competitization, I will discuss each dimension primarily in relation to three main examples.First, competitization in academia as a process that can be observed at different levels and among different actorsespecially since the 1980sand which has recently become a much-researched field; second, market competitization as a specific form of competitization that has spread since the nineteenth century in a first wave of marketization (Burawoy 2007) and that has especially intensified in recent decades, for example in the case of emissions trading markets; third, the proliferation of rankings in almost all areas of life, from sports tables to university and city rankings, as a form of competitization that has also increased in the last decades in various social fields simultaneously.Here, I pay specially attention to city rankings.
In the following section ('Dimensions of competitization'), I describe these different dimensions of competitization in detail and conclude ('Conclusion: competitization as a multidimensional process') by highlighting the advantages of using such a framework of studying competitization.

Creating scarcity (competitization by scarcity)
The first dimension, competitization by scarcity, refers to the process of competitization via the construction of the scarcity of a desired good.This can include both, the increase of scarcity in regard to an already scarce good and the introduction of scarcity in regard to a formerly abundant or nonrival good.
(Neoclassical) economic scholars tend to assume the naturalness of scarcity as a human condition, understand competition as given provided there is scarcity and, thus, also see competition as an inevitable part of human life.By contrast, the perspective on competitization by scarcity studies how scarcity comes about.It does not see scarcity as synonymous with finiteness, but as the result of social processes of access and distribution, of desire and demand, and thus relational and historically contingent (Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse 2021;Klein and Rumpfhuber 2014).Moreover, while (neoclassical) economics treats people's preferences as exogenous to the economic realm, critics emphasize that the economic system itself produces demand, which is a precondition of scarcity (Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse 2021, 12;Panayotakis 2011;2014;Welz 2015, 47;Werron 2019, 24).Scarcity, then, is finiteness 'made socially relevant in a specific way' (Werron 2019, 24).From this perspective, scarcity is understood as produced by discursive and material practices, and as the outcome of a process of negotiation embedded in structures of power (Tauschek 2015;Welz 2015;Werron 2019, 26).
To show how the introduction or increase of scarcity can be understood as an essential dimension of competitization, I turn to the three main examples.
Competitization in academia: As many studies show, the last decades have brought an increase of competition in academia for different scarce goods such as grants, jobs, students, visibility or committee positions (Krücken 2021;Musselin 2018).All of these scarce goods were constructed as scarce at one point in time; for example, certain committee or journal positions by establishing them, or students by linking their enrollment numbers to the allocation of certain funds, thus making them a soughtafter good.A particularly illustrative example is the introduction and expansion of third-party funding, organized competitively by research funding agencies (Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Edlund 2023).While the funding of scholars in Europe was largely provided by universities until the 1990s, the Bologna Declaration of 1999 and the creation of the European Higher Education Area led to reforms in many European countries that aimed to increase the quality and productivity of universities and researchers.This often resulted in a distinct construction of scarcity; namely, clearly defined third-party funding budgets that are competed for.Consequently, an increasing share of scholars is financed by third-party funding, which has led to a sharp increase in the demand for grants and, thus, their scarcity.
Market competitization: In many cases of market competitization, the good's scarcity is established long before the other dimensions.However, the introduction of scarcity sometimes coincides with the introduction of a competitive mechanism of allocation.An illustrative example is the introduction of carbon trading, carbon emission allowances and credits that began in the 1990s; these were based on the ideas from the 1960s of Ronald Coase and John Harkness Dales, among others, which helped establish the trade of environmental pollution (Aspers 2021;Brill 2021;MacKenzie 2009).In particular, this introduction of trading was accompanied by a cap on carbon emissions in participating countries by limiting the number of permits that allow emissions of carbon dioxide and equivalents over a given period of time.This meant that allowances for emitting carbon dioxide became a scarce good.In the EU, this cap will be gradually lowered to reduce total allowable emissions to zero by 2050, making emissions allowances increasingly scarce.
Rankings: In the case of rankings, introducing the allocation mechanism does not only coincide with the introduction of a scarce goodas with carbon tradingbut implies the establishment of a specific scarcity by introducing a metric that enables comparing different social entities and awarding scarce high ranks.Thus, rankings can be seen as producing scarcity (Brankovic, Ringel, and Werron 2018, 279f).Additionally, prizes and awards in areas like the arts, architecture or charity have the same effect of producing rare winners (English 2005).City rankings reflect a muchresearched example of rankings.Scholars from a variety of disciplines have observed an increase in city competition and rankings since the 1980s (Begg 1999;Cheshire 1999;Jensen-Butler 1997).A variety of rankings, such as the Economist ranking of the most livable cities, the Mercer Quality of Life index, the Global Talent Competitiveness Index, or the Global Urban Competitiveness Report, award scarce first places to the respective winners, thereby constructing the scarcity of these ranks.As the extra-economic aspects in the positioning of cities and the use of rankings for this purpose became increasingly relevant (Jessop and Sum 2000), the scarcity of these high ranks also grew with the demand for them.
The increase or introduction of scarcity was an essential dimension to the introduction of competition for each of these examples.In some cases, the good had already been constructed as scarce, while sometimes it was constructed as scarce at the same time that the competitive allocation mechanism was constructed.In other cases, as with rankings or prizes, the construction of scarcity was part of the competitive allocation mechanism itself.

Establishing a mechanism of competitive allocation (competitization by mechanism)
The second dimension, competitization by mechanism, refers to the process by which social life is (re-)shaped toward a specific allocation mechanism; specifically, rewarding the party that best meets certain criteria.Although the first dimension of competitization is fulfilled and a scarce good has been constructed, this does not necessarily mean that it will be allocated competitively.Rather, a competitive allocation mechanism must be introduced, established, and materially stabilized, even though the actors organizing its construction may differ; for instance, the state, economic actors 'in the wild' (Callon 2007;Çalışkan and Callon 2010), or ranking organizations.Referring to Georg Simmel's third party, who judges the competitors, Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse (2021, 14) call these producers and organizers of specific competitions the 'fourth party of competition.' As shown in the introduction, there is currently a large number of fields where competitive allocation mechanisms play an essential role, and their numbers have considerably increased in recent decades.In particular, practices of measuring, quantifying, evaluating and valuing, auditing, and rankingand corresponding technologies, which could be considered, adapting the vocabulary of Callon and Muniesa (2005), competition deviceshave gained importance through digitalization and datafication and have enabled new opportunities for competitive comparison and, thus, for competitization by mechanism (Brankovic, Ringel, and Werron 2018;Mau 2019;Stark 2020b).
It seems promising to study how mechanisms of competitive allocation (e.g. via a price, by voting, by a score) are realized in different formats of competition such as beauty contests, casting shows, sports contests, tendering, poetry slams, but also different kinds of markets like the stock market or a farmer's marketan approach taken by several scholars, often in reference to Georg Simmel's (1995) conception of competition as a social form.For example, the sociologist Tobias Werron (2014) is interested in 'modern forms of competition,' which particularly refers to public forms of competition where public communication mediates between competitors and the audience.Others are explicitly interested in the plurality of competitions, i.e. in the diversity of specific competitive formats and types of competition (Nullmeier 2002;Tauschek 2013;Wetzel 2013).
I will only outline a few ways to differentiate between how specific competitive formats are constructed (although differentiation is also possible according to completely different features, e.g. according to the orientation of competitive action, see Nullmeier 2002).There are official, formalized and materially stabilized mechanisms of allocation, like in 'reality competition' media formats, awarding of grants, markets, professional sports competitions or in rankings.However, there are also less tangible, more unstable competitions that involve a less-standardized and explicitand often barely materially supported, but nonetheless effectiveallocation mechanism; for example, in competition for social status, recognition or visibility (see also Aspers 2021).As one can imagine, a competition with unclear and non-standardized allocation criteria may work differently than a competition where everything is explicit and transparent.Thus, it is interesting to investigate the relationship between the degree of formalization, transparency, and explicitness of an allocation mechanism and the functioning of the respective competition.
Increased economic competition through markets and marketplaces, i.e. market competitization, is a specific format of competitization.More specifically, market competition differs from other forms of competition mainly through its price mechanism, i.e. a specific mechanism of competitive allocation.Since there is often no price mechanism in competitization, marketization is not equivalent to competitization but represents a smaller subset of all competitization cases.Moreover, some of the cases discussed under marketization are not about actual markets, but about how organizations are redesigned through competitive formats to resemble markets (Davies 2014, 38).These represent 'quasi-markets;' for example, simulating markets through performance evaluations and allocating resources, especially money, based on the results of these evaluations (Le Grand 1991; Schimank and Volkmann 2012).However, whether in the case of the increase of markets, quasi-markets, or general competitions, all should be understood as part of the process of competitization.
Another way to differentiate between these increasing formats of competition is to look at the materialities through which a competitive mechanism of allocation is constructed.Scholars following the performativity approach have done helpful groundwork in this regard with respect to markets (Callon 1998;2021;Callon and Law 2005;Çalışkan and Callon 2010;MacKenzie, Muniesa, and Siu 2007).They sought to understand how 'concrete markets' (Callon andMuniesa 2005, 1230) work in their multiple forms and how this functioning is both stabilized and contested by technical devices, spatial arrangements and logistical infrastructuresan approach that can usefully be extended to competition in general.It also seems promising to study how visibility is produced via the material construction of the competitive allocation mechanism.How the materiality of the competition shapes the gaze relations between the involved actors (between the competitors and also between the competitors and the jury) could provide insight into the concrete functioning of competitions.For example, when referring to Theodor Geiger (1941), Christensen and Knudsen (2021, 165) describe how competition is characterized by a side glance through which competitors observe each other.This side glance can arguably be shaped by the material configuration of the competition.This perspective on materiality makes the differences and similarities in the material constitution of competition formats a promising field of research for tracing the functioning of increasing competitions beyond abstract concepts.
For clarity, I shall return to the three main examples.
Competitization in academia: As mentioned above, there was an increasing institutionalization of competitive formats in the academic fieldespecially after the Bologna Declaration in 1999 and the establishment of the European Higher Education Area.Competitive allocations mechanisms can be increasingly observed at different levels and among different actors (Krücken 2021;Musselin 2018).Competition increasingly occurs at both the individual (scientists compete for grants, tenure positions, committee positions, journal positions, visibility), institutional (universities compete for students, grants, high positions in rankings, visibility), and national levels (countries compete for excellence clusters and scholars).At each level, concrete competitive mechanisms were introduced through which the allocation of the respective scarce good, whether research funds, positions, or visibility, is organized; for example, through expert reviews, decision-making committees, criteria catalogs, indicators, or metrics.These formats differ depending on the scale of competition (e.g.university-wide, national, international), the competitors (e.g.scholars, universities), and the scarce good (grants, positions, visibility).In the area of third-party funding mentioned above, for example, very different formats can be found depending on the funding agency and the specific funding track.
Market competitization: As has been argued many times, the proliferation of markets through practices of marketization has been an essential process in the transformations of the social world in recent decades (e.g.Schimank and Volkmann 2012).However, as the sociology of markets has convincingly shown, the concrete form in which markets are realized is central to their functioning (e.g.Callon 2021;Fligstein and Dauter 2007).The format of concrete markets often repeatedly changed throughout their history, as with trading carbon emission allowances and credits in specific market systems.For these emissions trading market systems to work, a key aspect is competition among market participants, since these systems are constructed with the assumption that perfect competition can achieve a desired level of emissions reductions in a cost-effective manner.The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, which was the first and is the current-largest cross-border emissions trading system in the world, was launched in 2005 and the system's mechanism has been recurrently modified since then.For example, starting in 2013, the national allocation plans were replaced by an EU-wide overall cap on CO 2 emissions.Moreover, while emission allowances had previously been distributed largely free of charge, they were increasingly allocated by auction from 2013 onwards.Furthermore, allowances that remain free of charge will no longer be allocated according to the facility's historical emissions, but instead according to the principle of best-available technology; that is, measured against the benchmark of what the output of a modern and efficient facility of the same size would be.The concrete allocation mechanism shapes how the competitors are brought into competitive relations and, thus, the functioning of the carbon market.
Rankings: Rankings are a central example of competitization by mechanism, making actors comparable and awarding prestigious and exclusive top positions to competitors who best meet the criteria of the ranking in question (Espeland andSauder 2016, Esposito andStark 2019;Ringel, Espeland, and Sauder 2021).However, the specific allocation mechanisms of the rankings can vary widely.Thus, it is particularly interesting to examine which specific ranking format is introduced, which, for example, may be complex or simple, may or may not be scientifically based, may work via quantitative or qualitative criteria, may be transparent or hidden, or may award several winners or only one.This also applies to city rankings, whose competitive allocation mechanisms can be differentiated according to various aspects, such as their spatial scope, their criteria and indicators, their methodology, or their form of dissemination (Giffinger, Haindlmaier, and Kramar 2010).
Whether in the case of the establishment of competitions in academia, carbon emission markets, or rankings, all examples involve the introduction of a mechanism through which a scarce good is awarded to the party that best meets certain criteria whereby the concrete shape of the mechanism is essential for the specific functioning of the respective competition.

Framing social situations as competitive and understanding oneself and others as competitors (competitization by imaginary)
The third dimension of competitization, competitization by imaginary, grasps how actions and situations are increasingly framed, narrated, and understood as competitive in scientific and public discourses but also in everyday interpretations of all kinds of people, and how actors increasingly understand themselves and others as competitors.Although a scarce good as well as a competitive allocation mechanism have been constructed, this does not mean that the actors involved necessarily see themselves as competitors.Thus, there is always the possibility that actors do not internalize competitive imperatives, and instead appropriate competition for their own purposes or contest competitive contexts; for example, by means of solidarity (Arnold 2021;Christensen and Knudsen 2021;Lagerström et al. 2021).Moreover, Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse (2021) note that while an actor may perceive others as competitors, this is not necessarily the case vice versa.Thus, competitive relationships do not need to be reciprocal.Rather, a social imaginary of competition and a normalization of competitive framing are required to establish competitive self-understandings.For example, the sociologist Tobias Werron tries to understand how competition has become a 'taken-for-granted part of our modern world view,' or, 'a general institutionalized imaginary' (Werron 2015, 197).In the same vein, Jessen (2014) describes the increased importance of competition as an interpretative pattern in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, while Nullmeier (2002) notes the increasing framing of social situations and activities as competition, and Tauschek (2013) points out the normalization of competition as part of actors' everyday selfinterpretations.Michel Foucault and the scholars who follow his work examine competitive imaginaries as part of a governmental rationality of liberalism in detail (Brown 2015;Bröckling 2016;Davies 2014;Foucault 2008;Gane 2019;Lemke, Krasmann, and Bröckling 2000;Martin 1988;Rose 1999).They refer to an understanding of government as a link between power and subject and examine how neoliberalism as a political project produces autonomous, self-responsible, and economic-rational subjects following entrepreneurial calculation.Competitization by imaginary, then, is a form of producing and governing subjectivities.However, although the scientific and political framing of social interaction as competition may often explain why people perceive situations as competitive, competitization by imaginary does not necessarily proceed top-down and it seems promising to study empirically how, in detail, scientific knowledge, political discourses and everyday perceptions mutually influence each other.
Although approaches that study competitization by imaginary may vary in their detailed conceptions, they share the view that culture shapes how people understand themselves, whether they theorize culture as knowledge, meanings, or semiotic/symbolic orders.From this perspective, there is no ahistoric homo competicus whose actions are oriented toward calculating and winning by nature.Thus, there is a fundamental difference between (neoclassical) economic approacheswhich, due to a universal competitive subject, do not see competitization by imaginary as an issue at alland the positions presented in this section, which understand competitive subjects as contingent and historical.
To conceptualize this dimension of competitization, it is helpful to distinguish between contextspecific competitization that relates to specific situations or fields and generalized competitization, which describes an increasing general competitive stance about one's daily concerns and fellow human beings.The first case relates to competitive understandings and subjectivities limited to specific fields like the desire to win in sports or an entrepreneurial ethos in the economic field and in the market, while other fields remain unaffected.This means that one can leave competitive understandings and subjectivities behind by withdrawing from competitive arenas; for, example, by resigning or retiring, or simply at the end of sports training.The second case results from a generalization of this competitive stance, such as a modern drive to win as a will to success (Nullmeier 2002, 160-161), as a constant effort to maintain competitiveness and to opportunistically remain open for future possibilities (Rosa 2006, 88-89 and 94), or as the perpetual optimization of oneself so that physical and psychological resources provide a stable foundation for professional success (Reckwitz 2020, 131 and 221).
Again, I return to the three example fields of competitization for illustrative purposes.
Competitization in academia: In the last two decades, many scholars have been concerned with competitive imaginaries in the academic world and to what extent scholars understand themselves and others as competitors.For example, competitive imaginaries in academia can manifest in scholars increasingly seeing themselves as academic entrepreneurs (Peter 2017), comparing themselves more intensely with colleagues (Hammarfelt, de Rijcke, and Rushforth 2016), following the publishor-perish principle (Carson et al. 2013;van Dalen and Henkens 2012), maximizing the citability of publications and gaming of citations and authorships (Biagioli and Lippman 2020, MacDonald 2023), or maximizing scholarly output by dividing publications into least publishable units (Broad 1981).In this regard, an interesting example is the impact that academic social networks and their high visibility of metrics of other scholars have on their users and their competitive self-understandings.For example, Komljenovic (2018) studies how metrics on academic social networks promote competition, Utz and Muscanell (2018) investigate feelings of envy and pride when using platforms, Duffy and Pooley (2017) explore how these networks lead to self-branding of scholars, and Hammarfelt, de Rijcke, and Rushforth (2016) examine how profiles on academic social networks serve as technologies of the professional self.These studies show how competitive imaginaries shape scholars' worldviews and self-understandings and are essential for competitization in academia.
Market competitization: Market competitization by imaginary means the proliferation of the view of social situations as markets.This was an essential element of establishing economics as an academic discipline and the adoption of economic analysis in other disciplines and politics since the nineteenth century.In the second half of the twentieth century, some authors even claimed a universal applicability of the perspective on markets to social life.The work of Gary Becker (1992) who was heavily criticized for his 'economic imperialism' offers a well-known example of this expansion (Fine and Milonakis 2009;Mäki 2009).This work applied an approach to human behavior as economic and competitive on a variety of issues like crime, family, discrimination, marriage, the death penalty, and human capital, and had a lasting impact on the public framing of social life as markets.The work of Ronald Coase, whose ideas made an important contribution to the development and implementation of emissions trading systems, can also be understood from this perspective as contributing to the strengthening of a competitive imaginary in recent decades and as a prerequisite for the notion that pollution is manageable in a competitive market system.In particular, he reinforced the idea of the rational and maximizing individual and the 'psychological emphasis on competitiveness as an essential trait of individuals' beyond competition as an institutional property of the market (Davies 2014, 47).However, academic knowledge, like Becker's and Coase's work, is not the only contributor to market competitization through imaginary.The framing of social situations as markets is also coconstructed by and part of the everyday knowledge of political decision-makers and 'economists in the wild' (Callon 2007;Çalışkan and Callon 2010).
Rankings: As mentioned above, technologies and practices that measure, quantify, evaluate, audit, and rank have gained great importance in recent decades, and bring new ways of understanding oneself and the relations between social entities with them (Espeland and Sauder 2016;Esposito and Stark 2019;Brankovic, Ringel, and Werron 2018;Mau 2019;Ringel, Espeland, and Sauder 2021).For example, several studies address the link between city rankings and the notion of cities as competing spatial entities.Many scholars describe how the rise of city competition and rankings has been accompanied by a new orientation of urban policy toward competitive rankings (Mattissek 2008;McCann, Roy, and Ward 2013) and the adoption of entrepreneurial strategies to increase their competitiveness (Harvey 1989;Jessop and Sum 2000).Essentially, this is accompanied by the adoption of a competitive imaginary that conceives other cities as competitors (Altreiter et al. 2023;McCann 2004).Thus, competitization by imaginary captures changes in how cities and the relationships between them are increasingly understood in terms of competition.
In all of these examples, the construction of a competition imaginarycompetitors as seeing themselves as acting in competition, and other actors as competitorsis an essential dimension of competitization.

Constituting actors capable of competitive behavior (competitization by agency)
Competitization by agency, the fourth and last dimension of competitization discussed in this paper, refers to the introduction or the enhancement of the competitors' ability to strategically and competitively decide, control, and act with regard to the competitive allocation mechanism.Even if a good is scarce, a competitive allocation mechanism has been introduced and the actors involved perceive the situation as competitive and themselves as competitors, this does not necessarily mean that the actors can act competitively and, thus, enact competition.For example, as Brunsson and Wedlin (2021) note, a lack of agency may mean that a ranking does not spark competition because the ranked entities are not capable of making decisions and acting.
Most notably, Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse (2021) point out that agency is a central requirement for competition.They emphasize that social actors do not emerge naturally, but have to be constructed, and that their capabilities fundamentally depend on their resources.Additionally, the specific materialities involved can play an essential role in producing agency and competitive capacities.For example, Callon and Muniesa (2005) assert that it is not individuals who are calculating, but that calculation is a distributed, collective effort of human and non-human agenciessuch as tools like a calculator, bookkeeping, or algorithms.From a competition research perspective, these technologies can be understood as another type of competition device that endows social entities with a capacity to act competitively.As Michel Foucault (2008) has shown, increasingly sophisticated technologies of self-observation and self-government developed over the centuries, which increased agency over one's own body and self.In recent decades, different scholars have described tendencies toward self-optimization that emerge in the context of flexible careers and that are facilitated by recent digital technologies and devices to track and quantify various aspects of one's life such as daily steps, sleeping time, or athletic activities (Duttweiler et al. 2016;Lupton 2016), which further increase the agency over one's own body, enable strategic action, and, thus, make it possible to actually compete to a greater extent.However, while competition often takes place between individuals, it also occurs between larger entities such as sports teams, musical ensembles, educational institutions, corporations, or nations.Whether it is an individual or a large group, the social entity must first be constituted as an actor capable of competing in order to enact competition at all.This dimension of competitization through the establishment of competitive agency is again illustrated by the three main examples: Competitization in academia: Although university rankings have existed in the United States since the end of the nineteenth century (Musselin 2018;Ringel and Werron 2020), competition between these universities was not actually possible as long as they did not have the ability to make autonomous decisions and implement them.The construction of the competitive agency of universities by turning them into organizational actors, thus, was an essential requirement of academic competitization (Hasse and Krücken 2013;Musselin 2018).Similar developments have been described for the school system and the agency of schools as a precondition for the ability to compete for students; for example, by developing an outstanding school profile (Bomark, Edlund, and Arora-Jonsson 2021).At the individual scholar level, competitization by agency can be seen, for example, in the increasing technological capabilities used to measure and analyze output and productivity, which increasingly equip scholars with the ability to strategically manage that output and productivity, as studies on academic social networks and their omnipresent metrics show (Hammarfelt, de Rijcke, and Rushforth 2016).
Market competitization: The case of emissions trading schemes is less telling here, as the agency of the companies involved existed long before these schemes were introduced.Companies are the actors with competitive agency par excellence, whose management structures are clearly designed for strategic capabilities to decide, control, and act.Thus, corporate agency with respect to emissions trading did not emerge primarily as a result of the introduction of emissions trading systems.Nevertheless, corporate agency is constructed and shaped in specific ways even within the context of emissions trading.First, emissions trading systems address companies and make them key actors in tackling the climate crisis by endowing them with the agency to participate in emissions trading.However, not all companies have access to the carbon market because emissions trading only applies to certain emissions from certain activities.Thus, companies that are not involved in these activities do not have agency to participate in trading.Moreover, the role of agency is illustrated by the fact that companies vary in their ability to participate in emissions trading due to differences in skills, knowledge, and resources.Finally, companies also try to increase their own agency regarding emissions trading by developing climate strategy plans and carbon credit procurement strategies.
Rankings: Rankings are an interesting example in regard to competitization by agency because often the lack of agency of the entities being ranked means that there is no full-fledged competition, as in the case of university rankings.In some cases, however, rankings lead to the creation or modification of decision-making structures in order to become more capable of action.This is the case for city rankings that have resulted in certain cities changing their administrative structures to be able to respond to rankings and take action accordingly; for example, by centralizing decisionmaking competencies, establishing individual departments to deal with rankings, or establishing city marketing agencies (Anttiroiko 2015;Kaufmann and Arnold 2018).
In each of these examples, the introduction or strengthening of the competitors' agency was an essential dimension of competitization.Competitive agency was sometimes constructed at the same time as the competitive allocation mechanism, sometimes as a result of it or in response to it.

Conclusion: competitization as a multidimensional process
To conclude, I want to return to the introduction and emphasize three aspects of conceptualizing competitization as presented in this paper.First, understanding competitization as a multidimensional process allows for distinguishing between different dimensions of competitization and considering cases where not all of these dimensions are constructed while keeping them in the same framework.Starting from the four basic elements of competition, as demonstrated in the introduction, full-fledged competitization requires all four dimensions of competitization to occur.The competed-for good must be established as scarce, a competitive mechanism of allocation has to be introduced, and actors have to understand themselves and others as competitors and must be able to act competitively.However, as already mentioned, it is also very common for cases to occur in which not every dimension of competitization has taken place, which could be described as incomplete competitization.In order to speak meaningfully of incomplete competition, either a competition imaginary or a competitive allocation mechanism should be established.Three variants of incomplete competition seem to be especially relevant: (1) No competitive imaginary: Cases in which a scarce good, a competitive allocation mechanism, and actors with competitive agency have all been constructed, but the actors do not see themselves as competitors.For example, Brankovic, Ringel, and Werron (2018) indicate that although rankings may produce scarcity and a competitive allocation mechanism, they do not necessarily cause competitive self-understanding and behavior between the units ranked, which they call 'decoupling.'Moreover, people may even disguise mechanisms of competitive allocation in certain situation to avoid being affected by it.For example, friends who apply for the same job may downplay the competitive situation to prevent their friendship from being affected by the rivalry.(2) No competitive agency: Cases in which a scarce good and a competitive allocation mechanism have been constructed, but the competitors have no agency and therefore cannot enact the competition.As mentioned earlier, this was the case regarding American universities until the 1980s, where competitive rankings have existed since the end of the nineteenth century, but universities had no decision-making authority because they were internally fragmented (Hasse and Krücken 2013;Musselin 2018).(3) No competitive mechanism of allocation: Cases in which a scarce good and actors who see themselves as competitors and have agency have been constructed even though there is no competitive allocation mechanism.For example, as Scroggins and Souleles (2021) show, contests can draw actors into competition even if these contests are only imagined.Furthermore, the cases of the introduction of competition that Aspers (2021) describes as 'mutual adjustment' can be understood as competitization without mechanism.As these examples show, although it is often only possible to identify incomplete competitization, rather than full-fledged competitization, it seems useful to analyze these cases within the same framework.This also allows to recognize cases of misidentification of competition, which are discussed as competition, but do not show all dimensions of competitization.In addition, this approach can be used to identify cases of failed competitization in which individual dimensions of competitization were not realized as intended.At the same time, however, it can also be used to identify cases of potential competitization in which full-fledged competitization is close at hand.
A second aspect of this paper's framework for theorizing competitization, building on the first aspect, is the opportunity to clarify how the different dimensions relate to each other by empirically studying their temporality and interconnectedness.This also means that the framework can be used to account for cases where individual dimensions (for example, scarcity or agency) were not constructed with the intention of introducing competition, yet may enable full-fledged competitization.For example, how is the increasing scarcity of a good related to the mechanism regulating its allocation?How does the proliferation of the mechanisms of competitive allocation influence the self-understandings of actors?To what extent does the spread of competition devices such as self-tracking gadgets or metrics encourage competitive understandings of social situations?Two cases seem particularly relevant here: (1) Competitive agency through competitive allocation mechanism: Cases where the introduction of a competitive allocation mechanism triggers the strengthening of the competitors' agency.This applies to aforementioned competition between universities.As described above, despite being ranked, these universities initially had no agency.However, increasing competitive formats were an incentive for universities to be restructured as strategic organizations, giving them new decision-making powers and competitive capabilities (Hasse and Krücken 2013;Musselin 2018).( 2) Competitive imaginary through competitive allocation mechanism: Cases where the introduction of a competitive allocation mechanism leads to a competitive self-understanding of the actors involved.For example, Scroggins and Souleles (2021) discuss how contests and prizes can work as a 'lure' that draws actors into competition and makes them understand themselves as competitors without them being fully aware of this process.
Using this paper's four dimensions of competitization, these examples allow for distinguishing between the different relations between the dimensions and the different temporal sequences of their construction.Moreover, the framework allows for empirically identifying specific configurations of the four dimensions at a given time or in a given case.For example, Davies (2014, 49) asserts that in late neoliberalism, competitiveness as a psychological trait is more important than actual institutions of competitiona change that can be described within the framework as a shift from competitization by mechanism to competitization by imaginary.
Third and finally, I want to reiterate that competitization is not congruent with marketization or economizationa point made by many scholars from social and cultural disciplines (Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse 2021;Arora-Jonsson et al. 2021;Engel 2019, 81;Nullmeier 2002;Rosa 2006;Tauschek 2013;Werron 2015).Thus, competitization does not necessarily mean market competitization, which can rather be understood as a subprocess of competitization.It is useful to recall Simmel's conception of competition as a modern social form, which does not only exist in the economy, but in many other social fields.When theorized this way, competitization is a much more comprehensive and extensive process and part of the even more comprehensive process of modernization. 4 Rosa (2006, 83), for example, adds competitization to other principles of modernization such as economization, rationalization, differentiation, and individualization (see also Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse 2021).From this perspective, competitization is not just an economic process, but a sociocultural process.The paper shows that this process is multidimensional and simultaneously affects a great variety of fields, including the economic field, albeit sometimes in an incomplete manner, and argues for a systematic empirical study of the different dimensions.Notes 1.While the term competitization is not commonly used in English-speaking academia, it is cursorily used in the German-speaking world (in German: 'Verwettbewerblichung,' e.g.Wetzel 2013).However, it is not systematically elaborated upon there either.
2. This includes social constructivist approaches as well as those that critically engage with them and develop them further, such as Latour's concepts of 'realistic constructivism' and 'instauration' (Latour 2003;2013).3.There are minor differences between the four dimensions of competitization discussed in this paper and the competition definitions of Arora-Jonsson, Brunsson, and Hasse (2021b) and Werron (2015), which also differ slightly.However, these differences are not the focus of this paper, which is concerned with competitization as the construction of the individual elements of competition and the relations between these dimensions of competitization.4. Of course, the narrower process of market competitization can also be analyzed as a subprocess of modernization, as Marion Fourcade demonstrated (2007).

Table 1 .
Elements of competition and dimensions of competitization.