Making Global Institutions Work

Making Global Institutions Work
Author: Kate Brennan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2014-09-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317629620

This book seeks to think differently about what we recognize as "global institutions" and how they could work better for the people who need them most. By so doing, the contributions show that there is a group of institutions that influence enough people’s lives in significant enough ways through what they protect, provide or enable that they should be considered, together, as global institutions. The United Nations, the World Bank, the internet as well as private military and security companies leave a heavy footprint on the social, political and economic landscape of the planet. We are all aware in different ways of the existence of these global institutions but their importance in achieving change in the twenty-first century is often underestimated. In this book, contributors seek to explain what associations exist between change in global institutions and the reduction of poverty and inequality as well as the achievement of security and justice. The work makes sense of processes of change and identifies the most significant obstacles that exist, offering suggestions for future action that will be of interest to students and scholars of global institutions.

Making International Institutions Work

Making International Institutions Work
Author: Ranjit Lall
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2023-02-23
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1009216287

This book explains why some international institutions succeed and others fail - and what we can do to improve them.

Ideology and International Institutions

Ideology and International Institutions
Author: Erik Voeten
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2021-01-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 069120733X

A new theoretical framework for understanding how social, economic, and political conflicts influence international institutions and their place in the global order Today’s liberal international institutional order is being challenged by the rising power of illiberal states and by domestic political changes inside liberal states. Against this backdrop, Ideology and International Institutions offers a broader understanding of international institutions by arguing that the politics of multilateralism has always been based on ideology and ideological divisions. Erik Voeten develops new theories and measures to make sense of past and current challenges to multilateral institutions. Voeten presents a straightforward theoretical framework that analyzes multilateral institutions as attempts by states to shift the policies of others toward their preferred ideological positions. He then measures how states have positioned themselves in global ideological conflicts during the past seventy-five years. Empirical chapters illustrate how ideological struggles shape the design of international institutions, membership in international institutions, and the critical role of multilateral institutions in militarized conflicts. Voeten also examines populism’s rise and other ideological threats to the liberal international order. Ideology and International Institutions explores the essential ways in which ideological contestation has influenced world politics.

Institutional Design

Institutional Design
Author: David L. Weimer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 206
Release: 1995-03-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780792395034

Policy scientists have long been concerned with understanding the basic tools, or instruments, that governments can use to accomplish their goals. The initial interest in inductively developing comprehensive lists of generic instruments for policy analysis soon gave way to efforts to discover more parsimonious, but still useful, specifications of the elementary components out of which instruments can be assembled. Moving from a generic instrument to a fully specified policy alternative, however, requires the designer to go much beyond the elementary components. Rather than directly specifying some of these details, the designer may instead set the rules by which they will be specified. The creation of these specifications and rules can be thought of as institutional design. This book helps scholars and policy analysts formulate more effective policy alternatives by a better understanding of institutional design. The feasibility and effectiveness of policies depend on the political, economic, and social contexts in which they are embedded. These contexts provide an environment of existing institutions that offer opportunities and barriers to institutional design. A fundamental understanding of institutional design requires theories of institutions and institutional change. With a resurgence of interest in institutions in recent years, there are many possible sources of theory. The contributors to this volume draw from the variety of sources to identify implications for understanding institutional design.

Rules for the World

Rules for the World
Author: Michael Barnett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2012-04-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0801465109

Rules for the World provides an innovative perspective on the behavior of international organizations and their effects on global politics. Arguing against the conventional wisdom that these bodies are little more than instruments of states, Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore begin with the fundamental insight that international organizations are bureaucracies that have authority to make rules and so exercise power. At the same time, Barnett and Finnemore maintain, such bureaucracies can become obsessed with their own rules, producing unresponsive, inefficient, and self-defeating outcomes. Authority thus gives international organizations autonomy and allows them to evolve and expand in ways unintended by their creators. Barnett and Finnemore reinterpret three areas of activity that have prompted extensive policy debate: the use of expertise by the IMF to expand its intrusion into national economies; the redefinition of the category "refugees" and decision to repatriate by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; and the UN Secretariat's failure to recommend an intervention during the first weeks of the Rwandan genocide. By providing theoretical foundations for treating these organizations as autonomous actors in their own right, Rules for the World contributes greatly to our understanding of global politics and global governance.

International Organizations Revisited

International Organizations Revisited
Author: Dennis Dijkzeul
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2021-07-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781800731226

Despite the sustained scholarly attention that the United Nations and international NGOs have received in the twenty-first century, they still remain under-researched from a management studies perspective. This volume brings together rich analyses of these organizations’ functioning, arguing that they are best understood as intermediaries between international decision-making and funding bodies in the developed world and initiatives that take place on the ground, primarily in the Global South. Based on current management research, this follow-up to Rethinking International Organizations (Berghahn, 2002) provides a wealth of both empirical and theoretical insights, along with practical recommendations how these organizations can function more effectively.

Power in Global Governance

Power in Global Governance
Author: Michael Barnett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2004-12-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139444220

This edited volume examines power in its different dimensions in global governance. Scholars tend to underestimate the importance of power in international relations because of a failure to see its multiple forms. To expand the conceptual aperture, this book presents and employs a taxonomy that alerts scholars to the different kinds of power that are present in world politics. A team of international scholars demonstrate how these different forms connect and intersect in global governance in a range of different issue areas. Bringing together a variety of theoretical perspectives, this volume invites scholars to reconsider their conceptualization of power in world politics and how such a move can enliven and enrich their understanding of global governance.

To Reform the World

To Reform the World
Author: Guy Fiti Sinclair
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198757964

This book explores how international organizations (IOs) have expanded their powers over time without formally amending their founding treaties. IOs intervene in military, financial, economic, political, social, and cultural affairs, and increasingly take on roles not explicitly assigned to them by law. Sinclair contends that this 'mission creep' has allowed IOs to intervene internationally in a way that has allowed them to recast institutions within and interactions among states, societies, and peoples on a broadly Western, liberal model. Adopting a historical and interdisciplinary, socio-legal approach, Sinclair supports this claim through detailed investigations of historical episodes involving three very different organizations: the International Labour Organization in the interwar period; the United Nations in the two decades following the Second World War; and the World Bank from the 1950s through to the 1990s. The book draws on a wide range of original institutional and archival materials, bringing to light little-known aspects of each organization's activities, identifying continuities in the ideas and practices of international governance across the twentieth century, and speaking to a range of pressing theoretical questions in present-day international law and international relations.

The Politics of Expertise in International Organizations

The Politics of Expertise in International Organizations
Author: Annabelle Littoz-Monnet
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2017-02-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134879717

This edited volume advances existing research on the production and use of expert knowledge by international bureaucracies. Given the complexity, technicality and apparent apolitical character of the issues dealt with in global governance arenas, ‘evidence-based’ policy-making has imposed itself as the best way to evaluate the risks and consequences of political action in global arenas. In the absence of alternative, democratic modes of legitimation, international organizations have adopted this approach to policy-making. By treating international bureaucracies as strategic actors, this volume address novel questions: why and how do international bureaucrats deploy knowledge in policy-making? Where does the knowledge they use come from, and how can we retrace pathways between the origins of certain ideas and their adoption by international administrations? What kind of evidence do international bureaucrats resort to, and with what implications? Which types of knowledge are seen as authoritative, and why? This volume makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the way global policy agendas are shaped and propagated. It will be of great interest to scholars, policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of public policy, international relations, global governance and international organizations.

The Rational Design of International Institutions

The Rational Design of International Institutions
Author: Barbara Koremenos
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2003-12-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9781139449120

International institutions vary widely in terms of key institutional features such as membership, scope, and flexibility. In this 2004 book, Barbara Koremenos, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal argue that this is so because international actors are goal-seeking agents who make specific institutional design choices to solve the particular cooperation problems they face in different issue-areas. Using a Rational Design approach, they explore five features of institutions - membership, scope, centralization, control, and flexibility - and explain their variation in terms of four independent variables that characterize different cooperation problems: distribution, number of actors, enforcement, and uncertainty. The contributors to the volume then evaluate a set of conjectures in specific issue areas ranging from security organizations to trade structures to rules of war to international aviation. Alexander Wendt appraises the entire Rational Design model of evaluating international organizations and the authors respond in a conclusion that sets forth both the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach.