International Organizations Engaging the World

This book shows how international organizations interact with various different actors, and how this affects these organizations.

Jan Klabbers (Edited by)

9781009536219, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 October 2025

312 pages
28 x 19 x 2.3 cm, 0.617 kg

International organizations have always been exclusively seen as vehicles for their member states, exercising delegated powers. This book demonstrates that this picture is seriously outdated: international organizations address a wide variety of social actors, and this needs to be reflected in the way we think about international organizations. The book provides an overview, in distinct chapters, about the sort of actors international organizations engage which; provides empirical examples; investigates potential winners and losers of such interaction, and aims to find ways to come to terms with the realization that international organizations are not solely member state-driven. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

1. The vacuum assumption in international organizations law Jan Klabbers
2. How International organizations may affect the legal position of non-members Fernando Lusa Bordin
3. Law and the interaction between international organizations René Urueña
4. Governance shapers? The big four, international organizations and the EU Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz and Evgenia Raili
5. Towards an Urban internationalism? Cities and international organizations in the interwar era? Helmut Philpp Aust
6. Climate action in sports – The UN climate change's sports for climate action initiative and its implementation in the wider sports sector Rebecca Schmidt
7. International organizations and the market Elisabetto Morlino
8. International organizations as sellers of goods and services Ukri Soirila
9. Corporate Philanthropy in the UN development sector Tleuzhan Zhunussova
10. The WHO and the A1H1 Flu: fine-tuning for pandemic responses Sebastian Machado
11. The problem of applicable law in the contractual relations between international organizations and private parties Orfeas Chasapis Tassinis
12. The private sector and gavi, the vaccine alliance: a story of continuous evolution Eelco Szabó
13. Public-private cooperation in global security governance: entanglement, infrastructure and the affordances of fundamental rights Dimitri van den Meerssche
14. Institutional promiscuity – an epilogue Jan Klabbers.

Subject Areas: Public international law [LBB]