Ways of Seeing International Organisations
New Perspectives for International Institutional Law

Advocates for an interdisciplinary and heterodox approach to the role of international institutions in global governance.

Negar Mansouri (Edited by), Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín (Edited by)

9781009552622, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 April 2025

342 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.668 kg

'Engaging and provocative, this volume shows international organizations as sites of socio-technical struggle. Challenging the dominance of 'problem-solving thinking' in international institutional law, Ways of Seeing International Organizations draws from law, history, anthropology, and political science to provide a rich description of institutional practices and their distributive effects. A sophisticated, unconventional, and insightful take on the lives of international organizations.' René Urueña, Professor of Law, Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)

For decades, the field of scholarship that studies the law and practice of international organisations -also known as 'international institutional law'- has been marked by an intellectual quietism. Most of the scholarship tends to focus narrowly on providing 'legal' answers to 'legal' questions. For that reason, perspectives rarely engage with the insights of critical traditions of legal thought (for instance, feminist, postcolonial, or political economy-oriented perspectives) or with interdisciplinary contributions produced outside the field. Ways of Seeing International Organisations challenges the narrow gaze of the field by bringing together authors across multiple disciplines to reflect on the need for 'new' perspectives in international institutional law. Highlighting the limits of mainstream approaches, the authors instead interrogate international organisations as pivots in processes of world-making. To achieve this, the volume is organised around four fundamental themes: expertise; structure; performance; and capital. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Part I. Thinking International Organisations Differently: 1. Seeing international organisations differently Negar Mansouri and Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín
2. Critical theory and international organisations: the need for an integrated approach B. S. Chimni
3. Inter-disciplinarity and the law of international organizations Jan Klabbers
Part II. Ways of Seeing International Institutions: Expertise, Authority, & Knowledge Production: 4. Studying the assembling of expertise in global governance Annabelle Littoz-Monnet
5. Experts, practices, power: the work of international criminal court reform Richard Clements
6. Drawing the contours of hidden hunger as an object of governance Juanita Uribe
Structures, Spaces, & Jurisdictions: 7. The puzzle of freedom: structure and agency in international adjudication Tommaso Soave
8. Reassembling transnational legal conflicts across global institutions: ethnographic perspectives on claims of authority over the Mediterranean Sea Kiri Santer
9. Placeholders: an archival journey into the interim histories of international organisations Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín
People, Practices, & Performance: 10. The micro-politics of international commissions: the case of telegraphic standards Jan Eijking
11. Keeping up standards for a better world: anthropological alternatives to the study of international organisations Miia Halme-Tuomisaari
12. 'The critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles': on professional performances and material practices Dimitri Van Den Meerssche
Capital, Class, & Political Economy: 13. Laissez faire, state capitalism, and the making of international organizations: the dynamics of a struggle Negar Mansouri
14. Deconstructing 'resilience talk' in global governance: toward a critical political economy approach A. Claire Cutler
15. A white knight in shining armor? Ethiopia, international organisations, and the global colour line Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín
Part III. Conclusion: 16: Examining elephants in the dark Guy Fiti Sinclair.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS]