scholarly journals Problematizing Scientization in International Organizations

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-22
Author(s):  
Teklu Abate Bekele
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Comparative Education ◽  
Organizational Legitimacy ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Recent Emergence ◽  
Education And Development

Comparative education studies examined the roles multilateral organizations and non-governmental organizations play in global governance and international development. Emphasis has been given to their engagements both at policy and practice levels as well as their impacts. Generally, the mechanisms international organizations use to govern education and development seem qualitatively to change over time. The most recent emerging research trajectory explains how international organizations primarily use the power of scientific knowledge for organizational legitimacy, credibility, and impact. This is referred to in the literature as soft governance, epistemic governance, scientization, or scientific multilateralism, as it significantly relies on the authority of scientific knowledge as opposed to hard, financial preconditions, for global governance and development. Our understanding of scientization is still in its ‘infancy’, partly due to its relatively recent emergence and partly due to the use of varied indicators to assess it across organizational types. To contribute toward further theorization, this study problematizes scientization in international organizations, with a focus on multilateral, intergovernmental organizations. The study is organized around answering this overarching question: What are the conceptual and methodological attributes or features of scientization in international organizations? Using sociological theories and conceptions of policymaking and transfer, it discusses core substantive, methodological, and theoretical issues of scientization having relevance for further research.

scholarly journals A quick indicator of effectiveness of “capacity building” initiatives of NGOs and international organizations

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 155
Author(s):  
David Lempert
Keyword(s):  
Capacity Building ◽  
International Development ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Development Interventions ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Sample Test ◽  
Foreign Governments

The article offers an easy-to-use indicator for scholars and practitioners to measure whether NGOs, international organizations, and government policies and projects meet the criteria for design and implementation of “capacity building” projects that have been established by various international organizations and that are recognized by experts in the field. The indicator can be used directly to address failures that are routinely reported in this key and growing development intervention. Use of this indicator on more than a dozen standard interventions funded today by international development banks, UN organizations, country donors, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) reveals that while many smaller organizations are working to change institutions and society in ways that effectively build long-term capacity, most of the major actors in the field of development have failed to follow their own guidelines. Many appear to be using “capacity building” as a cover for lobbying foreign governments to promote international agendas (“purchasing foreign officials”) and/or to increase the power of particular officials at the expense of democracy, with the public lacking simple accountability tools. The indicator points to specific areas for holding development actors accountable in order to promote development goals of sustainability and good governance. The breadth of the field of “capacity building” also allows this indicator to be used, with some modifications, for a large variety of development interventions. This article also offers several examples of where current capacity building projects fail, along with a sample test of the indicator using UNCDF as a case study.

Part VI Relationships of International Organizations with Other Actors, Ch.33 Relations with Civil Society

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scholte Jan Aart
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Fourth Section ◽  
The Third ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Regulatory Processes ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the forms, consequences, and challenges of civil society involvement in contemporary global governance. It is organized as follows. The first section considers definitions of civil society. The second section maps the various involvements of civil society actors in global regulatory processes. The third section surveys different theoretical understandings of the relationship between civil society and global governance. The fourth section assesses the substantive impacts of civil society interventions in global governance, that is, how NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and other civil society groups affect institutional developments, agendas, decisions, discourses, and deeper structures of global governance. The fifth section considers the relationship between civil society and legitimacy in global governance. The conclusion includes several suggestions for future enhancement of civil society engagement of global-scale regulation.

scholarly journals Private experiments in global governance: primary commodity roundtables and the politics of deliberation

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Brassett ◽  
Ben Richardson ◽  
William Smith
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Sustainability Criteria ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Regulatory Regimes ◽  
Experimentalist Governance

Emerging scholarship on global governance offers ever-more detailed analyses of private regulatory regimes. These regimes aim to regulate some area of social activity without a mandate from, or participation of, states or international organizations. While there are numerous empirical studies of these regimes, the normative theoretical literature has arguably struggled to keep pace with such developments. This is unfortunate, as the proliferation of private regulatory regimes raises important issues about legitimacy in global governance. The aim of this paper is to address some of these issues by elaborating a theoretical framework that can orientate normative investigation of these schemes. It does this through turning to the idea of experimentalist governance. It is argued that experimentalism can provide an important and provocative set of insights about the processes and logics of emerging governance schemes. The critical purchase of this theory is illustrated through an application to the case of primary commodities roundtables, part of ongoing attempts by non-governmental organizations, producers, and buyers to set sustainability criteria for commodity production across a range of sectors. The idea of experimentalist governance, we argue, can lend much needed theoretical structure to debates about the normative legitimacy of private regulatory regimes.

A "Democracy Building" Development Project Indicator for NGOs and International Organizations

Global Jurist ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. Lempert
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Development ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Development Project ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
Sample Test

The article offers an easy-to-use indicator for scholars and practitioners to measure whether non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international organizations, and government policies and projects meet the criteria for “democracy” that have been established by various international treaties and that are recognized by experts in the field. Use of this indicator on more than a dozen standard interventions funded today by international development banks, United Nations organizations, country donors, and NGOs reveals that most of the major actors in the field of development are actually failing to promote democracy and good governance and points to the specific areas where they need to improve in order to fulfill democracy, governance and rights criteria. This article also offers a sample test of the indicator using the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) as a case study.

Non-Governmental Organizations as Motors of Change

2007 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 513-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelia Beyer
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Institutions ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Formation Processes ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations

AbstractOn one hand, NGOs are seen as experts because of their proximity to the problems they address. They provide knowledge relevant to the solution of these problems and can bring this into the political process. They are able to increase the efficiency of global governance by participating in the policy-formation processes of international organizations. In this paper I will explain the role and functions of NGOs as described in the debate about their legitimacy and theorize – while applying Ernst Haas's theory of organizational learning – on the mechanisms likely to lead to their increasing integration into international institutions as well as the implications of this integration.

The role of civil society and organizations

2018 ◽  
pp. 317-326
Author(s):  
Matilda van den Bosch ◽  
Cathey E. Falvo ◽  
Génon K. Jensen ◽  
Joshua Karliner ◽  
Rachel Stancliffe
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Sustainable Practices ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Environment And Health ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Future

Civil society and non-governmental organizations play a major role in advocating for environment and health interactions in policy and practice. They work to influence the future healthcare agenda towards more sustainable practices, where also the role of nature is part of a general mindset among healthcare politicians, practitioners, and researchers. This chapter will give examples of how the translation of science into practice can be facilitated through the channels of such organizations. Four international organizations are selected to provide examples of how organizations can be developed, what missions and goals are common themes, how they can function, and what kind of activities they may be engaged in.

Mechanisms of Global Governance: Economic Analysis

2013 ◽  
pp. 4-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Grigoryev ◽  
A. Kurdin
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Global Level ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Global Problems

The coordination of economic activity at the global level is carried out through different mechanisms, which regulate activities of companies, states, international organizations. In spite of wide diversity of entrenched mechanisms of governance in different areas, they can be classified on the basis of key characteristics, including distribution of property rights, mechanisms of governance (in the narrow sense according to O. Williamson), mechanisms of expansion. This approach can contribute not only to classifying existing institutions but also to designing new ones. The modern aggravation of global problems may require rethinking mechanisms of global governance. The authors offer the universal framework for considering this problem and its possible solutions.

Accountability in Global Governance

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gisela Hirschmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Third Parties ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The Right ◽  
Austerity Policy ◽  
Comprehensive Study

How can international organizations (IOs) like the United Nations (UN) and their implementing partners be held accountable if their actions and policies violate fundamental human rights? Political scientists and legal scholars have shed a much-needed light on the limits of traditional accountability when it comes to complex global governance. However, conventional studies on IO accountability fail to systematically analyze a related, puzzling empirical trend: human rights violations that occur in the context of global governance do not go unnoticed altogether; they are investigated and sanctioned by independent third parties. This book puts forward the concept of pluralist accountability, whereby third parties hold IOs and their implementing partners accountable for human rights violations. We can expect pluralist accountability to evolve if a competitive environment stimulates third parties to enact accountability and if the implementing actors are vulnerable to human rights demands. Based on a comprehensive study of UN-mandated operations in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Kosovo, the European Union Troika’s austerity policy, and global public–private health partnerships in India, this book demonstrates how competition and human rights vulnerability shape the evolution of pluralist accountability in response to diverse human rights violations, such as human trafficking, the violation of the rights of detainees, economic rights, and the right to consent in clinical trials. While highlighting the importance of studying alternative accountability mechanisms, this book also argues that pluralist accountability should not be regarded as a panacea for IOs’ legitimacy problems, as it is often less legalized and might cause multiple accountability disorder.

Angling for Influence: Institutional Proliferation in Development Banking

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Pratt
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
Multilateral Development Banks ◽  
Institutional Control ◽  
Bretton Woods ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Identification Strategy

Abstract Why do states build new international organizations (IOs) in issue areas where many institutions already exist? Prevailing theories of institutional creation emphasize their ability to resolve market failures, but adding new IOs can increase uncertainty and rule inconsistency. I argue that institutional proliferation occurs when existing IOs fail to adapt to shifts in state power. Member states expect decision-making rules to reflect their underlying power; when it does not, they demand greater influence in the organization. Subsequent bargaining over the redistribution of IO influence often fails due to credibility and information problems. As a result, under-represented states construct new organizations that provide them with greater institutional control. To test this argument, I examine the proliferation of multilateral development banks since 1944. I leverage a novel identification strategy rooted in the allocation of World Bank votes at Bretton Woods to show that the probability of institutional proliferation is higher when power is misaligned in existing institutions. My results suggest that conflict over shifts in global power contribute to the fragmentation of global governance.

scholarly journals Fixing Technology with Society: The Coproduction of Democratic Deficits and Responsible Innovation at the OECD and the European Commission

2021 ◽  
pp. 016224392199910
Author(s):  
Nina Frahm ◽  
Tess Doezema ◽  
Sebastian Pfotenhauer
Keyword(s):  
European Commission ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Responsible Innovation ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
Major Barrier ◽  
Societal Participation ◽  
New Vision ◽  
Governance Institutions

Long presented as a universal policy-recipe for social prosperity and economic growth, the promise of innovation seems to be increasingly in question, giving way to a new vision of progress in which society is advanced as a central enabler of technoeconomic development. Frameworks such as “Responsible” or “Mission-oriented” Innovation, for example, have become commonplace parlance and practice in the governance of the innovation–society nexus. In this paper, we study the dynamics by which this “social fix” to technoscience has gained legitimacy in institutions of global governance by investigating recent projects at two international organizations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Commission, to mainstream “Responsible Innovation” frameworks and instruments across countries. Our analysis shows how the turn to societal participation in both organizations relies on a new deficit logic—a democratic deficit of innovation—that frames a lack of societal engagement in innovation governance as a major barrier to the uptake and dissemination of new technologies. These deficit politics enable global governance institutions to present “Responsible Innovation” frameworks as the solution and to claim authority over the coproduction of particular forms of democracy and innovation as intertwined pillars of a market-liberal international order.

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