Marieke Louis

The Field Study

Drawing upon the work of anthropologists and sociologists, scholars in political science and international relations (IR) increasingly rely on ethnographic methods. Based on multiple fieldwork experiences, within secretariats of international organizations and on the field of international interventions, this chapter addresses the relevance of such methods and the challenges of their concrete application in IR. It provides a series of concrete practical tricks to anticipate, prepare and conduct a fieldwork. It considers the different types of participation a researcher can adopt and stresses the various dimensions of observation. Finally, it draws attention to the daily challenges of ethnographic methods and suggests solutions to overcome issues of confidentiality and to deal with the effects of immersion. Ethnographic methods are relevant to cover a wide variety of fields and objects and therefore, as the chapter shows, are appropriate to the study of IR. More precisely, this chapter suggests different ways to adapt ethnographic methods to the specificities of international configurations. Doing fieldwork is required not only to study the relationships that structure the processes of internationalization and globalization but also to test the relevance of academic and indigenous categories produced to understand these configurations.

Representativeness from Within: A Comparison between the ILO and the ISO

Abstract Representativeness has become a keyword in reform projects of global governance. While it often appears as a cure for the legitimacy deficit of international organizations, this notion has hardly been defined at the global level. This article aims at filling this void by providing a socio-historical account of the meanings and uses of this concept based on a comparison of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), two of the oldest organizations in the global arena. Looking at the genesis of both organizations, the article shows that the categories and mechanisms used by international organizations to select their members are embedded in a broader socio-historical, political, and economic context. Moreover, they are subject to contestation and transformation. Representativeness may therefore be used both as a political resource for international players and as an analytical category for the study of the multilateral system over time.

Book Review: Christian Welz The European Social Dialogue under Articles 138 and 139 of the EC Treaty. Actors, Processes, Outcomes Kluwer Law International: The Netherlands, 2008; 659 pp.: 9789041127440, 130 (hbk)

in education, for example, which instruments to use in order to develop an effective international identity in the trade union movement. How far is education a sufficient tool to generate such an ‘international’ or ‘European’ identity? I believe that coordination strategies and structural support in this direction are also needed in order to accompany the development of an international trade union movement in the current global era.