Martha Finnemore

The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations

International Relations scholars have vigorous theories to explain why international organizations (IOs) are created, but they have paid little attention to IO behavior and whether IOs actually do what their creators intend. This blind spot flows logically from the economic theories of organization that have dominated the study of international institutions and regimes. To recover the agency and autonomy of IOs, we offer a constructivist approach. Building on Max Webers well-known analysis of bureaucracy, we argue that IOs are much more powerful than even neoliberals have argued, and that the same characteristics of bureaucracy that make IOs powerful can also make them prone to dysfunctional behavior. IOs are powerful because, like all bureaucracies, they make rules, and, in so doing, they create social knowledge. IOs deploy this knowledge in ways that define shared international tasks, create new categories of actors, form new interests for actors, and transfer new models of political organization around the world. However, the same normative valuation on impersonal rules that defines bureaucracies and makes them powerful in modern life can also make them unresponsive to their environments, obsessed with their own rules at the expense of primary missions, and ultimately produce inefficient and self-defeating behavior. Sociological and constructivist approaches thus allow us to expand the research agenda beyond IO creation and to ask important questions about the consequences of global bureaucratization and the effects of IOs in world politics.

International organizations as teachers of norms: the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cutural Organization and science policy

Most explanations for the creation of new state institutions locate the cause of change in the conditions or characteristics of the states themselves. Some aspect of a states economic, social, political, or military situation is said to create a functional need for the new bureaucracy which then is taken up by one or more domestic groups who succeed in changing the state apparatus. However, changes in state structure may be prompted not only by changing conditions of individual states but also by socialization and conformance with international norms. In the case of one organizational innovation recently adopted by states across the international system, namely, science policy bureaucracies, indicators of state conditions and functional need for these entities are not correlated with the pattern for their adoption. Instead, adoption was prompted by the activities of an international organization which “taught” states the value of science policy organizations and established the coordination of science as an appropriate, and even a necessary, role for states. This finding lends support to constructivist or reflective theories that treat states as social entities shaped by international social action, as opposed to more conventional treatments of states as autonomous international agents.

Alternatives to “Legalization”: Richer Views of Law and Politics

The authors of “Legalization and World Politics” ( International Organization , 54, 3, summer 2000) define “legalization” as the degree of obligation, precision, and delegation that international institutions possess. We argue that this definition is unnecessarily narrow. Law is a broad social phenomenon that is deeply embedded in the practices, beliefs, and traditions of societies. Understanding its role in politics requires attention to the legitimacy of law, to custom and laws congruence with social practice, to the role of legal rationality, and to adherence to legal processes, including participation in laws construction. We examine three applications of “legalization” offered in the volume and show how a fuller consideration of laws role in politics can produce concepts that are more robust intellectually and more helpful to empirical research.

Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Unipolarity

Despite preponderant power, unipoles often do not get their way. Why? Scholars interested in polarity and the systemic structures determined by the distribution of power have largely focused on material power alone, but the structure of world politics is as much social as it is material. In this article the author explores three social mechanisms that limit unipolar power and shape its possible uses. The first involves legitimation. To exercise power effectively, unipoles must legitimate it and in the act of legitimating their power, it must be diffused since legitimation lies in the hands of others. The second involves institutionalization. A common way to legitimate power is to institutionalize it. Institutionalizing power in rational-legal authorities fundamentally transforms it, however. Once in place, institutions, laws, and rules have powers and internal logics of their own that unipoles find difficult to control. The third relates to hypocrisy. The social structures of legitimation and insti tutionalization do more than simply diffuse power away from the unipole; they create incentives for hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a double-edged sword for unipoles. On the one hand, unrestrained hypocrisy by unipoles undermines the legitimacy of their power. On the other hand, judicious hypocrisy can provide crucial strategies for melding ideals and interests. Indeed, honoring social ideals or principles in the breach can have long-lasting political effects, as decades of U.S. hypocrisy about democratization and human rights suggest.

Power in Global Governance: The power of liberal international organizations

International organizations are at the hub of most theoretical and historical discussions of global governance. Politicians, publics, and theorists alike believe that a globalizing world requires mechanisms to manage the growing complexity of crossnational interactions, and international organizations are the mechanism of choice. As a result of this vision, states have established more and more international organizations (IOs) to perform an increasingly varied array of tasks. IOs now manage conflicts, both international and civil. They promote economic growth and free trade, they work to avert environmental disasters, and they are actively involved in protecting human rights around the globe. The reasons states turn to IOs and delegate critical tasks to them are not mysterious or controversial in most of the scholarly literature. The conventional wisdom is that states create and delegate to IOs because they provide essential functions. They provide public goods, collect information, establish credible commitments, monitor agreements, and generally help states overcome problems associated with collective action and enhance individual and collective welfare. This perspective generates important insights, but the statism and functionalism of this view also obscures important features of IOs, making it difficult to see the power they exercise in global governance. First, the functionalist treatment of IOs reduces them to technical accomplishments, slighting their political character and the political work they do. It also presumes that the only interesting or important functions that IOs might perform are those that facilitate cooperation and resolve problems of interdependent choice. However, IOs do much more.

Exporting the English School

Barry Buzans essay provides a welcome forum for discussion about the virtues and future direction of the English School as a resource for IR research. Like many American With apologies to my Canadian colleagues, I use the term American to mean US. I am uncomfortable ascribing the concerns outlined here to scholars in Canada who have intellectual traditions of their own and may well have a different perspective on these matters. constructivists, I am an admirer of English School scholarship and have found it extremely helpful in my own work. I am less optimistic than Buzan, however, about the prospects that the English School will become either a grand theory or the focus of new trans-Atlantic IR debates. It is not clear to me that grand theory status is necessary for the English School; it may not even be particularly desirable. Buzan does not define what he means by a grand theory, but, from the context of his remarks and the Wallerstein example, it would seem that grand theory requires a degree of cohesion and discipline that is antithetical to the methodological pluralism which has characterized English School work and which Buzan views as one of its strongest virtues. Giving the English School more salience in American IR debates, by contrast, would be a real improvement. Even if it does not become the focus of debate, American scholarship would be enriched by incorporation of the historical and normative orientations the English School brings. As the growing strength of constructivist scholarship in the US indicates, there is an eager audience for theoretical frameworks that provide traction on such issues. In what follows I sketch some reasons why the English School has had only limited impact on US scholarship. Specifically, I will argue that the Schools lack of clarity about both method and theoretical claims has made it difficult for American scholars to incorporate it into their research. Addressing these issues might make the English School more useful to more US researchers. It might also have the converse effect of sharpening work within the School and assisting its advocates in constructing the research focus Buzan seeks.

Ontology, methodology, and causation in the American school of international political economy

ABSTRACT This paper explores disjunctures between ontology and methodology in the American school to better understand both the limits of this approach and ways we can counter its blind spots. Tierney and Maliniaks TRIP data point to a strong elective affinity between, on the one hand, rationalist/liberal ontological assumptions and quantitative methodologies, and on the other, constructivist assumptions and qualitative methodologies. This affinity is neither natural nor obvious, as is discussed. It also raises deeper issues for the field about the nature of causation. As a variety of philosophers of science have insisted, we need to do much better in thinking about the relationship between our underlying notions of causation and the methodological tools that we employ. By so doing, we will not only be able to better build social-scientific knowledge, but also better help bridge the empirical-normative gap that Cohen identifies. More broadly, the paper suggests that by combining a more thoughtful approach to causation with a broadly pragmatist approach to the philosophy of science we can both remedy some of the defects of the American school of international political economy, and provide some pointers to the British school, too.

Fights about rules: the role of efficacy and power in changing multilateralism

The American-led Iraq war that began in 2003 has generated intense discussion about when it is legitimate to use force and what force can accomplish. Often this debate is portrayed as a breakdown in consensus, with the US charting a new unilateralist course that undermines existing multilateral understandings of how force should be used. Often, too, the debate is portrayed as a transatlantic one in which Europeans (notably France, supported by Germany) are leading the multilateralist defence against growing US unilateralism. Both portrayals are overblown and simplistic. While the US is resisting current multilateral rules in some spheres, it is actively promoting more and more intrusive rules in others (such as trade). Further, the US has usually opposed multilateral rules it does not like, not with unilateralism, but with alternative forms of multilateralism. This has been true even of an administration as suspicious of the existing multilateral rules as the current Bush administration. Thus, if the UN will not approve military action in Kosovo, the US goes through NATO (under Clinton). If the US thinks the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is not working, it works through the Nuclear Suppliers Group or sets up a Proliferation Security Initiative (under Bush). Similarly, the perception of a large transatlantic gap in allies’ attitudes toward use of force is overstated. There has been transatlantic agreement on many uses of force in recent years. Europeans were active participants in the 1991 Gulf War, with the French among those patrolling the no-fly zone in Iraq in the years after the war, and the Kosovo action was supported by all members of NATO. The gap in the Kosovo case was not a transatlantic one, but a gap between the transatlantic alliance and Russia. Current debates over use of force look less like a fight between unilateralism and multilateralism than a fight over what exactly multilateralism means and what the shared rules that govern use of force are (or should be). Similarly, the gap in views on use of force is not only, or perhaps even primarily, a transatlantic one. There are many gaps in views on this question – gaps within Europe, gaps within the US, gaps across the international system. This is hardly an unusual state of affairs in world politics. Disagreements about when force should be used and can be used effectively are the norm, not the exception, historically. The more interesting questions for us as analysts are: what, exactly, do states think the rules governing force are; what do they think they should be; and how will these disagreements shape future action?

Constructing Norms for Global Cybersecurity

On February 16, 2016, a U.S. court ordered Apple to circumvent the security features of an iPhone 5C used by one of the terrorists who committed the San Bernardino shootings. Apple refused. It argued that breaking encryption for one phone could not be done without undermining the security of encryption more generally. It made a public appeal for “everyone to step back and consider the implications” of having a “back door” key to unlock any phone—which governments (and others) could deploy to track users or access their data. The U.S. government eventually withdrew its suit after the F.B.I. hired an outside party to access the phone. But the incident sparked a wide-ranging debate over the appropriate standards of behavior for companies like Apple and for their customers in constructing and using information and communication technologies (ICTs). That debate, in turn, is part of a much larger conversation. Essential as the Internet is, “rules of the road” for cyberspace are often unclear and have become the focus of serious conflicts.

The Politics of Global Partnership

Much of the conversation surrounding implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is very technocratic in tone and content. People worry about program design and efficiency. They worry about effectiveness and what techniques or programs will work. They worry about evaluation and specifying concrete measures for success. These are all important concerns. Indeed, they are crucial, and one of the very important contributions of the MDGs has been to set concrete, measurable goals that focus attention on some of these technocratic problems of evaluation. But technocratic know-how is only half of what is needed to meet the MDGs. Political know-how is also required.