Seeing like an International Organisation

Abstract

International organisations (IOs) often serve as the 'engine room' of ideas for structural reforms at the national level, but how do IOs construct cognitive authority over the forms, processes, and prescriptions for institutional change in their member states? Exploring the analytic institutions created by international organisations provides insights into how they make their member states 'legible', and how greater legibility enables them to construct cognitive authority in specific policy areas which in turn enhances their capacity to influence changes in national frameworks for economic and social governance. By 'seeing like an international organisation' we can increase our understanding of the cognitive and organisational environment that guides an IO's actions and informs its policy advice to states, which enables a more comprehensive picture of how the everyday business of global governance works in practice. Instead of 'black boxing' international organisations, the contributors to this special issue demonstrate how studying IOs from the inside-out expands both our understanding of the policy dialogue between IOs and their member states, as well as how IOs and states learn from each other over time. KeywordsInternational organisations, cognitive authority, global economic governance, economic constructivism How do international organisations (IOs) construct cognitive authority over the forms, process, and prescriptions for institutional change in their member states? This special issue examines this complex question through concentrating on the analytic institutions that shape how IOs 'see' the social environments in which they seek to effect economic reforms and embed particular intellectual frameworks as commonsense solutions to a state's policy problems. The analytic processes through which IOs 'see' different societies and attempt to make them 'legible' through common systems of measurement and benchmarking standards constitute an indirect exercise of political power over distinct social, economic, and political systems, which rests upon the cognitive authority to measure, analyse, and prescribe institutional changes for states that is constructed by -and housed within -IOs themselves. While the processes through which IOs attempt to construct cognitive authority usually operate in the background -and tend to attract

Austerity: Neoliberal dreams come true?

“…The rhetoric may have changed in response to the crisis, but there is consistency in the general message (Vetterlein, 2015). The IMF, alongside other international financial institutions, helped to frame the crisis by identifying it, classifying it, diagnosing its causes and potential solutions, and presenting its policy advice as 'world's best practice' (see Broome and Seabrooke, 2012).…”

“…The IMF is first and foremost an organisation that seeks to assert 'cognitive authority' (Broome and Seabrooke, 2012) over its member states and to foster solutions to economic and social challenges that fit with its core beliefs. Its core beliefs are subject to change over time, but also have deep roots.…”

Local orders in international organisations: the World Health Organization's global programme on AIDS

“…5 WHO only re-established a full-fledged HIV/AIDS department in 2001 (Gerbase et al 2009: 10). 6 See also Broome and Seabrooke (2012) for an investigation of how IO units 'read' the relevant organisational environment. 7 This focus on trans-organisational coalitions slightly differs from open systems approaches that are primarily concerned with 'boundary spanners', that is, actors specialised in managing interorganisational relations (Ansell and Weber 1999: 92;Jo¨nsson 1986: 41).…”

Norm diffusion and the limits to forestry governance reform in Southeast Asia's new democracies

“…Through these various policy initiatives emerges an attempt to process international norm diffusion through the largely generic policy solutions produced by international organizations. The evolution and deployment of these norms by the same institutions are encouraged by internal efficiency motives and the process of institutional diffusion (Broome and Seabrooke 2012;Ovodenko and Keohane 2012). Institutional diffusion is 'the adoption in new or reformed institutions of institutional features already operating in other institutions, national, international or transnational'; it can operate across issue-areas, levels of governance, and groups of governments, and it occurs 'where either the issue area or the set of governments is the same as in a prior application of an institutional innovation, or when an international organization is involved' (Ovodenko and Keohane 2012: 524À525, 533).…”