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In this article, I reconceptualise the League of Nations as an Imperial Assemblage that embeds and is embedded by coloniality. Relying on the return to the League's historisisation by Third World Approaches to International Law, I argue that we can understand the League as a governance body that works across scales of international, transnational and local actors, processes and structures to reiterate coloniality within the mandated territories. I utilise Deleuzian notions of assemblage alongside the concept of 'coloniality' within the literature of decolonial theory within International Relations and Sociology to show how the work of the League's various actors, processes and structures across different scales made, actualised and evolved the laws on Forced Labour and Slavery from 1925 to 1932 in the inter-war era with a particular focus on Mandate Territories B and C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the ways in which Kosovo strategically uses multilateral diplomacy to navigate challenges and improve its international standing, despite the significant geopolitical constraints facing it. Regardless of opposition from influential states such as Serbia and Russia, Kosovo has been able to make incremental progress in gaining international recognition and legitimacy through its proactive participation in multilateral forums. Kosovo participates in different International and Regional Organisations, Treaties, and Conventions where it has a member/observer/participant/beneficiary and contracting party status. Using these platforms, Kosovo has effectively constructed a narrative of responsible statehood, positioning itself as a credible and constructive participant in global diplomacy. This approach yielded immediate diplomatic gains and has also contributed to a sustained trajectory towards broader acceptance and recognition. The study concludes that Kosovo's strategic use of multilateral diplomacy has led to both short-term diplomatic successes and long-term progress towards achieving broader international integration and acceptance. This illustrates the continued relevance of multilateralism for small states seeking to assert their sovereignty in the international arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how the World Bank formulates healthcare financing recommendations by examining the cases of Argentina and Croatia, two representative cases of socio-political transformations in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe during the Washington (1987–1997) and post-Washington Consensus (1997–2007) periods. It argues that when formulating recommendations, the World Bank is involved in the process of policy bricolage, defined as a process in which policy actors draw on multiple sources of knowledge and information to piece together contextualised policy solutions instead of relying on textbook blueprints or predefined solutions. By conducting a document analysis of World Bank publications, our findings suggest that, in formulating healthcare financing recommendations, the organisation does not dogmatically follow a particular policy paradigm. Instead, it contextualises and recombines existing ideas to tailor recommendations to country-specific conditions, namely economic and political circumstances, as well as healthcare system performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars tend to study international organisations as selective clubs. Theorising organisations as clubs, however, obscures an important aspect of their evolution that is connected to the goods they produce. Some organisations produce goods that are increasingly attractive and accessible to non-members. Those organisations face pressures to enlarge beyond the optimal size suggested by club theory, changing the experience of membership fundamentally. Over time, lower exclusivity, increased rivalry, and tighter governance structures shift the organisation from producing club-goods to managing common resource pools. The case of the European Union illustrates this transformation. By theorising the EU as a collection of common resources pools rather than a club, this study underscores how the EU accompanied the pressure for greater inclusiveness and competition for resources with reforms to strengthen member states' self-discipline and multilateral surveillance. Such institutional reforms were and remain necessary for any international organisation to avoid the tragedy of the commons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The way in which international actors formulate proposals for reforming or establishing public social policies not only varies between different organisations but is also dependent on the policy field in question. This article compares the positions of two international organisations (IOs), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), on the two related social policy fields of health and long-term care in Latin America. We apply qualitative document analysis to reports and strategy articles published by ECLAC and PAHO between 2000 and 2015. The analysis finds that despite some similar proposals by both organisations, there are also clear differences between their positions depending on the policy areas. While both organisations see the need to establish healthcare and long-term care as a human right, they have different ideas on targeted and universal approaches. Moreover, with long-term care as a new and emerging policy field, there is still much more variation in how the IOs address the topic, while proposals on healthcare are shaped by previous debates at international and regional levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Armed conflicts, pandemics or natural disasters often necessitate rapid, coordinated responses by international organisations (IOs) to avoid escalation or loss of life. However, effective analytical tools to assess and compare the speed of these responses are lacking. This paper introduces a framework for evaluating IO crisis response speed, with the aim of better understanding which IOs are best equipped to offer rapid crisis responses and which are not. I propose a three-stage model that measures the time for IOs to (a) recognise a crisis, (b) decide on measures and (c) implement these measures, while also accounting for variations in levels of precision and obligation. Using empirical insights from the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, I demonstrate how this model can generate data that can improve our understanding of the performance of IOs as crisis managers and foster discussions on enhancing the speed and efficiency of multilateral responses during crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organisations (IOs) have never been more authoritative and potentially agential while simultaneously faced more intense threats to their continued existence. Amid these dialectic conditions, this article identifies a novel type of behaviour: IO Survival Politics. IO Survival Politics occurs when senior institutional actors perceive the organisation to face an existential threat and, in response, employ extraordinary strategies to ensure the organisation's continued existence. Survival Politics thus differs both in degree and kind from the ways in which secretariats exercise influence during conditions of normal policymaking. Two case studies illustrate the concept: (1) the European Commission's response to Brexit and (2) NATO's response to President Trump's withdrawal threats. Drawing on 87 interviews with senior officials, the article shows that IO Survival Politics occurs across a range of diverse IOs in face of diverse threats and can be a crucial factor in determining the fate of IOs in crisis. By conceptualising IO Survival Politics, the article intends to open new avenues for research and advance scholarly understanding of IOs and the crisis of multilateralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digitalisation emerged as a central problem in global social governance in the past decade. 'Digital transformation' was expected to bring new social risks, requiring a redesign of the welfare state. This study examines the social policy responses of international actors on the digitalisation agenda in the 2010s and early 2020s. Inspired by sociological institutionalism, it shows different trajectories followed by UN agencies, the OECD and the World Bank in terms of addressing the social implications of this transformation. Despite these divergent organisational agendas, the article reveals the emergence of a new transnational policy paradigm, the 'Schumpeterian consensus', overcoming the antagonism between 'economic' and 'social' institutions from previous decades. In this paradigm, the 'Schumpeterian investment state' is seen as a mediator between the creative and destructive potential of technological change. Its social model encourages governments to invest in skills, universal social protection and flexicurity for the digital era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organisations and their local allies continue to press for the further expansion of social protection across Africa, often in the face of resistance. The future politics of social protection in Africa will be shaped by endogenous and exogenous changes. Endogenous changes involve feedback effects from the past and continuing expansion of social protection; these can be either positive or negative in terms of further expansion. Exogenous effects result from the changing structural context, including especially population growth, urbanisation, and climate change. As the Covid-19 pandemic and related lockdowns showed, even those exogenous shocks which reveal gaps in current provision need not prompt enduring expansions of social protection. Neither endogenous nor exogenous changes are likely to shift African countries off their current varied pathways; considerable political obstacles to the further expansion of social protection will persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organisations have become increasingly contested resulting in worries about their decline and termination. While international organisation termination is indeed a regular event in international relations, this article shows that other institutions carry the legacy of terminated international organisations. We develop the novel concept of international organisation afterlife and suggest indicators to systematically assess it. Our analysis of 26 major terminated international organisations reveals legal-institutional and asset continuity in 21 cases. To further illustrate this point, the article zooms in on the afterlife of the International Institute of Agriculture in the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Refugee Organization in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the Western European Union in the European Union. In these three cases, international organisation afterlife inspired and structured the design of their successor institutions. While specific international organisations might be terminated, international cooperation therefore often lives on in other institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article – and the special issue it introduces – contributes to the expanding scholarly literature on the global governance of education, with a particular focus on its future-oriented and 'promissory' dimension. Inspired by Beckert's (2020) concept of 'promissory' legitimacy, a key contribution of this special issue is to critically analyse past and contemporary promissory narratives of the major international organisations and other global actors concerning the future of education. We focus on three overarching themes that emerge from the contributions to this special issue: Problems of legitimacy in the global governance of education; a shift towards multistakeholderism, which we explore through the lens of 'the neuro-affective turn'; the use of crisis narratives as an instrument of global governance, and geopolitical shifts and the decline of the liberal world order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the possibilities and limitations of VET-related research by international organisations and compares the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (CEDEFOP) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in this context. Theoretically, the article refers to the concept of evidence-based research and its role in policy design. A catalogue of dimensions is developed for the comparison, which serves for the discussion to what extent and for what purpose evidence is generated that is intended to contribute to political decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the use of the so-called "international argument" in vocational education and training (VET) for the transfer of VET elements. Using policy documents of two political actors of the European Union at the interface between politics and research (CEDEFOP and ETF), exemplary ways of using the "international argument" are examined and systematised. Finally, desiderata for practice and research for a systematic investigation of the "international argument" are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vocational education and training (VET) is not only organisedwithin, but also increasingly beyond, the state. In this article, we analyse the growing international dimension of VETand propose to understand cross-border attempts to shape VET in the framework of "international VET governance". We present a typology comprising six types of international VET governance (bilateral, multilateral, intergovernmental, supranational, interregional and transnational) and illustrate these types using current examples from research and practice. We show that these types differ not only in their constellation of actors, but also in their institutional arrangements, the governance instruments used and the role of the state. The aim of our contribution is to bring together previous work on VET policy from international VET research in order to identify possible cross-connections and overlaps and to analyse them under the concept of international VET governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this concluding reflection, we value the special issue's focus on how power asymmetries among civil society organisations (CSOs) affect their relations with international organisations (IOs) and micro-level dynamics of in – and exclusion. Yet we propose to pay further attention to the crisis of liberal institutions and the shrinking spaces provided to some CSOs. We also encourage revisiting the liberal assumption that CSOs seek to democratise IOs and the proposition that the majority of CSOs are keen to cooperate with IOs. The pressing question for us is not how CSOs push in- or exclusion in IOs but how dynamics of in- and exclusion are generated in the web of practices performed by diverse actors. In our perspective, the question is best addressed in reflexive research that is aware of power relations, the methodological difficulties of researching CSOs and often inaccessible IOs, and the dangers of silencing non-academic voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how monumental preservation at the Taj Mahal leveraged the broader goals of national and international agencies including UNESCO and other UN bodies, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, to address the wicked problems of pollution, pro-poor tourism, and sustainable development. I suggest that the Taj, and more specifically its future preservation, is bound up in a set of conflictual connectivities and centrifugal forces that far exceed normative heritage and conservation practice. Thus the Mughal tomb became 'the critical receptor' and nodal site for an onslaught of international technical, economic, developmental and conservation schemes attempting to link cultural conservation with environmental concerns, in concert with social and economic uplift, well-being and urban resilience. What remains after decades of foreign studies, consultancies, technical reports, preservation monitoring and novel technologies? And how might we disentangle those wicked problems encircling monumental preservation in an era of environmental and political toxicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sovereignty becomes an essential concept when populist participation in international politics is examined. The research questions of this article are as follows: Which topics do right-wing populist leaders (Jair Bolsonaro and Viktor Orbán) connect to state sovereignty in International Organisations (IOs)? How do they act in IOs to defend the sovereignty of their countries if they perceive it – or their domestic power base – to be threatened? The article examines the behaviour of Brazil and Hungary in the United Nations, the European Union (Hungary) and the Organisation of American States (Brazil). The results illustrate that instead of quitting IOs, the populist leaders examined prefer to find like-minded allies among member states, while they also use harsh rhetoric and/or abstention/the power of veto in an attempt to reshape the direction of IOs when they see their countries' sovereignty and/or their domestic power as threatened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) played a key role in handling the Hungarian refugee crisis of 1956. It was this body, established in 1951, that organised the registration and transport of some 200,000 Hungarian refugees in Austria and Yugoslavia. This paper examines this international migration organisation in the 1950s based on the archives of the ICEM and the UN Secretariat, as well as on US, British and French foreign policy documents. It focuses on the workings of the ICEM concerning the Hungarian refugee crisis and its influence upon the subsequent history of the organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactions between International Organisations (IOs) within a regime complex often manifest themselves through competition and cooperation. Current research has examined the factors that promote inter-organisational competition and cooperation, yet the precise timing of when such competition or cooperation commences remains unclear. This paper focuses on two pivotal IOs in global health governance, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, to explore the timing and onset of competition and cooperation within a regime complex, as well as the driving factors in the evolution of their inter-organisational relationships. By looking into the interactions between the WHO and the World Bank in norm-setting and resource mobilising, the paper sheds light on how their relationships have transitioned from competitors to cooperators. It systematically presents the mechanisms and processes of policy transformation in inter-organisational interactions. As a new agenda arises, IOs within a regime complex often compete for dominance, with ideational differences driving them to propose and implement distinct governance strategies. They will compete for resources and mainstream of their strategy. The negative spillover effects of competitive policies consequently undermine the effectiveness of IOs' policy, thereby undercut their legitimacy. To surmount these challenges, the international community should promote inter-institutional coordination in global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since gaining independence, Ukraine has recognised the need to reform its vocational education and training (VET) system to better align with new economic realities. This necessity was largely driven by the country's increasing openness to the world and its desire to integrate with the European Union, which became especially pronounced after the Euromaidan protests in 2014. As a result, the government has pursued policies that are more closely aligned with the European Union. This led to greater international cooperation in the sphere of VET in Ukraine. The study on which this article reports analyses the impact of international organisations and cooperation programmes, as well as actions, initiatives and projects, on the changes and reforms in the Ukrainian VET system from 2013 to 2022 on normative and institutional levels. We adopt a theoretical framework that explains the areas and instruments of influence on policymaking in education used by international organisations. The method applied in the study is interviews with experts from international projects and initiatives currently active in Ukraine. Our findings indicate that international cooperation programmes have had a significant impact on the development of vocational education in Ukraine, particularly in areas such as the governance of the VET system, public‐private partnerships, quality assurance, qualifications frameworks, and digitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multilateral cooperation in international organisations is characterised by regime complexity. The literature usually adopts a policy-focused perspective studying the properties, effects, and dynamics within given regime complexes for different policy areas. Yet few accounts of why states drive regime complexity have been provided in the literature. Therefore, we adopt a state-focused perspective and observe how states differ in the extent to which they foster complexity through overlapping memberships and policy competencies in international organisations. In order to explain this variation, we extract state motivations from the regime complexity literature, but also incorporate the role of geopolitical opportunity structures for complexity as well as interactions between both elements. The empirical analysis reveals that the power to pursue self-interests leads to duplicated policy competencies, whereas duplicating international organisation memberships by creating new international organisations or joining existing ones is costly and a less favoured route towards pursuing substantive gains. The motivation to gain external reputation also positively influences the overlap in membership and policy competencies. Moreover, the number of neighbouring states and the disappearance of deep-rooted ideological cleavages are important opportunity structures for states furthering complexity. Opportunity structures also reinforce the positive effect of power to pursue self-interests and external reputation motivations on complexity. Thus, we contribute to regime complexity research in showing that not all states equally foster regime complexity and this relationship is dependent on a specific context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive literature has explored the influence of the OECD on school education policies globally, while their influence on higher education policies has been underexamined. This article addresses that void by analysing the internationalisation of higher education in Israel and South Korea. We suggest that joining the OECD provided political legitimacy for both countries and that the OECD comparative metrics and guidelines were crucial in generating anxieties about their underperformance in the global market for international students. These metrics served as benchmarks for internationalisation policies and shaped the foci, aims and definitions of success (i.e. parity with OECD averages). The desire to compete spurred cross-national policy referencing and borrowing, initially with little adaptation resulting in a form of 'prefabricated internationalisation'. Over time, the (im)balance between global aspiration and local realities resulted in localisation. We argue that policy isomorphism is overstated, and call for the recognition of complexity in the convergence debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous diseases can be prevented and treated with the help of Nutraceuticals. They have become an integral part of daily food intake for every human due to the increase in lifestyle-related health issues. Ensuring the enforcement of safety and quality standards is of utmost importance, particularly considering the widespread global usage of vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, prebiotics, probiotics, and herbal supplements for both preventive and therapeutic purposes. The necessity for the development of such regulatory guidelines has been further highlighted by the fast-growing global Nutraceutical business. Even though rules in the US, UK, and Europe have been simplified and made more conductive to growth of Nutraceutical product ecosystem, the Indian Nutraceutical companies and the regulatory landscape are still in their nascent stage and have a lot of room to grow and compete with other international organisations. India's Nutraceuticals industry is expanding quickly, and several measures have been made to position the country as a major role in the future of the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organisations have increasingly developed interest in the human rights dimensions of their development work. Some organisations have relatively more advanced engagement in rights issues, while others have considered human rights to be irrelevant to their mandate. Inter-organisational collaboration in common areas of work presents a peculiar site of human rights mainstreaming. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations and the World Bank have collaborated in investment in agriculture and related sectors for over half a century, in thousands of projects in hundreds of countries. Separately, the two organisations lie more or less on opposite ends of the spectrum of human rights integration in development work. They both have environmental and social policies, but with significantly differing attention to rights. Their collaborative engagement presents an interesting example of how human rights mainstreaming can be better articulated and implemented. A cursory look at the collaboration shows that the source of project funding, incentive and administrative structures and the knowledge and perceptions of technical staff add to the absence of clear rules on whose policies apply in what context, resulting in inconsistent practices that underserve the benefits of a human rights-based approach to investment in agriculture and related sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The normative output of international organisations is rarely legally binding as such. Yet, agendas and operational policies of international organisations have implications for both states and individuals. The current special issue explores the variety through which international organisations engage with human rights. The contributions of the special issue all approach this question from the perspective of the mandate and work of individual organisations. While on the one hand the engagement of organisations with human rights is defined by the institutional law of the organisation, it is also determined by administrative processes, normative frames and professional culture. In exploring the variety by which human rights become part of the work of organisations, the contributions raise questions ranging from conceptual endorsement of a rights-based approach, to performing organisation-specific functions and practical implementation, to staff emancipation. All of these aspects, the special issue shows, can be crucial for understanding the human rights endorsement (or lack of it) of international organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the arrival in power, for the first time, of a left-wing majority in Kosovo. Nowhere in the Western Balkans and Europe was the impact of the pandemic on politics so salient and extensive. The power shift created an unlikely opportunity for progressive social policy change. However, as shown by policy responses during the first year of the pandemic, substantial policy change is still uncertain. Although political parties have begun to matter more in policy choices, expansive change is constrained by the broader unfavourable conjuncture involving, among others, the existing neo-liberal welfare regime, its feedback on policy learning, mobile right-wing actors with influence in state institutions and global organisations such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and European Union – all of which may rather favour the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC) is the most comprehensive multilateral framework for dealing with democratic breakdowns and backslidings in the Western Hemisphere. In such cases, the Organisation of American States (OAS) is supposed to defend democracy by suspending states, imposing sanctions or taking other multilateral measures. Oftentimes, however, the OAS has looked the other way. The question, then, is what makes the difference. In this comparative case study, we use cross-cases comparisons and process-tracing to identify the actors and causal mechanisms that determine when and whether the IADC is actually enforced. We explain inconsistent enforcement by analysing interactions among three sets of actors – the governments of powerful member states, OAS secretaries general and civil society organisations – during coups, executive takeovers and electoral frauds in OAS member states between 2001 and 2020. Our analysis reveals that cooperation between an activist secretary general and civil society actors was neither sufficient nor necessary for IADC enforcement. By contrast, US support for enforcement was a necessary but insufficient condition for the OAS to act. To get it to do so, the United States required the support of two leading regional powers: Mexico and Brazil. These findings suggest that the 'right to democracy' enshrined in the IADC hinges upon the volatile preferences of the executives of the OAS's three most powerful member states. The resulting lack of institutional autonomy leads to inconsistent enforcement of the IADC, jeopardising the credibility of the region's formally declared right to democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses how and when institutional actors can shape overlap with other international organisations. Growing overlap either poses the threat of marginalisation to the incumbent organisation or offers opportunities for cooperation. Institutional actors should therefore be expected to try shape the relations with the overlapping organisation to protect their own. The article theorises that institutional actors can shape overlap if they possess sufficient institutional capacity and face a favourable opportunity structure. Whether institutional actors embrace or resist overlap, in turn, depends on their perception of the nature of the domain expansion of the other international organisation. Relying on 20 interviews with senior officials, the article probes the argument against the case of the growing overlap between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union resulting from the latter's recent security and defence initiatives. Contrary to most expectations, it finds that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization actors played a consequential role in restructuring the relationship with the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of Kosovo's public social welfare provision is today spent on basic universal programmes, namely, old-age pensions, healthcare services and child benefits. These programmes are tax-financed, citizenship-based and unconditional with regard to other criteria. Such expansive basic universalism is unusual for the Western Balkans and the rest of post-socialist Southeastern Europe. The first two of these programmes emerged through a complex process of policy formation led by powerful international organisations (IOs). The third programme was more recently initiated by the first-ever left-wing majority that came to power after two decades of democratic elections, implementing a manifesto that endorses a progressive policy mix. This outcome is counterintuitive: the IOs would be naturally expected to lean towards means-tested, targeted programmes, and Kosovo to crystallise into a (neo)liberal welfare regime (path-dependency). The article examines the detailed causal mechanisms that intervened in producing the outcome. Basic universalism has already had a significant impact in Kosovo by contributing to poverty reduction, the size of overall social protection expenditure and citizenship-building, and by serving as a good policy standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to promote a better understanding of the link between normative climate justice claims—originating in Political Theory and Philosophy—and concrete social practices of the climate justice movement active at the international climate negotiations. We argue that the climate justice movement can be understood as a community of practice. Empirically, we zoom into this community of practice and comparatively analyse three case studies on human rights networks, faith-based groups and gender justice advocates. Methodologically, our analysis is based on a review of primary and secondary documents, participatory observations and expert interviews at the climate negotiations in Warsaw (2013), Bonn (2014), and Paris (2015) and via skype/phone (2013–2016). Our analysis reveals that each network within the community of practice—even those with more radical objectives—minimise the demands formulated at the outset in order to successfully cooperate with state negotiators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The African Union is emerging as a prominent actor in election assistance and observation. Considering the continued centrality of the electoral process to democracy-building efforts in Africa, African continental and regional organisations are increasingly monitoring elections and taking the lead in election observation processes across the continent. This paper contributes to the African agency literature by showing how agency is operationalised and implemented through international election observation. Focusing on Malawi's recent electoral history (2004–2020), this paper argues that the African Union is institutionalising its election observation protocols and challenging the dominant position of western international actors, through enacting the role and agency of continental and regional actors. It critically assesses the African Union's ability to undertake these efforts and how it has addressed elections, and the politics surrounding them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the origin, development and fall of the 'school voucher' system in Spain. It was called the Ley de Financiación de la Enseñanza Obligatoria (Compulsory Education Financing Law) (LFEO), and this reform represented the first attempt at an international level to establish a school voucher model for a whole country. This article attempts to explain the importance of the new ideas that emerged from the Economics of Education and International Organisation to understand the origin of the proposed LFEO. It also focuses on its development and the parliamentary debate of the law. Finally, it explains how other foreign ideas began to compete to establish models of equal opportunities in education different from the one proposed. The paper provides a valuable insight into how educational transfers take place, and the importance of the role that local actors can play in the development and, in this case, the failure of such transfers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the influence of policy ideas from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on healthcare financing policy in Croatia during the 2002 reform. It contributes to the global social policy literature by providing evidence that the influence of international organisations primarily stems from non-coercive instruments to control the policy agenda, for example, dissemination of ideas, technical assistance and consultations with the recipient government. Even though Croatia was facing economic and political difficulties which weakened its bargaining position vis a vis IOs, the paper shows that impact of coercion and conditionalities attached to international aid was limited. It explains the lenient stance of international organisations by their mission to aid and adjust to a country's needs as well as their self-interest to lend money, to stay in the reform game and to prolong their influence in the future. Consequently, international organisations are willing to bargain and make trade-offs with the recipient government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As novel instruments in global governance, international organisations' (IOs) global reports have emerged in all policy sectors in the more recent period. Drawing on an original dataset of N = 363 editions from N = 95 explicitly global reports from the period 1947–2019, this study documents the rise of reporting and uses citation and content analyses to examine the changing role of science. Reporting based on scientific research and quantitative indicators increases over time and across all sectors, yet particularly striking since the late 1980s and most in sectors dealing with human development and the environment. Drawing on arguments from world society theory, the sociology of quantification and post-truth approaches, this work argues that while reports provide IOs with new legitimacy in science-based governance, their scientised and quantified nature is likely to make IO activities the target of antiscientific populist rhetoric and critical arguments about a reductionist interpretation of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organisations (IOs) are said to command growing levels of authority. But in studying this phenomenon, scholars predominantly focus on the formal capacities member states assign to IOs. Much less attention is paid to the effects of IO authority, that is, how authority is exerted in practice and what it does within the affected societies. Based on a case study of the African Union's (AU) anti-coup regime, I make the case for a 'bottom-up' approach to IO authority, focusing on its localised enactment and effects. Analysing the AU's authority through a governmentality lens and drawing on several months of field research, I show that the AU's authority to govern coups is indeed effective: in commanding the re-establishment of constitutional order, the AU prescribes a particular imaginary of political order to resolve conflict and shapes the conduct of political actors in affected states by inscribing them into this order. But rather than operating in a top-down, direct way, the AU's authority is enacted in a distant, diffuse manner. Although based on formal powers assigned to the AU, neither the way this authority is exercised nor its effects can be inferred merely from these formal powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focal organisations are typically seen as the undisputed leaders in addressing specific cooperation problems. However, as global governance becomes increasingly fragmented and contested, even well-established organisations are now facing challenges to their traditionally unquestioned focality. Drawing on new theoretical insights, the article contends that the contestation of focal organisations is not a new phenomenon. On the contrary, most focal organisations experience challenges to their focality from their very establishment. At the same time, focal organisations are likely to respond to these challenges with tailored, ad hoc strategies. The article tests these expectations in the case of the global health governance complex, where the initial focality of the World Health Organization was contested by various actors since the outset. Among those contesting the World Health Organization’s focality, a prominent position was gained by the World Bank. By examining the interinstitutional relationship between the World Health Organization and the World Bank from the 1970s onwards, the article shows how this dynamic impacted the World Health Organization’s focality and influenced the broader evolution of the global health complex over the past decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "A Thousand Cuts: Social Protection in the Age of Austerity" published in the Liverpool Law Review discusses the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in global economic policy. It highlights how IMF conditionality, which includes austerity measures and neoliberal reforms, has had adverse effects on social protection and outcomes in borrowing countries. The authors, Alexandros Kentikelenis and Thomas Stubbs, argue that despite rhetoric about poverty reduction, IMF practices continue to negatively impact social policies. The article provides a detailed analysis of IMF conditionality and its effects on health spending, income inequality, and health outcomes, offering valuable insights for future research and potential advocacy against austerity measures. [Extracted from the article]

In the late 2010s, the future of work gathered attention from the most influential actors in global social governance. The International Labour Organization (ILO), since 2015 and in the context of its Future of Work Initiative, aimed to position itself in the discussion by putting this issue at the centre of their activities for its centenary (2019). The normative and conceptual approach developed by the ILO in this initiative was named the 'human-centred agenda', aimed to align technological change with decent work and social justice. Although preliminary scholarly works have seen these efforts as a humanistic and pro-worker 'countermovement', a deeper analysis of the ideas and interests involved in the Future of Work Initiative reveals a different, more complex picture. This article studies the creation of the human-centred agenda led by the ILO secretariat and the Global Commission on the Future of Work, and how it was further negotiated and modified by the social partners in the making of the Centenary Declaration in 2019. In particular, it shows how business at the ILO and right-wing populist governments, in tandem, reoriented the human-centred agenda towards a pro-employer perspective, thus framing social and labour policy as a tool for adapting the workforce to technological change. It concludes with some reflections about the consequences of these developments for the ILO's position in global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to shed light on the diverse role and place attributed to interreligious dialogue in the intercultural dialogue initiatives advanced by a wealth of international organisations over the last 20 years. It claims that the position of interreligious dialogue within these broader international efforts can be either blended, disjunct, autonomous or neglected, and that this variation primarily depends on how each organisation has dealt with both the position of the West-Islam juxtaposition in the definition and implementation of its intercultural dialogue agenda, and on its specific understanding of the relation between the concepts of culture and religion. Analysing the discourse, governance and policy dimensions of a wealth of such international organisations' initiatives, this paper provides a typology of existing approaches to interreligious dialogue which will further contribute exposing the underlying rationale behind intercultural dialogue efforts in international politics and untangling the fuzziness around this concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many authors have argued that International Public Administration can influence policy-making through their expert authority. The article compares de jure and de facto expert authority of IPAs to evaluate their conformity. It comparatively assesses the two kinds of authority for five important IPAs (BIS, FAO, IMF, OECD and World Bank) active in agriculture or financial policy. It shows that, on average, de jure and de facto authority seem to conform. At the same time, it demonstrates that gaps between de jure and de facto authority exist at the level of the IPAs, the policy areas and the IPAs' addressees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brussels is known worldwide for hosting (most of) the European institutions as well as several other international organisations like North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Besides the symbolic political value, their presence has an economic impact because of their administrative activities and staff remunerations. Estimating the economic impact poses two main challenges. First, the supranational nature of these organisations makes it challenging to quantify the size of these institutions and related bodies because country-based statistical systems hardly account for transnational organisations. Second, as these institutions and organisations mainly rely on taxpayers' funding, policymakers need transparent estimates to assess the implications of their decisions as well as for a matter of accountability. For these purposes, a meticulous data collection is carried out, and transparent assumptions are used to estimate the local economic multiplier effect of these activities accounting for operational expenditures, employees' consumption as well as (Belgian) taxes and saving. The results show that the economic impact for the Brussels-Capital Region lies between 23% and 26% of regional turnover and 19% and 20% of employment, while interregional spillovers are estimated being around 1.5% to 1.7% of regional turnover and 0.6% to 0.7% of employment for both Flemish and Walloon regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The welfare state is increasingly challenged and threatened by futures, whose exact realisation remains largely uncertain. The article compares how the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the World Bank anticipate and authorise "futures of work" in light of technological transformations and climate change. The article shows that IOs face epistemic constraints both in constructing problems and in designing social security policy proposals. Constraints rely on visions of possible and probable futures over which the IOs do not always have control. Anticipatory practices that enact future visions oscillate between concretely specifying future developments and narrative flexibility, which does not directly specify courses of action but impacts core logics behind policy proposals. Irrespective of IOs' ideological differences, solutions to technological transformations focus on precaution, whereas solutions to climate change focus on preparation. While precaution allows for imagining possibilities, preparation stresses the urgency of issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a comparative analysis of the anticipatory practices deployed by two international organisations (IOs), UNESCO and the OECD, to govern education futures. I show how their coordination of education futures is mediated by: (1) their different histories, missions, resources and geo-political alliances; (2) use of different anticipatory practices; (3) ongoing tensions between the two organisations around who dominates future-making in education; and (4) the challenges to be negotiated when anticipated futures arrive as a problematic present. My argument develops around three moments of crisis as new arenas for what Ann Mische calls "hyper-projectivity" around futures. In each moment I explore the way UNESCO and the OECD engage in, and compete over, framing, shaping and materialising future presents. In doing so, they claim to be guardians of education futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue introduction develops the concept of anticipatory global governance by focusing on the practices through which international organisations (IOs) imagine and establish "present futures" across diverse transnational issue areas. Rather than following a conventional chronological stance, the contributors adopt a constructivist perspective on time to detail the logics and effects of anticipatory practices. In this introductory article, we suggest that the analysis of IOs' anticipatory practices and the resulting present futures can broaden our understanding of global governance in two ways. First, we highlight the implications of how IOs problematise and govern yet-uncertain future transnational issues. Second, we reveal how in this process IOs perform, rather than simply wield, authority by sanctioning a wide range of visions. The special issue develops a general conceptual vocabulary for the study of anticipatory global governance, and provides empirical evidence on how IOs govern by anticipation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for normative change is rarely self-evident but requires the sustained efforts of actors to create a demand for action. With emerging technologies such as autonomous weapons systems (AWS), the challenge is even greater given the early stages of development and use of these systems. This places unusual demands on actors to present evidence for the nature, scale and severity of a problem. Suggesting that the epistemic bases of norm-building are poorly understood, the article introduces a practice-theoretical approach to cast light on how international organisations cope with the uncertainty surrounding AWS. The key claim is that the emergence of anticipatory norms depends upon forward-looking epistemic practices that produce knowledge about future governance objects and create a demand for preventive action. Analysing the role of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), I argue that attempts to de-science-fictionalise the issue rather than futuristic scenarios may proof integral to propel the emergence of anticipatory norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do international organisations (IOs) govern the present based on claims about the coming impacts of technological change? Drawing on primary documents and participant observation, this article traces how the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) anticipates automation emanating from the growing integration of blockchain technologies in global governance. We find that promises of radical, rapid, and reckless automation advanced by promoters of Bitcoin and other 'defiant' applications of the technology are steered by this IO towards more incremental and carefully managed forms of automation. The OECD relies on two managerialist practices to anticipate "reckless automation" through the promotion of what we identify as "responsible disruption". In combination, OECD practices of scenario building and shared orientation framework construction deepen and extend managerial forms of global governance today whose technocratic and expert-led nature limits democratic possibilities and perpetuates global inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tajikistan is one of the main migrant origin countries in the post-Soviet world, with about one million labour migrants living and working in Russia. It is also one of the world's most remittance-dependent economies. By exploring how and why the Tajik government has engaged with labour migrants since 1991, this article analyses the development of emigration policy in Tajikistan. In doing so, the article de-reifies the state and illustrates the complexity of policy processes: many actors are directly and indirectly involved in policymaking and implementation. Four aspects are analysed: shifts in emigration policymaking over time and the influence of different domestic actors; the assistance offered to labour migrants; the impact of Russia as the main host country; and the influence of international organisations in the context of the nascent global governance of migration. This article argues that Tajikistan's emigration policy has gradually moved from a laissez-faire phase, through a proactive, then a "messy", to a reactive one. It shows that Tajik authorities have followed often contradictory pathways of (non)involvement with labour migrants and thereby illustrates how declared policies can be distinguished from informal practices performed by the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affordable access to medicines is a key determinant of a country's resilience to health crises. The modern hyper-connected international trade and production networks have a vital role to play in ensuring this accessibility, especially in the context of a pandemic. This article focuses on medicines and medical equipment and analyses the synergistic role of the two international organisations—The World Trade Organisation (WTO) and The World Health Organisation (WHO), in assuring affordable access to these goods globally. WHO is responsible for global healthcare regulations; however, the medical supply chain originates in a few developed countries, manufactured in bulk (in case of medicine) at low cost in developing countries, and finally traded worldwide. Here, the role of WTO comes in where it facilitates global trade cooperation and intellectual property rights monitoring, both key elements in medical goods production and trading. Despite the need for cooperation in mitigating COVID-19, much of the global response to COVID-19 has been fragmented and inward-looking. This lack of coordination has serious repercussions especially for developing countries. We use qualitative content analysis methodology, connecting concepts of cooperation theory and global governance to identify the joint role of the two organisations in fostering global cooperation in medical goods accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]