Ways of Seeing International Organisations : New Perspectives for International Institutional Law

A breath of fresh air in the study of international institutions in global governance. As the United Nations -and multilateral diplomacy, more broadly- look at their weakest, this volume foregrounds the crucial role of such institutions in world (dis)order. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

For decades, the field of scholarship that studies the law and practice of international organisations -also known as ''international institutional law''- has been marked by an intellectual quietism. Most of the scholarship tends to focus narrowly on providing ''legal'' answers to ''legal'' questions. For that reason, perspectives rarely engage with the insights of critical traditions of legal thought (for instance, feminist, postcolonial, or political economy-oriented perspectives) or with interdisciplinary contributions produced outside the field. Ways of Seeing International Organisations challenges the narrow gaze of the field by bringing together authors across multiple disciplines to reflect on the need for ''new'' perspectives in international institutional law. Highlighting the limits of mainstream approaches, the authors instead interrogate international organisations as pivots in processes of world-making. To achieve this, the volume is organised around four fundamental themes: expertise; structure; performance; and capital. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.