Institutions with Authority, Autonomy, and Power

Abstract

Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics. By Michael Barnett, Martha Finnemore. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004. 240 pp., $45.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-8014-4090-4), $17.95 paper (ISBN: 0-8014-8823-0). In Rules for the World , Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore have written a forthright and path-breaking constructivist book that not only challenges the familiar realist and neorealist argument that international organizations (IOs) are entirely subservient to their member states but also the neoliberal assumption that international institutions are generally beneficent in character. In a sense, Barnett and Finnemore are addressing a great debate in international relations theory about the autonomy, authority, and power of IOs that never fully happened. They stake out a controversial and nuanced theoretical position, illustrate it with three case studies of actual bureaucratic practice, and consider the normative implications of the perspective they advance. Barnett and Finnnemore observe that at least 238 IOs operate in the world today. These organizations are actively involved in all sorts of global issues and even deal routinely with matters that formerly were the exclusive province of states (p. 1). Yet, oddly, IOs have been rather neglected both in terms of theory and empirical research. Why? The reason has been the state-centric nature of international relations theory, which has tended to persist even as new theories evolved. Realism and neorealism initially dominated the field, and both approaches assumed that IOs and their behavior merely reflected the preferences of member states. Even the emergent interest in interdependence during the 1970s had the effect of slighting IOs because it focused mainly on international regimes, interpreted as the “principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures' that governed state action” (pp. vii–viii). As Barnett and Finnemore argue, [I]nternational organizations … were not actors in their own right and had no …