Les enseignements de l’administration publique pour la gouvernance mondiale. Conclusions du numéro spécial sur « La bureaucratie internationale et le système des Nations unies »

Abstract

The role of international bureaucracies in providing governance in the 21st C is expanding. Not only is the United Nations (UN) bureaucracy large and growing (see introduction to this volume by Thorvaldsdottir et al. 2021), but international organizations of diverse kinds beyond the UN are actively crafting policies, practices, and rules that govern international life in almost every sphere of activity (Weiss and Wilkenson, 2014). Understanding the power, procedures, and effects of these international public administrations (IPAs) will be essential and, as the papers here demonstrate, a public administration (PA) perspective can shine light on crucial issues that both policymakers and scholars in other scholarly fields (political science, economics, sociology) might miss. In what follows I do two things. First, I highlight findings from these papers that may surprise and intrigue scholars in other fields, particularly my own (international relations (IR)), and I highlight what PA scholars are bringing to the broader interdisciplinary conversation. Second, I draw out implications of these findings for broader issues under discussion among global governance scholars elsewhere that PA might fruitfully consider