The Bark and Bite of International Organizations in Implementing International Agreements

Abstract

International Organizations and Implementation: Enforcers, Managers, Authorities? Edited by Jutta Joachim, Bob Reinalda, Bertjan Verbeek. Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science, 2008. 224 pp., $140 hardcover (ISBN: 978-0-415-39788-9). The variety of roles now played by international organizations (IOs), some new and some old, has rekindled scholarly interest in the study of IOs, resuscitating a field that in the 1980s appeared to have been abandoned as IR scholars moved on to other “broader forms of international institutionalized behavior”—in particular, international regimes—that seemed to better explain actual behavior in international relations (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986:753–755; Rochester 1986; Senarclens 1993). This renaissance actually began with the end of the Cold War and has been spurred on by globalization and the technological revolution that have significantly altered the international political, economic and social landscape, especially the relationships between states, international business enterprises, and civil society, as well as the roles and functions of IOs within the rapidly changing international system of governance (Bruhl and Rittberger 2002). The growing interest in IOs, though, is not only among scholars of international relations, but also in other disciplines—such as policy studies, management, and public administration—that are bringing to bear new and different perspectives on and approaches to the study of IOs (Reinicke 1998; Dijkzeul and Beigbeder 2003; Muldoon 2003; Van Tulder with van der Zwart 2006). Today, research on IOs has become more inter-disciplinary …