The Liberal Project of International Organisation and the Lure of Professionalism

Abstract

Throughout the last century, much has been made of international organisation by students of international relations. Originally alerted by hostilities that eventually culminated in World War I, many students of international relations have exhibited a pragmatic liberal persuasion and an ‘international mind’. They have analysed, and advocated, organised cooperation in the League of Nations (LoN) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as the appropriate strategy to cope with threats to peace and problems induced by growing interdependence. The intensification of political and socio-economic crises around the globe has only confirmed internationalists about their purpose. For they have become ever more enthusiastic about the United Nations Organisation (UNO), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the European Union (EU), the World Bank System (WB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) etc. being harbingers of peace, progress, and, respectively, social justice. Based on what they have meant that international organisations are and do, liberal internationalists have assumed an active stance to strengthen their performance, and to thus making the world a better place. Their enthusiasm has even led them to bemoan a new intellectual approach to international relations and organisation. In their opinion, studying international relations and organisations only through textbooks and from within academic institutions has proven inadequate. They now maintain that “[e]ven when the relevance of international affairs to everyday life is recognized intellectually, it is difficult to give the student a sense of how it feels to be a decision-maker at the national and international level.” Many internationalists have deplored what they see as a gap between the academic study of international relations and the active participation in the fora of international organisations. They thus deem it important to change the way students are being familiarised with international relations and organisations. They endorse what they perceive as a ‘paradigmatic shift’ in international relations teaching, namely the use of simulations and case studies, which arguably help teachers move both the world of international relations and the settings of various international organisations away from textbooks and lecture to where the action is. And indeed, since the days when it was at first popularised by