Do international organizations perform?
The new issue of the Review of International Organizations has a collection of essays on a critical topic—how to measure the performance of international organizations. Tamar Gutner (full disclosure: the head of my academic program) and Alexander Thompson tee up the issue by arguing that international relations scholars haven’t grappled adequately with the question of ...
The new issue of the Review of International Organizations has a collection of essays on a critical topic—how to measure the performance of international organizations. Tamar Gutner (full disclosure: the head of my academic program) and Alexander Thompson tee up the issue by arguing that international relations scholars haven't grappled adequately with the question of whether multinational institutions perform. "While performance evaluation has been a hot topic inside individual organizations and in the policy literature," they write, "it has not been on the radar screen of most international relations scholars." In essence, IR scholars have been so tied up arguing about why states create these organizations and whether they matter at all that they've largely neglected critical examination of their performance. Addressing that gap is critical, they argue, not least for the organizations themselves. Given their distance from the citizenry, "the most viable source of legitimacy for IOs in the foreseeable future is likely to be good performance."
The new issue of the Review of International Organizations has a collection of essays on a critical topic—how to measure the performance of international organizations. Tamar Gutner (full disclosure: the head of my academic program) and Alexander Thompson tee up the issue by arguing that international relations scholars haven’t grappled adequately with the question of whether multinational institutions perform. "While performance evaluation has been a hot topic inside individual organizations and in the policy literature," they write, "it has not been on the radar screen of most international relations scholars." In essence, IR scholars have been so tied up arguing about why states create these organizations and whether they matter at all that they’ve largely neglected critical examination of their performance. Addressing that gap is critical, they argue, not least for the organizations themselves. Given their distance from the citizenry, "the most viable source of legitimacy for IOs in the foreseeable future is likely to be good performance."
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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