2014/09/01 by Sebastian Schindler
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Global trade, sustainability, and social impact #International Development and Aid
paper · doi:10.1177/0305829814541167
openalex publication_date 2014/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
The research on international organisations (IOs) continues to be dominated by two distinctions: on the one hand, the distinction between rational choice and social construction; on the other hand, the distinction between IOs as arenas for states and IOs as actors in their own right. In this article I argue that these two distinctions structure not only our theoretical debates on IOs, but also what our theories aspire to explain: political conflicts in IOs. Through an in-depth study of two debates during a conflict in the world food organisations, I show how the distinctions were used to create lines of dispute. I conclude that research that itself establishes the distinctions on a theoretical basis is unable to grasp what conflict in IOs, since it fixes theoretically what is contested politically. What is called for is instead a practice-theoretical approach.