2003/12/01 by Michael Merlingen · 111 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Argument (complex analysis) #Corporate governance #Economics #Foucault, Power, and Ethics #Governmentality #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #Law #Law and economics #Management #Peacebuilding and International Security #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Power (physics) #Social science #Socialization #Sociology #Sovereignty #Value (mathematics)
paper · doi:10.1177/0010836703384002
published in Cooperation and Conflict 38(4), 361-384 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2003/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/21
In this article I draw on the later work of Michel Foucault to elaborate a governmentality framework for the study of international governmental organizations (IGOs). The main ‘value added’ of the proposed framework is that it brings into focus the micro-domain of power relations, thereby highlighting what mainline IGO studies fail to thematize. IGOs exercise a molecular form of power that evades and undermines the material, juridical and diplomatic limitations on their influence. They are important sites in the non-sovereign, microphysical workings of power that shape territorialized populations in unspectacular ways. In short, I argue that our understanding of IGOs remains incomplete if we do not pay attention to the effects of domination generated by their everyday governance tasks and good works. I develop this argument through a brief engagement with an innovative strand of IGO studies: research on international socialization, which is empirically illustrated through a brief exploration of the induction by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe of post-socialist countries into its embryonic security community.