International Organization Initiatives: How and Why Organizations Adapt and Change

How do changes in international organizations (IOs) come about? How do IOs adapt to respond to crises and unforeseen needs of their members, and what roles do the secretariats, and their heads play in this process? International Organization Initiatives deals with these questions and shows how IOs, their secretariats and executive heads launch and implement innovative activities. It sheds light on both proactive and reactive approaches to institutional evolution.

Bringing together distinguished scholars of international organizations and experienced practitioners, this volume showcases and investigates IOs’ adaptive capacity, their achievements, and limitations. ＂Through case studies and conceptual frameworks, the book explores a largely uncharted world of IO evolution to which international secretariats contribute significantly. The collection of chapters brings to light the mechanisms used in the past by IOs to adapt to what were, on each occasion, new challenges to their efforts to assist and respond to unprecedented needs of their members faced with new realities.
International Organization Initiatives is a valuable resource for both scholars and practitioners interested in IOs and their capacity for change in response to global crises, members’ demands, internal impulses or interactions with the outside world. Providing an in-depth look at governance model transformations and institutional innovations, it offers a collective wealth of knowledge and insights, along with lessons for future global governance.

Gabrielle Marceau is professor in the Department of Public International Law and International organisation at the Law Faculty, University of Geneva, and the Hyman Soloway Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa. She was also a visiting professor in several other universities and institutes. Professor Marceau has been involved with associations and groups promoting international (economic) law, and she has published extensively on the relationship between trade and non-trade concerns, dispute settlement, and international organizations. Professor Marceau worked for 30 years in the Secretariat of the WTO, in dispute settlement, in research and in the Director General’s office.

Henner Gött is a legal and policy advisor at the German Federal Chancellery in Berlin and a professor of law honoris causa at Leuphana University Lüneburg. His research focuses on international economic law, international organizations, international labour law, and on EU and German constitutional law. He previously held positions as a legal advisor at the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action, senior research fellow at Georg-August-University Göttingen, guest lecturer at several other universities, and Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the European Society of International Law’s Interest Group on the European and International Rule of Law.