Making Global Norms: Politics Versus Science in International Organizations

Global norms form the core infrastructure of economic and political globalization. To be influential, these norms need to be codified into policy scripts that spell out how they are to be applied in practice. This process of developing scripts is a key job of international organizations, which act as venues where states can collectively make major decisions. When forging policy prescriptions, these organizations draw on scientific knowledge but are also highly attune to political pressures.

Making Global Norms provides a theoretical account and advanced methodological toolkit to study how variation in the intensity of scientific consensus and political contestation produces policy scripts that modify global norms. This book shows that the policymakers involved in scriptwriting processes within international organizations wear two hats: they are both political representatives of the states that appoint them and experts in their own right with worldviews that correspond to their expertise. They have to negotiate with each other, as well as with their organization’s technocratic staff, to shape the ultimate content of global policy scripts. The implication of the authors’ findings is that diversity within IOs matters: changes in the kinds of expertise that are present in deliberations can yield significant differences in how norms are modified. Their empirical focus is on the International Monetary Fund’s scripts for capital controls, sovereign debt management, and taxation. Drawing on a novel mixed-method methodological approach, Making Global Norms opens the black box on how some of the most important norms underpinning globalization were made.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Alexander Kentikelenis is an Associate Professor of Political Economy and Sociology at Bocconi University in Milan.

Leonard Seabrooke is Professor of International Political Economy and Economic Sociology in the Department of Organization at the Copenhagen Business School and Research Professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.