Global Networks Talk | International Organziations as Technocratic Utopias

Im ersten Global Networks Talk des Fallsemesters 2021 wird Jens Steffek, Professor für Transnationale Governance sein Buch International Organization as Technocratic Utopia vorstellen.

Jens Steffek ist Professor für Transnationale Governance an der Technischen Universität Darmstadt. Seine Forschungsinteressen umfassen internationale Organisationen, internationale Geschichte und internationale politische Theorie. Er ist der Autor von Embedded Liberalism and Its Critics: Justifying Global Governance in the American Century (Palgrave, 2006) und hat Artikel in zahlreichen wissenschaftlichen Fachzeitschriften veröffentlicht.

Das Buch wurde in der akademischen Buchreihe Transformations in Governance der Oxford University Press publiziert. Innerhalb der Reihe werden beachtliche Forschungen in den Bereichen der vergleichenden Politikwissenschaften, internationalen Beziehungen, öffentlicher Ordnung, Föderalismus sowie Forschungen, die sich mit der Verlagerung von Kompetenzen von Zentralstaaten auf supranationale Institutionen, subnationale Regierungen und öffentlich Private Netzwerke befassen. Die Reihe bringt Arbeiten zusammen, die das Verständnis von Organisationen, Ursachen und Folgen von mehrstufigem und komplexem Regieren verbessern.

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Abstract

As climate change and a pandemic pose enormous challenges to humankind, the concept of expert governance gains new traction. This book revisits the idea that scientists, bureaucrats, and lawyers, rather than politicians or diplomats, should manage international relations. It shows that this technocratic approach has been a persistent theme in writings about international relations, both academic and policy-oriented, since the 19th century. The technocratic tradition of international thought unfolded in four phases, which were closely related to domestic processes of modernization and rationalization. The pioneering phase lasted from the Congress of Vienna to the First World War. In these years, philosophers, law scholars, and early social scientists began to combine internationalism and ideals of expert governance. Between the two world wars, a utopian period followed that was marked by visions of technocratic international organizations that would have overcome the principle of territoriality. In the third phase, from the 1940s to the 1960s, technocracy became the dominant paradigm of international institution-building. That paradigm began to disintegrate from the 1970s onwards, but important elements remain until the present day. The specific promise of technocratic internationalism is its ability to transform violent and unpredictable international politics into orderly and competent public administration. Such ideas also had political clout. This book shows how they left their mark on the League of Nations, the functional branches of the United Nations system and the European integration project.