In International Organization as Technocratic Utopia, Jens Steffek highlights “technocratic internationalism” as a fundamental notion behind international organizations (IOs). Technical internationalism encompasses several streams of international thought, all with a commonality: dislike of conventional international politics in which politicians and diplomats, driven by their own will and the national interest of a territorially-based constituency, engage in bargaining and rent seeking. Technocratic internationalism champions an alternative in which experts and IO bureaucracies, driven by reason and the global public interest, engage in deliberations and problem solving (p. 189). In short, the aim of technocratic internationalism is to make policy making more “scientific.”

Thus, technocratic internationalism is also a normative view that shuns the politicization of international policy making. Just as Woodrow Wilson and others called for politics to be separated from public administration domestically, technocratic internationalism has demanded that politics be separated from public administration internationally. Proponents share the hope that “power politics and opportunistic rent-seeking of states will give way to rule-based decision-making, based on scientific evidence, and catering to the public interests of a transnational community” (p. 13). Depoliticization occurs in two main ways: IO bureaucracies can take on tasks that are purely technical or they can take on less “pure” tasks but be insulated from states’ interference and other political complications.

However, the depoliticization endorsed and wrought by technocratic internationalism has a long and troubled history, which Steffek sorts into four phases. First is the “Pioneering Phase” (1815–1914), when international policy making became more formalized and some of the earliest IOs were created. Second is the “Utopian Phase” (1914–30s), when bold experiments such as the League of Nations and the United States’ New Deal took center stage. Third is the “Paradigmatic Phase” (1940s–60s), when a substantial number of specialized and omnibus IOs were established in ways that addressed some of the League’s shortcomings and further eroded states’ monopoly over policy-making tasks. Fourth is the “Disintegration Phase” (1970s–present), when IOs are routinely derided as ineffectual or illegitimate. Most of the book is dedicated to painstaking and fascinating research into this 200-year history: the Pioneering Phase (chap. 2), the Utopian Phase in liberal and nonliberal contexts (chaps. 3 and 4), World War II as a turning point (chap. 5), the Paradigmatic Phase (chap. 6), and the Disintegration Phase (chap. 7). Steffek is masterful in his meticulousness across these chapters.

The result is a book that makes several important contributions. Most centrally, International Organization as Technocratic Utopia delivers a comprehensive intellectual history of how technocratic internationalism matured and spread, shaping the IO landscape. This responds to and extends earlier constructivist work that took for granted some kind of “legal-rational” appeal by IO bureaucracies, without explaining how people came to believe in the virtues of IO bureaucracies in the first place (p. 8).

But the book also accomplishes other things: It demonstrates fruitful dialogue between international relations and neighboring disciplines, and it helps us understand the discord that IOs face today. Operating in the “fertile trading zone” (p. 5) between disciplines, Steffek notes that although people desire self-governance and popular sovereignty, they also desire competent and predictable governance. Only through synthesis with neighboring disciplines (such as public administration, history, sociology, and law) can we fully appreciate how and why IO bureaucracies are currently squeezed between progressive calls for transnational democracy and public accountability, on the one hand, and populist campaigns for renationalization of policy making, on the other hand.

Given the high stakes of this squeeze, however, it would be useful to see further contemplation in three areas. First, the detailed history in the book hints that policy making was made “scientific” in a remarkably unscientific way. The Utopian Phase, which ends in the 1930s, was not a time when technical internationalism operated well—in fact, the lead-up to World War II was a time when technical internationalism was hardly operating at all, but instead was mostly daydreamed. Soon after came the Paradigmatic Phase, in which technical internationalism dominated. In between was a rather abrupt leap from daydreams to domination, largely from a scale-up of the United States’ New Deal (itself still in an experimental mode). Isn’t it startling that a tremendous push to make international policy making “scientific” did not involve more scientific features, such as falsifiable propositions, updating, demonstrated expertise, and completed experiments before scale-up?

Second, although the detailed history covers the long-standing distinction between politics and public administration, Steffek does not dig into a more recent distinction between public administration and public management. “Public administration” is meant as an apolitical term because it focuses on a single stage in which bureaucracies merely carry out policies. But the term “public management” brings politics back in, recognizing that bureaucracies also may be involved in the prior stage of setting objectives and in the subsequent stage of taking responsibility for results. If technical internationalism grew stronger in the twentieth century with the rise of public administration, isn’t it predictable that technical internationalism would grow weaker in the twenty-first century with the rise of public management?

Third, despite noting that many IO bureaucracies seem powerful and powerless simultaneously, the detailed history does not get to the heart of why this is so problematic. The book acknowledges that IO bureaucracies look powerful because they seem to be part of an untamed world government, and at the same time they look powerless because they do not eradicate states’ power politics (p. 3). As Steffek points out, it is attractive and even credible for IO bureaucracies to claim to speak for a “global interest.” However, that misses a key problem: People welcome IO bureaucracies as a counter to other interests, but they dislike it if IO bureaucracies can escape being countered themselves. Put differently, people often like pluralism and dislike unaccountability. Doesn’t the powerful/powerless paradox melt once we recognize that technical internationalism, by relying on insulated experts, has injected international policy making with both pluralism and unaccountability?

In summary, the book offers a very detailed and useful history; it could do more to assist readers in processing that history’s implications. The implications are threefold, but all point in the same direction. By defying the scientific process they claimed to embrace, linking to domestic trends in the evolution of public administration, and striving to insulate IO bureaucracies from political influence, the builders of technocratic internationalism contributed to the Disintegration Phrase in which numerous IOs now find themselves.

How IOs will manage the pressures is a question for the future—and in the meantime, Steffek’s detailed history helps us spot how the pressures arise from the past.