Change is with us always. Reflecting on why and how it happens, with what results, is useful. This edited volume advances our understanding of change in international organizations (IOs).

The book is one of several products arising out of research on international organizations (IOs), largely carried out at the University of Geneva under the leadership of Gabrielle Marceau, a long-time official of the World Trade Organization with a parallel academic career. It builds on an important paper associated with that research project,Footnote ¹ as well as a vibrant July 2022 symposium at the University of Geneva.Footnote ² Following the symposium, in which academics and international civil servants (active or retired) exchanged experiences and views, the editors (Marceau and co-editor Henner Gött of the German government and academia, assisted by Ana Balcazar-Moreno and Akshaya Venkataraman) drew in additional renowned international experts, practitioners, and academics to round out the ensuing volume.

As the editors note, “This book features IO practitioners who—taking the role of what anthropologists might call ‘participant observers’—describe specific initiatives, while academics and theorists discuss the responses of IOs and their capacity to adapt their initial mandates to meet new needs” (p. xi). The practitioner authors were usually directly involved in the initiatives they highlight, thus offering insider perspectives that are valuable if sometimes uncritical. The academics step back and take a wider look, trying to make analytical sense of what may be quite disparate practice.

In the book, the term “international organizations” encompasses intergovernmental organizations, including those with mixed or hybrid state and non-state membership (p. ix). Thus, it extends to newer, private-public partnerships and more theme-focused organizations that have emerged in recent years as well as member state-based international organizations of the traditional type.

As for “initiatives,” the editors contemplate action which “1) aims to meet a need of the IO, its membership, its secretariat, or other internal or external stakeholders, 2) is novel, or previously unfamiliar to the IO in question, and 3) pushes the boundaries of the IO beyond its founding or prior operational activities, thus resulting in IO change” (p. x). Change can be reactive or proactive; it can occur immediately or over time. Most of the authors address the drivers of change that led to a particular initiative. Several have highlighted the crisis that emerged in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the special initiatives taken in response. The book could, however, have made greater use of the extensive literature that this emergency inspired in relation to international organizations.Footnote ³ For a good overall analysis of change in IOs, see Hannah Birkenkötter’s chapter (especially at pp. 21–22, 26–27).

The volume has a somewhat unusual structure and, for the most part, it works. After an overall introduction, “Why Should We Care About IO Initiatives in Response to Needs?,” the book is divided into four parts: (1) Part I – Theoretical and Legal Foundations of IO Initiatives; (2) Part II – The Role of Secretariats in Initiating IO Change; (3) Part III – The Role of Heads of Secretariats in Initiating IO Change: Functional Formalism and Pluralism; and (4) Part IV – Interaction with the Outside World and IO Change. While Part I aspires to be overarching, Parts II to IV each conclude with a commentary that engages with the chapters in that part. Sometimes the allocation of various chapters to a part seems a bit random or arbitrary, however. For example, Janelle M. Diller’s chapter focusing on the Rana Plaza Arrangement initiated by the International Labour Office (see more below) would have fit better in Part II on the role of secretariats in initiating IO change.

To begin, José Alvarez asks why IO initiatives matter, and then briefly reviews the theoretical and jurisprudential frameworks set out in the first part of the book. As he notes, one strength of the book is that it does not force any particular theoretical framework on the wide range of IO initiatives that are later described in rich detail. Indeed, he laments the sometimes arcane theorizing around IOs. This book, by contrast, offers deep dives into practice that may gather evidence for theorists to support certain ideas, such as implied powers or transnational governance, in turn pushing the boundaries of the traditional sources of international law beyond what is captured in Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (treaties, custom, general principles, subsidiary means).

The book includes a solid presentation of “From Functionalism to Constitutionalism” by Christiane Ahlborn, who brings the approaches together with a view to helping IO decisionmakers arrive at more legally sound and coherent choices. She argues that seeing IOs as constituted legal orders will allow for a more nuanced analysis of institutional linkages and cooperation between organizations, and that a constitutional approach to IOs is likely more accessible to IO legal practitioners. Guy Fiti Sinclair moves the debate to another level, urging us to “Forget ‘Functionalism’!” (p. 30) and instead look at “socio-legal imaginaries” that “embody and express the dynamic of liberal reform that drives and legitimizes IO initiatives” (p. 39). He thus looks at two metaphors—that of the “living constitution” and that of “the idea of ‘international administration’”—as rationales for IO action, with examples from other chapters.

Providing further background, Birkenkötter sketches the influence of international relations scholarship and traditional public international law on understandings of international organizations, and how these have been challenged by the emergence of public-private partnerships that go beyond a classic intergovernmental structure. A more traditional but quite useful legal background is provided by Niels Blokker, who addresses the evolution of IO powers and activities and draws, inter alia, on work of the International Law Commission, in particular its Draft Articles on Responsibility of International Organizations (DARIO). Similarly, Fernando Lusa Bordin reminds us of the key frameworks of the constituent instrument of an international organization along with the traditional rules of treaty interpretation to justify the evolving powers of IOs. These two chapters provide a helpful transition to the next two parts of the book on the roles of the secretariats of IOs and then of their executive heads.

At first glance, it seems a bit odd to treat the secretariats of IOs and their executive heads separately. Indeed, the concluding remarks to the volume suggest that the divide might have been artificial (p. 371). Yet the distinction may make sense from the perspective of their different roles, with executive heads reflecting a more political direction inherent in how they are selected, while the staff of secretariats is to be recruited—ideally but not always in line with rules governing the international civil service—chiefly for their expertise and technical skills. In her chapter, Margherita Melillo looks at how secretariats marshal knowledge to instigate or support change in an IO, citing examples from other chapters in the volume (e.g., those by Bonucci, Rocha Gabriel and Ukamwa). She concludes, “IO secretariats can use knowledge in three main ways: instrumentally, symbolically, and strategically” (p. 97). Competent secretariats need a politically sharp head with top notch negotiation skills, and such heads need talented and dedicated secretariats to deliver effectively.

Part II, which features the secretariats, draws on a disparate set of examples: the active role of the UN Secretariat in the establishment of the UN Criminal Tribunals (examined by Huw Llewellyn); the World Bank’s evolution toward taking account of environmental and social responsibilities (by Charles Di Leva); the World Health Organization’s reactions to COVID-19 (by Gian Luca Burci and Ana Balcazar-Moreno); the treatment of fossil fuel subsidies at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (by Ronald Steenblik and Helen Mountford); and the African Union Commission’s engagement with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in relation to the Chagos Archipelago for achieving the complete decolonization of Mauritius (by Namira Negm). Of these chapters, the insider views of Llewellyn (highlighting the role of the Office of the Legal Adviser of the UN), Negm (focusing on strategic planning, legal expertise and diplomatic coordination), and Steenblik/Mountford (shedding light on how a measurement initiative helped drive the debate on fossil fuel subsidies) are the freshest and most revealing.

An overall concluding chapter for this Part by Jacob Katz Cogan observes that the innovative work of secretariats is “seldom appreciated or recognized” (p. 158). He suggests that the myths that obscure the creative work of secretariats may however also provide the officials space, thus allowing IOs room to operate. International officials are hardly omniscient, and one of their most valuable contributions may be in identifying the best outside expertise to bring on board for background research, help in identifying issues and contributing to finding solutions. While placed in other parts of the book, the chapter by Vivian Daniele Rocha Gabriel (on the work of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean) and the contribution of Gabriela Ramos (on the development of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence) illustrate this aspect well. Ramos’s richly detailed account shows how multidisciplinary and multicultural expertise can heighten the credibility of proposals that IO heads and secretariats then push forward. Experts can indeed influence the trajectory of what becomes an international instrument, such as when the input from occupational health and safety experts ended up expanding the originally envisaged discrimination-focused scope of the Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190) of the International Labour Organization (ILO).Footnote ⁴

Turning to the heads of organizations in Part III, the volume features insights regarding eight IOs, varying widely by type and approach. The chapters here range from an interview with the former Secretary-General of the OECD (Angel Gurría) by its former Legal Adviser, Nicola Bonucci, to an overview by Naphtali Ukamwa of the functions and powers of agency heads. In a conceptualization of their autonomy, Ukamwa argues for a pluralist understanding of the functions of heads of secretariats. He points to “the imperative to initiate changes in situations of collective crises …” (p. 178); the crises in turn become tests for the heads’ personalities and leadership skills. Gurría’s comments, on the other hand, open a window on the practicalities of garnering strategic support for a good idea and the importance of fostering personal links with decisionmakers. As examples, he cites two initiatives linked to the financial crisis of 2007–2008: the New Approaches to Economic Challenges and the OECD’s work on transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes. A bridge between the two perspectives may be the chapter on the role of the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Here Akshaya Venkataraman distinguishes initiatives linked directly to functions, powers, and duties explicitly identified in WTO agreements (such as trade monitoring and reporting) from those that are distinct from them (such as initiatives in response to the COVID-19 crisis). Yet both have been motivated by a desire to respond to the organization’s evolving needs.

While almost all the chapters highlight successes, much is to be learned from failures. The brief study by former ILO Legal Adviser Francis Maupain of how things went wrong in the mid-1970s for C. Wilfred Jenks, Director-General of the ILO and a highly respected international jurist, offers insights into how risk assessment can clash with a devotion to principles. After recounting a political miscalculation made by this director-general, the author recalls Jenks’s more enduring legacy to defend freedom of association as part and parcel of universality facing off against hegemony. In other comments about the ILO, Jane Hodges, in her solid wrap up chapter for Part III, adds brief background to a current crisis that now awaits an advisory opinion by the ICJ. The ICJ’s reaction to the question (“Is the right to strike of workers and their organizations protected under the Freedom of Association and Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No. 87)?”) is anticipated this year.Footnote ⁵

Perhaps the most astounding of the stories recounted in Part III of the volume is André-Philippe Ouellet’s chapter about the (now quite newsworthy) International Energy Agency, whose origins trace back to a taskforce in the OECD. He recounts the body’s remarkable trajectory from one promoting petroleum production in the wake of the oil shock following the 1973 war in the Middle East to a call for its phasing out. The author highlights the pivotal and sometimes controversial role played by the organization’s executive head in pushing for clean energy in the face of climate change.

Kicking off Part IV of the book, Gött’s thoughtful reflections explore interactions with the outside world (i.e., beyond the IO’s membership) along four axes: (1) the character of the interaction on a continuum from conflict to integration; (2) immediacy, from direct to indirect; (3) the degree of formality of the interaction; and (4) the stage of an IO’s work where the interaction occurs (from policymaking to implementation). He urges more research on the impact of IOs’ external interactions on their own initiatives and evolution. This examination should also take greater account of the diversity in resource levels available to each organization and the care shown in their use.

From the perspective of a well-endowed organization, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank), Hassane Cissé’s chapter offers an insightful rendition of externally induced legal, policy, institutional, and strategic change. His examples of the Bank’s anti-corruption strategy and sanctions reform and a new focus on situations of conflict and fragility are more convincing than those of a shift from adjustment policy to development policy lending and the Bank’s “modest change [of] human rights considerations in the Bank’s operations” (pp. 312–13). Yet he acknowledges the difficulty the Bank has had in addressing human rights and traces the divergence between theory and practice to “an inherent tension within the Articles of Agreement” of the Bank (p. 313). These should not be insurmountable, however. Earlier in the book, Di Leva’s chapter, entitled “The World Bank’s Evolution Towards Environmental and Social Responsibilities,” traces the slow evolution of the Bank in relation to environmental (only) concerns, inspired by the development of international environmental law. Reflections on why less progress was made on human rights than on environmental issues would perhaps have required a separate chapter. Might the multiplicity of human rights issues and wider diversity among non-governmental organizations active on human rights have played a role? Or have deep-seated ideological differences in relation to neoliberalism and social justice been the key stumbling block?

As many of the authors note, a (usually external) crisis often lies at the origin of an IO initiative. A case in point was the Rana Plaza building collapse that left some 3,200 supply chain workers dead or injured in Bangladesh in 2013. Janelle M. Diller explores a targeted initiative of the ILO that creatively steered the creation of a multi-stakeholder compensation scheme for the victims that has also paved the way for strengthening the capacity of the government and of the ILO to address such issues in the future. She argues that IO orchestration of multi-stakeholder initiatives “may eventually help innovate effective modes of governance at the nexus of international cooperation and transnational governance” (p. 301). Indeed, the example should inspire development of the right to remedy within the framework of legal instruments relating to business and human rights.Footnote ⁶

The brief chapter on the responses of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to new challenges in the global economy, by Yan Liu and Kyung Kwak, provides a succinct presentation of the legal framework in which the IMF works before describing (without critique) two new financing tools: the Resilience and Sustainability Trust to address climate change and pandemic preparedness and the Food Shock Window (FSW) to cope with a spike in food and fertilizer prices in the wake of Russia’s 2022 attack on Ukraine. As the authors note, to stay true to the IMF’s mandate, the time-bound FSW required conceptualization under existing emergency financing instruments as a basis for facilitating cooperation with other international organizations such as the UN, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme in six countries. Further insights into any lessons learned from this cooperation in practice would have been welcome.

The chapter on the WTO head cites in particular creative initiatives to enhance the organization’s outreach and influence: the cooperation with NGOs in the annual WTO Public Forum and the establishment of WTO chairs “to foster research, training, and outreach … in developing countries and least developed countries” (p. 234). Like the WTO, but for somewhat different reasons, the World Health Organization (WHO) has similarly championed interactions with the outside world. Steven A. Solomon and Kenneth Piercy explore the global health architecture for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response—a process that recently bore fruit with the adoption of the WHO Pandemic Agreement, reflecting creative compromises.Footnote ⁷ Their chapter foregrounds the WHO’s broad definition of relevant stakeholders to encompass non-governmental organizations, private sector entities, philanthropic foundations, academic institutions, and even the general public. With public hearings that included a virtual platform and interpretation in all WHO official languages, along with a dedicated web portal for written input, the WHO sets an example that other IOs could follow. Yet it is a tricky balancing act between such openness and the decision-making processes by governing organs that require a safe space for member states to negotiate the terms of a legally binding instrument.

Partnerships have been at the origin of some hybrid organizations. An example is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which arose in 2002 in part in response to stakeholder impatience with the work of the WHO. In their chapter on initiatives in the Global Fund, Fady Zeidan and Jean Abboud explain how partnerships work in practice—from the institutional arrangements to the grant-making cycle and technical cooperation—and offer several concrete examples. They assert that the Global Fund’s track record in collaboration “positions it in a unique way on the global public health scene” (p. 342).

Another example of a public-private global health partnership, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), founded in 2000, was, like the Global Fund, a new species established as a foundation under Swiss law with international institutional status. Former Gavi Legal Adviser Jelena Madir’s chapter focuses on the creation of a global collaborative mechanism for the procurement and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines (known as the COVAX Facility), in close cooperation with the WHO. Madir teases out the legal and financial risks that the creative but complex operation posed for Gavi. For instance, when advance purchase commitment agreements were negotiated, no one knew if and when vaccines would become available (p. 374). She heralds the COVAX Facility as “the template for future global risk-sharing agreements and financing instruments in global health governance” (p. 348) and posits its possible use for a climate change fund. The subtext here is that it too would work within given market parameters to avoid resistance by key players. Yet questions of fairness remain at the heart of issues like access to medicine, as noted later by Michael Barnett (pp. 363–64).

One of the most interesting chapters describes how informal initiatives can transform into formal arrangements (see David Lewis on how what began in the Group of Seven (G7) morphed into the Financial Action Task Force (pp. 191–202)). Several authors also cite the influence of the Group of 20 (G20) as a driver of an initiative (e.g., Burci and Balcazar-Moreno, pp. 129–31). Yet a book like this would be incomplete without a look at the other end of the formal spectrum, i.e., the role of the Secretary-General of the United Nations under the UN Charter. In her chapter on the evolution of initiatives to respond to violent and non-violent threats to international peace and security, Mona Ali Khalil highlights initiatives that introduced the first peacekeeping force in the 1950s up to the first health-keeping mission in response to the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in 2014. The latter was a UN system-wide mission—an attempt to overcome the fragmentation and duplication of effort that can emerge in IOs’ work.

Barnett, in his concluding remarks to Part IV about the relationship between IOs and outsiders, recalls standard theories about IOs—and their shortcomings—that underlie a number of the chapters. He particularly regrets the silences around measuring effectiveness of IO initiatives. It is true that authors could have drawn much more on the extensive work done in relation to measurement across the UN system, illustrated in part by the—admittedly selective and imperfect—targets and indicators articulated under the Sustainable Development Goals.Footnote ⁸ Perhaps the omission simply reflects a certain fatigue around Global Administrative Law, which championed measurement in ways that elicited protest by those defending values.Footnote ⁹ And yet for years, largely under pressure from member states and other funding sources, IOs have been beefing up evidence-based reporting about their own work. Barnett rightly criticizes the lacunae surrounding impact in most of the initiatives highlighted. On the other hand, the initiatives described differ so much in scope that in the more widely cast ones, measurement would be difficult. In any event, Barnett recalls comments about accountability (and its absence) by Diller and Gött.

Barnett also rightfully reproaches the practitioners’ omission of external criticism lobbed at certain initiatives (see pp. 359–60). However, as a former longtime international organization employee, I suspect that the “self-censoring” he critiques (p. 360, n. 10) was attributable to the authors’ sense of discretion and loyalty to the institution rather than ignorance. Indeed, Blokker’s citation of Article 100 of the UN Charter (p. 69) reminds us of the parameters within which international officials are to perform their duties.

Barnett queries the identity of the experts on which IOs rely, mistakenly suggesting that they are the McKinsey consultants of the world rather than experts in specific areas of education, public health, environmental science, labor market inequalities, statistical measurement, and more. But he is right in suggesting that the chapters could have been more specific about which experts they had in mind.

Barnett also wrote, “IOs live in a world in which their funding base is largely constant from one year to the next (though are clear periods in which it is not)” (p. 361). Clearly, we are now in such a period. The authors and editors wrote their contributions before it became evident that many international organizations are already or will soon be facing massive and unparalleled funding shortfalls.Footnote ¹⁰ For several organizations, this abrupt jolt to multilateralism has also posed a profound challenge to their raison d’être. How the organizations navigate these troubled waters is now ripe for tracking and analysis. What has been the impact on the mission of the organization, its international, national, and local partners, and its staff? What approaches or measures have been adopted to pursue transformation based on accountability and respect for core values? Has the shake-up in funding led to greater uptake in the use of Artificial Intelligence? Such a new study would do well to look to this one for its largely successful combination of empirical insider reportage with sanguine outsider analysis of factors influencing the processes and outcomes of a wide range of international organizations. This book’s premise—that in the face of crisis or novel needs international organizations “have been able to adapt in a remarkable manner … and … recalibrated the ways in which they deliver their mandate” (p. ix)—is certainly now being tested.

The concluding overview chapter, by Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, Marceau, Gött, Venkataraman, and Balcazar-Moreno, sums up commonalities that emerged from the practitioners’ accounts of change in their diverse organizations. It also raises some questions proposed for future inquiry: a more fine-grained taxonomy of factors for change, factors relevant to the success or failure of an IO’s initiative and how that is benchmarked, and when an initiative goes beyond an IO’s mandate so as to risk becoming ultra vires.

The book had two avowed aspirations—to inspire and guide further studies in this area and to further our collective understanding of the role and impact of IO initiatives (p. xi). For the most part, this was achieved. On impact, however, it probably falls short, and a few of the chapters basically just plough well-known turf. Yet, overall, the book considerably enriches the literature on international organizations. The chapters by Barnett, Cissé, Gött, Madir, and Ramos were in my view among those that were especially instructive.

This edited volume is one of several recent publications on IOs. One example of excellent companion reading alongside this book would be Ways of Seeing International Organizations: New Perspectives for International Institutional Law,Footnote ¹¹ which uses an interdisciplinary lens, drawing on international relations, history, and anthropology, alongside international law. It reflects perspectives from Global Administrative Law to Feminist and Third World Approaches to International Law, approaching IOs from more theoretical perspectives, for better or worse. This work and the Marceau/Gött edited volume complement each other well, and a course on international organizations would profit from drawing on both as teaching tools. In addition, IO series such as those launched recently by several publishers promise additional depth in relation to the organizations addressed.Footnote ¹² Inspired by the content and method of International Organization Initiatives, such accounts can be read with fresh eyes to pose more questions about change in IOs.