In The Law of Interactions Between International Organizations, Henner Gött sets out a framework for multi-institutional governance, based on an original study of the interactions between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank, as well as between the ILO and two bodies of the Council of Europe: the European Court of Human Rights and the Economic and Social Council. After an in-depth analysis of structural challenges for inter-organisational cooperation, he examines the potential of public international law to provide responses.
After defining the ILO's labour governance model, in Part I the author provides an account of the ILO's eventually successful critique of the World Bank's ‘Employing Workers Indicator’ in the Bank's ‘Doing Business’ reports. He moves on to look at the use of ILO instruments and the views of ILO supervisory mechanisms by the European Court of Human Rights and the Economic and Social Council, and the parameters in which this may occur.
Part II sets out the institutional laws of the respective organisations, and how their own relativisation of the ILO's model of labour governance might be mitigated. In Part III, the book identifies existing inter-organisational treaties and agreements—or, in the case of the ILO and World Bank—their absence. It recalls the incompleteness of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties between States and International Organizations or between International Organizations (concluded in 1986 and not yet in force), inter alia, to resolve potential conflicts between organisations. This leads to an examination of other possible avenues, such as customary inter-organisational law and general principles of (inter-organisational) law. Finding (in Part IV) the existing positive law to be inadequate to protect and promote the ILO's labour governance model, the author then moves on to present several ideas for a normative framework for inter-organisational interactions (in Part V).
In terms of structure, the chapters, and subdivisions within them, contain helpful conclusions. The volume is rounded out by tables of treaties, official documents and publications, cases and supervisory practice, and websites; an extensive bibliography; the index; and a list of the other publications since 2012 to have appeared in the series of Beiträge zum ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht (contributions on comparative public law and public international law; Gött's book is number 299 in this prestigious series edited by Armin von Bogdandy and Anne Peters).
The book is aimed at public international law scholars and practitioners as well as political scientists focusing on governance issues in relation to international organisations. While the author uses the labour governance model of the ILO as the anchor for this examination of interactions with other organisations, the insights could be extrapolated to apply to institutions in other fields as well.
By identifying the major international law lacunae in relation to interactions between international organisations, and then suggesting possible avenues to fill it, the book breaks new ground. It proceeds methodically, examining threshold issues before moving on to more substantive questions. The author reviews various options already proposed by others, pointing out the practical difficulties these would encounter in the face of jurisdictional and membership overlap. The theories examined include inherent rights emanating from ‘organizationhood’ (Finn Seyersted), a prohibition of interference (Matthias Rüffert), an ‘inter-organizational principle of good neighbourliness’ (Niels Blokker), and an obligation to cooperate in good faith (Christian Tietje). The author recalls what the work of the International Law Commission, in its Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations and in the 1986 Vienna Convention, has left insufficiently addressed. As Gött notes, the solutions so far ‘struggle to accommodate the structural peculiarities of the inter-organizational constellation’ (397).
Gött calls for refinement of some fundamental concepts of inter-organisational law, including what he terms the ‘legal default rule’ (399ff). He then puts forward a case for recognition of an inter-organisational obligation not to compromise another international organisation's accomplished and ongoing work. For this, he notes, a normative legal scaffolding—ie the basis on which such a duty would rely—would be needed. After pointing to several possibilities, he zeroes in on Article 5 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), the ‘lex specialis’ provision, as a means of overcoming the pacta tertiis rule. This is a tantalising proposition, and could have been teased out further. The idea is an important contribution to the ‘underdeveloped law of inter-organizational interactions’ (409).
The author's writing is clear, and numerous headings guide the reader. On occasion, the author spends too much time explaining what he will not be addressing, or speculates in a direction that would not necessarily be in the long-term interest of the ILO's governance model. In terms of style, the case studies and basic frameworks are accessible to all, while the more theoretical discussions will be of primary interest to scholars. On the whole, Gött has offered a highly informative and promising contribution to the fields of public international law and organisational governance at the international level.
