Emergence of Critical Approaches

This chapter underscores aspects of the study of international organizations (IOs) or international institutions that are relatively neglected by critical approaches to international law (CAIL) and calls for an integrated approach that combines what may be termed external and internal critiques and, in its backdrop, considers proposals for their reform.

A few prefatory remarks are, however, in order at first on the evolution of CAIL scholarship. For nearly a century international institutional law scholarship has been rooted in the positivist tradition of international law, whose different variants may together be termed mainstream international institutional law scholarship (MIILS).Footnote ¹ MIILS has a synergistic relationship with functional and liberal approaches, which tend to present IOs as essential and neutral institutions that promote international cooperation and the global common good.Footnote ² Their shared views are widely disseminated through standard textbooks of international law and IOs. What are neglected are the individual and collective roles of IOs in the expansion and stabilization of a hegemonic global order centered around the global capitalist system through inter alia prescribing, justifying, and legitimizing policies and practices that advance the interests of advanced capitalist states.

An emergent MIILS was challenged in the inter-war period of the last century by Soviet scholarship using a Marxist lens and later by the classical realist approach.Footnote ³ Subsequently, after decolonization postcolonial nations questioned the role of IOs for pursuing the interests of developed nations, in particular the role of international economic organizations such as GATT, IMF, and the World Bank. There was also an effort to establish new IOs such as UNCTAD, created in 1964 and seen as anti-GATT, that argued the case of developing nations, in this case in the field of international trade.Footnote ⁴ UNCTAD formally adopted the principle of preferential treatment for developing nations, leading in 1966 to the addition of Part IV in GATT.Footnote ⁵ Since developing nations were heavily reliant on the export of primary products for their export earnings UNCTAD actively promoted price and income stabilizing international commodity agreements and international commodity organizations.Footnote ⁶ UNIDO was founded in 1966 to “promote and accelerate the industrialization of developing countries.”Footnote ⁷ The G-77 was established in the same year as UNCTAD to identify, articulate, and promote the collective interests of developing nations in international economic organizations.Footnote ⁸ The different critical and constructive efforts culminated in the call for a new international economic order in 1974.

These initiatives and developments received support from the academia in the developing world, in particular from the first-generation proponents of Third World Approaches to International Law.Footnote ⁹ Meanwhile, other critical voices began to emerge. The neo-Gramscian scholar Robert Cox argued that we need “to place the process of international organisation in the framework of global change, to take the structural, diachronic approach.”Footnote ¹⁰ He identified those features of IOs that sustained the rule of advanced capitalist nations: (1) they embody the rules which facilitate the expansion of hegemonic world orders; (2) they are themselves the product of the hegemonic world order; (3) they ideologically legitimate the norms of the world order; (4) they co-opt the elites from peripheral countries; and (5) they absorb counter-hegemonic ideas.Footnote ¹¹ But even by the end of the last century there was a paucity of critical literature on IOs.Footnote ¹²

However, in the last two decades the influence of both MIILS and the functionalist-liberal approaches to IOs has begun to be actively challenged by a host of critical approaches, which include a second generation of Third World Approaches to International Law, Feminist Approaches to International Law, and Neo-Marxist Approaches to International Law. There is, besides, the global administrative law initiative, which seeks to promote the democratic functioning of IOs.Footnote ¹³ Each of the critical approaches bring out particular troubling dimensions of IOs. The feminist approaches contend that IOs neglect the world of women, promoting policies and practices which reinforce institutions of patriarchy, and in this context point to among other things the absence of women in key decision-making positions.Footnote ¹⁴ The third world and Marxist approaches to international law argue that IOs are instruments of imperialism, the roots of which can be traced back to the Mandate System of the League of Nations.Footnote ¹⁵ Arguably, a transnational capitalist class has emerged in recent years that influences the work of IOs, diminishing the resistance of postcolonial nations to imperialism.Footnote ¹⁶ There are also intersectional approaches, which combine class, gender, and race standpoints to critique IOs.Footnote ¹⁷ Finally, emerging global administrative law points to the need for greater transparency and accountability in the functioning of IOs.

It deserves mention that the various critical approaches do not subscribe to the reductionist view that IOs are mere instruments of class, gender, racial, or geographical domination. There is recognition that to different degrees individual IOs also promote larger community interests. Thus, for example, whatever the critique of WHO, it would be acknowledged that it has been an important instrument of coordination in the course of the Covid 19 pandemic, providing beneficial assistance and guidance to member states.Footnote ¹⁸ The United Nations even serves as a site for the formation of counter-hegemonic coalitions (such as in the UN General Assembly [UNGA]) and strategies (discursive and legislative) to influence international agenda and outcomes. Even in the instance of international economic organizations whose mandates and design more openly support the objectives of imperialism, critical approaches are not dismissive of them. For instance, there is acceptance that developing nations need IMF as a lender of last resort. The problem is not the goal of providing loans for overcoming short-term balance of payments crises but the content of the accompanying conditionality regime. Yet all things considered it can be said that IOs tend to promote the interests of dominant social classes and states in the international system. In other words, critical approaches rightly underline the class, gender, race, and geographical bias of existing IOs.

While critical approaches have made an important beginning in pointing to the deficiencies in IOs there are important aspects of their history and functioning that have received insufficient attention. First, the existing literature primarily offers an external critique of individual IOs with a focus on issues of biased design, the lack of adequate participation of weak states and groups, and unjust distributional outcomes. This critique needs to be strengthened in at least four ways: through factoring in the emergence of institutional complexes that necessitate a critique that goes beyond the design and operation of individual organizations; by offering a separate and detailed account of the history and participation of individual postcolonial nations in IOs; by advancing an appropriate theoretical framework that enables the effective combination of the class, gender, race critique of IOs and evolving IO complexes; and by suggesting ways to fill gaps in the existing accountability and responsibility regime found in the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organisations. Second, an external critique needs to be accompanied by an internal critique of IOs. An internal critique should inter alia review the following aspects of the functioning of an IO: the working of rules of membership, withdrawal, suspension, expulsion, voting, finance, and dispute settlement; in relation to endogenous and exogenous factors, the changing interpretations of mandates and accompanying policies and practices and their impact over time; and the role of leadership, staff recruitment policies, knowledge production, and organizational culture and how these subserve the interests of powerful states. Third, an active debate is called for on the need and usefulness of advancing proposals for the reform of IOs. A key question is whether organizational nihilism or organizational reform is the way forward for weak states and groups? In sum, what is needed is an integrated critical approach to IOs.

External Critique

The external critique of IOs neglects at least four important dimensions of the functioning of IOs. The first is the ongoing transmutation of IOs through the emergence of what Abbot and Faude call “hybrid institutional complexes” (HICs).Footnote ¹⁹ The historical movement is from individual IOs to “regime complexes” (consisting of an international treaty and a formal international organization) to HICs characterized by “a high degree of institutional diversity.”Footnote ²⁰ HICs are constituted by “informal inter-governmental organisations; trans-governmental networks; transnational public–private partnerships; transnational associations of sub-national governments; private transnational regulatory organisations; and other types of institutions.”Footnote ²¹ According to Abbott and Faude, “HICs exhibit relatively greater functional differentiation, and…greater informal hierarchy. As a result, they produce different dynamics, interactions, systemic effects and outcomes.”Footnote ²² Eilstrup-Sangiovanni and Westerwinter speak more broadly of the emergence of a global governance complex defined as “a system of governance composed of at least three international or transnational institutions or actors whose mandates, functions and memberships overlap, and that jointly address a specific policy problem.”Footnote ²³ The UN Secretary-General has also spoken of the phenomenon of networked multilateralism that “draws together existing institutional capacities, overcoming fragmentation to ensure all are working together towards a common goal…”Footnote ²⁴ He has pointed out how “networks can be flexible, allowing for variable participation by a wide range of actors and the possibility for open coalitions or small ‘mini-lateral’ or even ‘micro-lateral’ groups, growing over time to include more actors.”Footnote ²⁵

The result of the emergence of these new developments is that engaging with single institutions or even regime complexes does not today suffice to understand the working of IOs. The inner dynamics of HICs or the like may either promote progressive orientation and practicesFootnote ²⁶ or result in impeding individual components from pursuing commonly agreed objectives.Footnote ²⁷ For instance, in the field of climate change multiple regional and international IOs, along with corporations and sub-national associations (such as cities) and civil society associations are involved. Arguably, given the vast financial resources available to corporations, and the primacy accorded to the interests of shareholders, disinformation campaigns and lobbying may be carried out negatively impacting the dynamics of the global climate change institutional complex. In other words, critical approaches must “investigate the ways that power is articulated and exercised within institutional complexes.”Footnote ²⁸

Second, there is the justified lament of postcolonial theory that both mainstream and critical approaches do not study the record of participation of Global South nations, occluding the possibility of soundly assessing their place and role in IOs. The history of participation of even principal developing nations such as Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and Nigeria are seldom reviewed and taken into consideration in theorizing or identifying problems with the functioning of contemporary IOs. Take the example of colonial India, which was an original member of the League of Nations and United Nations. Its record of participation in the period before independence in 1947 shows that formal membership alone does not promise positive outcomes.Footnote ²⁹ That history suggests that the current relationship between postcolonial nations and IOs need to be evaluated only after locating them in deep structures of neo-colonialism.Footnote ³⁰ There is also the need to examine whether regional organizations (e.g., African Union and ASEAN) and development organizations (e.g., the New Development Bank) established by Global South nations are able to advance their interests. Furthermore, how far do these organizations depart from the universal counterparts in terms of design, objectives, and functioning? For example, do international financial institutions established by Global South nations reject the principle of weighted voting? In short, in order to advance an effective critique of IOs or offer sound suggestions on ways of reforming them it is necessary to engage with the history of participation of Global South nations.

Third, while individual critical theories have made important contributions in pinpointing shortcomings in existing IOs from class, gender, race, and geographical standpoints there is also a need to explore intersectional approaches that can draw together the rich insights that have been advanced. The overall idea is not an arithmetic aggregation of the different critiques but the development of a more fundamental viewpoint that traces the separate critiques to deep structures that give rise to different forms of exclusion. Arguably, the deficiencies can be traced to the functioning of a patriarchal and racial global capitalist system whose inner dynamics produces negative distributive outcomes for subaltern groups and nations in the process of sustaining the global accumulation of capital.

Fourth, there is the need to pinpoint the weaknesses and gaps in the ILC’s Draft Articles of Responsibility of International Organizations as it only deals with a narrow set of acts of omission and commission.Footnote ³¹ What is called for is a more inclusive rendering of the rules of legal accountability and responsibility, especially for large human rights harm caused to subaltern groups and nations through IO policies and practices.Footnote ³² One way forward is for IOs to “acknowledge customary international law obligations to provide effective remedies.”Footnote ³³ According to Daugirdas and Schuricht, the advantages of this move are many: “…it offers a way to apply human rights law to powerful, non-State actors – and increases the likelihood that those obligations will be implemented. And from the perspective of global administrative law, a customary obligation offers a way to cement accountability-promoting principles in a traditional source of binding law.”Footnote ³⁴ Another possibility is that member states of IOs undertake due diligence obligations.Footnote ³⁵ These are just some suggestions. What is called for is a thorough discussion of ways in which to supplement ILC’s Draft Articles.

Internal Critique

Even a comprehensive external critique of IOs will remain partial and limited if unaccompanied by a review of the internal functioning of an IO, i.e., a study of its intramural structures and everyday practices, which can play an important role in sustaining the hegemony of powerful states. The internal critique is now complicated by the emergence of HICs as a new dynamic is in play with individual IOs having to function in an institutional complex. At least seven aspects of the internal functioning of an IO deserve to be examined.

First, critical theory needs to be more alert to the fact that powerful states seek to achieve their objectives through manipulating the design features of an IO.Footnote ³⁶ The focus of the internal critique will be more on the practice of states than the design feature per se. For example, it would examine in detail how the provisions on withdrawal from membership have been used to make an IO change direction and policies.Footnote ³⁷ The US has deployed the withdrawal strategy on a number of occasions: It withdrew from membership of ILO (in 1977, returned in 1980), UNESCO (in 1985, returned in 2003), UNIDO (1995), UNICEF (2017), HRC (2018, returned in 2022, withdrew in 2025), and WHO (2020, returned in 2021, withdrew in 2025). It has also threatened to withdraw from WTO. A number of Global South nations have also used the provision of withdrawal to signal their dissent from policies of IOs. For example, Bolivia (2007), Ecuador (2009), Venezuela (2012), and Honduras (2024) have withdrawn from the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) to protest inequitable outcomes. African nations have threatened to exit the International Criminal Court (ICC) for targeting African leaders. Burundi (2017) and Philippines (2019) have already withdrawn from ICC. However, in view of the power differentials Global South nations do not have the same impact as those of the Global North.

A key design feature of any IO relates to the allocation of voting rights which can be used to gain control over the decision-making process. The constituent instruments of the IMF and World Bank are examples of IOs that adopt a weighted voting system denying effective participation to Global South nations. The veto powers assigned to the five permanent members in the UN Security Council is another instance. These design defects have sought to be rectified by Global South nations. Thus, for instance, Article 10 of the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties, 1974, stressed “the right to participate fully and effectively in the international decision-making process in the solution of world economic, financial and monetary problems.”Footnote ³⁸ There have also been efforts to amend the UN Charter provisions on membership and veto power in the UN Security Council;Footnote ³⁹ the Russian vetoes after the invasion of Ukraine is likely to renew these endeavors. The challenge before critical approaches is to offer in the matrix of these formal voting structures an ethnographic account and analysis of the dynamics of the regular interactions among officials of the organization, the type of diplomatic bargaining that tends to take place, the informal processes influencing decision-making in times of crisis, and the negative effects of formal arrangements on taking impartial, equitable, and reasoned decisions.Footnote ⁴⁰

Second, in reviewing IOs, critical approaches need to distinguish different phases of the life of IOs with the inevitable ebbs and flows to capture the complex relationship between external developments in the global order and the changing interpretations of their mandates. What are required are thick histories of organizations that allow an assessment of the principal factors that influence their functioning, and the informal and formal processes through which respective mandates are adapted to address new challenges or concerns of powerful member states. For example, the World Bank has gone through at least six phases in response to external developments. Michael Goldman identifies four of these: the “‘reluctant Banker’ period of 1944–68; the Bank’s ‘rise to power’ in the period of 1968–80 during which the calls for ‘poverty alleviation’ and meeting ‘basic needs’ for the ‘absolute poor’ reflected a new turn; the ‘debt and adjustment’ period of 1980–89; and the ‘green neoliberal’ period” beginning 1989.Footnote ⁴¹ The 2007 financial crisis and Covid 19 pandemic inaugurated two subsequent phases. The different phases of the history of the IMF are inter alia reflected in its changing guidelines on conditionality. For instance, as a response to developing nations avoiding seeking loans from the organization IMF adopted new conditionality guidelines in 1979. A key feature of the new guidelines was the possibility of “pay[ing] due regard to the domestic social and political objectives, the economic priorities, and the circumstances of members including the causes of their balance of payments problems.”Footnote ⁴² But the situation underwent change with the collapse of primary commodity prices in the early 1980s followed by the debt crisis that visited many Global South nations. Thereafter, IMF tended to neglect the 1979 guidelines.Footnote ⁴³ The organization once again revised its conditionality guidelines in 2002 when it was without clients, now recognizing that “its programs have become unduly intrusive” and that there was a need to “reduce the number of conditions to those that are essential to the achievement of the program’s objectives.”Footnote ⁴⁴ But post the financial and pandemic crises the IMF received a new lease of life and the earlier regime of conditionalities was essentially restored. The history of IMF also shows how the mandate can be reconfigured in practice. It was given little authority by the articles of agreement in the domain of capital controls.Footnote ⁴⁵ But since it worked in the interests of the advanced capitalist states the absence of mandate did not deter IMF from adopting an “institutional view” on capital controls, the latest in March 2022 (replacing an earlier view approved in 2012).Footnote ⁴⁶ The reasoning that informs and legitimizes the response of the IMF – pointing to developments in the world economy – can only be tenuously justified by reference to the articles of agreement. Put differently, the mutable relationship between IMF actions, its mandate, and the global capitalist system deserve to be adequately researched.

The changing role of UNHCR is another example of how the mandate of an IO is adapted to meet either new situations or the concerns of powerful states.Footnote ⁴⁷ Betts speaks of “formal and informal adaptations over time” of the UNHCR Mandate with respect to “who to protect” and “how to protect.”Footnote ⁴⁸ The changes in the mandate have in some cases been authorized by states, but in other instances initiated by the organization in response to changing contexts and developments, including its relationship to other organizations in the field.Footnote ⁴⁹ Betts goes on to identify “five key turning points in mandate expansion”: “1. prolonging its existence (1952–1956); 2. geographical expansion (1957–1967); 3. becoming a humanitarian relief agency (1990–2000); 4. assuming responsibility for IDP [internally displaced persons] protection (1998–2006); and 5. protecting victims of natural disaster (2007–2011).”Footnote ⁵⁰ What critical approaches need to explore is the relationship between these different phases, the organizational stakes in modifying the mandate, and the interests of powerful states. An important variable here is the voluntary nature of funding making UNHCR vulnerable to pressure from rich donor states.Footnote ⁵¹ Therefore, when Betts concludes that UNHCR “has had considerable agency to define its own destiny,” the question is the factors and actors that allowed it that freedom.Footnote ⁵² These aspects call for close study so that the hypothesis of IOs as vehicles for pursuing the interests of powerful states can be tested.

The shifting role of the UN Security Council and UNGA in the maintenance of international peace and security in different times is an instance of the shifting responsibility of the internal organs of an IO. The emergency session of the UNGA on the Russian invasion of Ukraine called under the Uniting for Peace Resolution adopted in 1950 shows the evolution of assigned roles of internal organs of IOs over time.Footnote ⁵³ Critical approaches must closely analyze the meaning and implications of such developments.

Third, critical approaches do not sufficiently examine the role of organizational leadership and its impact on the goals and functioning of an IO. The feminist approach to international law is an exception in this respect, but its reflections are essentially confined to the absence of women in leadership roles. While this lament is entirely appropriate the issue of leadership goes beyond the gender question. A dynamic leadership can redefine the goals of an IO. For example, Robert McNamara, who was the president of the World Bank between 1968 and 1981, played an important role in projecting a poverty agenda in a period of accelerated decolonization. The official history of the World Bank puts it in the following way: “Robert McNamara shaped the Bank as no one before him… The Bank that McNamara left in 1981 was completely transformed from the institution he had entered thirteen years earlier. It was a much larger organisation, and much more complex.”Footnote ⁵⁴ What did this expansion and complexity mean? Did it reflect the strategy of the Bank to deal with the problems of postcolonial states? Did the poverty agenda help operationalize a neo-colonial agenda? The leadership in IOs has played an important role in other organizations such as UNHCR. According to Betts, leadership “mattered for defining the direction of the organisation’s mandate.”Footnote ⁵⁵ The fact that the role of leadership is a significant factor can be seen from the targeting of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus by the Trump administration during the Covid 19 pandemic followed by a call for change in the direction and functioning of the organization. In reality, the leadership was impeded by “limitations in the mandate” and “its chronic underfunding, with 80 per cent of its $2 billion annual budget dependent on earmarked contributions, which undermines its [i.e., WHO’s] independence and capacity to deliver on its mandate.”Footnote ⁵⁶ In sum, a critical assessment of leadership of IOs is important in sustaining the view that these serve interests of powerful states.

Fourth, critical approaches should review staff recruitment policies and everyday practices of an IO. The kind of staff that is hired, its class, gender, geographical, and disciplinary dimensions, has an important bearing on organizational culture with implications for IO policies and practices. Thus, for example, it is important to consider the profile of experts working in the World Bank and explore how far the dominance of economists has a bearing on the fact that it has not taken international human rights law seriously.Footnote ⁵⁷ What role have anthropologists and sociologists played in the World Bank? What impact have they had on organizational culture? Did the generation of interdisciplinary knowledge help internalize the gender and green critiques? There are a range of other issues as well. How does the socialization and everyday work of the staff contribute to the effectiveness of an IO? How far does the fact that international civil servants are insulated from the influence of individual member states help in maintaining the autonomy of an IO? For instance, it has been said that there is “substantial evidence that World Bank staff play an important role in facilitating implementation of investment projects.”Footnote ⁵⁸ In sum, what is the impact of organizational culture and staff on the working of IOs?

Fifth, there is a need to separately study the legal culture of IOs as it can determine whether certain policy initiatives and practices are seen as in accord with respective mandates. In his recent work Van den Meerssche documents how a “new normative architecture” proposed by Anne-Marie Leroy, the World Bank General Counsel from 2009 to 2016, shaped the understanding of the limits of the organization’s mandate and accountability.Footnote ⁵⁹ Leroy departed from the more traditional approach of predecessors like Ibrahim Shihata who insisted that the World Bank act within the constraints imposed by the mandate. Instead, she emphasized “a pragmatic ‘paradigm’ for legal practice.”Footnote ⁶⁰ It allowed Leroy to respond positively to the demands of the higher management leading to “the emergence of a new ‘culture’ of lawyering a flexible, dynamic, outcome-driven approach attuned to the productivities of uncertainty and the governmentality of risk.”Footnote ⁶¹ This orientation was used to limit the Bank’s accountability to international human rights law. She did this to restore “institutional harmony” when the World Bank Inspection Panel was seen as overstepping its role.Footnote ⁶²

Sixth, critical approaches should review the knowledge production function of IOs which has from the times of the League of Nations performed a crucial role in global governance; the League saw the production of information and analysis on mandate states as critical to their (colonial) administration.Footnote ⁶³ The production of knowledge about postcolonial nations is as significant today in devising and legitimizing certain models of development.Footnote ⁶⁴ For instance, the development strategies recommended by organizations such as the World Bank are based on the knowledge produced and its larger vision of development spelled out in publications such as The World Development Report.Footnote ⁶⁵ The impact of the ideas advanced in them comes through their wide dissemination and their eventual infiltration of policy-making forums in postcolonial nations. The “law and development” project of the World Bank is another example of how knowledge is used, in this case relying additionally on the work of economic historians like Douglass North, to ensure the creation of legal institutions necessary to promote free market economies.Footnote ⁶⁶ But to be sure not all production of knowledge by IOs feeds into the hegemonic enterprise. The UN, as the UN Secretary-General has observed, is “a source of reliable data and evidence, providing public and verified information to help the world understand risks and opportunities.”Footnote ⁶⁷ There are also initiatives underway for “better linking of knowledge centres across the United Nations system, including in its specialised agencies.”Footnote ⁶⁸ Such efforts need to be evaluated from the perspective of weak groups and nations.

Seventh, critical theories should devote close attention to IO–NGO–civil society relations. The UN Secretary-General has stated that “what is most needed” at present is for the UN system “directly to include civil society in their work across all the pillars of our activities.”Footnote ⁶⁹ He has called on “all United Nations entities…to establish a dedicated focal point for civil society, if they have not already done so.”Footnote ⁷⁰ Underlying this understanding are the all-affected and all-subjected principles that stress the need to give voice to all those impacted by global rules, decisions, and practices and help address democratic deficit in IOs.Footnote ⁷¹ At the same time there is a need to be alert to the growing presence and influence of corporates in IOs to suggest ways in which to limit their impact. Thus, for example, WHO has framed rules to limit the influence of transnational corporations in the making of its policies.Footnote ⁷² Finally, in instances when IOs accept the viewpoint of civil society, such as the World Bank’s accommodation of its human rights and environment critiques, it is important to evaluate whether it is real and substantial.

Reform of IOs

It can be said that despite the serious and legitimate concerns expressed by critical approaches – which need to be further explored through addressing the neglected dimensions of external and internal critiques – contemporary IOs have a dual character. Even as IOs help sustain the hegemony of powerful states these also promote the common good, each IO to a different degree, through institutionalizing progressive international cooperation. If that were not the case weak nations would not have remained members of IOs or expressed concern today that the liberal international order is being dismantled. In other words, there is acknowledgment that a global order in which IOs mediate the relationship between powerful and weak states on the basis of agreed rules and established channels for communication is better than a system in which the relationship between these group of states is the direct subject of power relations. The concern of weak nations is that among other things the mandate and rules that control the functioning of IOs, especially key IOs (or their organs), favor strong states constraining among other things their policy space, limiting the possibility of promoting the welfare of their peoples.Footnote ⁷³ The matter is complicated by the emergence of a transnational capitalist class which aligns the interests of elites of key Global South and Global North nations.Footnote ⁷⁴ This development prevents important Global South nations from actively campaigning for reform of key IOs through a global coalitional strategy, other than to seek changes that enhance their individual influence in the global order. It is this complex situation which explains why IOs are simultaneously the subject of sanguine mainstream functionalist and liberal views and questioning critical approaches. To put it differently, while IOs have the potential to actively promote the global common good through institutionalized international cooperation, and some gains do accrue to weak nations, the promise of a just global order remains largely unfulfilled as these submit to the imperatives of sustaining a global capitalist order.Footnote ⁷⁵

But given the fact that some advantages do accrue to weak nations the idea of reform of IOs is worth pursuing so as to enhance opportunities for further gains. It could of course be argued that since IOs are primarily tools of dominance and exploitation any effort at reform will only go to legitimize them. Such a view overlooks three considerations: First, since the proposals for reform simultaneously represent a critique of the mandate, structures, and functioning of existing IOs these can help disseminate the reasons for dissatisfaction. Second, as long as the direction of proposed reforms is part of a larger vision for creating a more equitable global order such initiatives do not necessarily go to legitimize individual IOs or the global organizational order. Third, the reform project could in the face of resistance from powerful states propel the creation of new IOs that serve the interests of weak nations. In the past weak nations established organizations like UNCTAD and UNIDO for this purpose.

The more important question perhaps is whether in the present state of international relations there is less likelihood of effective collective strategies being put together by weak nations. The fact that key Global South nations are members of G-20 – and the non-aligned movement and G-77 are no longer as effective – would appear to reduce the possibility of building a coalition of weak states to bring about reform of IOs. On the other hand, we have seen the creation of a new platform and multiple organizations by BRICS nations. These contrasting developments suggest competition and collaboration between key nations of the Global North and Global South that does not eliminate the possibility of and space for reform of existing IOs. The problem with the standpoint of organizational nihilism is that it leaves the field free for dominant social forces and actors to pursue their hegemonic enterprise. It discounts the fact that sustained critique and political mobilization through a coalition of states, and global civil society, even if at times sans some key states of the Global South can help bring about changes that advantage weak nations and groups in however small ways. It must be remembered that “while weak states are often profoundly disadvantaged in the global system, they have more power than is commonly assumed, and a wide variety of strategies for exercising that power.”Footnote ⁷⁶ The latter range from linkage making to the act of withdrawal.

However, if IO reform is to be pursued several steps need to be taken by CAIL to create a facilitating environment.

First, there is a need to decolonize the pedagogy and study of IOs. It is crucial to expose and disseminate the role IOs play in sustaining a hegemonic global order. Such interventions must be accompanied by a critique of MIILS for ignoring the key role of ideology, power, and interests in the functioning of IOs. Likewise, attention must be drawn to the limitations of the functionalist and liberal approaches. A sustained case has to be made out for studying IOs from class, gender, race, and intersectional standpoints.

Second, when possible critical scholars should use official platforms to propose reforms in relevant IOs. For example, many leading TWAIL scholars have served or are serving as UN Special Rapporteurs on different human rights themes. These include Tendayi Achiume, Michael Fakhri, Obiora Okafor, and Balakrishnan Rajagopal. The position of Special Rapporteurs allows the authorized gathering and dissemination of important information and analysis which challenges dominant accounts and visions of the global order. It equally creates opportunities to advance proposals for reform of IOs in concerned areas even if these be modest in nature.

Third, critical approaches should assess measures taken by IOs to accommodate critiques, including in some instances the creation of new processes and mechanisms to address problems raised by academia and civil society critics.Footnote ⁷⁷ Thus, for example, the World Bank created the World Bank Inspection Panel to deal with concerns of project-affected persons whose plight was raised by social movements.Footnote ⁷⁸ Its design and functioning should be appraised so as to identify gaps and weaknesses in functioning.

Finally, critical approaches should advance detailed proposals for reform of IOs and call for the creation of new organizations if these can promote the interests of weak states and groups. For instance, a new IO is needed for global digital regulation as the current regime constituted by national and regional regimes and self-regulation of digital corporations cannot effectively protect the digital rights of individuals and weak states. Equally, critical approaches should propose designs and structures that can promote digital equity and justice.

Concluding Remarks: The Value of an Integrated Approach

In order to be effective, the appraisal of IOs should not simply be an extension of a critique of the global order. The specificities of the world of IOs, their mandates, structures, and functioning, need to be the basis on which any assessment must be advanced. What are called for are integrated critical studies that combine external and internal evaluation of individual organizations and institutional complexes to map and illuminate over time the role inter alia of the mandate and its interpretations, design, leadership, and culture in sustaining the domination of powerful states resulting in troubling outcomes. Such detailed analysis can help assign appropriate significance to formal and informal elements and processes, underscoring that the demand for structural reform should be accompanied by suggested changes in the everyday practices and culture of an organization or organization complex. In other words, an integrated approach can capture the interaction and dynamics between the formal and non-formal elements to help identify multiple spaces for intervention and reform. It can thus help frame appropriate initiatives to realize the interests of weak states and groups.