The Survival of International Organizations Institutional Responses to Existential Challenges

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While international organizations (IOs) have played a central role in global governance in the post-Cold War period, during the last decade many have struggled. Due to the rise of populism, the Trump Presidency, and the renewed assertiveness of the emerging powers, various IOs have been challenged in ways that put their ability to perform core functions at risk.

The Survival of International Organizations studies the responses of IOs to such existential challenges. It focuses on the central institutional actors inside IOs - IO leaders and their bureaucracies - that have a strong interest in the survival and well-being of their organizations. Presenting six case studies and drawing on more than 100 interviews, this book highlights the variation in the way in which these institutional actors try to cope with and counter existential challenges: Some fight tooth and nail to keep their IOs relevant, while other institutional actors are more circumspect in their actions.

The Survival of International Organizations examines the IOs themselves as well as both those who lead IOs at the top and the desk officers who keep the machinery running. This behind-the-scenes view uncovers important processes about the survival of IOs and international institutions. It demonstrates that institutional actors try to tailor their responses to the specific types of existential challenges, but that their ability to do so depends on the quality of their leadership, organizational structure, and embedding in external networks.

Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, and environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states to supranational institutions, subnational governments, and public-private networks. It brings together work that advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars.

The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

Hylke Dijkstra, Professor of International Security and Cooperation, Maastricht University,Laura von Allwörden, Postdoctoral Researcher at the International Relations Chair, Kiel University,Leonard Schütte, Senior Researcher, Munich Security Conference,Giuseppe Zaccaria, Research Associate in Political Science, University of Glasgow

Hylke Dijkstra is Professor of International Security and Cooperation at Maastricht University in The Netherlands, where he leads the research programme on Europe. He holds a PhD from Maastricht University and was previously a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is the Project Coordinator of the Horizon-funded ENSURED project on EU support for global governance transformation. He was previously the Principal Investigator of the NestIOr project on the decline and death of international organizations funded by the European Research Council. He has published widely on global governance, multilateralism, and international organizations.

Laura von Allwörden is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the International Relations Chair at Kiel University in Germany. She holds a PhD from Maastricht University where she was part of the NestIOr project on the decline and death of international organizations funded by the European Research Council. Her research focuses on challenges to international organizations in the field of climate and energy, and she has studied the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change and the International Energy Agency. She has published articles in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs and International Relations.

Leonard Schütte is a Senior Researcher at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. He holds a PhD from Maastricht University where he was part of the NestIOr project on the decline and death of international organizations funded by the European Research Council. He is interested in European security, NATO, and international organizations and has published articles in International Affairs, Journal of Common Market Studies, and Journal of European Public Policy.

Giuseppe Zaccaria is a Research Associate in Political Science in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom. He holds a PhD from Maastricht University where he was part of the NestIOr project on the decline and death of international organizations funded by the European Research Council. His research focuses on challenges to international organizations in the field of global trade and development, and he has studied the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. He has published articles in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Global Policy, and Pacific Review.