For decades, the field of scholarship that studies the law and practice of international organisations -also known as 'international institutional law'- has been marked by an intellectual quietism. Most of the scholarship tends to focus narrowly on providing 'legal' answers to 'legal' questions. For that reason, perspectives rarely engage with the insights of critical traditions of legal thought (for instance, feminist, postcolonial, or political economy-oriented perspectives) or with interdisciplinary contributions produced outside the field. Ways of Seeing International Organisations challenges the narrow gaze of the field by bringing together authors across multiple disciplines to reflect on the need for 'new' perspectives in international institutional law. Highlighting the limits of mainstream approaches, the authors instead interrogate international organisations as pivots in processes of world-making. To achieve this, the volume is organised around four fundamental themes: expertise; structure; performance; and capital. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

‘Challenging the traditional lens of international institutional law, Ways of Seeing International Organisations brings fresh perspectives to the field. By interrogating expertise, structures, performance, and capital, this work transcends conventional boundaries, inspiring a critical, multidisciplinary understanding of international organisations' socio-technical roles and world-ordering visions.'

Sundhya Pahuja - Melbourne Laureate Professor, University of Melbourne

‘This volume brings together a remarkable set of critical voices, both established and emergent, from the field of international organization studies. The book not only documents the variety and richness of theoretical approaches available for the critical study of international institutions and law, it also provides readers with a wealth of empirical vignettes and case studies to underline their crucial contribution. A great achievement!'

Jens Steffek - Professor of Transnational Governance, TU Darmstadt, Germany

‘Engaging and provocative, this volume shows international organizations as sites of socio-technical struggle. Challenging the dominance of ‘problem-solving thinking' in international institutional law, Ways of Seeing International Organizations draws from law, history, anthropology, and political science to provide a rich description of institutional practices and their distributive effects.  A sophisticated, unconventional, and insightful take on the lives of international organizations.'

René Urueña - Professor of Law, Universidad de los Andes (Colombia)

‘In drawing together diverse disciplinary perspectives and traditions of thought to pluralize and complicate 'ways of seeing' international organizations, this wonderfully rich volume advances both scholarship on international organizations themselves, and more wide-ranging inquiries about the connections between legal forms, institutional arrangements and epistemology in international law.'

Megan Donaldson - Associate Professor of Public International Law, University College London