Introduction

This chapter zooms in on the dynamics of competition that shape interorganizational relations (IOR) in world politics. More specifically, it probes into the competition over authority that pervades global governance: the quest by various actors to become epistemic authorities – the key knowledge producers – on the objects that are governed in world politics, such as international security, the global economy or the climate. Does this competition make the epistemic practices of these actors more similar or more distinct?

This question is key to understanding how IOR affect the ordering of world politics. If the competition fosters a diversity in the epistemic practices, this may make the objects more ambiguous, thus complicating efforts to develop frameworks and tools for their governance. One example for such an ambiguity is the world-wide level of armaments, for which military expenditures are a prominent indicator. Several organizations produce international statistics on military expenditures, vying for attention and influence in debates about security politics. Their statistics, though, diverge. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), for instance, estimates that the military spending of the US in 2019 (US$732 billion) far surpassed the combined spending of China (US$261 billion) and Russia (US$65 billion) (Tian et al, 2020). The US State Department, in turn, publishes a range of estimates on the patterns of military expenditures for the same year, with the upper end of the estimates suggesting that the combined spending of China (US$417 billion) and Russia (US$170 billion) was much closer to the US spending (US$730 billion) than the SIPRI figures indicate (US State Department, 2021a).

The chapter builds on and further develops theorizing on organizational fields to explain the effects of the competition over authority. Sociological neo-institutionalists have developed and used the concept of organizational fields to study how the interaction of organizations generates field dynamics that shape the form and practices of these organizations (for overviews, see Scott, 2008: 181– 209; Wooten and Hoffman, 2017). Isomorphism, for instance, denotes field dynamics that make the forms and practices of the organizations more similar over time (see Boxenbaum and Jonsson, 2017). Scholars in international relations (IR) have drawn on this theorizing to probe into different aspects of world politics, such as isomorphism among states (Farrell, 2005) or among governance institutions (Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2009), processes of policy change (Vetterlein and Moschella, 2014) and the evolution of ecologies of governance institutions (Lake, 2021).

Introduction

Military interventions involve a wide array of intervening actors, ranging from international and regional organizations to nation-state actors and violent as well as non-violent non-state actors. Mali is a prominent example of a contemporary intervention site where several military missions and mandates overlap and where a large number of intervening actors have been engaged since 2012. After several coups d’état in Mali, the further proliferation of jihadist groups in the Sahel region and the (partial) withdrawal of European troops in 2022, the country is increasingly seen as another potential case of failure of international interventionism, shortly after the disastrous withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan in 2021.

This chapter will not deal with the overall question of whether the international interventions in Mali can be assessed as success or failure. Instead, it seeks to highlight a more specific ‘dark side’ of inter-organizational interventions in Mali during the last decade. The cooperation among international organizations (IOs) such as the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), and new regional coalitions of states, such as G5 Sahel Joint Force, has yielded several negative effects on the protection of civilians (PoC). Given that PoC is a core norm of peacekeeping missions, the weakening of the implementation of this norm also impacted negatively on the local perception of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSMA) in Mali.

In the fields of international peace and security governance, policy makers and analysts alike have often treated cooperation among IOs as a desirable policy objective in itself. The burgeoning rhetoric of security partnerships among organizations after the end of the Cold War is an indicator of this optimism. Franke (2017: 19) has noted in a review of theoretical approaches to IOR that ‘current research is restricted by the still dominant equation of (inter-organizational) relations with cooperation, coordination, or collaboration. Examinations of competition and conflict already take place but should be strongly encouraged and expanded.’

In the spirit of this suggestion, this chapter seeks to elucidate more problematic and conflictive dimensions of inter-organizational collaboration itself: the weakening of the implementation of a core norm of peacekeeping missions.

Introduction

Since its creation in 1999, the UN Global Compact (UNGC) has been discussed as a prime example of global governance involving multinational enterprises (MNEs) (Rasche and Gilbert, 2012; see also Ruggie, 2001). As a multi-stakeholder initiative (MSI), the UNGC is designed to bring different entities together to discuss and improve standards for human rights, labour conditions and the environment, as well as combat corruption. Fostering corporate social responsibility (CSR), transparency and dialogue, the UNGC, at least for advocates, promotes and expands fundamental responsibilities of business in a globalized economy. Such an economy, it has been argued, is ‘ungovernable’ through states alone (Held and McGrew, 2002). With this logic, the UNGC marks an important step towards a more inclusive and effective global governance (Brown et al, 2018). Contrary to this, critics of the UNGC have emphasized that the Compact remains limited in its current form since compliance with its principles remains voluntary and the network appears too loose (Andrews, 2019). Following this account, the UNGC, at best, has no impact. At worst, it provides an opportunity for MNEs to ‘bluewash’ themselves by capitalizing on the moral authority of the UN (Berliner and Prakash, 2015).

Going into its third decade, the debate between these two sides has not been settled and the overall impact of the initiative remains more uncertain than ever (Podrecca et al, 2021). In this chapter, I want to relate to and weigh in on this debate by framing the UNGC through the lens of interorganizational relations (IOR). The rationale for this is simple: I argue that both advocates and critics rely on a similar and ultimately limited ontology of governance and the UNGC. Both assume the existence of independent global governors deliberately interacting within the Compact. The UNGC as such becomes a space to meet but otherwise does not have any transformational impact on the actors involved (Barrese et al, 2020). In other words, neither reading takes inter-organizational dynamics into consideration that potentially change how MSIs evolve over time and constitutively affect their participants. Furthermore, neither reflects how MNEs, NGOs, cities and other public-sector entities mutually recognize each other and thereby (re)produce their agency as constituents within the UNGC.

Introduction

Sports is a relevant subject for international relations (IR). Countless people around the world organize in sports clubs and associations or practice independently regardless of their specific circumstances. Cities bid for hosting sports events that many want to attend and watch. Companies place advertisements at these events and their broadcasts, politicians show up and pose with athletes. Supporters or athletes point out human rights violations or other grievances related to federations organizing or countries hosting an event, usually followed by officials of major sports federations claiming sports to be apolitical. These attempts, however, only increase the political character of sports and the necessity to study it.

Along these lines of the global relevance of sports and sports federations, the focus of this chapter is on how both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), responded to Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Since 1896 and 1930 respectively, the IOC and FIFA have been holding tournaments that are now among the largest sports events in terms of participation and attention. Athletes representing countries from all continents take part in these events, while around 40 per cent of the world population are watching (Fett, 2020).

Interested in inter-organizational relations (IOR) and their contributions to world order, we study the IOC and FIFA through the lens of both an open system's perspective from organization studies (Scott, 1992 [1981]) and classical pragmatism (Peirce, 1998 [1903]; Dewey, 1991 [1927]). We ask how both organizations are embedded in their environments and what beliefs as rules for action they follow in the context of Russian aggression. We assume that the beliefs held by those who speak on behalf of the IOC and FIFA contribute to world order, understood as a specific constellation of beliefs on how human life is organized (Roos, 2015). These beliefs become manifest in practice, in what those who act in the name of states, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) or non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as the IOC, FIFA or other ‘structures of corporate practice’ do (Franke and Roos, 2010: 1065–9).

Introduction

When the Comision Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG) was expelled from the country in 2019, this heralded the end of a successful experiment in international cooperation. The commission was a unique governance arrangement in the rule of law sector that was embedded in a dense web of inter-organizational relations (IOR), interacting with organizations at different layers of governance, ranging from the global to the local. Anti-impunity commissions are part of a broader global trend towards hybrid governance solutions, which are located in the middle of a continuum, with purely international mechanisms (using international law, international staff and enjoying supranational powers) occupying one end of the spectrum, and domestic mechanisms (employing national law, local staff and ceding no sovereign privileges to external actors) occupying the other end.

This present contribution investigates the impact of this novel type of hybrid actor on the rule of law. More specifically, it inquires into how the new hybrids’ entanglement in a web of inter-organizational relations shapes their impact on the culture of lawfulness in their host state. The study of IOR is a relatively young subfield in the discipline of international relations (IR), and within this nascent subdiscipline, the inter-organizational relations of hybrid anti-impunity commissions have not been the subject of academic scrutiny. As noted in the introductory chapter, existing studies of IOR tend to be somewhat limited in terms of organizations and issue-areas studied – privileging relations between international organizations (IOs) in the fields of economic and security governance – and with regard to forms of interaction, in that existing studies tend to assume a binary distinction between cooperative and confrontational relations. The present contribution seeks to correct these biases: first, by introducing a new issue area – judicial cooperation; second, by focusing on a new type of organization – hybrid anti-impunity commissions and their manifold relations with IOs, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and state actors; and third, by demonstrating how hybrid anti-impunity commissions’ inter-organizational relations produce variegated and ambivalent forms of interaction that defy the cooperation vs conflict dichotomy.

Hybrid anti-impunity commissions are deeply embedded in their organizational environment, as they do not seek to supplant the justice system of the target state but fight impunity from within it.

This chapter outlines the theoretical and historical argument of the book by criticizing extant accounts of the origin of the modern international system. It does so be engaging the view according to which the modern international system emerged as a consequence of a transition from a world of empires to a world of states, arguing that this presupposes that empires and states are categorically distinct and can be placed in historical succession. It also engages the view according to which the modern international system spread to other continents as a result of a diffusion of European ideas, instead arguing that this was a result of their creative appropriation.

Chapter 4 deals with the rise of nationalism and pleas for self-determination during the latter half of the nineteenth century and describes some attempts to reconcile these with notions of empire and imperial rule. When the principle of nationality became constitutive of statehood towards the end of that century, this principle was used to justify wars of unification in Europe. But this principle also provided a new and potent justification of colonial rule at a moment when earlier standards of sovereignty and civilization were increasingly contested. Whereas European peoples were deemed ripe for self-government by virtue of constituting homogenous nations, non-European peoples were considered unfit for self-government on the grounds that they lacked the defining characteristics of nationhood and should therefore remain under European tutelage. Yet the idea of nationality was soon appropriated by anticolonial nationalists to debunk empire and imperial rule and to support claims to self-determination of non-European peoples. Although most of those claims were initially unsuccessful, the spread of anticolonial nationalism and the contestations of standards of legitimacy and recognition that ensued made membership of the international system the obvious escape route from imperial domination.

Chapter 3 analyzes the many attempts to reconcile notions of empire with proliferating claims to independence during the Age of Revolutions, arguing that such claims and their relative success were precarious and contingent on the ideological context at hand, and rarely if ever translated into a demise of empires or imperial forms of rule. Claims to independence during this period are best understood in the context of emergent norms of international legal recognition, and against the backdrop of the competing visions of empire that animated global great power rivalries in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. When seen from this perspective, the rise of independent states in the Americas looks less like a successful revolt against empire and an expansion of international society into a new continent but more like a continuation of empire with indirect means in a world defined by the interconnectedness of nominally sovereign states.

Chapter 2 describes how Roman and medieval of notions of imperium were re-appropriated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to describe the sovereignty claims of nascent states as well as to legitimize their territorial aggrandizement in Europe and beyond. Since early modern conceptions of sovereignty came with few restrictions on the scope of rule in terms of peoples or places that could be legitimately subjected to its authority, early modern authors made no categorical distinction between empires and states. But even if these authors had no clear conception of a distinctive international realm, they nevertheless developed a rich vocabulary for describing relations between different polities in and out of Europe. Many of those who resisted imperial aggrandizement during this period maintained that the quest for universal sovereignty violated the natural liberty of both individuals and states and proposed that upholding the balance of power between European empires cum states was crucial to the preservation of natural liberty. From this Enlightenment historians and lawyers concluded that European powers constituted a system of sovereign and formally equal states held together by public law and balance of power in equal measures.

Chapter 5 describes how anti-imperialists of various stripes successfully raised clams to self-determination during the second half of the twentieth century, and how this issued in the final globalization of the international system and the universalization of the nation state as the only prima facie legitimate form of rule to the exclusion of other forms of political association. Even if this spelled the end of formal imperial relations between the West and the rest of the world, critics were quick to point out how informal hierarchical relations were reproduced and further entrenched under conditions of sovereign equality. By amalgamating these seemingly incompatible forms of political association while marginalizing alternative forms in the process, a global international system was naturalized into brute fact of modern political life, with myths of origin invented in its support. Hence, rather than spelling the end of empire, it is possible to interpret the globalized international system not only as a continuation of imperial relations but as an empire in its own right.