Includes monthly supplements to: International congress calendar.

Once the exclusive preserve of member states, international organizations have become increasingly open in recent decades. Now virtually all international organizations at some level involve NGOs, business actors and scientific experts in policy-making. This book offers the first systematic and comprehensive analysis of this development. Combining statistical analysis and in-depth case studies, it maps and explains the openness of international organizations across issue areas, policy functions and world regions from 1950 to 2010. Addressing the question of where, how and why international organizations offer transnational actors access to global policy-making, this book has implications for critical issues in world politics. When do states share authority with private actors? What drives the design of international organizations? How do activists and businesses influence global politics? Is civil society involvement a solution to democratic deficits in global governance?

Global partnerships have transformed international institutions by creating platforms for direct collaboration with NGOs, foundations, companies and local actors. They introduce a model of governance that is decentralized, networked and voluntary, and which melds public purpose with private practice. How can we account for such substantial institutional change in a system made by states and for states? Governance Entrepreneurs examines the rise and outcomes of global partnerships across multiple policy domains: human rights, health, environment, sustainable development and children. It argues that international organizations have played a central role as entrepreneurs of such governance innovation in coalition with pro-active states and non-state actors, yet this entrepreneurship is risky and success is not assured. This is the first study to leverage comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis that illuminates the variable politics and outcomes of public-private partnerships across multilateral institutions, including the UN Secretariat, the World Bank, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

This book explores the roles of national actors within international organizations, with particular emphasis on the collaborative approach adopted by Nordic governments and associations. Analyzing Nordic regional cooperation within international organizations, this volume seeks to shed light on the politics of alignment and distinct macro-regional identity-building in international arenas. Exploring the middle ground between the national and the international, contributors discuss how Nordic governments and associations have successfully created and used the image of a distinct group within the international system and where they have failed. Presenting a richer picture of international and transnational relations, the volume’s features include: a key focus on the ‘Nordic model’ with its schism in regard to the EU studies on cooperation between governments and within civil society, including trade unions and anti-EU movements contributions from Nordic and international experts highly respected in their fields Seeking to move beyond neo-realist and cosmopolitan approaches in international studies, Regional Cooperation and International Organizations will be of interest to students and scholars of international relations, regionalism, Nordic studies, and Transnationalism.

Global policy making is unfurling in distinctive ways above traditional nation-state policy processes. New practices of transnational administration are emerging inside international organizations but also alongside the trans-governmental networks of regulators and inside global public private partnerships. Mainstream policy and public administration studies have tended to analyse the capacity of public sector hierarchies to globalize national policies. By contrast, this Handbook investigates new public spaces of transnational policy-making, the design and delivery of global public goods and services, and the interdependent roles of transnational administrators who move between business bodies, government agencies, international organizations, and professional associations. This Handbook is novel in taking the concepts and theories of public administration and policy studies to get inside the black box of global governance. Transnational administration is a multi-actor and multi-scalar endeavour having manifestations, depending on the policy issue or problems, at the local, urban, sub-regional, sub-national, regional, national, supranational, supra-regional, transnational, international, and global scales. These scales of 'local' and 'global' are not neatly bounded and nested spaces but are articulated together in complex patterns of policy activity. These transnational patterns represent a reinvigoration of public administration and policy studies as the Handbook authors advance their analysis beyond the methodological nationalism of the nation-state.

The role of business in global governance is now widely recognized, but exploration of its role in global financial governance has been more haphazard than systematic. This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the role of transnational financial associations (TFAs) in the organization of global finance. This book develops three theoretical themes of assemblage, functionality, and power as enrolment. These themes challenge approaches that treat financial power as emanating from a single location or force. Whilst existing approaches tend to treat TFAs as irrelevant or as merely transmitting power originating elsewhere, this book argues that power must be created by painstakingly assembling actors, networks, and objects that are often quite autonomous and working at cross purposes to one another--a process in which TFAs play a central role. The book explores these themes in chapters examining the roles of TFAs in interacting with public authorities, constructing global financial markets, and creating financial communities. The authors additionally analyse the roles of TFAs in the European Union, in the Global South, and in promoting goals other than profitability, including Islamic finance, microfinancing, savings banks and cooperatives. Making a distinctive contribution to our understanding of global finance and global governance, Transnational Financial Associations and the Governance of Global Finance is an important book for students and scholars of international political economy, finance, global governance and international relations.