Podcast Summary: Ways of Seeing International Organizations: New Perspectives for International Institutional Law

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode Date: December 13, 2025
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guests: Dr. Negar Mansouri & Dr. Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín
Book Discussed: Ways of Seeing International Organisations: New Perspectives for International Institutional Law (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Overview of the Episode

This episode spotlights the newly edited volume, Ways of Seeing International Organisations, which re-examines the field of international institutional law through innovative, interdisciplinary lenses. The editors, Dr. Negar Mansouri and Dr. Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín, discuss their motivations, the structure of the book, and its core arguments—challenging the conventional “rut” in how international institutional law is studied and understood. The conversation moves through the book’s four main thematic areas, offering insights into the social, political, and even architectural dimensions of international organizations.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

Origins and Motivation for the Book

• The Editors’ Frustration & Vision
  Both editors, once fellow PhD students in Geneva, describe their shared dissatisfaction with the limited questions and perspectives in the field of international institutional law:

  "We felt that the people we were reading, the questions we were posing, the answers we were imagining... were quite limited. And we thought that as PhD students, we were in a good position to try to shake the field a little bit." – Dr. Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín (04:00)

• The Book’s Unique Offering
  Although international law and organizations have been widely studied, their intersection—international institutional law—remains oddly neglected, especially by critical, feminist, or postcolonial theory.

What is the "Rut" in International Institutional Law?

• Dominance of Positivism and Liberalism
  The field suffers from a narrow, depoliticized focus—primarily on improving norms and standards—thus downplaying history, material structures, and political economy:

  "For decades, the scholarly focus of liberal international lawyers... has been how to improve norms and standards... Even now, asking this more substantial question of why many things have gotten worse despite an increase in norms... is very unlikely to come up outside the circle of a small number of elitist schools..." – Dr. Negar Mansouri (07:03)

• Lack of Sociological Approaches
  Legal scholars rarely incorporate sociological, anthropological, or material perspectives that are more common in International Relations.

Book Structure: Four Thematic Sections

(09:01)
Dr. Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín explains the book's structure, designed to take familiar legal questions from new angles:

1. Expertise, Authority, and Knowledge Production

   • Mixes lawyers and scholars from science & technology studies; analyzes how “expertise” is created and legitimized within international organizations.

2. Structures, Spaces, and Jurisdictions

   • Explores how international organizations construct and operate in both legal and physical spaces—ranging from courtrooms to mundane office spaces.
   • Notable for emphasizing the built environment and spatial politics.

3. People, Practices, and Performances

   • Draws on anthropology and ethnography; looks at how international law and bureaucracy are enacted by people—with attention to rituals, behavioral norms, and historical continuities.

4. Capitalism, Class, and Political Economy

   • Introduces underexplored analyses of class, accumulation regimes, and the effects of capitalism and race within international organizations.

The volume concludes with an essay by Guy Fiti Sinclair, critically reflecting on what new perspectives the collection offers.

Deep Dives into Each Section

1. Expertise and the Black Boxes of Knowledge

(13:52–20:25)

• Challenge to Neutrality
  Knowledge categories in international organizations aren’t neutral—they’re deeply political:

  "It’s very important to problematize knowledge categories that appear as politically neutral and inherently conducive to social progress..." – Dr. Negar Mansouri (14:40)

• Historical Example
  The shift from “limits to growth” to “sustainability” in the UN system allowed treaties like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to bypass environmental protections.

• Depoliticization as Technique
  By categorizing issues as “technical” or “functional," IOs can obscure broader structures of inequality, such as North-South trade imbalances or neocolonial power dynamics.

• Consequences of Unquestioned Expertise
  If “black boxes” remain closed, IOs risk becoming tools for transient, often Western interests, and lose sight of deeper, structural problems—see the rise of “resilience talk” as an example.

2. Structures, Spaces, and Jurisdictions

(22:26–27:54)

• Physicality of International Organizations
  The built environments—offices, basements, coffee areas—shape how governance happens:

  "To offer global governance really requires you to go to spaces, meet with people, have coffee breaks, discuss, lobby, bring a report, shuffle around... that's the kind of questions I was trying to think, very tentatively, how does the precariousness of the built environment tell us something about the work of international organizations?" – Dr. Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín (23:32)

• Jurisdiction Reconsidered
  Territorial and spatial framings of jurisdiction can reveal new contests over power (e.g., in the Mediterranean Sea or the distribution of office space in UN buildings).

• Politics of Infrastructure
  Even mundane aspects—broken elevators, lack of space—reflect wider struggles and resource allocations within and between organizations.

3. People, Practices, and Performance

(27:54–30:41)

• Embodied Expertise
  Studies how standards and rituals are enacted, from 19th-century telegraph organizations to today’s Human Rights Council.

• Professional Cultures in IOs
  Contrasts formal legal practices with bureaucratic, managerial routines (e.g., World Bank Group):

  "How do we engage with less formalist traditions that are perhaps more bureaucratic and more problem based? And how do they open some of the assumptions of the discipline?" – Dr. Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín (29:52)

4. Interdisciplinarity in Methodology

(31:20–34:34)

• Not Just Bolt-on Methods
  Genuine interdisciplinarity means more than “just adding a little bit” of another field—it requires real dialogue and reflection on biases:

  "...It requires a kind of engaged thinking about how do the two disciplines come into contact, what are their limitations, do they have mutually reinforcing biases?" – Dr. Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín (32:49)

• Interdisciplinary Limitations
  Both editors note that law and international relations still rarely engage meaningfully, despite obvious areas of overlap.

5. Capitalism, Crisis, and Race

(34:58–38:15)

• Regimes of Accumulation
  Chapters link shifts in global capitalism and neoliberal crisis to changes in IO operations.

• Not Mere Reflections of Capital
  IOs are “relatively autonomous” but help maintain structures that favor capital; with each crisis, their focus and function are reconfigured.

• Race and the Visual Imagination The book ends with analysis of a stained glass triptych in Africa Hall (UN Economic Commission for Africa), exploring how IOs figured in African decolonization narratives and the entanglement of race in global governance:

  "What I find interesting is that towards the corner of the composition, you see a figure fully cladded in European clothes, and not only that European armor. He's like some sort of white armored knight, and he has at the center of his chest the shield of the United Nations. And I use that to try to think... that's how people in Ethiopia, and perhaps around the colonized world, came to think about the UN as this kind of pesky European institution..." – Dr. Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín (40:36)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the limitations of mainstream approaches:
  "[...] the law of international organizations is stuck in a rut."
  – Paraphrased by Dr. Miranda Melcher (05:00)

• On depoliticization:
  "International organizations govern by depoliticizing from the politics of each era."
  – Dr. Negar Mansouri (20:16)

• On spatial politics:
  "There's a real kind of politics to the precariousness of infrastructure [in] international organizations."
  – Dr. Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín (26:40)

• On interdisciplinarity:
  "It's not about just adding a little bit of a different method and calling it interdisciplinary."
  – Dr. Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín (32:51)

• On imagery and race in IO history:
  "[The triptych] is telling an Ethiopian story. And that Ethiopian story might not be necessarily recognizable to Africans elsewhere... but for the purpose of this chapter, I wanted to see how did Ethiopia engage with international organizations, and in particular, how did what Dubois called the global color line became a problem or an opportunity for Ethiopia in those engagements?"
  – Dr. Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín (39:35)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introductions and Project Origins – 03:05 to 04:53
• “The Rut” in International Institutional Law – 05:16 to 09:01
• Book Structure and Four Main Areas – 09:01 to 13:52
• Expertise, Power & Knowledge Categories – 13:52 to 17:39
• Functionalist Approaches and Hidden Consequences – 17:20 to 20:25
• The Politics of Space and Infrastructure – 23:32 to 27:54
• People, Professional Cultures and Rituals in IOs – 27:54 to 31:20
• Methodological Interdisciplinarity – 31:20 to 34:34
• Capitalism, Crisis, and Class – 34:58 to 38:15
• Race, the Africa Hall Triptych, and Visual Imagination – 38:15 to 42:04
• Current and Future Projects of the Editors – 42:27 to 46:32
• Closing and Open Access Thank Yous – 46:56 to end

What are the Editors Working on Next?

• Negar Mansouri:
  Now tracing the journey of political and economic developments from national arenas (e.g., Japan, Malaysia, London urban policy, US oil shipping) into the international organizational sphere, she is particularly interested in lesser-known technical organizations—some created to insulate economies from free-market competition (e.g., BRICS).

• Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín:
  Finalizing a monograph on the iconic architectural spaces of IOs (e.g., UN HQs) and beginning new research into alliances—how organizations like the United Nations also function as military or diplomatic alliances, with special focus on theory and history.

Episode Tone and Style

The conversation is scholarly yet accessible, merging critical theory with personal anecdotes and clear engagement with concrete examples. The editors advocate for more interdisciplinary and historically grounded study of international organizations, and they close with enthusiasm for making such research openly available.

Takeaways

• The book challenges foundational assumptions in international institutional law, promoting richer, more critical, and interdisciplinary perspectives.
• It sheds light on the political, material, and social dimensions often overlooked in the study of international organizations.
• The volume is openly accessible thanks to Swiss National Science Foundation funding: “Any listener can just go now and download any chapter, regardless of institutional affiliation, regardless of where they’re based, in the global north to the global south.” (46:59)

For listeners/readers interested in global governance, law, or international institutions, this episode offers both a roadmap to the book’s themes and a primer on renewing how we see and study IOs today.