[Séminaire d'axe] Making Global Norms: Politics versus Science in International Organizations

Executive policymakers in large international organizations are often caught in a bind. They are expected to represent the political demands of member states while simultaneously making decisions grounded in best-practice expertise. In Making Global Norms, Kentikelenis and Seabrooke examine how this tension is managed in practice, and with what consequences for global policymaking.  

The book shows that executive policymakers routinely wear two hats: they act as state representatives and as experts with distinct professional worldviews. Global norms—the core infrastructure of economic and political globalization—emerge through negotiations among these dual loyalties, as executives bargain not only with governments but also with technocratic staff inside international organizations. Whether politics or science prevails varies across issue areas and moments in time, with significant implications for how norms are translated into policy.  

Kentikelenis and Seabrooke develop a mixed-methods framework to explain how variation in scientific consensus and political contestation shapes outcomes. Drawing on an archival deep dive into the International Monetary Fund, they show how Executive Board members are educated, selected, and socialized, and how career trajectories and professional training can sometimes trump assumed national interests. Empirical chapters on capital controls, sovereign debt management, and taxation between 1980 and 2010 demonstrate how struggles between politics and expertise unfold differently across issue areas. A central implication is that the diversity of expertise within international organizations matters: shifts in who participates in executive decision-making can fundamentally alter how global norms become policy.

The book is Open Access and available at: https://academic.oup.com/book/61256

Speakers

Alexandros Kentikelenis, Bocconi University 
Len Seabrooke, Copenhagen Business School

Chair

Matthias Thiemann, Sciences Po, CEE