Book Review: International Organizations in Global Social Governance, Cham by Martens K., Niemann D. & Kaasch A.
| Author | Juliette Alenda-Demoutiez |
| DOI | 10.1177/13882627211050417 |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Martens K., Niemann D. & Kaasch A. (eds.), International Organizations in Global Social Governance, Cham,
Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, 353 pages, ISBN 978-3-030-65438-2.
Reviewed by: Juliette Alenda-Demoutiez
DOI: 10.1177/13882627211050417
The study of governance is fundamental in social sciences nowadays. At different levels, from the
local to the global, social policy is no longer about just the state, but about a constellation of dif-
ferent power-holding actors. This book focuses on the international level and the role of interna-
tional governmental organisations in different global social policy fields, acknowledging that
they are not mere instruments of states but institutions with their own life and goals. This focus
is highly ambitious. If many studies in international relations have explored the role of international
organisations (IOs) and the power they retain, they have not offered a more comprehensive under-
standing of how they shape and disseminate their discourses. Consequently, the book helps to con-
struct the field of global social governance analysis. Besides, it presents a collection of analyses in
the field of labour, education and environment. Each part may seem disconnected at first, presenting
a picture of varied characteristics and stakes. However, important commonalities appear between
them. The book will be of particular interest for social policy students, but also for academics com-
piling theoretical frameworks, methodologies and perspectives for further research. Finally, the
opportunity to access this book freely through the digital version offers the opportunity that such
important topics can be accessed easily by different audiences.
The main contributions of the book fall under three headings: (1) the connection between dis-
course and practice; (2) an innovative theoretical framework about how discourse is shaped; (3)
new empirical insights into discourse building. First of all, the authors point out the important
link between discourses and how individual or collective actors frame ideas and practices
through the implementation of norms. This reveals, at the same time, an architecture of arguments
and shows the impact of these arguments on different social policies. The way IOs frame ideas is
connected to the role they occupy as legitimate actors in different fields and the power they hold in
global governance. These ideas are then transmitted into national systems through soft governance.
Comparing the different social policies shows that IOs are not homogenous actors, but institutions
that may present different discourses depending on the type of policy but also within different
departments inside the IOs themselves. Analysing the recent evolution of IOs in their diversity,
density and connections, the book shows that IOs have played an important role in broadcasting
new ideas and establishing priorities for social policies. The network perspective used in different
chapters helps to illustrate this evolution, mapping dominating actors, identifying different clusters,
showing how IOs have been interacting, all with the aim to establish connections with discourses.
Second, the introduction presents a web of theories that reflects well the diversity but also the
complementarity of the different disciplines of the authors (political sciences, social policy, sociol-
ogy, geography, educational research). Far from being an artificial interaction between all sets of
theories as it may appear at first, it actually offers a coherent framework with which to understand
such an ambitious topic and show how interdisciplinarity matters. Based on constructivist work, but
also acknowledging its limits, the authors bring together a combination of organisational ecology
and soft governance approaches to analyse developments and changes in the realm of IOs. It helps
in understanding the impact of their own institutional design, how they react to their institutional
Book Reviews 399
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