“Global Institutions without a Global State,” in the Oxford Handbook on Historical Institutionalism – with Martha Finnemore – eds. Orfeo Fioretos, Tulia Falletti and Adam Sheingate

Historical institutionalism has not yet grappled with the deeper intellectual challenges of “going global.” Understanding international, particularly global, institutions, requires attention to and theorizing of a global social context, one that does not rely on a national government in the background, ready to enforce laws and rules. It also requires theories about the global organizations themselves. In this chapter, the authors argue that a historical institutionalism that engages with the many varieties of sociological institutionalism would be a richer tradition that could more systematically examine the role of norms and ideas, thereby expanding its analytic range to institutional contexts beyond the state.

Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore, “Global Institutions without a Global State,” Oxford Handbook on Historical Institutionalism, eds. Orfeo Fioretos, Tulia Falletti and Adam Sheingate (Oxford University Press: 2016). Also published in Orfeo Fioretos, International Politics and Institutions in Time (Oxford University Press: 2017).

Access the full text here.

Other Writing:

Essay

This Year’s Economics Nobel winner Invented a Tool That’s Both Brilliant and Undemocratic

Richard Thaler, of the University of Chicago, just won the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics for his contribution to behavioral economics — the subfield known for exploring how psychological biases cause people to act in ways that diverge from pure rational self-interest. Policymakers are more likely to know him for a different reason. Together with ...
Read Article
Essay

Balancing National Security and Commerce: Information Politics in the New Transatlantic Agenda

Following several years of tension between Europe and the United States, policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic have rediscovered pragmatism. Apparently irreconcilable differences of values are giving way to new forms of practical cooperation. However, the new transatlantic relationship differs from the old one in some very important ways. New issues that involve access ...
Read Article