The presentation will address the rise and fall of the doctrine that international relations should be managed by technical experts, bureaucrats and lawyers, rather than by national politicians and diplomats. Praise for technocratic governance has been a persistent theme in the (self-)legitimation of international organizations (IOs), especially of the functional type, such as ILO, ISO, ITU or WIPO. This doctrine was put forward by practitioners and academics alike.

Scrutinizing historical evidence from the entire 20th century, I will identify some recurring patterns of technocratic legitimation. Typically, proponents of technocratic international governance drew on three themes when legitimating IOs: technical competence, efficient problem-solving and impartial defense of the (objectively given) public interest against political rent-seeking. Recent popular resistance against global and regional IOs may be interpreted (at least in part) as a backlash caused by the unanticipated consequences and unfulfilled promises of this technocratic utopia.

Speaker:

• Jens Steffek, Professor of Transnational Governance and Managing Director of the Institute for Political Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt

Discussant:

• Nina Reiners, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Potsdam

A light sandwich lunch will be served as 12.15

This event is part of the Global Governance Colloquium series.