Amid multi-faceted global challenges such as climate change and economic instability, international organisations (IOs) assert their role in producing and disseminating critical knowledge and providing evidence-based advice to policy-makers. Despite their vast knowledge hubs, the extent to which this knowledge is used by states, transnational groups, companies, and policy-makers remains uncertain. How do IOs select and prioritise the scientific knowledge they disseminate? What guides these decisions, and who influences them? When do states rely on IO knowledge? We invite papers exploring the dynamics of knowledge production and dissemination, focusing on both the supply and demand sides of international knowledge exchange.
Scholars have explored diverse forms of knowledge production and diffusion by International Organisations (IOs). This entails the collection, use, transfer, amplification, co-production, and generation of knowledge. Proponents of evidence-based policy-making argue that expertise is mainly used to inform operations and decision-making. Others have highlighted the co-production of knowledge and operations, and power dynamics related to expertise. Despite their vast knowledge hubs, the extent to which this knowledge is used remains therefore uncertain and we know little about the origins, selection processes, and decisions in knowledge production and diffusion processes of IOs.
This workshop will provide an interdisciplinary exchange (International Relations, Public Administration, Science and Technology Studies, Political Economy, and Environmental Politics) on knowledge-related roles of IOs. Doing so is important to avoid the risk of narrowed instrumental and linear approaches to knowledge production and transfer, and to widen the scope beyond formal processes. The main purpose of the event proposed here is to expand our understanding of the theoretical and empirical discussion of the role of IOs in every step of this process as well as the demand side of this interaction, namely the target groups of disseminated knowledge (individuals, transnational groups, companies, and states). With its focus, the workshop seeks to forward repertoires for an effective multidisciplinary assessment of the content, sources, and dissemination of knowledge generated by IOs.
We welcome contributions focusing on different IOs (e.g, WB, IMF, MDBs, UN institutions, IPCC, EU) with various methodological approaches and plan to put together a special issue.
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Littoz-Monnet, Annabelle (2017). The politics of expertise in international organizations: how international bureaucracies produce and mobilize knowledge. Abingdon: Routledge.
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1: How (and why) do IOs select and prioritize the scientific knowledge they disseminate?
2: Who are relevant actors in IO knowledge production and diffusion, and what guides their action?
3: When do states rely on IO knowledge, and with what implications?
4: Which types and sources of knowledge are seen as authoritative, and why?
5: How do IOs balance competing demands when curating and disseminating scientific knowledge?
1: Knowledge production and dissemination mechanisms in IOs
2: Sources of knowledge in IO knowledge products
3: Target groups of IO-generated knowledge
4: Contested IO expertise
5: Hierarchies and power dynamics in international knowledge politics
6: Environmental knowledge produced and disseminated by IOs
7: Development knowledge produced and disseminated by IOs
8: Influence of knowledge networks and epistemic communities
