CALL FOR PAPERS. Administory Journal for the History of Public Administration / Zeitschrift für Verwaltungsgeschichte, Volume 7. Administrative Culture(s) of International Organizations

 

(Source: https://sciendo.com/journal/ADHI)

Administrative Culture(s) of International Organizations

AUGUST 17, 2021

ADMINISTORY is an Open Access online journal on the history of state and administration. Volume 7 is dedicated to the topic “Administrative Culture(s) of International Organizations”. International Organizations (IOs) have proliferated in the 19th and 20th centuries and spread across the globe in their various forms from intergovernmental, financial to non‑governmental organizations. They have received considerable attention in recent years as conveyors of internationalism, as a specific model of multilateral conflict resolution, as sites of diplomatic, economic, and military cooperation and contestation and as platforms for the circulation of knowledge, models and practices of governance between nation states.

However, this has overshadowed that IOs themselves constituted the object and product of knowledge transfers and cooperation (as well as conflict) as organizations staffed by actors trained and experienced in different legal systems, administrative decision-making processes, writing and filing routines, and hierarchical structures. IOs, therefore, faced the challenge to establish an administrative apparatus that could integrate or supersede different administrative practices.

IOs can, however, not be understood as composites of national administrative cultures resulting from a unidirectional knowledge transfer from national to international administration. Instead, the administrative internationalisms of IOs provide the opportunity to go beyond such methodological nationalism and investigate the role of subnational administrative bodies, specific branches as well as individual actors. Taking IOs’ role in the circulation of knowledge seriously also means to ask not only how IOs contributed to the dissemination of new administrative models and practices but also whether and when they adopted them for their own administrative bodies.

We invite contributions on

• intergovernmental (e.g. League of Nations, United Nations, Organization of African Unity/African Union), supranational (e.g. the EU and its predecessors), economic or financial (e.g. the COMECON, the IMF, World Bank) and internationally operating non‑governmental organizations (e.g. Amnesty International, Greenpeace);

• processes of change, continuities and ruptures in organizational culture during the 19th and 20th centuries, which were closely related to changes in the organizations’ political, social, and cultural environment.

 We particularly invite contributions that go beyond the ‘Global North’ and examine the role of actors from or IOs established in the ‘Global South’.

 ADMINISTORY sees itself as a platform to publish and discuss cutting-edge research on the history of administration. The journal, which appears once a year with double blind peer-review procedures, is interdisciplinary, transepochal and transnational as well as methodologically open. ADMINISTORY thus establishes itself as an interface between historical-cultural research and the debates on state and administration in the social sciences, law and political sciences. Contributions are published in German or English.

The issue will be edited in collaboration with Madeleine Herren-Oesch. If you would like to propose an article for this volume, please submit an abstract (max. 2,500 characters) including a title and a short CV by 30 September 2021 to thomas.rohringer@lmu.de. The selected authors will be notified in October; the deadline for submission of articles (max. 10,000 words, including footnotes) is 31 January 2022, an online authors’ workshop is planned at the end of February/beginning of March 2022.

Subsequently, the contributions will be reviewed in a double-blind peer-review process which will decide whether the texts are accepted for publication. Publication date for accepted texts is end of 2022.

More information: https://www.lhlt.mpg.de/notice/cfaadministory

BOOK: Karen GRAM-SKJOLDAGR et al. (Eds.), Organizing the 20th-Century World - International Organizations and the Emergence of International Public Administration, 1920-1960s (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). ISBN 9781350134591, 61.20 GBP

 

(Source: Bloomsbury)

Bloomsbury is publishing a new book on the emergence of international public administrations.

ABOUT THE BOOK

International Organizations play a pivotal role on the modern global stage and have done, this book argues, since the beginning of the 20th century. This volume offers the first historical exploration into the formative years of international public administrations, covering the birth of the League of Nations and the emergence of the second generation that still shape international politics today such as the UN, NATO and OECD.

Centring on Europe, where the multilaterization of international relations played out more intensely in the mid-20th century than in other parts of the world, it demonstrates a broad range of historiographical and methodological approaches to institutions in international history. The book argues that after several 'turns' (cultural, linguistic, material, transnational), international history is now better equipped to restate its core questions of policy and power with a view to their institutional dimensions. Making use of new approaches in the field, this book develops an understanding of the specific powers and roles of IO-administrations by delving into their institutional make-up.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Introduction, Karen Gram-Skjoldager, Aarhus University, Denmark and Haakon A. Ikonomou, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Torsten Kahlert, and University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

 

Part I: Populating Administrations

Chapter 2 Biographies and International Administrations in the 19th and 20th Century Bob Reinalda, Radboud University, The Netherlands.

Chapter 3 The Biography as Institutional Can-Opener: An Investigation of Core Bureaucratic Practices in the Early Years of the League of Nations Secretariat

Haakon A. Ikonomou, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Chapter 4 Prosopography – Unlocking the Social World of International Organizations

Torsten Kahlert, Aarhus University, Denmark.

 

Part II: Learning and Norms

Chapter 5: The Influence of the United States on the Rise of Global Governance in

Education: The OEEC and UNESCO in the Post-World War II Period,

Maren Elfert, King's College London, UK & Christian Ydesen, Aalborg University, Denmark.

Chapter 6: Learning Across Institutions – the Officials of the ECSC High Authority and EEC Commission, Katja Seidel, University of Westminster, UK

Chapter 7: Food and Nutrition – Expertise Across International Epistemic Communities and Organizations, 1919-1960, Amy Sayward, Middle Tennessee State University, USA.

 

 

Part III: Legitimacy and Legimization

Chapter 8: Legitimizing International Bureaucracy – Press and Information Work from the League of Nations to the UN, Emil Seidenfaden, Aarhus University, Denmark

Chapter 9: The Avant-Garde of the League: The International Federation of League of Nations Societies and their Part in Governing the World, Anne Isabel Richard, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Chapter 10 An Uneasy Relationship – German Diplomats and Bureaucrats in the League of Nations, Michael Jonas, Helmut Schmidt Universität, Germany

 

Part IV: Leadership and Administration

Chapter 11: Secretaries-General and Crisis Management – Trygve Lie and the UN, Ellen Ravndal, University of Stavanger, Norway.

Chapter 12: Leadership Styles and Organizing Principles in NATO: Ismay, Spaak and Wörner, Linda Risso, Institute of Historical Research/School of Advanced Studies, UK

Chapter 13: The Making of International Civil Servants c. 1920-1960 – Establishing the Profession, Karen Gram-Skjoldager, University of Copenhagen, Denmark and Haakon A. Ikonomou, Aarhus University, Denmark

 

More info here

BOOK: Sara LORENZINI, Global Development : A Cold War History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). ISBN 9780691180151, 29.95 USD

(Source: Princeton University Press)

Princeton University Press has published a new book on the history of development during the Cold War period.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In the Cold War, “development” was a catchphrase that came to signify progress, modernity, and economic growth. Development aid was closely aligned with the security concerns of the great powers, for whom infrastructure and development projects were ideological tools for conquering hearts and minds around the globe, from Europe and Africa to Asia and Latin America. In this sweeping and incisive book, Sara Lorenzini provides a global history of development, drawing on a wealth of archival evidence to offer a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a Cold War phenomenon that transformed the modern world.

Taking readers from the aftermath of the Second World War to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, Lorenzini shows how development projects altered local realities, transnational interactions, and even ideas about development itself. She shines new light on the international organizations behind these projects—examining their strategies and priorities and assessing the actual results on the ground—and she also gives voice to the recipients of development aid. Lorenzini shows how the Cold War shaped the global ambitions of development on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and how international organizations promoted an unrealistically harmonious vision of development that did not reflect local and international differences.

An unparalleled journey into the political, intellectual, and economic history of the twentieth century, this book presents a global perspective on Cold War development, demonstrating how its impacts are still being felt today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sara Lorenzini is associate professor of international history in the School of International Studies at the University of Trento in Italy.

More info here

BOOK: Haakon A. IKONOMOU & Karen GRAM-SKJOLDAGER (eds.), The League of Nations. Perspectives from the Present (Aarhus: University Press, 2019). ISBN: 9788771846201, 299 DKK, pp. 284

(Source: Aarhus University Press)

ABOUT THE BOOK

The League of Nations – Perspectives from the Present is an accessible and richly illustrated edited volume displaying a wide variety of cutting-edge research on the many ways the League of Nations shaped its times, and continues to shape our contemporary world. A series of bite-size studies, divided into three thematic parts, investigates how the League affected the world around it and the lives of the people who became part of this ‘first great experiment’ in international organisation. Recent research has reinterpreted the League as a laboratory of global economic, political and humanitarian governance. Expanding on this, the volume aims to show that the League is an ‘academic site’, where international history – as a discipline – has re-invented itself by integrating new approaches from social, cultural and media history. With an introduction by Director-General Michael Møller of the United Nations Organisation in Geneva, this work is a timely reminder of the fragile, varied and enduring history of multilateralism, on the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Karen Gram-Skjoldager is Associate Professor at the Department of Culture and Society - History, 

Aarhus University.

Haakon Andreas Ikonomou is Associate Professor at the SAXO-Institute for Archaeology, Ethnology, Greek & Latin, History in Copenhagen.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A pdf version of the table of contents is available here.

More information here.

CALL FOR PAPERS: International Organizations throughout the 20th and 21st Centuries: Successes, Failures, Transformations, and Challenges - Special issue of Acta Universitatis Carolinea Studia Territorialia (Deadline: 15 January 2019)

(Source: Studia Territorialia)

Via Hsozkult, we learned of a call for papers on the history of international organizations in the 20^th and 21^st century for a special issue of the Czech academic journal AUC Studia Territorialia:

The upcoming centenary of the foundation of the League of Nations and associated international bodies represents an invitation for historians, sociologists, political scientists, economists, legal experts, and anthropologists to reflect on the origins of the contemporary system of international organizations, its transformations over the past 100 years and the various challenges it faces today […]

The full call for papers can be found here