International organizations (IOs), like the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, NATO, or the European Union have become common place in how governments govern their international relations. IOs are often seen as the solution to international cooperation problems, be it in areas of conflict, trade, human rights, or the global environment. Whether IOs can live up to this promise and can indeed change national governments' behaviour to solve global cooperation problems will be the central question this course addresses. Specifically, we will examine why IOs differ in their rules and decision-making processes and how this variation translates into different policy outputs and outcomes.

We will first develop the theoretical and analytical foundation to address these key questions in a principled manner across different policy domains. Second, we will apply these insights to specific IOs, which students are most interested in. We will be doing so through an applied workshop on day 3, where students will develop briefing documents and present their work in the classroom. We will discuss prominent IOs, such as the World Bank, IMF, or NATO together with newer forms of transnational governance as well as international courts.

Literature will come primarily from academic literature on international cooperation and IOs. A full list will be provided in the course handbook and expectations around readings will be discussed in the initial Zoom meeting.

Useful references are as follows:

 Introductory text:

This is a good introductory textbook that gives an overview of how different IOs work.

-     Hurd, I. (2017). International Organizations: Politics, Law, and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Other useful texts:

These texts are useful references for general debates in the international institutions literature (and beyond) as they offer good and concise summaries on various topics.

-      Carlnaes, W., Risse, T., and Simmons, B.A. (2013): Handbook of International Relations. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

-      Reus-Smit, C. and Snidal, D. (2008): The Oxford Handbook of International Relations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.