This module will focus on international organizations and their role in development. We will learn about the system of global governance, the organizations that make it up, and the underlying logics that inform the project of development and governance. Â How can we best understand international organizations? How do they fit into the global order? Why are they important for development? What is the underlying technological and scientific vision below this mode of governance.
The objective for Module 2 is to better understand the foundations and organization of the contemporary international order. Based on the readings please address the following questions. Don’t forget to complete part 2 where you summarize the additional article you have chosen. Your discussion board posts should be about 650-700 words. APA format, with citation of all sources and page number.Â
Read the following:
Barnett, Michael N., and Martha Finnemore. “The politics, power, and pathologies of international organizations.” International organization 53.4 (1999): 699-732. (28 pages)
Weiss, Thomas and Rorden Wilkinson. (2014). “Rethinking Global Governance? Complexity, Authority, Power and Change.” International Studies Quarterly, 58: 207-216 (7 pages)
Scott, J. 1988. “Authoritarian High Modernism.” In Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Yale University Press. (16 pages)
Cullather, N. 2007. “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie.” American Historical Review. 112(2) . (28 pages)
Please answer all the questions in your discussion post. It would be great if you can answer them together in one mini-essay rather than as series of answers (1, followed by answer 1, etc). Instead read the questions and then write a post that answers them coherently. If you miss a question, that’s okay as long as your answers deal meaningfully with the assigned readings for the week. Will also attach two previous paper on technology and development, that I have done for the same professor. So it doesnÂ’t contradict previous ideas.
1. What is global governance and how does it relate to international organizations? What do you think is the best way to understand the behavior of IO’s? How does global governance relate to development practice?
2. In GTD we seek to understand the relationship between technology and development. What can we learn about IO and government ways of seeing and it’s impact on what can be known and done. Do you think high modernism and its optics are central to contemporary global governance? If not, what techniques and technologies are at work in making the world legible for development intervention?
3.Provide a summary of the article below . Summarize your chosen article and articulate how it helps you better understand global governance and it’s modes of knowing and doing.
Cullather, N. 2007. “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie.” American Historical Review. 112(2) . (28 pages)
 After a day or as soon as its posted before Sunday mid night, will need to respond to two other posting.
Jared
Weiss and Wilkinson (2014) tell us that “it is commonplace to state that many of the most intractable contemporary problems are trans-national, ranging from climate change, migration, and pandemics to terrorism, ?nancial instability, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and that addressing them successfully requires actions that are not unilateral, bilateral, or even multilateral, but rather global.” The successful action they are referring to is the idea of global governance. Unfortunately, they go on to inform us that “everything is globalized – that is, everything except politics.” So, how is our world successfully dealing with the aforementioned trans-national issues? Simply put, we’re not. Not successfully anyway. The reason lies with the fact that there exists a “fundamental disconnect between the nature of a growing number of global problems and the current inadequate structures for international problem solving and decision making”. The plans, power to carry them out, and the means necessary for eradicating such vast issues continue to reside within singular state governments rather than cooperatively as a global government. Weiss and Wilkinson stress how this is the recipe for disaster when they analyze the idea of “global governance without global government” and the “gaps” this causes as individual states try to fix only micro-parts of the macro-problems. International organizations come into play by being the means to which these gaps could be filled if states agreed to allow for that. The big reason that an international organization, such as the United Nations, hasn’t been able to assume the role of Global Governor is due to how individual states perceive their intentions or behaviors.
Barnett and Finnemore (1999) delve into many reasons why international organizations (IOs) might not be trusted by everyone, sharing that “not only are IOs independent actors with their own agendas, but they may embody multiple agendas and contain multiple sources of agency.” On top of that, depending on which lens you view an IO through and how you define success, different states are going to have differing opinions on how they judge them. It’s not so simple as an economist deeming a capitalist venture successful or not based on their spreadsheets. The positive progress of an IO in terms of handling global issues can’t always be measured quantitatively. The evaluation of IOs “should be an empirical and ethical matter, not an analytic assumption.” But even the most well intentioned IOs shoot themselves in the foot no matter how you look at it. Whether it be cultural contestation with the UN or organizational insulation at the World Bank, a bureaucratic organization seems to always have it faults.
The biggest reason that international development hasnÂ’t been a more successful venture up until this point has a lot to do with the fact that everyone is out for themselves at the end of the day, trying to make it seem like developing the entire world up to the same living standards, but in reality just mining resources from the many in order to sustain an unsustainable life for the few. A true global government wouldnÂ’t be able to stand for that inequality. A true global government doesnÂ’t exist because it isnÂ’t in the best interests of the global elite for the playing field to be leveled. So, in terms of global government and development, the elite wield that power, they just donÂ’t use it for the benefit of the whole world.
In Cullather’s article “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie”, they teach us that the State was able to utilize the measuring ability of the calorie to understand the habits of its population. It allowed the State to supervise and regulate the general welfare of its inhabitants. To the State, the calorie was “a technology for classifying food within the inventory of resources [at their disposal]”. A nation was able to see the progress of their development in “numerical terms”. The United States “constructed the calorie by giving it practical value, standardizing it and embedding it in systems of distribution and administration. It was in the United States that the calorie left its most visible imprint on foreign policy. It popularized and factualized a set of assumptions that allowed Americans to see food as an instrument of power, and to envisage a ‘world food problem’ amenable to political and scienti?c intervention.” This led to a global alliance of actors that were able to work together in the efforts against famine epidemics around the world.
