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Book Reviews: International Relations
How does the world get governed? Recent scholarship has moved on from the long-standing debate over whether international institutions matter to an analysis of a more complex array of questions about the causes and consequences of the specific forms that global governance takes. This includes attention to rational design, bureaucratic routines, and the particular actors involved in producing governance (Barbara Koremenos et al., "The Rational Design of Institutions," International Organization 55 [no. 4, 2001]: 761-99; Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore, Rules for the World, 2004; Deborah Avant et al., Who Governs the Globe? 2010). In World Rule, Jonathan Koppell contributes to our understanding of these questions in three ways: He brings together different types of global governance organizations--both state and nonstate--in one analytical framework; he links design outcomes with the effort to deal with competing demands for accountability from different groups; and his systematic analysis of a wide array of organizations reveals interesting patterns in how they are structured.
To date, most international relations scholars have analyzed either international organizations in which states are the only members or nongovernmental or mixed types of international organizations, but rarely have they examined both together. The borders between state- and nonstate-based governance have blurred over time, making this distinction less useful. Koppell takes an admirably broad view of what he calls "global governance organizations" (GGOs), including both governmental and nongovernmental organizations in his framework. Indeed, he does not acknowledge this as an issue, but instead assumes that who participates in a particular...