The Making of the World. How International Organizations Shape Our Future. YvesSchemeil. <i>Verlag Barbara Budrich</i> (2023), 406 <i>p</i>., <scp><i>ISBN</i></scp> <i>978‐3847421467</i>

In The Making of the World. How International Organizations Shape Our Future, Yves Schemeil, a professor emeritus of global and comparative politics in Grenoble with extensive knowledge of international organizations (IOs), develops a convincing framework to grasp how IOs have shaped our world. It sheds light on the mechanisms that have enabled IOs to gain authority, legitimacy and power over our lives. IOs have historically been studied by jurists and historians. In the social sciences in particular, they have mostly been safeguarded by political scientists who have developed International Relations as a sub-discipline of political science. In this vein, the book acknowledges IR theories and more specifically echoes the constructivist theory in International Relations by putting international organizations, as portrayers of norms and values that “rule the world” (Barnett & Finnemore, 2019), at the heart of the analysis of international relations (Louis & Maertens, 2021). While scholars in international relations are the book's obvious audience, Schemeil puts IOs center stage by analyzing them as organizations in their own right. Following the seminal work of Brechin and Ness (Ness & Brechin, 1988; Brechin & Ness, 2013), he uses concepts and theories developed in the sociology of organizations to shed light on IOs in their “making of the world”. Schemeil's in-depth understanding of a sister discipline –sociology– allows him to broaden the audience beyond IR readership and to also speak to organizational sociologists. The theoretical argument hence lies in the spirit of its time in two distinct yet complementary ways. First, a growing number of scholars are calling for theoretical and conceptual tools developed by organizational sociologists to be better integrated into the analysis of IOs. The special issue published in the Swiss Review of Sociology in March 2023 compiled five contributions illustrating this driving interest (Badache & Kimber, 2023). Second, scholarship dedicated to IO research calls to open their “black box” (Maertens, 2016) to understand the inner workings and the making of global policy (Pouliot & Thérien, 2023) that ultimately have an impact on our lives. The book hence does a fine job at analyzing the internal factors that empower IOs, rather than the external contexts that limit their actions by adopting – without specifying it – a Weickian approach to organizations. Schemeil's argument aligns with Karl Weick's (1993) paradigm shift in organizational sociology studies, suggesting organizations as a process of organizing. The book thus fills a theoretical gap by offering a clear processual framework on IOs that helps grasp how they “make the world” through their practices, actions, collaborations, mandates, etc. The book opens with a well-nourished introduction, presenting the author's departing questioning, illustrated in the title How International Organizations Shape Our Future? He seeks to understand how IOs have developed, grown, and at the same time restricted us, citizens, and national governments, in our freedom. Schemeil's argument is divided in five chapters. Each chapter concludes with a takeaway message under the banner “to Sum Up”, reflecting on the main ideas developed and making sense of the way all chapters tie in with the overall question and analysis. The first part, entitled “What IOs Are and What We Think We Know”, goes back to the basic definition of IOs. It presents both the various paradigms developed in IR theory, and the typologies that scholars have created to map IOs in the context of global governance. The author shows how the sociology of organization, long neglected by IR specialists, has allowed to go from an analysis revolving around states towards a framework that puts IOs center stage to analyze the inter-organizational cooperation in which many stakeholders come together, work together and sustain themselves. The second part, “IOs as Complex Organizations”, discusses the bureaucratic variety of IOs as they come in all shapes and forms, with different mandates, created at various times in history, and for variegated issues. The author argues that despite their different inceptions, be it in terms of time or mandate, IOs form a homogenous crowd. Working from headquarters, preferably in prestigious addresses, he argues that they depoliticize hot issues and at the same time aim for outreach in the field. Yet the subsequent operations do not (always) coincide with the needs at the local level. Their complexity stems from the constant ambivalence that the organizations deal with daily: on the one hand centralizing efforts despite decentralized units; on the other homogenizing practices despite heterogeneous characteristics in a context of day-to-day bureaucratic work essentially targeted to field operations. The third part, “A Predictive Model of IOs' Behaviour”, sets focus on leadership and management within IOs. While spotlighting IO staff, the author suggests to theoretically relegate member states –their primary constituents– to the “environment” to discuss the dynamics of implementing change within IOs themselves. Drawing from management and organization studies, he discusses public organizations' unavoidable injunction to comply with New Public Management principles and its subsequent shortcoming “in a world where the environment changes at ‘high-velocity’, while the legitimacy of current activities decline, and salvation depends on adaptive, inventive, and proactive behavior at every level” (p. 132). Critical of these principles, he underlines the organizations' leadership's ambivalence between developing resilience to comply with NPM principles on the one hand and expanding for the organization's sustainability on the other. Part four, “From Competition to Cooperation” analyzes the conditions under which “too big to fail” speaks to the reality of IOs. Indeed Schemeil underlines that mandates have enlarged and hence overlapped within IO systems. Yet he argues that IOs benefit from the duplication of mandates because their staff expect economies of scale, a strengthening of their collective position, and more legitimacy in the face of national governments. This part inherently and theoretically borrows most from organizational sociology. He adopts a “coordination, collaboration and cooperation” framework, well theorized by McNamara (2012), combined with a Weickian paradigm of envisaging organizations' organizing processes such as illustrated with “from Networks to Networking”. He suggests that IOs in their environment, inscribed in networks, “convert liabilities into resources, dissent into legitimacy, and competition into collaboration” (p. 298). Part five, entitled “How Likely is any Institutionalization of the World?”, looks into the power dynamics among the various actors involved in and around IOs. The author highlights the significant influence of the United States on global matters. Even when their leverage and soft power diminish, their overall impact remains substantial through U.S.-registered NGOs that promote federal policies worldwide and initiate global advocacy campaigns, as well as through IGOs with recognized authority to endorse global norms, akin to the WHO's certification of drugs and vaccines. At the same time, Schemeil highlights that abiding by capitalistic norms, done as such by the US, also provokes externalities like disasters, contagion during a pandemic, and internationalized wars, to the extent that the push of universal norms makes states return to a nationalistic stance. He concludes that in the world of multi-stakeholderism fostered by multilateralism grows a tendency of decentralization dynamics giving way to other forms of multilateralism such as bilateralism. In The Making of the World, Yves Schemeil asserts that international organizations often perceive themselves as guardians, attempting to manage the globalization they helped foster, akin to superheroes in a blockbuster film. However, unlike cinematic narratives, our reality is fraught with numerous challenges on the path to sustainability. Schemeil contends that the establishment of a world government, or even approaching that objective, remains highly improbable. Schemeil also does not delve into how practitioners within these organizations make sense of their practices, an aspect of “sensemaking” (Weick, 1993) that is however crucial for understanding organizational dynamics and effectiveness. Furthermore, the book omits a discussion on the potential impact of artificial intelligence on international organizations, leaving unanswered timely questions about how AI might transform the operations, decision-making processes, and their overall influence in the future. Schemeil takes a definitive stance by asserting that “IOs don't only provide a public good, they are a public good” (p. 367) emphasizing the necessity of shielding these organizations from intergovernmental instability. He advocates for a broader understanding of the roles and functions of IOs, extending beyond the liberal and institutionalist perspective, which typically confines them to information sharing, and surpassing the realist, rationalist viewpoints. Schemeil argues that IOs organize, plan, and structure cooperative behavior among member states and within their own frameworks. The book is enriched with a wealth of knowledge, anecdotes, and narratives that effectively illustrate and support Schemeil's arguments, offering a comprehensive and engaging analysis of the pivotal roles international organizations play in the global arena.