Inter-organizational relations research revisited

Committed to the idea of re-pluralizing the discussion and exploration of inter-organizational relations (IOR) within international relations (IR), this volume began from the assumption that a broader understanding was required of what exactly is to be examined and of how this research could take place. To achieve such a broadening, three levels offer room for innovation. These relate to subject matter or research object (organization type and policy field/societal sphere), theory and methodology.

First, at the level of the research object, innovation seems to be easiest to achieve. The narrow focus of the study of IOR on intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) can be countered by broadening the research agenda to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and multinational enterprises (MNEs). This is done in Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8, while Chapter 2 addresses the relations of a hybrid form of governance. Besides IOR in the dominant policy fields of security (Chapters 3, 4 and 6) and economy (Chapter 7), topics linked to the rule of law (Chapters 2 and 3) and sports (Chapter 8) are also covered. The same holds for a topic from security studies that is not directly associated with it (Chapter 5). However, more could have been achieved here with regard to pressing issues such as health or climate/environmental policy (but see, for instance, Eckl and Hanrieder, 2023; Holzscheiter, 2015; or Smith et al, 2021).

Second, on theoretical innovation, this volume contains only one contribution based on a rationalist approach. Rationalist accounts have come to dominate the discussion of IOR in IR so far. This discursive power is not only reflected in numbers of publications; it is also wielded through the capacity to create and disseminate key terms, such as ‘interorganizationalism’ (Koops, 2008; also Biermann, 2009), or to define the field (Koops and Biermann, 2017). Regardless of the reasons for their dominance, this volume enlarges the space for alternatives to rationalist accounts. In addition to sociological neo-institutionalism (Chapters 3 and 5) and classical pragmatism (Chapter 8), which have already been proposed in the introduction, options include post-structuralist discourse theory (Chapter 3) and relational sociology (Chapter 7), along with combinations of rationalist regime complexity with constructivist considerations from (critical) norms research (Chapter 4) and public administration with organization studies (Chapter 6).