New Books Network Negar Mansouri and Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín eds., "Ways of Seeing International Organisations: New Perspectives for International Institutional Law" (Cambridge UP, 2025
Dec 13, 2025
Negar Mansouri, a historical sociologist and legal scholar at Copenhagen Business School, and Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín, a Colombian postdoctoral researcher, unpack their co-edited work on international institutional law. They discuss how the field has become stagnant, critiquing its reliance on positivism. The guests introduce four themes: expertise, structure, performance, and capital, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary insights. Additionally, they explore the impact of capitalism on international organizations and examine how race shapes visual politics in institutions like the UN.
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Project Born From Shared Frustration
- Daniel and Negar began the project as PhD students in Geneva frustrated by limited questions in the field.
- That shared frustration and a 2021 conference led to the edited volume.
Discipline Stuck In A Positivist Rut
- International institutional law is stuck in a positivist, depoliticized rut that limits critical inquiry.
- Negar Mansouri argues this obscures structural causes and sidelines feminist, postcolonial, and political-economy perspectives.
Four Lenses Reframe IO Study
- The editors organize the book around four lenses: expertise, structure, performance, and capital.
- Daniel Quiroga-Villamarín says this reframing reveals different problems and interdisciplinary conversations.
