3 October 2023 – 15-16 CEST
Christina Davis presents
Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations
Prof. Dr. Christina Davis (Harvard University) will join the EU-RENEW Webinar Series to present her new book, Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations (forthcoming Princeton University Press). Prof. Dr. Charles Roger (Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals) will offer some reflections and questions before an audience Q&A.
About the book: Member selection is a defining element of social organization, imposing categories on who we are and what we do. Discriminatory Clubs shows how international organizations are like social clubs, ones in which institutional rules and informal practices enable states to favor friends while excluding rivals.
Where race or socioeconomic status may be a basis for discrimination by social clubs, geopolitical alignment determines who makes the rules of global governance. Christina Davis brings together a wealth of data on membership provisions for more than 300 organizations to reveal the prevalence of club-style selection on the world stage. States join organizations to deepen their association with a particular group of states—most often their allies—and for the gains from policy coordination. Even organizations that claim to be universal, to target narrow issues, or to cover geographic regions use club-style admission criteria. Davis demonstrates that when it comes to the most important decision of cooperation—who belongs to the club and who doesn’t—geopolitical alignment can matter more than the merits or policies of potential members.
With illuminating case studies ranging from nineteenth-century Japan to contemporary Palestine and Taiwan, Discriminatory Clubs sheds light on how, for global and regional organizations such as the WTO and the EU, alliance ties and shared foreign-policy positions form the basis of cooperation.
About the author: Christina L. Davis is the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics in the Department of Government at Harvard University. Her research interests include the politics and foreign policy of Japan, East Asia, and the study of international organizations with a focus on trade policy. She is the author of Why Adjudicate? and Food Fights over Free Trade.
Discussant: Charles Roger (IBEI)
Moderator: Kari Otteburn (University of Leuven)
Participation is free and the webinar can be joined from anywhere in the world.
ABOUT EU-RENEW
EU-RENEW (EU Research and Education Network on Europe in the World) is an Erasmus Jean Monnet Network bringing together 19 outstanding higher education institutions from Europe (9), Asia (3), Africa (4), and the Americas (3) with the goal of improving knowledge and enhancing debate on ‘Europe in the World’.
Through a focus on exchange and dissemination of pedagogical tools and innovative research, EU-RENEW will foster a global debate on the role and place of Europe in a fast-changing global order.
As a truly global and interdisciplinary network, EU-RENEW takes into account local dynamics and practices in Europe and beyond with attention to global-local interaction at the regional level, external perceptions of Europe and the European Union, and diffusion of European practices.
AUTUMN 2023 WEBINAR SERIES
12 September: Philip Schleifer presented Global Shifts. Business, Politics, and Deforestation in a Changing World Economy (2023, The MIT Press) – Watch the video recording
3 October: Christina Davis presents Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations (forthcoming, Princeton University Press) – Register here
18 October: Ranjit Lall presents Making International Institutions Work: The Politics of Performance (2023, Cambridge University Press) – Register here
14 November: Brian Burgoon and Peter Trubowitz present Geopolitics and Democracy: The Western Liberal Order from Foundation to Fracture (2023, Oxford University Press) – Register here
1 December: Jean-Philippe Therien and Vincent Pouliot present Global Policymaking: The Patchwork of Global Governance (2023, Cambridge University Press) – Register here