The Global Governance Workforce: Shifting Politics of International Organizations | GGRCC Talk

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Global governance is not just an arcane concept but also a very tangible set of tasks performed by countless individuals daily. The book manuscript behind this talk argues that the global governance workforce has become contractualized over recent decades, transforming the politics of international organizations. Focusing on the United Nations, it first documents and explains the sharp decline in continuing staff and concomitant rise of non-staff and outsourced personnel. It then theorizes the global governance job market around two structuring principles, job (in)security and (im)mobility, distinguishing three working classes among contingent workers: insecure and immobile proletarians; a versatile yet precarious middle class; and a hypermobile transnational elite. Today, contractualization operates through practices such as staff augmentation, corporate consulting, and steering committees. Finally, the talk draws out the political stakes at the micro, meso, and macro levels: contractualization vulnerabilizes workers, weakens IOs, and pushes global governance from bureaucratic authority toward market-based delegation, accountability and legitimacy.

Bio
Vincent Pouliot is a professor in the Department of Political Science, where he holds the Chair of Excellence in International Studies in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on international organizations, global governance, multilateral diplomacy, and global history. Broadly speaking, he seeks to better understand the past, present, and future of the modern project of “governing the world” from the perspective of its shifting power relations. He is currently working on two book projects:

• the evolution of the global linguistic landscape from the 19th to the 21st century through the institutionalization of the international system;
• the evolution and precariousness of work organization in global governance, particularly at the UN.

Complete list of his publications

His latest article, entitled “Can IR Hear? Grasping the Global Politics of Languages,” is available in open access.

The GGRCC Talk Series
This Global Governance Research Centre Consortium (GGRCC) Talk Series showcases recent research from across the interdisciplinary field of global governance. It is organized by the Global Governance Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, on behalf of all GGRCC partners.