The authority of science and the legitimacy of international organisations: OECD, UNESCO and World Bank in global education governance

ABSTRACT

International organisations’ (IOs) legitimacy in global educational governance is commonly seen as a function of their regulative or normative power. By contrast, this paper stresses the increasing importance of scientific research and policy-relevant knowledge and its strategic production, dissemination and transfer by IOs. The article examines knowledge work at OECD, UNESCO and World Bank based on novel data from publication analyses, archival work and a number of interviews. Drawing on sociological institutionalism and constructivist international relations scholarship, this study is interested in the rationales, resources and capacities for knowledge production, the strategies of dissemination and transfer as well as the implications of science production for IOs’ position and relevance in global governance. Findings emphasise the authority of science as the primary source of legitimacy – and even survival – in an increasingly crowded and competitive field of global education governance.

KEYWORDS:

• International organisations
• global education governance
• science and research
• organisational legitimacy
• epistemic governance

Acknowledgments

I am highly indebted to David Baker, Annie Chen, Marcelo Marques, Deena Magnall and Justin Powell.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. One interviewee had recently retired.

2. OECD and UNESCO did not grant access to their archives upon request.

Additional information

Funding

Research was supported by a German Academic Exchange Service grant at the American Institute of Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University Washington (fall/winter 2017).