The Love for International Organizations

Albeit the object of compelling criticisms in recent decades, international organizations continue to occupy a very central place in the practical, conceptual, cognitive, imaginary, and emotional universe of international lawyers. This article argues that the resilient centrality of international organizations in international legal thought and practice is the manifestation of international lawyers’ love for such institutions. This article’s main aim is to provide an account of the drivers that inform international lawyers’ love for international organizations with a view to elucidating what lies behind the centrality of international organizations in international legal thought and practice. Among the drivers of international lawyers’ love for international organizations, attention is paid to the representations of international organizations as taking care of people, as showing where to look for power, as knowing so much, as romanticising history, as providing a shared standard of experience, as textualising the universe, as providing and organizing space for discontent, as expanding international lawyers’ field of study, and as holding many secrets.


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Albeit the object of compelling criticisms in recent decades, international organizations continue to occupy a very central place in the practical, conceptual, cognitive, imaginary, and emotional universe of international lawyers.In fact, there is hardly any argument, study, dispute, theory or critique related to international law that does not have an institutional dimension or bear institutional consequences.This article aims at offering some explanatory insights as to why international organizations constitute such a resilient kingpin of international legal thought and practice.It is premised on the idea that the centrality of international organizations in international legal thought and practice is not self-evident, let alone natural.1 It argues that international lawyers continuously and systematically put international organizations at the centre of their practical, conceptual, cognitive, imaginary, and emotional universe because they experience a very deep love for them.2Drawing on the legal practice and legal literature devoted to international organizations, this article's main aim is to provide an account of all the drivers of international lawyers' love for international organizations with a view to elucidating what lies behind the centrality of such institutions in international legal thought and practice.
In the following sections, the attention is particularly paid to nine drivers of international lawyers' affection for international organizations, namely the latter's representations as taking care of people, their showing where to look for power, their knowing so much, their romanticising history, their providing a shared standard of experience, their textualising the universe, their providing and organising space for discontent, their expanding international lawyers' field of study, and their holding many secrets.These nine drivers are examined in turn.The article starts with a few introductory remarks meant to define the idea of love for international organizations and to delineate to scope of the inquiry it seeks to offer.The article ends with a few concluding observations.Two important preliminary caveats are in order.First, it is important to highlight that the following account is surely not exhaustive, for other phenomena may be at work in international lawyers' love for international organizations.It suffices to mention the career paths and sources of income which international organizations can constitute for those trained as international lawyers as well as the sophistication they seem to provide 113 international law with.3One could similarly explore potential psychoanalytical factors and affects4 to seek to explain international lawyers' love for international organizations and the centrality they enjoy in the practical, conceptual, cognitive, imaginary, and emotional universe of international lawyers.5Yet, the inquiry conducted in this article limits itself to the nine abovementioned drivers, for these drivers can come across as counter-intuitive, especially in the light of the current contestation of international organizations, or, alternatively can prove so self-evident that they often elude international lawyers' own epistemological consciousness.Second, it must be stressed that the nine drivers of international lawyers' love for international organizations that are discussed in the following sections are not presented as being constitutive of a single universal experience shared by all international lawyers engaging with international organizations.6To be sure, international lawyers may experience some of them and not others.Likewise, the degree and the ways in which they experience the drivers of their love for international organizations may be the object of immense variations.7In that sense, the following account of the drivers of international lawyers' love for international organizations is not aimed at providing any kind of clinical knowledge of international lawyers' emotional engagement with international organizations but to narrate, in a novel fashion, how international lawyers build their claims about the status, rights, duties, responsibility, normative output, failures and falls of international organizations.8 3 I am grateful to Daniel R Quiroga-Villamarin for sharing his interesting insights in that respect.4 On the idea that affects and cognition are not very distant processes and yet that strong affects theories suffer from severe limitations, see Eve K Sedgwick, 'Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You' in Eve K Sedgwick (ed), Novel Gazing: Queer Readings Fiction (Duke University Press, 1997) 1- 37. 5 In that regard, one could be tempted to see international organizations as what Freud as defines as a totem animal which is reminiscent of the murdered primitive father, and which is both loved, hated, feared while carrying the guilt for this original and ancestral murder.See Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (Routledge, 2012).I am grateful to Janne Nijman for her interesting thoughts on that matter.6 I have explored elsewhere the idea of international organizations as being the product of specific and varied experiences by international lawyers.practices that claim to be rigorous and grounded in the real.14In that context, the inquiry conducted here can be read as an attempt to resuscitate studies of discourses15 through affects and emotions.16It is an inquiry that does not ask the usual questions of 'what about power?' or 'what about legitimacy?' but rather wonder 'what about love?' .In doing so, it is an inquiry that provides the rudiments of theory of attachment to international organizations rather than a theory of power or legitimacy.17 As the following inquiry is envisaged as providing the rudiments18 of a theory of attachment to international organizations, it must immediately be made clear that examining the affection for institutions is not unknown to studies in humanities.19For instance, the strategies through which legal institutions have ensured that they are loved by those subjected to them have drawn considerable attention in French critical theory.20Likewise, International 14 For some exceptions, see Anne Saab, 'Emotions and International Law' (2021) 10(3) European Society of International Law Reflections 1; Andrea Bianchi and Anne Saab, 'Fear and international law-making: An exploratory inquiry' (2019) 32(3) Leiden Journal of International Law 351; Gerry Simpson, The Sentimental Life of International Law.Literature, Language, and Longing in World Politics (Oxford University Press, 2021).15 A discourse is understood here in a rather generic way as to refer to any system of meaning and set of connected utterances through which one speaks about and come to experience the world and human phenomena.On the notion of discourse, see generally Hayden V White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982) 4-5.See also Michel Foucault, Dits et écrits, I: 1954I: -1975I: (Gallimard, 2001) ) 623.On the idea that a discourse does violence to things, see Michel Foucault, L'ordre du discours (Gallimard, 1971) 55. 16 Freud is sometimes credited for reigniting studies based on affects and passions.See the remarks of de Certeau (n 12) 94 and 141.See also Sedgwick, 'Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You' (n 4) 2. 17 In the same vein, see Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique (University of Chicago Press, 2015) 17-18 and 177-178 (for a defense of affective hermeneutics).18 On the idea that our theories can at best be rudimental, see Roland Barthes, Leçon (Seuil, 1978) 15-16; Roland Barthes, Le bruissement de la langue: Essais critiques iv (Seuil, 1984)  Relations literature has also been infused with thoughtful reflections on the love for institutions.21The present venture into the love for international organizations witnessed in international legal thought and practice, despite exploring a discursive posture that has drawn little attention in international legal scholarship, does not accordingly claim to make an argument that is totally unheard of.It finds itself in good company in other areas of the humanities.
Although envisaged as the groundwork for a rudimental theory of attachment to international organizations, the following account of the drivers of international lawyers' love for international organizations resists any thorough theorisation of the very idea of 'love' .It does so, for any theorisation thereof would necessarily fail to capture the diversity of affective interests that international lawyers engaging with international organizations may experience.For that very reason, the idea of 'love' mobilised in the following sections is kept broad and all-embracing.It thus encapsulates a range of emotions as varied and distinct as desire, affection, attachment, admiration, adoration, adulation, need, etc.22 In resisting to theorise the idea of 'love' any further, the following inquiry accordingly refrains from drawing on the multi-layered and intricate taxonomies of affects forged in the 18th century literature.23 speaks of the erotic attachment to power apparatuses and the erotic dimension of the latter: see Two final remarks are warranted to properly delineate the scope of the following inquiry into the drivers of international lawyers' love for international organizations.First, although this article zeroes in on the love of international lawyers for a very specific type of institutions, namely international organizations, the drivers of such love as they are discussed here can certainly be of relevance to anyone interested in elucidating, more generally, why international lawyers love institutional phenomena.Second, it must be highlighted that the nine drivers of international lawyers' love for international organizations examined in the following paragraphs do not stand in isolation of one another.On the contrary, they often work alongside each other.For instance, it is because international lawyers love international organizations for what their alleged taking care of the world,24 that the latter show them where to look for power,25 that their action is based on knowledge,26 and that they come to provide a space for discontent as well as a will to reform international organizations.27The same discontent with international organizations and the will for reform can simultaneously be read as a separate marker of the romanticisation of the history of ideas about international organizations, which is yet another driver for international lawyers' love for international organizations.28By the same token, that international organizations are entities deemed to belong to the same transcendental legal phenomenon29 is what allows international organizations to be perceived as textualising the universe.30Likewise, international organizations' holding many secrets31 also contributes to the expansion of the field of study of international lawyers and thus, the love thereof.32The same mutual reinforcement is found in the love for international organizations being knowledge hubs that govern through expertise33 and the love for international organizations textualising the world.34It is first submitted that international lawyers experience a feeling of love for international organizations by virtue of their common representation of the latter as global caretakers.According to such representation, international organizations are deemed to play a critical role in the daily lives of people around the world35 while providing collective goods,36 common good,37 and societal change.38They are similarly considered the managers of common problems,39 especially when the State no longer looks sufficiently equipped or resourced.40Such portrayal of international organizations as global caretakers is often accompanied by the belief that addressing new global problems that arise calls for new international organizations to be created41 or, alternatively 119 for existing ones to be reinforced.42This representation of international organizations also entails a depiction of international organizations as constantly reacting to "new realities"43 and "real problems".44Their caretaking role is similarly interpreted by international lawyers to be adjustable to the emergence of new needs45 and to increase in times of emergencies.46By the same token, their ever growing care-taking role is perceived as requiring a constant adjustment of the legal categories through which international organizations and their practices are thought.47 In the same vein, the extent to which they take care of people is said to be instrumental in public trust.48 The most propitious variants of such representations of international organizations as global caretakers even projects an image of international organizations as "bring[ing] heaven to earth",49 contributing to the "salvation of mankind",50 improving the management of welfare,51 creating better living conditions,52 and being instrumental to the creation of a better world.53Needless to say that the abovementioned representations of international organizations as global caretakers is not benign, for they, most of the time coincide with claims that acknowledge and legitimise international organizations' exercises of public authority54 as well as their "far-reaching powers"55 in an ever growing number of areas.56From that perspective, international organizations ability to make law57 and to change the content of international law58 as well as their capability to intervene on a military, financial, economic, political, social and cultural levels is constantly celebrated.59Such celebrations and legitimisations of international organizations' caretaking powers often build on an ever growing expectation of what we expect international organizations to accomplish.60Such complacent and legitimising discourse is occasionally pushed as far as indicating that problems at the global stage come from States not giving international organizations the authority necessary to solve global issues.61 It is argued here that the abovementioned representations of international organizations as global caretakers-and thus the love for such institutions that they nurture-may be facilitated by the great familiarity that they may provoke among international lawyers.Indeed, such representations can be construed as mirroring an understanding of domestic structures of governance geared towards the care for the population and its management by experts that are familiar to most international lawyers.The consolidation at the domestic level of such structure of governance centered on the care for the population and its management by experts in the 18th century is what has been called the governmentalisation of the State.62It also said to correspond to the exercise of a bio-power over the population.63In that sense, it can be said that the abovementioned representations of international organizations as global caretakers projects an image of international organizations as governmentalised structures that exercise a form of bio-power over global populations that is reminiscent of tasks long bestowed upon States.Such similarity surely is conducive to international lawyers feeling that they are dealing with a very homelike structure of governance and thus with something that they can embrace and cherish without much risk.

International Organizations Show Where to Look for Power
According to the argument developed in this section, international lawyers love international organizations, for the latter show them where to look for power.64Indeed, international organizations are commonly represented, in international legal thought and practice, as power hubs, that is delineated spaces where power is exercised in certain instances by certain bodies using certain forms and symbols, that is in a very predictable way.This is for instance the case when international organizations are depicted as counterparts of States' sovereign powers65 or as spaces where State consent has been diluted.66122 A similar representation infuses the claims that international organizations exercise a supranational type of power,67 that they embody a type of global governance without government68 or that they discipline interactions on the world stage.69 The prolific literature on international organizations' separate will (volonté distincte)70 similarly carries a representation of international organizations as delineated spaces where power is exercised in certain instances by certain bodies and using certain forms and symbols.The same holds for accounts of global law-making according to which most rules generated at the international level are said to be initiated, negotiated, formulated, interpreted and implemented by international organizations,71 especially in times of emergencies.72In the same vein, the extensive literature and case-law on functionalism can be read as a way to justify and organise such representations of international organizations as delineated spaces where power is exercised in specific and predictable ways.73Such representations of international organizations as delineated spaces where power is exercised in certain instances by certain bodies and using certain forms are certainly reinforced by doctrines like that of international legal personality74 or that of international responsibility.75123 It is further argued in this section that, for international lawyers, such representations of international organizations as power hubs have the advantage of inscribing power in a definite time and space.In fact, as a result of power being inscribed in a definite time and space, power comes to look visible, locatable and apprehensible.And once seen, located, and apprehended through the vocabularies, forms, and symbols of international organizations, power, to the delight of international lawyers, come to look like it can be more easily scrutinised, counter-balanced, and subjected to accountability.In that respect, it is no coincidence that, having inscribed power in a definite time and space, international lawyers are often prompt to elaborate sophisticated taxonomies of powers76 as well as mobilise elaborate vocabularies-like that of global administrative law77 or that of constitutionalism78-in order to confront that power that is now seen, located, and apprehended.This is why it can be said that international lawyers love international organizations for the latter assuaging the former's desire to keep exercises of power at the global level in check.
It must be acknowledged that, whilst international lawyers can experience a great satisfaction in finding where to look for power, the inscription of power in a specific time and space can simultaneously make them feel some severe discontent at the precarity of accountability mechanisms to which such exercises of power may-or may not-be subjected despite being inscribed in a definite time and space.Such discontent-to which this article later returns79-is however not at variance with the satisfaction that international lawyers continue to experience as long they are shown where to look for power.
Another important remark is in order.The above-mentioned representations of international organizations as power hubs and the great satisfaction that it generates among international lawyers should not obfuscate the fact that the latter seem content with a very simplistic understanding of power.All those interested in the way in which power is exercised have long been warned that associating the exercise of power with the decision-making privileges of public or private institutions tells very little about how power works.80The latter does not merely and plainly reside in institutions, for institutions are at 124 best the apparatus behind which power ebbs and flows.81It has similarlyand convincingly-been shown that power is not exercised by an institution over an individual or another institution but takes the form of a myriad of mutually constitutive relations that produce a certain normality, a certain hierarchy, a certain individuality, a certain naturality, a certain plurality, etc.82And yet, international lawyers, in their representations of international organizations as power hubs, have continued to abide by an elementary understanding of power.This is maybe not entirely unexpected.After all, simplifying its manifestations as well as its locations is exactly what power does: power induces misunderstanding of itself.83For that very reason, the love for international organization which international lawyers experience as a result of the former showing the latter where to look for power may simply be the offspring of that very power.

International Organizations Always Know So Much
With a view to elucidating this third driver of international lawyers' love for international organizations, it must be recalled that international lawyers have long espoused a very modern attitude whereby they aim at securing some kind of truth about the meaning of the world, of its institutions and of its rules,84 knowledge, rather than revelation, being the intuitive access to truth.85This may provide an inkling of another reason why international lawyers love international organizations so much.Indeed, they often perceive international organizations as knowledge hubs where the exercise of power is informed by knowledge carefully obtained through the use of experts.86This attitude 125 simultaneously carries a belief in the a-political nature of the expertise on which international organizations rely.87Such expertise is not only thought as being a-political but also as being very dynamic, constantly adapting to changing circumstances and new challenges, skills and networks.88The same perception of international organizations as knowledge hubs re-surfaces in the frequent lamentations by international lawyers that politics too often infiltrate technical and science-based decision-making processes within international organizations.89The representation of international organizations as knowledge hubs and their resorting to expert-based knowledge is quite well documented in the international legal literature and it would be of no avail to expand thereon here.90It matters more to emphasise that international lawyers' love for international organizations as knowledge hubs is also a love for a managerial approach to international organizations.91A managerial approach refers here to a conviction that international organizations-and international organizations' experts-provide the technical vocabularies to both define and resolve global problems.92The love for international organizations as knowledge hubs thus also manifests a deep attachment of international lawyers to expert jargon and textual governance, which is yet another facet of their love for international organizations to which this article returns later.93

International Organizations Romanticise Global Histories
This section makes the point that international lawyers' love for international organizations can also be explained through the type of historical narratives that international organizations enable.In fact, international organizations are not only a very central and common marker of the histories told by international lawyers and through which they provide the formless past with form, order, and causal sequencing.94They are also the linchpin of a type narrativisation that represents international organizations, their creation, their normative output, their achievements, and even their failures and falls, as a romantic marker of global histories.95Indeed, in most histories of international law told by international lawyers, the world is deemed to be growing better thanks to international organizations, to the normative output they produce, to what they achieve, and to what one learns from their failures and falls.96To put it more precisely, international organizations allow international lawyers to romanticise97 global histories, that is to package them through a progressive narrative in which international organizations, their normative output, their achievements as well as their failures and falls are construed as a cause of improvement of individuals' condition on the globe.98It is in that sense that it can be argued that international lawyers love international organizations for their constituting a key as historical marker that embellish global histories.The romanticisation of global histories enabled by international organizations, understood as a romantic historical marker, is commonly verbalised, in the international legal literature, through a myriad of historical narratives, some of which should be mentioned here.One of the dominant variant of these romanticising narratives depicts the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th centuries as having witnessed the birth of a new form of political organization as important as the modern State.99According to this narrative, this new form of political organizations went on to proliferate in the rest of the 20th century through the repeated creation of new international organizations100 for the fulfillment of ever growing needs.101Such narrative goes on to claim that this new form of political organization came to defeat the early resistance against it as well as the lack of recognition thereof by judicial bodies,102 before being boosted by the accelerating decolonisation process103 as well as the end of the Cold War.104 Still according to this romanticising narrative, international organizations have continued to grow in importance ever since105 and are now "fixed elements of the international legal landscape",106 "a common feature of international relations"107 or an element of "everyday life in the world".108 The abovementioned variant of these romanticising narratives is commonly supplemented by yet another narrative whereby international organizations, as a romantic historical marker, are said to take care of the tasks that the modern State is no longer able to deal with,109 while also pouring resources more effectively than the latter.110As a romantic historical marker, international organizations are also said to be structures with a formidable transformative potential111 that have already secured considerable success.112In the same vein,  international organizations, as a romantic historical marker, are celebrated for providing a "formal framework of a universal world order and the formal elements of a universal legal order".113Such supplementary romanticising narrative about international organizations is often accompanied by the claim-very prominent in the interwar discourse-that international organizations are structures that downplay State sovereignty and diluted radical consensualism accompanying it in the 19th century114 while also making the world move away from war, disorganisations and chaos.115 International organizations being a cornerstone of this much cherished universalisation of the global legal order from the perspective of such romanticising narrative, it is no coincidence that the League of Nations came to be represented as a major milestone in the move from a pre-institutional to an institutional era.116In this narrative, the United Nations Charter is commonly awarded a similar status, for it is portrayed as having perpetuated the League's institutionalisation, and possibly constitutionalisation, of the international legal order.117130 As a romantic historical marker, international organizations have given rise to yet another romanticising narrative whereby they are portrayed as more inclusive and more transparent structures of governance,118 ones that are also subject to more accountability mechanisms.119According to such romanticising narrative, international organizations are represented as platforms that allow a greater participations of non-State actors in international law-making,120 thereby transforming such structures of governance into important sites of struggle over how to create a better world121 or better living conditions.122 It is noteworthy that, in many of all the romanticising narratives mentioned here, the concept of functionalism plays a central role.Indeed, functionalism they remain pockmarked by crises and failures.132The "move to institutions"133 is, for instance, said to be nowadays followed by a more dramatic "move away from institutions".134Yet, what is striking is the way in which all those romanticising narratives present crises and failures as opportunities for renewal or reform of international organizations135 as well as events which international lawyers are supposed to learn from.136So romanticised, the crises and failures of international organizations are always begging the question of how to do better with-rather than without-international organizations.137The brief account, provided in this section, of the romanticising narratives that populate the international legal literature and feed into international lawyers' love for international organizations calls for a final observation.Global histories to which the abovementioned romanticising narratives contribute are never benign.In fact, they are justificatory of the field, of the discipline, of the present content of international law, of all what international law does to the world, which such histories project as a necessity.138Most importantly, such histories confirm the ideologies, hegemonies, and geographies enabled by international law.In that sense, the telling of global histories to which the abovementioned romanticising narratives contribute can be construed as a technique meant to bring more people on board with international law, with 132 On the idea that crisis narrative constitutes a very common mode of representation of the present, see 133 its ideologies, with its hegemonies and with its geographies.139This is maybe where the use of international organizations as romantic historical markers, and the love that it bolsters, cease to be romantic.140

International Organizations Provide a Common Standard of Experience
The driver of international lawyers' love for international organizations introduced in this section calls for a preliminary remark.It is uncontested that international organizations contribute to constituting and shaping the world in a certain way.Indeed, they inscribe in the world new experiences of space, of personhood, of publicness, of conflicts, etc.  and normalises certain-mostly Western144-institutional and political configurations at the expense of others.145Surely, international lawyers may experience-or not-a great attachment to the world as it is constituted by international organizations and, thus, to the constitutive performances of international organizations.Yet, this is not the driver for love that this section is grappling with.
It is submitted here that international lawyers love international organizations because they allow the world of international organizations to be subjected to a common standard of experience.Said differently, and more philosophically, international lawyers fall for international organizations because the latter are very instrumental in perpetuating a type of commensurability thinking146 the former are usually so fond of.147Commensurability thinking refers here to the presumption that all facts, artefacts, instruments, institutions, practices that international lawyers can possibly observe or make the experience of in relation to international organizations actually belong to the same transcendental legal phenomenon across time and space,148 which, in turn, allows all of them to be constructed or judged according to the same standard.149Said differently, commensurability thinking corresponds here to the postulation of a "universal transcendent measure"150 or a "pre-comparative tertium"151 against which everything related to international organizations can similarly be gauged.152Commensurability thinking, so understood, is rife in international lawyers' engagement with international organizations.Indeed, subject to some rare exceptions,153 international lawyers approach all the creations, the foundations, the procedures, the practices, the outputs, the modes of action, the achievements, the failures and even the falls of each and every international organization as belonging to a similar transcendental legal phenomenon and subjecting them to the same transcendental standard of experience and Unsurprisingly, subjecting the world of international organizations to a common standard of experience requires a multitude of sophisticated conceptual and discursive moves.161In fact, commensurability between all international organizations takes more than the postulation of a transcendental legal phenomena.Some very refined constructions are often resorted to with a view to making the world of international organizations commensurable.It is the purpose of the rest of this section to sketch out those moves necessitated by the commensurability thinking about international organizations that is so cherished by international lawyers.
Upholding such commensurability thinking has, for instance, been facilitated162 by the use of very formal categories,163 including administrative law164 and public law165 concepts as well as the resort to traditional models of governance.166The same can be said of the many contractual167 as well as constitutional168 analogies that so commonly populate the legal literature on international organizations.It could be claimed that the sophisticated doctrine of functionalism has similarly been instrumental in mapping and ordering the world of international organizations according to a similar standard of experience.169Such commensurability thinking is also smoothened by the 138 postulation, witnessed in the literature, of a temporal continuity between various organizations.170 The mobilisation of a whole range of formal categories, concepts, doctrines, and continuities is not the only conceptual and discursive move deployed in international legal thought and practice to make the world of international organizations a commensurable place.It is also as an enabler of commensurability thinking that one can construe the formidable dualism of thought at work in international legal thought and practice about international organizations.171Whilst dualism of thought permeates international legal thought as a whole,172 there is hardly a domain of the international legal discourse that is more dominated by dualism than the literature and the case-law related to international organizations.In fact, dualist constructions are aplenty in international legal thought and practice about international organizations.Mention can be made of the common distinction between the legal and the political173 that continues to inform legal debates about international organizations.Likewise, dualist structures of thought are systematically mobilised to unify the character of the law international organizations produce,174 to elucidate the nature of international organizations' constitutive instruments,175 the nature of international organizations themselves,176 etc.This feature of the legal discourse about international organizations matters a The Transformation of International Organizations Law' (n 124) 9, 10.For some critical remarks on how functionalism works as an ideology, see Klabbers, 'Notes on the ideology of international organizations law: The International Organization for Migration, statemaking, and the market for migration' (n 90 lot for the sake of the argument made in this section.Indeed, dualism of thought always presupposes commensurability.The distinctions and dichotomies in which dualism materialises can only be distinctions and dichotomies between objects that belong to the same commensurable space.Said differently, there cannot be a distinction or a dichotomy between incommensurable elements.177In that sense, all the dualist constructions around which the legal discourse on international organizations is articulated can be read as enablers of commensurability thinking and thus drivers of international lawyers' love for international organizations.
Commensurability is similarly at work in the numerous dialectical constructions that populate the international legal literature and caselaw related to international organizations.178In fact, just like there cannot be dualism short of commensurability, there cannot be dialectical moves between elements that are not located in a commensurable space.179To illustrate this point, it suffices to mention the dialectical constructions manifesting themselves in the now much used concept of institutional veil,180 the findings of an oscillation between two conceptualisations of international organizations,181 the findings of an oscillation between the law of treaty and the law of the organization in the practice and theory of international organizations,182 the claims of a mutual and ontological need for one another between international organizations and their member States,183 the very popular idea of dédoublement fonctionnel,184 the mundane findings of interactions between law and politics,185 the frequent resort to hybridity to define the practice or nature of international organizations,186 etc.Even the doctrine of functionalism has been understood in a dialectical way, one that allows to make the world of international organizations commensurable.187As one of the most common constructions of the legal discourse on international organizations, dialectics helps generalise commensurability thinking about international organizations.188Finally, it is submitted that commensurability thinking about international organizations is facilitated by findings of paradoxes.189Indeed, a paradox can only arise within a unitary system of commensurability.190Interestingly, findings of paradoxes, and thus findings of commensurability, are aplenty in the legal discourse on international organizations.It suffices to mention here the common findings of a paradox of States being members of a collective entity while being sovereign entities,191 a paradox related to international organizations' need for independence to carry out their mission while remaining dependent on member States,192 a paradox between the doctrine of functionalism and the idea international organizations pursuing the common good and universal peace,193 a paradox between organizations being forces for good while being a product of sovereign States,194 a paradox lying in the constitutionalisation of international organizations always bringing about a counterforce,195 a paradox between contractual and constitutional elements of international organizations,196 a paradox between international organizations' rules and practices being regulated by the law of international organizations and international organizations' simultaneous subjection to public international law, paradoxes related to the ways in which the rules of international organizations are construed,197 etc.All those paradoxes can only be thought in a commensurable space, thereby nurturing the widespread commensurability thinking about international organizations that dominate international lawyers' engagement therewith.
The foregoing has outlined some of the ordinary conceptual and discursive moves found international legal thought and practice about international organizations that allow international lawyers to consider all the creations, the foundations, the procedures, the practices, the output, the modes of action, the achievements, the failures and even the falls of each and every international organization as belonging to a similar transcendental legal phenomenon, and thus permit the constant exercise of comparison at the heart of international institutional law.The love for international organizations that is discussed here can thus also be approached as a love for all the sophisticated taxonomies, formal categories, dualist constructions, dialectics, and paradoxes that enable the making of a commensurable space where international organizations, their creations, their foundations, their procedures, their practices, their output, their modes of action, their achievements, their failures and their falls can be compared and evaluated ad infinitum.

International Organizations Textualise the Universe
It is argued in this section that international lawyers' love for international organizations is also a love for texts, for textual constructions, for textual practices, for textual moves, for textual figures, for textual aesthetics, for textual controversies, for textual reforms, etc.More specifically, the love discussed here is a love for international organizations as constituting a huge textual universe.Claiming, as this section does, that international organizations constitute a huge textual universe has two facets.First, this means that international organizations themselves boil down to big textual spaces where signs indefinitely refer to other signs.Second, it refers to international organizations translating the world in which they intervene into a text.The following paragraphs will substantiate each of the two facets of the claim that international organizations constitute a huge textual universe-and hence two of the reasons why international lawyers' love for international organizations is informed by a love for texts.
It is first argued in this section that international organizations are big textual spaces saturated by textual practices.198It is not only that the academic discipline as well as the judicial practice organised around the practice of international organizations is an extensive textual practice.199It also that that international organizations are themselves extensive texts.200The textuality of international organizations can be explained as follows.They are the creation of a big text-the constitutive treaty-which governs, limits, gives expression to, verbalise, all what international organizations do and stand for.201In that sense, all the deeds of international organizations are apprehended, comprehended, and defined through the text of their constitutive treaty.In the same vein, it can be said that international organizations are big textual spaces because their action primarily takes the form of a huge textual output.Indeed, their output is first and foremost a textual output, be it in a form of decisions, resolutions, recommendations, executive summaries, reports, minutes of meetings, etc.202 198 This argument does not go as far as claiming that international organizations produce determinate meaning through such text.On the idea that international organizations do not systematically produce determinate meaning, see Monica Second, it is argued here that international organizations constitute a huge textual universe because they textualise the world in which they intervene.203This is so because their constitutive treaty as well as their textual output provide the categories, vocabularies, words, signs, symbols through which the world is apprehended, defined, problematised, organised, and experienced.204As a result of international organizations' textual interventions, the world is turned into a text that continues the very texts constituting international organizations and their output and which ought to be interpreted by reference to the very texts having constituted it.205Such textualisation of the world-and of one's experience of the world-by international organizations' constitutive treaty and textual output is possible by virtue of the necessary correlation between the word and the world,206 that is between the verbalisable and the perceivable.207It could be said that international organizations' textualisation of the world amounts to their putting into place a "programme of perception"208 of the world.
A final observation about the specific driver of international lawyers' love for international organizations discussed in this section is warranted.It should be no surprise that international lawyers fall for texts.After all, what international law does to the world it does it with texts.209Yet, may international lawyers remember that the textualisation of the world by international organizations, as it has been sketched out in this section, is not innocent.210International organizations textualise the world in a specific way rather than another, thus allowing certain experiences of the world rather than others.Such selectivity is no idiosyncrasy.After all, any language comes with a form of ideology, that is a certain way to experience reality.211Such selectivity of experiences of the world that follows the latter's textualisation by international organizations, although a common effect of any language, is a reason for resisting any complacency with how the world is textualised by international organizations.In fact, international lawyers, notwithstanding their deep affection for international organizations as constituting a textual universe, should realise that their engagements with international organizations' constitutive texts, textual output, and, more generally, textual interventions are themselves caught in that textual universe, the writing thereof international lawyers, through their engagements, perpetuate.212

International Organizations Provide Space for Discontent
In this section, it is argued that international lawyers love international organizations thanks to their criticability.213For the sake of this argument, the criticability of international organizations refers to the specific discontent that is enabled by international organizations themselves.Indeed, the point made here is that international lawyers do not experience just any discontent towards 210 On the idea that no language is innocent, see Debray, Cours de médiologie générale (n 139) 111.On the idea that metaphors constitute a way to govern and organize the world.On the idea that what we call ideology is precisely the confusion of the linguistic sign with natural reality, see de Man (n 18) 11.In the context of international lawyers' engagements with international organizations, there seems to be no doubt that the English language, today the main vernacular of most international organizations and most scholarly discussions about them, shapes what is perceivable by international lawyers, for instance by promoting a techno-economic image of the world into which international organizations intervene.On the extent to which the English language provides techno-economists understandings of the world and of its future, see Debray, international organizations but only that very discontent that is permitted by international organizations, by their constitutive treaty, by their normative output, by their actions, and by their interventions in the world.214In other words, there is never as much discontent as international organizations, their constitutive treaty, their normative output, their actions, and their interventions allow.That discontent towards international organizations is that enabled by them can be very satisfactory and reassuring for international lawyers.In fact, discontent being experienced in the very space left to it by international organizations, it never goes unbridled or out of control.Instead, discontent always follows the paths designed by contested international organizations, by their constitutive treaty, by their normative output, by their actions, by their interventions in the world.
To unpack this argument, the extent of the contemporary discontent generated by international organizations must draw the attention first.It seems uncontested that the time where international organizations were construed as the beacon of good is long gone.The deficiencies for which international organizations are blamed are now the object of a very prolific literature.215Speaking of international organizations, it is now common for international lawyers to talk about the crisis of confidence in such institutions,216 their fall from grace,217 or them being under strain.218Mention is also sometimes made of a current "move away from institutions".219Similarly, the legitimacy of international organizations is sometimes deemed to be in tatters.220 The reasons for such contemporary discontent towards international organizations are aplenty.For instance, their decision-making processes are regularly deemed to suffer from insufficient transparency and participation.221Likewise, they are said to lack proper accountability mechanisms.222 In the same vein, the institutional cooperation that international organizations facilitate is deemed to be outclassed by alternative governance platforms.223 As is illustrated by the controversies pertaining to international organizations' interventions in Haiti224 and in Srebrenica,225 there has simultaneously been a realisation that international organizations' actions may prove harmful226 and can bear negative effects on the States and populations in which they intervene.227They are even occasionally portrayed as human rights violators.228 Their environmental impact is also denounced.229Their effectiveness and omissions have been bemoaned as well.230By the same token, the long-lasting controversies about the growing extent of their powers has continued to fueled controversies,231 the metaphor of Frankenstein having enjoyed a steady popularity in the international legal scholarship.232Their cost for the taxpayer has been the source of resentment too.233More structural objections have been raised.For instance, the inadequate representations of women,234 the gender biases of their decision-making processes,235 and their perpetuation of gendered economic governance236 have been considered scandalous.An equally fundamental critique is raised following the finding that international organizations are hegemonic structures that perpetuate a neo-colonial, imperial, and capitalist configuration of the world.237 In that respect, it has been argued that some of the key concepts of international institutional law are inherited from colonial administration practices.238Likewise, it has been claimed that international organizations work for the reinforcement of States along the lines of a broadly Western model.239 The purported universality of many of international organizations' output has similarly been put into question for failing to take into account the perspectives of developing States.240This charge includes the finding that the inadequate representations of the Global South within international organizations has still not been addressed.241 In the same vein, international organizations have been said to provides the structure for the worst forms of capitalism to thrive.242 As this inevitably scant account of the contemporary discontent towards international organizations suffices to demonstrate, there is thus no dearth of criticisms towards international organizations.And yet, it is argued here that such discontent is always confined to the very terms set by international organizations, by their constitutive treaty, by their normative output, by their actions, and by their interventions in the world.It is thus a discontent that is always contained, predictable and located in familiar territories.In particular, it is a discontent which leaves the total discontinuation of international organizations out of the thinkable, and which reduces the consequences of discontent to reform and change rather than radical disruption.243 The foregoing points to the great conservatism informing international lawyers' discontent towards international organizations, and thus of the reforms and changes that such discontent can possibly give rise to.This is not surprising.After all, the critique of order always belongs to that order.244What is more, it is important to realise that claiming that an institution is in crisis is a very conservative move that is geared towards the vindications of some original, pre-crisis, and essential functions of the institution concerned.245 There is yet another-possibly more fundamental-reason for the discontent towards international organizations being always confined to the very terms set by international organizations, by their constitutive treaty, by their normative output, by their actions, and by their interventions in the world.In fact, the discourse on international organizations, like any discourse, organises the contestation of itself,246 thereby ensuring that contestation always takes places within the very vocabularies, geographies, hegemonies, and institutions around which such discourse is organised.247The legal discourse on international organizations is no exception to that.
That the discontent experienced by international lawyers always is, as has been argued in this section, the discontent that is allowed by international organizations, by their constitutive treaty, by their normative output, by their actions, and by their interventions in the world explains the extent of international lawyers' love for the criticability of international organizations, even of those organizations that are the most contested.In fact, however acute the resentment towards international organizations and however harsh the criticisms such discontent brings about, international lawyers come to feel that they are never stepping out of their common imaginary world, that is a world where their cherished international organizations are there to stay.They accordingly discharge their compelling criticisms, and the frustrations and anger that come with them, without ever displacing international organization from the centre of their practical, conceptual, cognitive, imaginary, and emotional universe.

International Organizations Constitute a Natural Field of Study
In this section, it is argued that international lawyers love international organizations because the latter are constitutive of a field of study.Indeed, international organizations, their creations, their foundations, their procedures, their practices, their output, their modes of action, their achievements, their failures and even their falls are represented as an everactive and ever-changing worldly phenomenon which international lawyers feel they must examine, scrutinise, organise, systematise, criticise, interpret, comment on, etc.By virtue of the representation of international organizations as a field of study, there is not a single day without international organizations producing new texts, new practices, new actions, new controversies, etc., that it behoves international lawyers to examine, scrutinise, organise, systematise, criticise, interpret, comment on,248 including by resorting to their traditional international law's categories.249As a field of study, international organizations provide international lawyers with a continuous outpouring of materials and practices to think of, chew on, debate, litigate, and write about.250Although the scholarly interest for international organizations dates back to the first half of the 20th century,251 it is nowadays common to claim that the law of international organizations consolidated as a proper field of study in international legal studies in the decade preceding the 1975 Vienna Convention on the Representation of States in their Relations with International Organizations of a Universal Character.252This consolidation of the law of international organizations as a field of study is said to have followed the spectacular position of the Court in its 1949 Advisory Opinion on Reparations253 as well as the publication of the first introductory textbook in English in 1963.254 In that respect, it has also been claimed that the University of Amsterdam played a leading role in constituting the field by the creation of a chair in the law of international organizations.255 The claim made in this section is not limited to international lawyers paying extensive attention to international organizations and representing the latter as constitutive of a field of study.What is most noteworthy is that international lawyers have simultaneously considered their creations, their foundations, their procedures, their practice, their output, their mode of action, their achievements, their failures and even their falls as a natural object of study for them, that is a worldly phenomenon on which international legal studies makes a natural claim.Said differently, notwithstanding the occasional acknowledgement of the epistemological challenges for international lawyers to study international organizations,256 international lawyers experience their turn to international organizations as a natural state of things.Such experience that international organizations constitute a natural object of study for international lawyers manifests itself, for instance, in their belief that, as a field of study, international organizations are rooted in public international law257 of which international institutional law constitutes a sub-field.258 Needless to say that one should always be suspicious of arguments grounded in the supposed natural character of social attitudes and social constructions.259It is argued here that international organizations providing international lawyers with a permanent and natural object of study should not be considered a natural state of things: the creations, the foundations, the procedures, the practices, the output, the modes of action, the achievements, the failures and the falls of international organizations do not constitute a naturally legal phenomenon that naturally falls within the scope of international legal studies.With a view to challenging international lawyers' experience that international organizations constitute a natural object of study for them, some of the most mundane narratives about international lawyers' natural hold on international organizations ought to be scrutinised and questioned in the following paragraphs.
The most traditional justification by international lawyers for claiming their natural grasp on the study of international organization is the mode of creation of international organizations, namely the treaty.260It is submitted here that the fact that international organizations are commonly created by virtue of an international treaty does not suffice to make it an object naturally falling within the scope of international legal studies.Such treaty-related justification for international lawyers' grasp on the study of international organizations is tautological and self-explanatory.Indeed, it is because international lawyers define international organizations as being treaty-based structures and that a treaty-based foundation is a condition of existence of an international organization that international lawyers can, in turn, claim that it is an object naturally falling within the scope of international legal studies.Said differently, elevating the presence of an actual treaty into a condition of what it takes to be an international organization261 is the very discursive move that allows international lawyers to justify their hold on the matter.What is more, one should remember that there are many institutions, regimes, arrangements, policies which are enabled or created by treaties which never appear on the radar of international lawyers and fall outside the scope of international legal studies.There are even international organizations that are created by treaty but which, over the years, have fallen out of the scope of international legal studies and have become an autonomous field of study and possibly a distinct discipline.In that respect, one may think of the European Union whose foundations, procedures, practices, output, modes of action, achievements, and failures, whilst being once an object of attention of those studying general international law as well as the law of international organizations,262 is now the chasse gardée of another and very distinct cohort of lawyers and scholars, a monopoly which international lawyers interested in international organizations never seek to jeopardise these days.263Another justification for international lawyers' natural grip on the study of international organizations is found in the claim that such grip simply follows the wide practice of litigation related to international organizations.It is true that the advent of international organizations and their proliferation have brought about a generalisation of legal conflicts before domestic courts, within international organizations endowed with a judicial system of sorts, and very occasionally before international courts.And yet, it is submitted here that the increase of litigations related to international organizations cannot justify that the latter constitutes an object naturally falling within the scope of international legal studies.Once again, there are many phenomena or institutions that give rise to permanent legal conflicts and which are followed by judicial proceedings while never drawing the attention of international lawyers, just like there are many phenomena or institutions that do not give rise to legal conflicts or litigations that are the object of intense scrutiny by international lawyers.264A third justification that is invoked for the sake of claiming that the creations, the foundations, the procedures, the practices, the output, the modes of action, the achievements, the failures, and the falls of international organizations constitute an object naturally falling within the scope of international legal studies lies in the international legal personality that is recognised to most international organizations.Here too, the argument is tautological and unpersuasive.International organizations do not fall within the scope of international legal studies as a result of them having an international legal personality.Instead, it is by virtue of international lawyers-including judges-recognising an international legal personality to international organizations that meet the conditions they have set that the latter enter the realm of international legal studies.It can also be objected against this third justification that being endowed with an international legal personality, or any other kind of legal status, has never been a condition of entry for an institution or any kind of institutional phenomenon into the international legal field.It suffices to think of all those institutions and institutional phenomena that are nowadays studied by international lawyers without them corresponding to any pre-existing formal legal category or being endowed with any kind of formal legal status.
In the light of the above, it is argued here that there is hardly any argument that can justify that international organizations are considered as naturally falling within the scope of international lawyers' expertise and field of study.The seizure of that topic by international lawyers is the result of a very calculated, strategic, and expansionist move, one that seeks to permanently nourish the field with new practices, new materials, new controversies, new critiques, etc.265Such expansionism is not, as such, anything to be surprised of, let alone to bemoan.After all, all professions, disciplines, and more generally all discourses, move and define their boundaries strategically.266What is more interesting is that international lawyers love the expansionism enabled by international organizations.International lawyers' love for international organizations also is a love for expansionism.267

International Organizations Carry Many Secrets
This section introduces a ninth and final driver of international lawyers' love for international organizations.It is submitted here that international lawyers' love international organizations for their being an infinite trove of secrets that it behoves them to search, discover and make public.More specifically, international lawyers experience deep affection for international organizations as the receptable of secrets which they hold as knowable and which they feel bound to reveal.That international organizations are the receptacle of many secrets is a rather mundane premise of most international legal studies devoted to them.It is, for instance, common to refer to the puzzles of international organizations,268 the half-truths that populate the field,269 the difficulty to pierce the veil that hide the realities of international organizations.270By the same token, it is often affirmed that many details of the practice of international organizations are yet to be disclosed.271The process of expansion of international organizations' powers is similarly held as being secretive.272So are the legal meanings of the new administrative law principles that inform the practice of international organizations.273Likewise, the sources of the law of international organizations, the question of their autonomy274 and their contribution to the verticality of international law275 are said to be in need of being further revealed.276It is the same presumption that international organizations hold many secrets that informs international lawyers' constant quest for a better understanding of international institutional law277 of their role,278 of how organizations are legally structured,279 or of their impact.280 International lawyers similarly claim that political forces within international organizations are yet to be elucidated.281Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely.
Interestingly, international lawyers engaging with international organizations are inclined to recognise that their frameworks of intelligibility and conceptual choices are often responsible for such secrets not having been revealed yet.282 In fact, in the literature, it is said that many secrets are kept hidden by the use of public international law categories.283The lack of theorisation of the field is sometimes deemed a cause for the many secrets about international organizations that are yet to be unveiled.284 In the same vein, it is also claimed that international organizations continue to carry many secrets because of the lack of a comprehensive legal concept of international organization,285 of gaps in the knowledge about why international organizations comply with international law,286 of the lack of clarity in the relationship between organizations and their members States,287 or of the unresolved question of the nature of the rules of international organizations.288 It is submitted here that the holding of international organizations as the receptable of many secrets, as has been exposed in the previous paragraphs, surely is a good reason to fall for them.After all, mysteries and untold truths commonly elicit excitement.But such excitement, it is argued here, calls for caution.In fact, as the rest of this section seeks to demonstrate, approaching international organizations as a receptacle of secrets is not accidental but, 157 instead, is yet another effect of the legal discourse on international organizations.The point made here is that the representation of international organizations as carrying secrets that are knowable and that must be revealed constitutes a way for the discourse to induce speaking and make international lawyers speak about international organizations.In other words, it is not that secrets are out there in international organizations, in their creations, in their foundations, in their procedures, in their practices, in their output, in their modes of action, in their achievements, in the failures and even in the falls, ready to be discovered and revealed.Instead, it is the discourse that makes international lawyers inscribe knowable secrets in international organizations, their creations, their foundations, their procedures, their practices, their output, their modes of action, the achievements, the failures and even the falls289 before making them feel bound by an obligation to truth.290 The outcome of such economy of secret is formidable.It not only makes international lawyers speak about international organizations and their secrets ad infinitum.It also makes them speak about international organizations along the very lines of the caretaking responsibilities allocated to them, the way in which they embody power, the expertise they showcase, the historical narratives of which they are the linchpin, the common standard of experience they allow, the textual universe they constitute, the discontent that they enable, and the natural objects of studies they provide.In that sense, the secrets that those secretshunting international lawyers end up inscribing in international organizations and revealing to the world are all already within international organizations.291In other words, revealing secrets about international organizations is nothing more than a perpetuation of all what international organizations already do, represent, and mean to them.It is yet another example of the extent to which the legal discourse on international organizations works for itself.292And the possible most efficacious way in which a discourse works for itself is by inducing its users to speak indefinitely about the object of that discourse.

11
Concluding Remarks: an 'Emotional Turn' in the Law of International Organizations?
As was said in the introduction, there are possibly other drivers of international lawyers' love for international organizations than international organizations' caretaking responsibilities,293 the way in which they incarnate power,294 the expertise they showcase,295 the historical narratives of which they are the linchpin,296 the common standard of experience they allow,297 the textual universe they constitute,298 the discontent that they enable,299 the natural objects of studies they provide,300 and the secrets they carry.301These nine drivers should however suffice to explain why international organizations have remained at the centre of international lawyers' practical, conceptual, cognitive, imaginary, and emotional universe notwithstanding the scathing and cogent charges raised against international organizations in recent decades.These nine drivers should similarly be enough to confirm, once more, that the centrality of international organizations in international legal thought and practice is nothing natural or inherent in international legal studies and international legal practice.It could simply have been otherwise: international law could have been thought and practiced without international organizations, as it previously was for centuries.If anything, this article has sought to show that it is international lawyers' love for international organizations, and its perpetuation in spite of all the criticisms directed at international organizations, that explain that the latter have been placed, and maintained at the centre of international lawyers' practical, conceptual, cognitive, imaginary, and emotional universe.Just like international law could live without international organizations, international lawyers could do without studies of their affective interests for 293   such institutions, let alone the rudiments of a theory of attachment as those offered here.After all, there is no obvious reason why the law of international organizations should imitate the 'emotional turn' witnessed in International Relations literature.302Whilst the author of these lines has always been a strong supporter of the dismantling of disciplinary borders,303 the literature on the law of international organizations ought not to mimic the interdisciplinary practices witnessed in International Relations scholarship.In they are so many other ways in which one can debate and reflect on international lawyers' engagement with international organizations, the most basic one being probably the narration of new stories.This is why the turn to love to explain the contingent centrality of international organizations in international legal thought and practice has been nothing more than a narrative device to tell a new story about international lawyers' engagement with international organizations.And yet, stories, especially stories about love, are very serious matters.304Even for the ever scientist-minded international lawyers.

115
129 134 159 80; Theodor W Adorno, Negative Dialectics, tr eb Ashton (Bloomsbury Academic, 1981) 42.On the idea that resistance to theory is theory, see Paul de Man, The Resistance to Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 1986) 19-20.For a rejection of strong theory, see also Sedgwick 'Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You' (n 4).19 For a useful collection of essays summarising research on emotion in various disciplines, see Michael Lewis, Jeannette M Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman-Barrett (eds) Handbook of Emotions (Guilford, 3rd ed, 2010).
20 Pierre Legendre speaks of the "love for the censor" ("l'amour du censeur") to describe how, since the advent of Canon law, legal institutions organize a love for subordination or mobilise sexual symbols; see Pierre Legendre, L' Amour du Censeur: Essai sur l'ordre dogmatique (Seuil, 2005) especially 6,45-49, and 197).For his part, Michel Foucault the love for international organizations International Organizations Law Review 20 (2023) 111-159 Downloaded from Brill.com09/17/2023 07:38:09PM via Universiteit of Groningen 36arter as Constitution of the International Community' (1998)36(3) Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 529.See contra Benedetto Conforti, The Law and Practice of the United Nations (Kluwer, 1997) 10.Sometimes, the creation of European Community is seen as yet another experiment, albeit at the regional level, of the constitutionalisation of an international legal order.See the remarks of Ole Spiermann, 'The Other Side of the Story: An Unpopular Essay on the Making of the European Community Legal Order' (1999) 10(4) European Journal of International Law 763; see also Jean d' Aspremont and Frédéric Dopagne, 'Two Constitutionalisms in Europe: Pursuing an Articulation of the European and International Legal Orders' (2008) 69 Heidelberg Journal of International Law (ZaÖRV) 939.On the judicial organs of the European Union calling the latter a constitutional order and resorting to a constitutional vocabulary to describe the nature of its political organization, see Parti Ecologiste "Les Verts" v European Parliament the very paradigm that makes it possible to narrate that States gradually understood it was better to delegate certain limited functions to organizations which can then carry them out in an a-political manner for the common good.123It is submitted here that the-sometimes very serious-challenge of the functionalist paradigm in recent decades124 and its occasional claims that functionalism has been superseded by a constitutionalist paradigm have not jeopardised the abovementioned romanticisation of global history but have, on the contrary, served it.125Infact, such conceptual debates have themselves been conductive to yet another romanticising narrative: the rise of a new type of intellectualism,126 as well as a new discipline127 with its own heroes-it suffices to mention the Schermers128 or Jenks,129 Reuter,130 Louis Sohn,131 and their many associates.It is important to stress that all the romanticising narratives that populate the legal literature, and which are enabled by the use of international organizations as romantic historical markers, are never sleek and linear.Indeed, International Organizations Law Review 428, 453.126 For an intellectual history of the law of international organizations, see Brölmann, The Institutional Veil in Public International Law: International Organisations and the Law of Treaties (n 98) 44-48, 54-64.127 On the rise of the discipline around the study of the law of international organizations, see the account provided by Klabbers, 'The Paradox of International Institutional Law' (n 102) 151; see also Sinclair, 'Towards a Postcolonial Genealogy of International Organizations Law' (n 73) 850-853.See more generally below section 9.
122 Amerasinghe, 'The Law of International Organizations: A Subject Which Needs Exploration and Analysis' (n 35) 11. d'aspremont International Organizations Law Review 20 (2023) 111-159 Downloaded from Brill.com09/17/2023 07:38:09PM via Universiteit of Groningen often is 123 Jan Klabbers, 'The Emergence of Functionalism in International Institutional Law: Colonial Inspirations' (2014) 25(3) European Journal of International Law 645.124 Jan Klabbers, 'Beyond Functionalism.International Organizations Law in Context' in Jan Klabbers (ed), Cambridge Companion to International Organizations Law (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 7-24; Jan Klabbers, 'The ejil Foreword: The Transformation of International Organizations Law' (2015) 26(1) European Journal of International Law 9-82.125 See generally Klabbers, 'Constitutionalism Lite' (n 78); Catherine Brölmann, Richard Collins, Sufyan Droubi and Ramses A Wessel, 'Exiting International Organizations' (2018) 15(2) International Organizations Law Review 243, 248; On this shift from a functionalist paradigm to a constitutional one, see the remarks of see Jean d' Aspremont, 'The Law of International Organizations and the Art of Reconciliation: From Dichotomies to Dialectics' (2014) 11(2) 130 Evelyne Lagrange, 'Functionalism According to Paul Reuter: Playing a Lone Hand' (2020) 31(2) European Journal of International Law 543.131 Ian Johnstone, 'Louis Sohn's Legacy' (2020) 31(2) European Journal of International Law 583. the love for international organizations International Organizations Law Review 20 (2023) 111-159 Downloaded from Brill.com09/17/2023 07:38:09PM via Universiteit of Groningen 141In other words, they provide a very specific alphabetical structure to the world.142This is no novel finding.It is the manifestation of the general performativeness of the sign.143This is why it is no coincidence that, in the literature, it has already been amply demonstrated that, for instance, international organizations produce 139On the idea to tell stories and histories to bring people on board, see Régis Debray, Cours de médiologie générale (Gallimard, 2001) 178.140In the international legal literature, there have been some occasional calls for being alert towards such romanticised histories, especially of the idea of progress informing it, see Chimni 'International Organizations, 1945-Present' (n 100) 113; Kennedy, 'The Move to Institutions' (n 115); Inis L Claude, Swords into Ploughshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization (Random House, 4th ed, 1971); Rose Parfitt, 'Empire des Nègres Blancs: The Hybridity of International Personality and the Abyssinia Crisis 1935-1936' (2011) 24(4) Leiden Journal of International Law 849, 850; d' Aspremont, 'The League of Nations and the Power of "Experiment Narratives" in International Institutional Law' (n 86); Benedict Kingsbury and Lorenzo Casini, 'Global Administrative 142 The expression is from Foucault, Naissance de la clinique (n 141) 165.143 On the performativeness of sign, see generally Judith Butler, 'Critically Queer' (1993) 1(1) glq 17, 17-18; John Law, After Method: Mess in Social Science Research (Routledge, 2004) 143; Foucault, L'ordre du discours (n 15) 59. the love for international organizations International Organizations Law Review 20 (2023) 111-159 Downloaded from Brill.com09/17/2023 07:38:09PM via Universiteit of Groningen Hakimi, 'The Work of International Law' (2017) 58(1) Harvard Journal of International Law 1, 19.On the more general idea that meaning is absent from international legal texts because it is perpetually deferred, see Jean d' Aspremont, The Sovereignty of Forms in International d'aspremont International Organizations Law Review 20 (2023) 111-159 Downloaded from Brill.com09/17/2023 07:38:09PM via Universiteit of Groningen 1990) xxiii, xxiv, and 45; Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Harvard University Press, 2018) 5. See also Foucault, Naissance de la biopolitique: Cours au Collège de France (1978-1979) (n 63) 18.260The corollary is also that that the law of international organizations is at the crossroads of the law of treaties and international institutional law.See, e.g., Brölmann, Collins, Droubi and Wessel (n 125) 244.261See however the debate on the legal personality of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (osce).See, e.g., Helmut Tichy and Catherine Quidenus, 'Consolidating the International Legal Personality of the osce' (2017) 14(2) International Organizations Law Review 403.d'aspremont International Organizations Law Review 20 (2023) 111-159 Downloaded from Brill.com09/17/2023 07:38:09PM via Universiteit of Groningen 302 See above footnote 18. 303 See, e.g., Jean d' Aspremont, 'International Law, Theory and History: Ordering Through Distinctions' in Jean d' Aspremont (ed), The History and Theory of International Law, Volume I: Historicizing the Theory of International Law and Volume ii: Theorizing the Histories if International Law (Edward Elgar, 2020).304 On the idea that all narratives belong to the order of meaning of the real as much as scientific discourses, see the remarks of Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (n 15) 122.See also Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (n 8) 5.