This project scrutinizes the elements making an international organization a respected knowledge-based actor in the eyes of its audience. Motivated by prior research, the project focuses on four IGOs (ILO, OECD, World Bank, WHO) and analyses the extent to which these organizations have invested over the years in scientific publishing and/or devising popularized recommendations aimed at national policy reforms. Any similarities detected in the ways in which the OECD and the World Bank (organizations clearly successful in establishing their authority in the eyes of their audiences) have engaged in knowledge-based governance would then suggest that these are the building blocks of a successful epistemic authority. Then again, any differences discovered in the ways in which the ILO and the WHO (organizations that have lost some of their stakeholders' support) have engaged in knowledge work would suggest that these are the building blocks of an unsuccessful epistemic authority.

2023

2027