Former Fellows

The project explores international institutions that are deliberately designed not to produce any policy output. Certain multilateral agreements and permanent organizations are deprived of capacity for policy development or implementation. Examples include the UN Forum on Forests and the Copenhagen Accord. Such institutions can be an obstacle to cooperation and prevent governance by legitimizing collective inaction. Empty institutions serve two political purposes: they hide the failure of international negotiations and neutralize public calls for genuine policy. Research is based on direct participatory observation of twenty-nine rounds of international environmental negotiations between 1999 and 2015 and interviews with diplomats and policymakers. During the period of the fellowship, I will conduct interviews at ministries in Sofia and finalize a book that documents these diplomatic processes and introduces a new concept to academic scholarship on global governance.