I’m presenting at the upcoming ISA Annual Convention 2019 in Toronto, 27–30 March 2019. Here’s the abstract of my paper:
Research on international organisations has increasingly explored how bureaucracies, networks of experts and diplomatic processes make social reality ‘legible’ and governable by engaging in distinct classification and framing activities. Existing theoretical approaches, however, still encounter difficulties in explaining this epistemic construction of world politics in situations where power-based international bargaining interweaves with highly technical and legalised implementation challenges. My paper addresses this conceptual and empirical gap by exploring the role of state representatives in the regular work of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The mundane-seeming everyday multilateral diplomacy within WTO committees remains under-explored, even though it is characterised by ideational contestation and legitimisation processes, and ultimately determines the legitimate scope of domestic regulation in the global economy. I conclude that in order to explain the state of the international trade system, it is crucial to understand the diplomatic practices through which shared frameworks of meaning about the objectives and limits of the multilateral trade regime are collectively produced, internalised and maintained over time.
Fabian Bohnenberger 