The Section on International Organizations of the International Studies Association (ISA) awarded me the Lawrence S. Finkelstein Prize for my research paper on diplomatic practices in the WTO. I presented a draft of the paper at the ISA Annual Convention 2019 in Toronto, 27–30 March 2019. Here is the reasoning of the ISA prize committee.
THE FINKELSTEIN PRIZE IS AWARDED TO:
Fabian Bohnenberger for the paper “Regime Management as Everyday Practice(s): A Cognitive Evolutionary Perspective on Multilateral Trade Diplomacy.” Bohnenberger’s paper provides a new departure for the study of the World Trade Organization that moves beyond rationalist assessments of negotiations and political-legal analyses of dispute settlement. Bohnenberger applies a communities of practice framework to the committees of the WTO, demonstrating that the interpretation of organizational rules emerges from the practices of WTO committees. This empirical focus on the practices of committee work is commonly found in the studies of the EU’s comitology, but is novel in the context of the WTO. The conceptual and theoretical development in this paper is superb and it makes an important contribution to the growing scholarship on communities of practice.
Fabian Bohnenberger 