This event features the third session of the Research Lab seminar series with a presentation by Madara Melnika
How do international organisations acquire authority in policy fields beyond their original mandate? Existing scholarship often assesses the authority of instruments through their scientific grounding, regulatory framing, and the participatory nature of their development processes. This implies that authority arises from sustained institutional engagement within a given policy domain, typically aligned with an organisation’s mandate. That also highlights a feedback loop in which the success of instruments further consolidates institutional authority.
Looking beyond the boundaries of the cemented identity, this article argues that authority can expand beyond the institutional core, but this expansion depends strongly on pre-existing forms of scientific cooperation and expertise. Through a socio-legal case study of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it demonstrates how early forms of scientific cooperation provided the institutional foundation for the development and legitimisation of environmental instruments, thereby fulfilling one of the key conditions for the emergence of authority. Furthermore, the second condition for such expansion is the collective political decision by member states to progressively reinterpret NATO’s mission. This suggests that the alliance’s authority in certain domains is not merely accidental or a mere yearning for influence but deliberately constructed by member states as a preferred form of regulatory power. Furthermore, these instruments derive additional authority from their association with NATO as an institution perceived as authoritative and scientifically capable, even in areas where its mandate is still evolving.
Accordingly, the article shows that the build-up of NATO’s authority in military-environmental matters - its enviornmentalisation - is not incidental, but emerges from the interaction between scientific capacity, institutional learning, and cumulative mission expansion over the alliance’s 75-year history.
The paper will be shared close to the event following registration.
The Research Lab was born from the idea of creating a space where researchers can present their work and where we, as a community, can come together for fresh and provocative discussions! Any researcher can present any research, and the idea is, similarly to the Faculty Seminar, to have a 1-hour monthly session with a paper shared in advance, an assigned discussant, and the possibility for everyone to engage with the arguments advanced. Until June, the Reps are running a pilot phase with some working groups.
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