PRIVIGO investigates relations between (public) international organizations and the private sector, and does so along three dimensions. First, the project examines the funding or co-funding of international organizations by the private sector, and aims to trace how such arrangements are (or should be) legally regulated. Second, it studies the role of international organizations as market actors. Many organizations procure goods and services and, in some cases, also sell them. PRIVIGO analyses how these economic activities are (or should be) governed by law. Third, the project explores the distributive effects of decision-making by international organizations. Decisions taken by these bodies often produce winners and losers. PRIVIGO therefore investigates how such distributive consequences arise and how they should be understood from a legal perspective.
The broader ambition is not merely to chart these three dimensions, but to reflect on what they they mean for regular conceptions of international organizations and how this might affect the law governing these organizations. To this end PRIVIGO, starting from the observation that there is more to international organizations than the traditionally emphasized relation to their member states, is developing what may be termed a ‘political economy of international organizations law’, under the label ‘suprafunctionalism’. In doing so, PRIVIGO aims to produce a historically informed perspective on international organizations that brings law, politics and economics together.
The problem addressed by the project is therewith to some extent a theoretical (or even philosophical) problem: the standard perspective on international organizations hides from view that international organizations have come to be important political actors in their own right, independent from member state preferences. Given the pivotal role of international organizations as the main institutions of global governance, exercising considerable public authority, it stands to reason to think of a different perspective. The perspective PRIVIGO develops, taking into account the connections with and to the private sector, does not view them as automatically guaranteeing the ‘salvation of mankind’ (if only…), but takes international organizations serious as actors in political-economic struggles, and as actively engaged, however unintentionally perhaps, in the authoritative allocation of values.
The overall objectives closely connect to the work actually being done. One of these objectives is to collect information on how many international organizations are structured, what they do, and how it affects third parties, in particular the private sector; as it is, the discipline knows far too little about the vast majority of international organizations.
A second objective is to document how contacts with the private sector are regulated: how does this take place? Under what conditions? Are there legal safeguards, or judicial remedies? How – if at all - does the involvement of the private sector in such activities as funding translate into the governance of international organizations, and what does it entail for accountability? Here the aim is to describe the applicable legal framework with some precision.
And a third objective resides in the process of re-thinking international organizations law, both investigating the weaknesses and blind spots of approaches to international organizations and developing new theoretical resources. If the law has long been premised on the idea that the only relevant partners of the international organization are its member states, then surely the contact to the outside world (including the private sector) must come to affect the underlying legal and theoretical frameworks.
In short, PRIVIGO contributes to increased knowledge about the law and practices of international organizations (including relations to private actors and others); is the first to apply a political economy methodology to international organizations law, and is manifesting a theoretical breakthrough, formulating a viable alternative for the dominant but flawed functionalist approach to international organizations law.
