Abstract:
This CHEF Talk seeks to rethink the authority of intergovernmental organisations and their capacity to steer nation states toward certain policy priorities, especially in the field of education. It starts with an outline of the notion of authority, analyzing the ways it has been redefined in recent theoretical debates. Following this outline, the authority and capacities of IGOs are discussed in view of developments that have unsettled the neoliberal imaginary of globalization. Here, the presentation attends to critical accounts of governance in international relations and analyses of the changing scope of organizational policies particularly during crises. Finally, it closes with a deliberation surrounding globalization’s transformations, the changing authority of IGOs and their implications for the future, particularly in education. The paper is based on an article published in the book titled Reimagining Globalization and Education (eds. Rizvi, F., Lingard, B. & Rinne, R., 2022).

Bionote:
Johanna Kallo is an Academy Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Turku. Her current research project funded by the Academy of Finland explores the construction of higher education policy futures by focusing on the varied expressions of predictive expertise and the way they spread across a number of institutional loci at local, national and transnational scales. She is interested in the construction of shared beliefs and the arrangements of knowledge creation within organizations.

Chair: Professor Susan Wright, Co-Director of CHEF, DPU, Aarhus University, Denmark