International Transitional Administrations: Towards Territorialization of IGOs?

Abstract

While the territorial state has been amply scrutinized in International Relations (IR), the academic preoccupation with possible deterritorialization of governance seems to have overshadowed the importance of two parallel and equally remarkable possibilities: reterritorialization through inter-governmental organizations (IGOs) and territorialization of IGOs themselves. The gradual institutionalization of the practice of international transitional administration suggests itself as a potential manifestation of such parallel processes. While the most sophisticated scholarly argument about the nature of international administrations revolves around the question of state-building, this article contends that state-building is not all that the practice of transitional administration implies for contemporary global governance.