Activists, scholars, and students seeking to understand how international organizations garner and conserve power—and how this affects their ability to fulfill their stated missions—will find much of value in The Authority Trap. The authors use case studies that illuminate how INGOs are received by three main audiences: NGO peers, state policymakers, and corporations. In the end, the authors argue, the more authority an INGO has, the more constrained is its ability to affect the conduct of world politics.
Sarah S. Stroup is Associate Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College. She is the author of Borders among Activists, also from Cornell. Wendy Wong is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Internal Affairs, also from Cornell.