International organisations (IOs) are key players in world politics. While classic studies have shown how IOs help states coordinate policies, overcome cooperation problems and advance their national interests, the more recent scholarship argues that IOs have become actors in their own right, regulating ever more issue areas and intervening deeply into the domestic realm of states. This has given rise to controversies not only over why international organisations exist and whether they matter in international politics, but also over whether they can effectively alleviate global problems and how legitimate they are. The aim of the module is to introduce students to these important debates in IR. Specifically, we will discuss the main theoretical and conceptual approaches to the study of international organisations; examine how international organisations are designed, how they work, and how effective they are; and analyse the major challenges international organisations face – legitimacy problems, politicization – as well as the ways they respond to these challenges. close