October 2024

International organizations, or “IOs” for short, are typically organizations to which multiple countries belong as members. They cover virtually every aspect of human endeavor and there are many that are related to environmental protection. International organizations may influence our lives quite profoundly and yet, outside our own field, we might struggle to name more than a few of them. Furthermore, it has been proposed that most of them are not functioning entities, but rather so-called“zombie organizations”.

That’s what Julia Gray has suggested. Julia is an associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, who has been researching zombie organizations for years. She joins me to explain how zombie organizations come about; why we don’t notice them; and what are their consequences.

Links to resources

• Life, Death, or Zombie? The Vitality of International Organizations - A 2018 article on the topic of zombie organizations, in International Studies Quarterly

• The Montreal Protocol - Background on The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, to which we refer in the episode

• CARICOM - This is a link to the website of the Caribbean Community, to which Julia refers at the end of the episode