Charles Roger joins the GLOBE Webinar Series to discuss his new book "The Origins of Informality: Why the Legal Foundations of Global Governance are Shifting, and Why It Matters" (2020, Oxford University Press).

The GLOBE Webinar Series – The Future of Global Governance – presents the latest and most cutting-edge research in global governance and gives audience members the opportunity to directly engage with leading scholars in the field. Each webinar focuses on a significant new book that has potential to shape future thought on global governance, featuring a presentation by the author, an intervention from an expert discussant, and a Q&A session with the audience.

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About the book: This book explores the phenomenon of informal international organizations. These bodies are involved in governing many of the most important issues the world currently faces, and differ significantly from the highly legalized, formal organizations the world has traditionally relied on. But despite their evident importance, they remain poorly understood. This book develops a new approach to thinking about these puzzling institutions, presents new data revealing their extraordinary growth over time, and develops a novel theory about why states are creating them. .

About the author: Charles Roger is Assistant Professor and Beatriu de Pinós Research Fellow at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). Before joining IBEI, Charles was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. He has also worked with the United Nations and other organizations in various consulting roles, including as a member of the UN High-Level Expert Group on Climate Change, Energy and Low-Carbon Development in Africa and as a contributing author of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In addition to The Origins of Informality, Charles published Transnational Climate Change Governance (CUP, 2014; coauthored with Harriet Bulkeley et al.). His research has also been published in journals like Global Policy, International Interactions, International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, and the Review of International Organizations.

Discussant: Ayelet Berman (Centre for International Law, National University of Singapore)
Moderator: Kari Otteburn (Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies)