The authors of International Organizations: A Companion offer a question and answer piece to accompany their pioneering and comprehensive analysis of over one hundred international organizations. Michael Davies and Richard Woodward explain why their textbook will serve as an essential companion volume supplementing other core texts in the field.

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If you ask most people by whom they are governed or, more pointedly, from where they are governed, they will probably answer by referring you to the ‘government’ of the country in which they live. Some might throw in a reference to the local government of their city, region or locality; some, especially those living in Europe, might also mention their sense that they are increasingly being governed by bureaucrats and politicians who work beyond national borders in regional institutions.

Hardly anyone will allude in any way to the international or global stage. Doesn’t everyone know that there is no ‘world government’? Isn’t international politics just a matter of state opposing state, with every country using its power to get away with whatever it can? Well, yes and no. […]