Reference no: EM131438111

You are correct that many NGO's get bogged down by emotion and politics. Do you think that this extends to epistemic communities that receive money from lobbyists and governments? 200 words please list references this question is in reference to this post:

Anyone who has spent at least a little bit of time studying international relations and/or law know about NGOs. In recent decades, they have become a constant presence on the scene when it comes to international regimes and intergovernmental bodies. But to be perfectly honest, I'd never even of the term "epistemic communities" before this week. Certainly, the concept is familiar; just not the term itself.

Anyway, after delving into the writings of Peter Haas, and a few others to be fair, it seems to myself that like any form of successful enterprise or such at the intergovernmental level, an epistemic community has to do a couple of things to be worthwhile in its purpose; in this case, to influence the perspective of the regimes in question.

The first thing that to answer before that question is to what extent can an epistemic community influence said regimes? That all depends on doing the mentioned "things" from above. First off, any undertaking in the multilateral sphere must balance the individual state and collective interests to have any chance to succeed. As mentioned by Haas 25 years ago, quote "How states identify their interests and recognize the latitude of actions deemed appropriate in specific issue-areas of policymaking are functions of the manner in which the problems are understood by the policymakers or are represented by those to whom they turn for advice under conditions of uncertainty." (Haas, 1992) From this, I believe the meaning is that while much of what is decided by the decision makers stems from those "experts" who are deemed to be the trusted advisers to said leaders, those same leaders make the judgement on who is worthy of advice-giving by their own knowledge of what is in the national interest in a general sense. And that, in a nutshell, is how much of international law and policy gets agreed to; nations coming to agreements that either all see something that benefits their own interests as individual nations and as a group.

The second thing any epistemic community must do to influence the direction an international regime will go is something that is an observation of my own. That is, to base every argument and piece of policy advice on fact. Sadly, many NGOs and the causes/missions that they work to help solve get bogged down by emotion and politics. They could very well be working for a good cause, however many members of NGOs and like-minded organizations are populated by individuals with agendas of their own. An epistemic community, by definition, should be made up of the finest minds on whatever problem or task is at hand. By sticking to hard data, then the old saying of " the truth shall set us free" will eventually prove to be prophetic.

Work Cited

Haas, Peter M. 1992. "Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination." International Organization. Vol. 46, No. 1. p. 2