Political Instrumentalism and Epistemic Communities in Global Governance a Network Analysis of the International Organization for Migration

Abstract

Global governance systems, including international organizations (IOs), turn to academic experts to achieve a variety of policy-related outcomes. Existing scholarship offers valuable insights into the two main functions of expertise for international organizations–instrumental and symbolic. I draw on network analysis to propose a third function–political instrumentalism–where IOs use experts' degree of connectedness to other actors to exert influence in politicized areas of policymaking and in domestic contexts in which they are less well-networked. To this end, IOs foster epistemic communities through networks that have the characteristics of small-world and scale-free networks. I illustrate this with a descriptive network analysis of the International Organization for Migration's work in migrant health. Analyzing data from IOM documentation (2016–2022), I find that IOM fosters a complex (small world and scale-free) network through an epistemic community in which academics and researchers hold powerful positions. These positions in the network can help to serve political instrumental purposes to expand IOM's influence and visibility in domestic environments in a highly politicized area of policymaking–migrant health.