Shaping Policy Agendas The Micro-Politics of Economic International Organizations Foreword

What do ‘social cash transfers’, ‘public internal financial control’, ‘regulationimpact assessment’, or ‘skills toward employment and productivity’ have incommon?1, 2 These frameworks, concepts, and instruments have been pro-moted by international organizations (IOs) and used in policy programmesat the regional, national, and local levels. Indeed, the action of IOs impactsnot only domains that require cross-border approaches (peace, war, transport,international trade), but also understandings of governmental knowledge andaccepted practices across a range of policy areas (Barnett and Finnemore,2004: 21; Bezes, 2007; Cassese and Wright, 1996; Dolowitz and Marsh, 2000:11; King and Le Galès, 2011; Nolan, 2001; Ougaard and Higgott, 2002; Pal,2012). The significant role IOs play in transferring policy models in turnrelates, and this is one of the assumptions of our book, to the power and legiti-macy economic and financial IOs have gained since the late 1980s