Description
The rich literature on the history of international organisation as well as on the history of international governing mainly follows a rationalistic understanding of bureaucratic administration, neglecting the affective dimension of governing. And indeed, nothing seems less associated with affects and emotions than international administrations which aimed at preparing territories for their independence. However, an analysis of UN documents, whether from the Trusteeships system or from post-Cold War administrations, reveals that these documents contain a rich affective vocabulary. They include statements about the political „atmosphere“ or „climate“ in the territories, which are classified as more or less (in)secure. Against this background, the paper analyzes international administrations as affective organizations. It draws on approaches of affective theory, which have also received increased attention in IR in recent years. Based on the analysis of UN documents, the paper investigates, on the one hand, the change in the affective vocabulary of international administrations from the 1950s to the present. Second, it examines the „affective apparatus“ (Anderson) of international administrations and asks how those have measured atmospheres of (in)security, how they have turned themselves into affective organizations, and in what ways collective sentiments in the administered territories have been captured, transported, and translated into a bureaucratic language. A central thesis of the paper is that the affective apparatus of international administrations initially focused on capturing atmospheres, while atmospheres later became the object of international governing.
