When Inclusion Enables Exclusion: Inside the Boundary-Making Power of an IO’s Dual Mandate

The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is an international organization (IO) with an ambiguous dual mandate. While tasked to facilitate the exploration and exploitation of the resources of the seabed and its subsoil, it is also entrusted to protect the marine environment in which these very activities take place. In recent years, growing interest in deep-sea mining has translated into intensified pressure on the ISA to develop a ‘mining code’ that would reconcile economic ambitions with environmental concerns. In parallel, the ISA is facing renewed governance constraints, additional legitimacy challenges, and growing criticism: new IOs and regimes emerge, potentially interfering with the ISA’s governance niche; stakeholders call for more inclusion and influence in what is perceived by many as a traditional closed-door IO; the dominance of science at the expense of indigenous and traditional knowledge is increasingly contested. While on-going research on the ISA reveals that this IO attempts to ward off criticism by means of self-legitimation rooted in epistemic selectivity, less emphasis has been placed on the strategic potential of what has normally been understood as a problematic dual mandate. Exploring what and whose knowledge matters in the ISA through thematic analysis of policy documents and interviews, I argue that the dual nature of the ISA’s mandate is paradoxically conducive to dynamics of exclusion rather than inclusion. In particular, I suggest that this dual mandate creates the ideal conditions for an ‘alternate’ boundary work that offers the ISA the opportunity to both include and exclude. Contributing to the literature on boundary work in IOs, this paper demonstrates how the latter may find unexpected sources of legitimacy in what are commonly viewed as inherent flaws or limiting aspects of IOs’ institutional design. Ultimately, these sources can enable IOs to diffuse contestation and avert risks of legitimacy crises.