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Organization without Delegation: Informal Intergovernmental Organizations (IIGOs) and the Spectrum of Intergovernmental Arrangements
Abstract
The renaissance in the theoretical analysis of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) has focused on formal IGOs (FIGOs), but many IGOs are subject to no formal treaty and/or have no permanent secretariat. Important examples of informal IGOs (IIGOs) include the G-groups that are the locus of much high-level interaction among states. We develop the spectrum of intergovernmental arrangements to show the wide variation in the formalization of international institutions and theorize when states will choose informal arrangements such as an IIGO over (or in combination with) a FIGO. A paired case comparison illustrates our claims that states use IIGOs when they need flexibility, to protect their sovereignty, to maintain close control of information, to lower short term transaction costs for speed, to minimize bureaucracy and to manage uncertainty during times of crisis. Finally, we examine how institutional choice is influenced by power.
... Centralisation refers to whether there is a single entity within the organisational structure of an arrangement that is responsible for core institutional tasks, also known as a secretariat, and is both independent and permanent (Koremenos et al., 2001;Westerwinter, 2021). MRGA can thus be classified as centralised MRGA-CFI, if they have independent and permanent secretariats; or non-centralised MRGA-CFIs, if they do not have a secretariat or if they have one but it is not permanently based in a country and/or depends on an external organisation (Vabulas and Snidal, 2013). Membership in centralised MRGA-CFI is controversial as it entails high sovereignty costs for the member states (Westerwinter, 2021). ...
... Membership in centralised MRGA-CFI is controversial as it entails high sovereignty costs for the member states (Westerwinter, 2021). This is because the members to such agreements often have to concede part of their sovereignty to the bureaucracy of such centralised institutions (Vabulas and Snidal, 2013). Based on this, it is reasonable to presume that centralised MRGA-CFI are more inclined, than noncentralised ones, to comply with forest conservation policies adopted by the governance arrangements (Vabulas and Snidal, 2013). ...
... This is because the members to such agreements often have to concede part of their sovereignty to the bureaucracy of such centralised institutions (Vabulas and Snidal, 2013). Based on this, it is reasonable to presume that centralised MRGA-CFI are more inclined, than noncentralised ones, to comply with forest conservation policies adopted by the governance arrangements (Vabulas and Snidal, 2013). We thus expect that the forest industry will lobby to hinder state participation in centralised MRGA-CFI and rather promote state participation in noncentralised MRGA-CFI (Polo Villanueva et al., 2023). ...
... In doing so, a variety of causal factors have been identified. For example, Vabulas and Snidal (2013) argue that a need for flexibility, speed, and confidentiality linked to features of an underlying problem structure-that is, the strategic nature of the issues that states hope to solve-can often explain choices about the informality of IGOs. Roger (2020), in turn, calls attention to domestic politics and institutions, especially within powerful states able to dictate the terms of cooperation. ...
... Equally, we specify scope conditions that determine when they operate. The specific drivers set out by Vabulas and Snidal (2013) vary considerably in their relevance across cases, as states in different regions and issue areas confront different problems. Vabulas and Snidal (2020) Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. ...
... In fact, their relationships may be complex. When Vabulas and Snidal (2013) first introduced the IIGO concept, they theorized when and why states "use IIGOs to complement, counter or substitute for FIGOs." They argued that to understand how informal IGOs operate we must examine their connections to formal ones. ...
The study of informal international institutions has advanced considerably over the past decade. Much of this work, including our own, has approached this phenomenon from the perspective of rationalist institutionalism. Yet, existing work has also been criticized from several conceptual, theoretical, and empirical angles. The recent special issue of International Politics on the “cascading dynamics” of informality by Cooper et al. (Int Politics, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-022-00399-4) offers an important example of such critiques. It builds on earlier work in the field, advancing our understanding of a number of processes and institutions, but also partly casts itself as a reaction to the approach we have adopted. We argue that key aspects of this critique are misguided and that Cooper et al. exaggerate the differences that divide us. Our aim in this article is to respond to their criticisms, clarify the key research issues at stake, emphasize the complementarities among approaches, and outline ways of moving forward.
... These IOs can also become international actors, but collective agency arises from interaction among member states (Gehring and Urbanski 2023). Member-dominated IOs include informal institutions (Vabulas and Snidal 2013;Roger 2020) like the Global Summits (G7, G20) and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, treaty management organization established under many multilateral treaties (Churchill and Ulfstein 2000;Gehring and Giesen 2022), and joint bodies of bilateral treaties (Dür and Gastinger 2022). Some organizational components of larger IOs, such as the UN Security Council, have similar characteristics. ...
... Second, this article demonstrates that numerous existing IOs without extensive secretariats may gain a considerable degree of independence from their members and provides an approach to analysing the sources (and limits) of their independence. Hence, informal IOs (Vabulas and Snidal 2013;Roger 2020), international treaty management IOs , joint bodies of bilateral treaties (Dür and Gastinger 2022), and member-dominated components of larger IOs like the UN Security Council may produce organizational effects that make them international actors in their own right, while their degree of independence varies across several dimensions. Third, the article provides a foundation for grasping the normative implications of IOs beyond activities of institutional agents (Erskine 2004). ...
... However, what may appear as organizational action is entirely the aggregate effect of the actions of group members (Tuomela 2020, 90-5). This is true for many "informal" or "low-cost" IOs (Vabulas and Snidal 2013;Abbott and Faude 2021). For instance, the Global Summits (G7, G20) and the BRICS Forum allow their member states to coordinate their action (Kirton and Larionova 2022). ...
This paper examines conceptual issues of the emer-gence and effects of collective agency. Collective agency seems to challenge the methodological individualist assumption that only individuals can act, but treating group actors, such as parliamentary committees or court cham-bers, as mere shortcuts for complex interactions among group members raises important theoretical, empirical, and normative issues. First, the paper discusses some fundamental issues of collective agency. We argue that anal-yses of collective agency must provide generative mechanisms that demon-strate how it arises from the interaction of group members. Second, the paper introduces major approaches to collective agency from analytical philosophy and sociology. They locate the source of collective agency in the formation of collective intentions through the adjustment of group members’ attitudes, in the organization of group decision processes, or in the transfer of resources to the group level, which empowers a collective actor to act in its own right. Against this backdrop, this paper offers an integrative concept of collective agency characterized in terms of the degree of autonomy and the level of re-sources controlled by a collective actor. Third, this paper introduces the con-tributions to this special issue, which tackle a broad variety of issues, includ-ing the formation and consequences of collective intentions in small and unorganized groups, collective agency issues of institutionalized groups and organizations, collective agency of large and unorganized groups without de-fined memberships, and normative issues of collective agency.
Keywords: Collective intentions, collective agency, group actors.
... Informality -understood here as the uncodified modes of cooperation that states rely on to make up for the weaknesses (or complement the strengths) of formal institutions -is on the rise in world politics (Roger, 2020;Snidal, 2013, 2021). This includes informal groupings of member states operating within formal IOs, such as the UN (Prantl, 2005), NATO (Gegout, 2002;Vabulas and Snidal, 2013) and, of course, the EU (see, e.g. Aggestam and Bicchi, 2019;Amadio Viceré, 2024;Amadio Viceré and Sus, 2023;Delreux and Keukeleire, 2017;Justaert and Keukeleire, 2012). ...
... Gegout, 2002;Pouliot, 2016;Prantl, 2005;Snidal, 2013, 2021). Contrary to formal institutions, informal groupings -be they within or outside a formal organization -do not have a permanent secretariat, 1 are characterized by loose membership criteria and do not rest on a legally binding international treaty, but rather on shared expectations or a tacit agreement (Koremenos et al., 2001;Roger, 2020;Vabulas and Snidal, 2013). Moreover, the light bureaucratic structure of informal groupings makes them flexible decision-making instruments that can more easily adapt to changing circumstances. ...
Informal groupings of states – either as stand-alone entities or as part of formal international organizations (IOs) – are playing an increasingly important role in sustaining multilateralism and global governance. But what is it about the informal nature of these groupings that makes them such a critical and increasingly popular fixture of international cooperation? To answer this question, the paper focuses on the role of informal groupings in European Union (EU) foreign policy negotiations. Within the EU, informal groupings provide a key venue for coordination, information-sharing, learning and consensus-building. As a result, these groupings are critical for the functioning of the formal decision-making process, providing necessary building blocks for the success of multilateral diplomacy. The proposed argument is explored in the case of two distinct instances of informal groupings, one extra- and one intra-EU grouping, by means of document analysis and elite interviews with national diplomats. First, the paper examines the role of the G7 contact group in the formulation of the Russian sanctions back in 2014. Second, it assesses the role of the PESCO 4 in driving the establishment of the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). In both instances, informal groupings provided important venues for coordination, as well as information-sharing, learning and consensus-building, which, in turn, enable and sustain multilateral negotiations among 27 member states. Critically engaging with the role of informal groupings in formal IOs, the paper sheds light on the dynamic relationship between informality and minilateralism, on the one hand, and formal multilateral institutions, on the other.
... 106 Fioretos 2019 Jokela 2022. 107 Abbott andSnidal 2000;Vabulas and Snidal 2013. 108 Stone 2013. ...
... 108 Stone 2013. 109 Rüland 2012Vabulas and Snidal 2013, 200. 110 Roger 2020, 42-43. ...
Power shifts leading to heightened conflict and negotiation deadlocks, as well as growing institutional fragmentation and informality, constitute major challenges for global economic governance. The three books reviewed in this article provide innovative and unique explanations for these developments, through the lens of Southern countries (Shaffer and Narlikar) as well as the industrialized West (Roger). While the studies by Narlikar and Shaffer highlight changes in the negotiation strategies and the legal capacities of poor countries and emerging powers, Roger develops a theory explaining why economically advanced Western democracies increasingly rely on informal institutions. The article examines how and in what ways the three books complement conventional wisdom in economics, International Political Economy ( IPE ) and International Relations ( IR ) literature on global economic governance. It discusses the books’ contributions to the theorizing of global (economic) governance, the advancements towards a Global IR (and IPE ), the changing power relations in global economic institutions, the domestic and the transnational dimensions of global economic governance, and the role of informality in the design of global economic fora. The conclusion summarizes the main insights offered about the current crises of multilateralism and delineates avenues for future research.
... We explain institutional succession (hereafter "Succession") as the result of a bargaining process through which dissatisfied parties seek to alter the institutional status quo. Succession is one among several strategies of institutional change: others include reform, shifting an issue from one existing institution to another (known as "regime-shifting", see Helfer, 2004), or creating new rival institutions to challenge the status quo ("rival regime-creation", see Morse & Keohane, 2014;Urpelainen & van de Graff, 2014;Vabulas & Snidal, 2013). Whereas reform, regime-shifting and rival creation have attracted much scholarly attention, succession has been generally overlooked, subsumed under the wider category of institutional creation. ...
... Some have focused on how powerful states may (threaten to) shift a contested issue from one existing institution to another where they are more likely to get their way (Helfer, 2004;Urpelainen & van de Graaf, 2014). Others have focused on how dissatisfied states may seek to challenge the status quo by creating new, rival, organizations that will become focal points for cooperation (Morse & Keohane, 2014:387;Urpelainen & van de Graff, 2014;Vabulas & Snidal, 2013;Kellerman, 2019). Unlike such strategies which lead to the existence of parallel, overlapping institutions with potentially inconsistent rules and procedures, 3 succession directly replaces an existing IGO with a formal successor that takes over the former IGO's membership, mandate, and core functions, leaving just one institution in place. ...
Given high costs of negotiating formal international institutions, states are widely expected to adapt, reform, and repurpose existing institutions rather than create new ones. Nevertheless, during the past century some 60 intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have been directly replaced by a legal successor. Why do states sometimes dissolve an existing IGO only to replace it with a new one that takes over the incumbent organization’s mandate and assets—a practice known as institutional succession? We offer a theory of institutional succession and illustrate with examples. Against the dominant belief that creating new IGOs is a choice of last resort, we argue that reform and succession are equally expedient tools for achieving institutional change but address different negotiating hurdles. By creating a new institution (as opposed to amending an existing one) succession bypasses veto players that may stunt reform. However, succession suffers from potential diseconomies-of-scale (since not every member of an existing IGO may join the successor) which reform does not. Depending on which negotiation hurdle prevails, reform will be preferred to succession or vice versa. Our analysis advances existing understandings of institutional contestation and change within the life cycle of an international organisation.
... Fourth, the institutional design of the G20 as an informal intergovernmental organization provides it with both the flexibility and strength to respond to humanitarian emergencies as they arise (Vabulas 2013(Vabulas , 2019. Unlike more formal intergovernmental organizations, it is a malleable shape shifter that is able to switch from a more intergovernmental and state-centric institution to a complex transnational network for multistakeholder coordination, and back. ...
This policy brief analyzes the urgent issue of humanitarian catastrophes (versus humanitarian emergencies) and its relationship with the mandate of the G20 and the priorities of the Brazilian Presidency. To this end, and in light of the cases of Ukraine and Gaza, the authors explore the extent to which the G20 could adopt a new role in the issue-area of international security crises, specifically linked to humanitarian catastrophes. In the midst of the persistent deadlock among member states in the United Nations system and the lack of a common foreign policy within the G20 regarding humanitarian action in these countries, they advocate the creation of a Working Group on Responses to Humanitarian Catastrophes (WG-RHC) within the G20 Sherpa Track. In this regard, the brief identifies three possible scenarios: one related to possible resistance from some G20 members to this initiative; another to do with its technical and legal operationalization that compliments the work of U.N. humanitarian bodies; and a third regarding the protection of children in the field of health and food security.
... Similarly, Goddard et al. (2024) identify multiple "sub-orders" and claim that "it would be more accurate to speak of liberal 'orders' rather than 'order.'" Finally, beyond the question of liberal social aims, scholars emphasise that the rules-based global order has become more informal and ad hoc (Vabulas and Snidal 2013;Roger 2020;Westerwinter, Abbott, and Biersteker 2021;Reykers et al. 2023), and that it is characterised by a greater plurality of actors (Grigorescu 2020; Acharya, Estevadeordal, and Goodman 2023) and more fragmentation in governance arrangements (e.g., Stephen and Parízek 2019). ...
Many international institutions are facing challenges due to changes in domestic politics and global power shifts. In this literature review, we ask whether international institutions are sufficiently robust to cope with a contested world in transition. We note that while changes in domestic politics and global power shifts put the liberal vision of a global order under pressure, the literature does not clearly show that the forces of populism and the rising powers uniformly challenge the rules-based global order. We also find that some international institutions have been surprisingly robust in the face of such challenges. Therefore the literature appears to indicate that we need to develop a better understanding-both conceptually and empirically-of how specific international institutions are challenged, how they cope with pressures, and what impact this has on their longer-term effectiveness and democracy in global governance.
... Krepon 2021; Kühn and Williams 2023;Wisotzki and Kühn 2021) by developing a novel conceptual framework that also speaks to a growing body of IR scholarship on more flexible and informal approaches to international cooperation (e.g. Vabulas and Snidal 2013;Westerwinter, Abbott, and Biersteker 2021). ...
Growing political and military tensions between China and the United States make it necessary to think of novel arms control approaches on nuclear weapons and certain emerging technologies , designed to include China and other actors. This commentary makes the case for a Behavioral Arms Control (BAC) framework between China and the United States, stabilizing relations in East Asia. It builds on the recent behavioral turn in arms control and historical examples from the realm of confidence-building measures. It suggests informal initiatives to reduce military risks by focusing on the actions, rather than the capabilities, that can lead to escalation. In order to avoid nuclear use and war, BAC prescribes responsible behavior in multiple military domains, involving various nuclear and non-nuclear actors. After discussing the BAC concept and "responsibility" in particular, the commentary lays out three principles for engaging China and subsequently offers a number of possible arms control initiatives under a BAC framework.
... Assim, Freeman acredita que não há eficiência em grupos sem estrutura. Mesmo os grupos informais, à medida que vão crescendo, surgem novas necessidades que apenas podem ser resolvidas por via da criação de estruturas formais (Vabulas & Snidal, 2013). ...
As organizações necessitam de se organizar de modo a alcançar o sucesso. Uma temática atual como as estruturas organizacionais necessita de estudos regulares de modo a nunca estar desatualizada, pelo que este artigo acresce em termos de importância. O objetivo deste artigo é, assim, estudar os principais estilos de estrutura organizacional, por via de revisão de literatura, promovendo, sempre que possível, exemplos práticos da questão. Assim traz-se à literatura uma nova visão da temática, algo que pode ser muito útil às diversas organizações que queiram fazer um raio-x à sua forma de atuar. A falta de estudos em língua portuguesa atribui também uma maior importância a este estudo. Conclui-se que a existência de estrutura é essencial, no entanto a escolha da melhor estrutura depende muito da forma de atuar, bem como de objetivos da organização em si.
... It is common to analyze informal institutions' external leadership dynamicsfor example, how G20, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), or IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa Dialogue Forum) and their members seek to change global governance (Cooper & Farooq, 2015). Yet it is their internal dynamics, particularly the exercise of leadership and coalition building, that remains understudied (see also Larson, 2019;Westerwinter et al., 2021;Vabulas & Snidal, 2013). ...
... Here, we build on the recent literature on epistemic networks (Davis Cross 2013) and informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGOs, such as the G20) and their growing influence over world politics (Roger 2020;Kleine 2018). This literature has observed that organizations that are not subject to formal treaty and/or have no permanent secretariat have become important tools of promoting state interests by providing flexibility, protecting sovereignty, maintaining close control of information and lowering transaction costs (Vabulas and Snidal 2013). Support for these organizations does not bind the states to any decision, and decisions are made on adhoc rather than institutional basis. ...
Why do some actors possess more leverage to diffuse norms than others? Although it is often assumed that norm diffusion simply 'happens' through the interaction of political and cultural systems, we argue that individuals and institutional flexibility play a crucial role in the success and failure of norm diffusion. Analyzing the contending interpretation and diffusion of the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) norm between the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) within the UNFCCC, we illustrate how larger political mandates, the use of informal negotiation platforms and the skills and connections of negotiators played a crucial role in the respective success and failure of norm diffusion. While the more flexible and ad-hoc AILAC was able to effectively diffuse its interpretation of CBDR into the climate regime, the strictly intergovernmental ASEAN was unable to do the same. These findings advance the literature on norm entrepreneurs from the Global South and support several assumptions of the informal institutions theory. They also show, however, the importance of individuals as a defining condition of both norm entre-preneurship and the functioning of institutional platforms.
... The paradigm shift of the 1970s and 1980s in the study of international relations from interstate diplomacy toward transnational relations was quickly supplemented by numerous studies on the increasing importance of "soft law" [Abbott, Snidal, 2000;Velizhanina, 2007], "soft organizations" [Klabbers, 2001], and the emergence of "informal intergovernmental organizations" [Vabulas, Snidal, 2013] and informal governance within IGOs [Stone, 2013]. ...
In recent years there was a significant of international structures that are being created as platforms for multilateral policy dialogue on climate change issues outside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Such entities are, for example, the Major Economies Forum (MEF), the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, the on Clean Energy Ministerial and a wide variety of partnerships. There is no common definition for such formats of cooperation and conceptual ground for understanding their place in international climate governance system. This includes both traditional interstate cooperation mechanisms embodied by the UNFCCC, as well as non-state initiatives, climate finance institutions, formats that support a constant dialogue between states, business representatives, academia, and NGOs on climate policy issues. The aim of the study was to clarify the nature of quasi-formal climate governance, to establish a typology and assess of the dynamics of development of quasi-formal entities to better understand the processes of its formation and implementation. I describe three types of quasi-formal entities from the new dataset of quasi-formal entities created in the period from 2001-2022: intergovernmental forums, UNFCCC party groupings, and hybrid partnerships. The study reveals an increase in the number of political forums and hybrid partnerships amid stabilization or even reduction of negotiating blocs within the UNFCCC. In complex system of international climate governance, quasi-formal entities are playing an increasing role in the accumulation and exchange of knowledge and experience between states on the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
... Unlike the BRICS countries' convergence in the UNGA, their convergence within the BRICS group starts with these states' explicitly shared expectations about institutional purpose and ability to find value in continuing their cooperation (e.g. Vabulas and Snidal, 2013). BRICS is a 'rising power group' -a group of states seeking global status that corresponds to their growing economic and geopolitical clout and their potential to act as rule-makers and norm-setters in global governance (Schoeman, 2015: 43;Mahrenbach, 2019). ...
Informal institutions are important platforms for renegotiating global governance, but there is disagreement on how they operate and challenge the United States (US). Realists view some informal institutions like Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) as counter-hegemonic entities, while rational institutionalists focus on their structure and performance in specific areas. However, neither approach explains the internal dynamics that make these institutions robust and potentially counter-hegemonic. To fill this gap, we first develop a new convergence approach for analysing informal institutional dynamics, and then we apply this approach to examine BRICS robustness and BRICS–US relations. Our BRICS Convergence Index measures policy convergence of the BRICS states using a novel data set of BRICS cooperation on 47 policy issues between 2009 and 2021. Using data on US policy preferences on the same issues, we also identify the key sites of BRICS–US contestation. We find an overall increase in BRICS policy convergence and limited divergence from US preferences across a wide range of policy issues. However, since BRICS has engaged with more security issues after 2015 and substantively deepened its cooperation, its capability to counter US influence has grown. Our convergence-focused analysis of informal institutions embraces members’ agency and pathways for institution building, while identifying the issues that bind rival countries. As such, it helps explain how informal institutions gain robustness and provides empirical insights into the rise of new powers and global governance reform efforts.
... This can be supportive and empowering, for instance by inviting a hitherto excluded entity and bestowing new capacities upon it. This can be done through formal delegation as well as in informal ways in which organizations, through orchestration or other forms of inclusive engagement, broaden the list of involved entities (Vabulas and Snidal 2013). Ascription, however, can also be hostile and restraining if an established actor denies agency to an entity-in-the-making. 12 Firmly established actors in particular can deny the agency of an entity-in-the-making, e.g., by arguing for participation restrictions or by denying an actor the right to speak. ...
One of the central assumptions of global governance is that "problems without borders" require collaboration among multiple stakeholders to be managed effectively. This commitment to multistakeholderism, however, is not a functional imperative but the product of potentially contested agency recognition in the past. As such, we contend that a reconstruction of agency dynamics must be at the core of understanding global governance since global governors. We draw on a relational framework to lay out the basics of how to reconstruct the agency of global governors as it emerges through relations. Through these relations, entities-in-the-making advance agency claims or are ascribed agency by relevant others. Equally important from a relational perspective are recognition acts, which those claims trigger. We theorize in this paper that different types of agency claims paired with different recognition dynamics determine the outcome as to who is accepted to "sit at the table" for a particular issue. This theorization is required to (a) better understand current manifestations of global governance in their historical emergence and (b) discuss conditions of agency from a normative perspective to determine who should be the global governors of our time.
Formal inter-governmental organizations ( FIGO s) combine inter-governmentalism and bureaucracy. FIGO s (e.g., the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization)—are among the most visible bodies in global governance. FIGO s also are regularly accused of stasis, as both the popular press and the scholarly literature depict them as entities that are not seriously considering alternatives to the status quo. Associating them with stasis is simplistic, however, for it misses how revolutionary FIGO s are and also glosses over how stasis that does exist is connected to FIGO s’ revolutionary aspects. Analyzing formal inter-governmental organizations at three levels, this article makes a three-part argument: 1) at the level of the international system, FIGO s are a transformation (a substantial change in circumstances); 2) at the level of policy areas and regimes, FIGO s are transformative (something that changes circumstances); and 3) at the level of individual organizations, FIGO s are transformed (facing changed circumstances), in ways that risk stasis.
International organizations (IOs) are crucial actors in global governance. Yet, we lack the conceptual means to study how different levels of formality in IO’s design can influence world politics. Current research almost always treats the formality of IOs’ designs as a strict binary—either an IO is formal or it is informal. This approach is problematic because it undermines the capacity to understand the causes and implications attached to different institutional choices within IOs. In this piece, I develop a conceptual framework that can be used to systematically unpack the formality of an IO’s design beyond the formal/informal dichotomy. I introduce three indicators to measure levels of institutional formality: bindingness, delegation, and repetition. I then break down the design of an IO into three core dimensions: membership accession rules, scope of issues covered, and coordination unit. I argue that each of these dimensions can show different levels of formality, which can vary over time. I show how this multidimensional conceptualization aids the theoretical development of such variation. The paper includes examples drawn from different IOs, illustrating the empirical applicability of the framework.
States are increasingly using informal international organizations (IOs) to pursue agreements in global governance. One of the main advantages of these IOs for member states is that their design constrains the amount of authority that can be delegated to them, thereby reducing sovereignty and reputational costs. However, we continue to have limited knowledge about what happens to the design of informal organizations over time. In this article, I argue that while members strategically limit the authority delegated to an informal IO at the foundational stage, this design preference may change over time. In the context of the global governance of money laundering and terrorism financing, I illustrate my argument by comparing the design of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) at different points over 30 years. Drawing on institutional documents and elite interviews, I show how increased delegation can occur when an informal IO needs unforeseen technical expertise to efficiently handle a policy area affecting powerful members.
International organizations play an important, if imperfect, role in world politics, solving collective action problems in security, economic, environmental, and global health among others. While many believe that international organisations have formed critical pillars of global governance, sceptics contend that they reflect the power politics of the day and the interests of hegemonic powers. This volume examines whether international organizations contribute to or detract from peaceful change, acting as agents of both status quo and stasis. Providing a historical overview of international organizations, from the nineteenth century to the current day, a team of leading scholars offer an overview of how major theoretical approaches – Liberalism, Constructivism, Rationalism and Realism – have contributed to our understanding of the role played by international organizations in peaceful change. In particular, the roles of the United Nations General Assembly, UN Peacekeeping, UN Environment Program, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization and G20 are analysed.
International organizations play an important, if imperfect, role in world politics, solving collective action problems in security, economic, environmental, and global health among others. While many believe that international organisations have formed critical pillars of global governance, sceptics contend that they reflect the power politics of the day and the interests of hegemonic powers. This volume examines whether international organizations contribute to or detract from peaceful change, acting as agents of both status quo and stasis. Providing a historical overview of international organizations, from the nineteenth century to the current day, a team of leading scholars offer an overview of how major theoretical approaches – Liberalism, Constructivism, Rationalism and Realism – have contributed to our understanding of the role played by international organizations in peaceful change. In particular, the roles of the United Nations General Assembly, UN Peacekeeping, UN Environment Program, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization and G20 are analysed.
International organizations’ lives often extend far beyond the moment of their initial contracting. How IOs do adapt to shifting circumstances in their member states global geopolitical changes, and even internal dynamics within the IO itself? This special issue on the life cycle of international cooperation explores the ebbs and flows of the IOs that underpin the international system. Firm theory, organizational sociology, and agency theory all have incorporated life cycles perspectives into the study of organizations, but IR has yet to fully harness these frameworks. A life cycles approach centers on, first, incorporating the IO itself as the core unit of analysis and, second, the dynamic processes within IOs — including life stages such as false starts, consolidation, inertia, growth, revitalization, death, and succession. Incorporating these dynamic processes into our understanding of IOs reminds us that historically, IOs have always experienced periods of both flourishing and faltering. Grasping the mechanisms that drive these changes is indispensable for a thorough understanding of the international system’s vitality and resilience. Articles in this issue explore the durability of IOs in the face of crises; the measures that IOs deploy to legitimize their existence; the role of individual leaders’ rhetoric in IO vitality; the tradeoffs that member states face between pulling the plug on an IO versus creating a new institution; the effect of member-state IO withdrawal on the international system overall; and the mass public’s perceptions of such withdrawals.
Since the adoption of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the order founded on the treaty has evolved into an increasingly fragmented regime complex. Fragmentation has resulted from forum-shifting initiated both at the top and at the bottom of the nuclear hierarchy: both the United States, with varying partners, and coalitions of small-and medium-sized non-nuclear states have repeatedly moved rule-making on nuclear issues to fora outside the NPT, adding partly conflicting institutions to the complex. To understand this dynamic, I propose a sociological perspective that highlights states’ positional struggles in a multidimensionally stratified international society. Drawing on Bourdieusian global fields theory, I argue that both dominant and weak states use forum-shifting to manipulate exchange rates between different (material, institutional and social) forms of capital they possess. Thus, they seek to protect their positions in global hierarchies within and beyond the nuclear field when they perceive these hierarchies as being challenged by material or institutional power shifts.
This paper develops the concept of transience of (in)formality to refer to the intersection of formal and informal negotiating procedures in the WTO decision-making system. It argues that both formal and informal negotiating processes are essential for delivering negotiating outcomes in the WTO. Particularly, the article assesses how informal negotiating practices emerge within the WTO formal framework and align with it. The analysis highlights how negotiating practices (re)shape existing norms, both formal and informal, adapting the WTO to overcome challenges and meet current needs. It also disputes legal formalistic perspectives that permeate trade literature and offer limited accounts of Members' agency in the WTO. The paper uses the Joint Initiatives as a case study to illustrate the convergence between formality and informality and a possible way ahead for the WTO negotiations. By broadening the understanding of law-making, it contributes to the discussion on WTO reform. It provides alternatives that reflect the reality of WTO negotiations and underlines the institution's relevance.
This paper introduces new data on the creation of subsidiary bodies (SBs) by members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) between 1972 and 2020. Delegation to SBs is one of the principal means through which the UNSC acts, and these bodies are designed to carry out crucial functions such as peacekeeping, implementing sanctions, and investigating crises. Yet, no research has systematically evaluated their creation, design, and use. Our dataset includes a typology of all proposed and created SBs as well as information about their purpose and design. After introducing the data, we empirically analyze the determinants of SB creation. Multivariate regression demonstrates that SBs are more likely to be created when the preferences of the permanent members are aligned. Moreover, stronger bodies are more likely to be created during periods of high preference alignment, while middle- and lower-strength bodies are less influenced by member alignment. These results provide unique evidence demonstrating how politics affects the choice of when and how the UNSC responds to global problems. Our data and analysis paint a picture of a more proactive UNSC than is commonly portrayed in the literature, and these data will enable scholars to further analyze UNSC action.
This chapter addresses the question of whether the G20 is legitimate. It argues that the existence of an institution that exercises the two functions of the G20 would in principle be desirable from the perspective of justice, as such an institution could play a role in addressing external effects of national policies in other countries and help reduce the shortcomings associated with the fragmented and often technocratic nature of global governance. However, focusing mainly on the group’s decision-making procedures, the chapter argues that the design of the G20 has serious shortcomings, such as the exclusion of non-members, power imbalances within the group, a lack of transparency, and the predominant role of executive bodies in decision-making. As there are feasible institutional alternatives to the G20 in its current form that are more just, the chapter concludes that the G20 should not be regarded as legitimate.
The second part of the book discusses the legitimacy of a specific global governance institution, the G20, which has so far hardly been investigated from the perspective of political philosophy. To prepare the normative assessment, this chapter describes the nature of this institution and its role in international political practice. It identifies two main overarching functions of the group: first, the G20 coordinates national policies of member states and, secondly, the group provides guidance to other global governance institutions and advances international regulations. The discussion of the nature and functions of the G20 shows that it is indeed a proper subject of legitimacy judgements because it is a collective agent that shapes public policies. In addition, identifying the function of the group clarifies what is at stake in legitimacy judgements regarding the G20. According to the concept of legitimacy developed in this book, to regard the group as legitimate means ascribing it the right to exercise its dual function.
In the wake of international organisations' (IOs) politicisation, treaty-based transfers of authority to or from IOs have virtually come to a standstill. Instead, we increasingly see instances of informal internationalisation and unilateral renationalisation of IO authority. In this article, we introduce a Political Contest Theory (PCT) that explains both phenomena at the same time. PCT builds on the postfunctionalist assumption that, in the age of politicisation, IO authority transfers activate a transnational cleavage between communitarian and cosmopolitan factions fighting over the 'right' locus of political authority. Yet, beyond extant postfunctional theorising, PCT specifies the mechanisms through and the conditions under which either the one or the other faction may prevail. We argue that communitarians can rely on a structural mobilisation advantage which allows them to assert unilateral renationalisations, whereas cosmopolitans can rely on an institutional power advantage which allows them to push through informal internationalisations. Moreover, PCT highlights a pattern of mutual reinforcement between the systematic advantages enjoyed by the opposing factions that is likely to exacerbate the polarisation over IO authority transfers in the future.
How do intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) evolve? Cooperation through IGOs is difficult to maintain, as membership dynamics change dramatically over time, leading to dissatisfaction with the status quo. This paper argues that IGO members states create new affiliated bodies, which I call linked intergovernmental organizations (LIGOs), to “re-contract” their cooperation. This helps IGOs adapt to changing membership dynamics, including the addition of new members and shifting constellations of power and preference. LIGOs are particularly useful for weak or formerly weak states seeking to alter the institutional status quo. Several features of LIGOs incentivize their creation: (1) they bypass difficult-to-enact reforms at existing IGOs; (2) flexible design features increase the voice of dissatisfied constituencies; and (3) they are politically viable for dissatisfied and status quo members of IGOs. To test my argument, I analyze original data on 1,200 LIGOs created between 1945 and 2012. Multivariate statistical analyses show that LIGOs are created in response to shifting membership environments that create demands for change at existing IGOs. I complement the quantitative analysis with case studies of two significant LIGOs: The International Development Agency (IDA) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). My theory suggests a dramatic rethinking of how international cooperation evolves and has broad implications for global governance in an increasingly multipolar world.
In terms of institutional positioning, the quartet of Indo‐Pacific states – Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – firmly endorse ASEAN. ‘ASEAN centrality’ is clearly highlighted in all Quad statements. Yet, the Quad presents an organizational and substantive challenge to the core institutional model of ASEAN. This competitive dynamic, with respect to style of associational methods (the how) as opposed to organizational purpose (the why), has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. If the literature does focus on the comparative approaches of ASEAN and the Quad, the prism is for the most part targeted on the differences with respect to the engagement with China. Our analysis is different and emphasizes the contrast between two types of institutional informality exhibited by ASEAN and the Quad. By situating our analysis in the context of contested informality, we point out that both ASEAN and the Quad are signposts showing that the foundational privilege of formal international organizations is under stress, albeit from a wide range of institutional designs. Only by detailing and evaluating the critical divergence in modes of informality can an appreciation of the nature and impact of the contest between ASEAN and the Quad be fully understood.
In the socioeconomic sphere, the concept of informality has been used to address issues pertaining to economic dynamics, institutions, work, poverty, settlements, the use of space, development, and sustainability, among others. This thematic range has given way to multiple discourses, definitions and approaches that mostly focus on a single phenomenon and conform to traditional disciplinary lines, making it difficult to fully understand informality and adequately inform policymaking. In this article, we carried out a multilevel co-word analysis with the purpose of unveiling the intellectual structure of socioeconomic informality. Co-occurring document keywords were used, initially, to delimit the scope of the socioeconomic dimension of informality (macro level) and, later, to identify its main concepts, themes (meso level) and sub-themes (micro level). Our results show that there is a corpus of research on socioeconomic informality that is sufficiently differentiable from other types of informality. This corpus, at the same time, can be divided into six major themes and 31 sub-themes related, more prominently, to the informal economy, informal settlements and informal institutions. Looking forward, the analysis suggests, an increasing focus on context and on the experience of multiple ‘informalities’ has the potential, on the one hand, to reveal links that help unify this historically fragmented corpus and, on the other hand, to give informality a meaning and identity that go beyond the traditional formal-informal dualism.
States have increasingly relied on informal international organizations (IOs) to govern cross‐border problems. Frequently, however, their accountability has been questioned because they have been created to evade political control and strengthen the hands of executives and bureaucrats vis‐à‐vis legislative actors. This has led some to propose solutions that might address their accountability gaps. In this article, I discuss the role that institutional inter‐linkages may play. Many informal IOs lack capabilities and accountability mechanisms that raise questions about their desirability as standalone institutions. Yet, in practice, by creating links with states and formal IOs, their capabilities and accountability have been augmented. With respect to their accountability, specifically, I argue such linkages can promote reflexivity, policy filtering, and the institutionalization of new procedural norms. While these dynamics cannot fully reduce accountability gaps, recognition of them provides a more balanced picture of the issues at stake and an added rationale for expanding such linkages in the future.
This chapter analyzes the conditions leading to the four types of authority relationships in regime complexes—when do we expect to find integration, fragmentation, marginalization, or resilience? Two conditions determine the respective inter-institutional authority relationship in a regime complex. The first is go-it-alone power. Only a coalition of challenger states, which possesses the power to go it alone, can successfully turn an institutional contender into the new focal institution. The second condition is the challengers’ membership preference. States base their preferences for inclusive or exclusive cooperation on the ratio between the costs of inclusion and exclusion. Combining the two perspectives then allows theorizing the theoretical pathways linking the emergence of a regime complex through contestation with the outcomes of authority relations. Four different pathways emerge depending on the absence or presence of the two basic conditions. Importantly, states can benefit from competitive regime creation independently of their relative power. Under certain conditions, even for a relatively weak state coalition, can it be rational to contest an institution they dislike.
This chapter lays out the conceptual basis of the book by discussing the emergence and consequences of regime complexity and developing a typology of interinstitutional authority distributions that can emerge in regime complexes. Institutions in regime complexes demonstrate varying degrees of authority in the issue area they govern. While states use some institutions regularly and thus make them focal within a complex, others find themselves on the margins and are neglected by their member states. If two institutions overlap in their mandates to govern an issue area, the use of an institution is a relative concept. Thus, if at least two institutions’ mandates cover the same issue area, using one specific venue often implies the non-use of its alternative. If such use patterns perpetuate, this leads to a distinct authority distribution in a regime complex. Four inter-institutional relations are theorized: Integration, marginalization, resilience, and fragmentation. Only if we understand the possible outcomes of authority distributions are we able to explain why a specific international institution emerged as the center of authority in a complex.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and the declining effectiveness of antibiotic medicines due to misuse are among the biggest threats to global health and a major challenge for global governance in this century. Since drug-resistant bacteria spread easily across borders, government policies that exacerbate or mitigate AMR affect other countries. International organizations and governments addressed the global public good of maintaining antimicrobial protection by creating a soft governance regime largely devoid of legally binding rules and enforcement mechanisms. This article presents a cross-national empirical assessment of the effectiveness of the international AMR regime combining novel data on national action plans and data on antibiotic consumption in 191 countries between 2000 and 2018. We find that the regime sets ambitious goals and achieves broad participation, substantial implementation, and meaningful change in the use of antibiotics. The involvement of the largest consumers of antibiotics has been crucial for both effectiveness and equity.
Several recent studies have pointed to the increasing relevance of relatively informal, non-treaty-based global governance bodies (GGBs). Yet, a systematic fine-grained assessment of these bodies and their implications for global governance are still pending. To what extent, do non-treaty-based GGBs constitute a truly novel type of governance body, distinct from traditional treaty-based international organizations (IOs)? How do the distinctive features of GGBs affect their role in global governance? To what extent are GGB’s patterns of emergence and development specific to policy sectors? This article tackles these questions, drawing on an original dataset on GGBs in five distinct policy areas (banking and finance, energy, global health, Internet, and migration policy). We combine a micro-organizational perspective with a meso-level network approach to unpack the main features of non-treaty-based GGBs vis-à-vis, traditional IOs. Our results provide support to the general expectation that non-treaty-based GGBs offer distinctive opportunities for global governance with respect to traditional IOs. However, importantly, this relationship is not dichotomous. We find that GGBs exist on a continuum of fit-to-purpose designs ranging from hard, formal, and intergovernmental models to a soft, informal, and multistakeholder-based form of governance. Lastly, we also find notable variations across policy areas, where global health stands out given its decentralized network structure.
Since the end of the Cold War, informal security cooperation has been on the rise. Besides formal alliances, states are increasingly establishing so-called “strategic partnerships”. This new form of security cooperation is currently under-researched, although governments consider it an important foreign policy tool. We do not yet know whether security interests are the basis of these arrangements or whether strategic partnerships function as substitutes for or complements to formal alliances. This article addresses both issues by analyzing a new dataset on strategic partnerships with the involvement of G20 countries. I find that two or more states are most likely to be tied by partnerships when the presence of a common threat coincides with the absence of their joint membership in a formal alliance. However, states parties to a formal alliance with a lower commitment, such as a consultation, neutrality, or non-aggression pact, are also likely to be tied to each other by partnerships when they face a common threat.
Warum die Sozialwissenschaften kollektive Handlungsfähigkeit ernst nehmen sollte«. This paper examines conceptual issues of the emergence and effects of collective agency. Collective agency seems to challenge the methodological individualist assumption that only individuals can act, but treating group actors, such as parliamentary committees or court chambers , as mere shortcuts for complex interactions among group members raises important theoretical, empirical, and normative issues. First, the paper discusses some fundamental issues of collective agency. We argue that analyses of collective agency must provide generative mechanisms that demonstrate how it arises from the interaction of group members. Second, the paper introduces major approaches to collective agency from analytical philosophy and sociology. They locate the source of collective agency in the formation of collective intentions through the adjustment of group members' attitudes, in the organization of group decision processes, or in the transfer of resources to the group level, which empowers a collective actor to act in its own right. Against this backdrop, this paper offers an integrative concept of collective agency characterized in terms of the degree of autonomy and the level of resources controlled by a collective actor. Third, this paper introduces the contributions to this special issue, which tackle a broad variety of issues, including the formation and consequences of collective intentions in small and unorganized groups, collective agency issues of institutionalized groups and organizations, collective agency of large and unorganized groups without defined memberships, and normative issues of collective agency.
Despite its widespread use in studies of domestic political institutions, the concept of “independence” has not been systematically applied to the study of international institutions. Most arguments regarding the ability of international organizations (IOs) to promote cooperation and mitigate conflict rely on the implicit assumption that such institutions possess some independence from states, and yet the field has failed to conceptualize—let alone measure—this institutional characteristic. Extracting insights from the theoretical literatures on both international and domestic institutions, the authors distill several design features that lend independence to political institutions and then generate coding rules for measuring the independence of IOs. Based on an original data set of regional integration arrangements, the authors then use regression analysis to test several propositions for explaining variation in IO independence, shedding light on some important theoretical and empirical puzzles in international relations.
International organizations have proliferated in recent decades. Virtually every issueof broad international concern is the subject of an international agreement that isadministered by an international organization. Broad powers are delegated to some ofthese international agents, many of which exercise significant discretion and author-ity. International courts with broad jurisdiction and hundreds of more specializedjudicial organs have been established to interpret a rapidly expanding body ofinternational law. The organizational capacity of international governance has in-creased, while the capacity of domestic governance has declined in a range of failedstates and contested territories. Meanwhile, the depth of policy coordinationdemanded by international agreements has led to an unprecedented level of interna-tional policy activism by some of the leading international organizations, includingthe IMF, the WTO, and the EU. Given the importance of what international organi-zations do, it is increasingly important to understand how international organizationsactually work.Most of our theoretical models of international organizations are based on theirformal attributes rather than on their behavior. Formal rules are important, of course,and generally set the parameters within which informal interactions take place, butshared expectations and extra-legal practices often modify or overrule written pro-visions. As a result, models based on legal provisions can be misleading. Forexample, there are numerous international organizations in which votes are nevertaken, or are almost always unanimous; nevertheless, analyses of their governanceoften focus on the equilibria of majority voting games. Since the game being playeddoes not involve building minimum winning coalitions, however, voting modelsbased on majority voting can shed little light on the degree of influence that powerfulcountries exert over decision making, or on the practical limits of that influence.Similarly, procedural models of EU legislation assume that the game being playedfollows the legal procedures prescribed in the EU treaties; but this is often not the
Scholarship on intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) has mushroomed, especially studies involving quantitative analyses of state involvement in IGOs and the effects of IGOs on the behavior of state members. Yet, little of that literature enumerates IGOs using conceptually based definitions of what are formal intergovernmental organizations. Here, the authors develop a new database on IGOs, based on a definition focusing on three dimensions: formal organizations that demonstrate ongoing decision- making and oversight by states; evidence bureaucratic organization; and demonstrate organizational autonomy. The authors conceptualize these organizations as FIGOs. Using these dimensions, they iden- tify the population of FIGOs at three points in time: 1975, 1989, and 2004. In addition, they gener- ate data on state membership in FIGOs, offering not only a simple frequency of number of organizations in which a state participates, but also another measure of state involvement through the creation of a denominator of 'opportunity', allowing for an analysis of the number of organizations joined versus the number of organizations a state is capable of joining. Finally, the authors compare the results from their efforts with the IGO COW database and suggest some advantages to using their data for a number of theoretical questions.
A basic debate in world politics involves the impact of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) on international conflict. Liberals, functionalists, and others see IGOs as capable of transforming global anarchy, while realists emphasize the essential irrelevance of IGOs in managing such fundamental processes as war and peace. Recent quantitative studies also yield disparate conclusions depending on particular econometric assumptions, implying variously that IGOs foster pacific relations among states, have no impact on dispute behavior, or even increase dispute propensity. At least part of the problem is a lack of theoretical and empirical specificity. The authors apply bargaining theory to develop a "middle path" between the realist and liberal perspectives. Only some IGOs, those with security mandates and the most sophisticated institutional structures, are likely to influence dispute behavior. The authors combine the theory with two improvements in research design. First, IGOs vary in capability, mandate, and cohesion. The authors construct a dataset of IGO institutional heterogeneity and member cohesiveness. Second, states join IGOs for reasons that are not unrelated to why states fight. The authors control for the level of international involvement among countries and find support for their arguments in initial tests.
As the pressure to invite international election monitors rose at the end of the Cold War, states refused to grant the United Nations a dominant role. Thus, today multiple intergovernmental, regional, and international non-governmental organizations often monitor the same elections with equal authority. This article examines the costs and benefits of this complex regime to highlight some possible broader implications of regime complexity. It argues that the availability of many different organizations facilitates action that might otherwise have been blocked for political reasons. Furthermore, when different international election monitoring agencies agree, their consensus can bolster their individual legitimacy as well as the legitimacy of the international norms they stress, and thus magnify their influence on domestic politics. Unfortunately the election monitoring example also suggests that complex regimes can engender damaging inter-organizational politics and that the different biases, capabilities, and standards of organizations sometime can lead organizations to outright contradict each other or work at cross-purposes.
Typologies are a well-established analytic tool in the social sciences. Working with typologies contributes decisively to forming concepts, exploring dimensionality, establishing measurement categories, and grouping cases. Yet some critics – basing their arguments on what they believe to be relevant norms of quantitative measurement – consider typologies to be an old-fashioned and unsophisticated mode of analysis. We show that this critique is methodologically unsound. The use of typologies can and should proceed according to high standards of rigor. We offer a basic template for constructing typologies and show how they can be “put to work” in refining concepts and measurement, examining underlying dimensions, and organizing explanatory claims and causal inference. The conclusion presents guidelines for careful work with typologies.
There is no integrated regime governing efforts to limit the extent of climate change. Instead, there is a regime complex: a loosely coupled set of specific regimes. We describe the regime complex for climate change and seek to explain it, using functional, strategic, and organizational arguments. This institutional form is likely to persist; efforts to build a comprehensive regime are unlikely to succeed, but narrower institutions focused on particular aspects of the climate change problem are already thriving. Building on this analysis, we argue that a climate change regime complex, if it meets specified criteria, has advantages over any politically feasible comprehensive regime, particularly with respect to adaptability and flexibility. Adaptability and flexibility are particularly important in a setting, such as climate change policy, in which the most demanding international commitments are interdependent yet governments vary widely in their interest and ability to implement them.
Available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1470242. States use formal international organizations (IOs) to manage both their everyday interactions and more dramatic episodes, including international conflicts. Yet contemporary international relations theory does not explain the existence or form of IOs. This article addresses the question of why states use formal organizations by investigating the functions IOs perform and the properties that enable them to perform those functions. Starting with a rational-institutionalist perspective that sees IOs as enabling states to achieve their ends, the authors also examine power and distributive questions and the role of IOs in creating norms and understandings. We identify centralization and independence as the key properties of formal organizations, and illustrate their importance with a wide array of examples.
The decade long trans-Atlantic banana dispute was not a traditional trade conflict stemming from antagonistic producers’ interests. Instead, this article argues that the banana dispute is one of the most complex illustrations of the legal and political difficulties created by the nesting and overlapping of international institutions and commitments. The contested Europe-wide banana policy was an artifact of nesting--the fruit of efforts to reconcile the single market with Lomé obligations which then ran afoul of WTO rules. Using counter-factual analysis, this article explores how the nesting of international commitments contributed to creating the dispute, provided forum shopping opportunities which themselves complicated the options of decisionmakers, and hindered resolution of what would otherwise be a pretty straightforward trade dispute. We then draw out implications from this case for the EU, an institution increasingly nested within multilateral mechanisms, and for the issue of the nesting of international institutions in general.
Available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1402965. The subject of this volume is legalization and world politics. World politics in this formulation needs no clarification, but legalization, the real focus of the volume, must be more clearly defined, if only because of its relative unfamiliarity to students of international relations. In the introduction the editors have briefly previewed the concept of legalization used throughout the volume, a concept developed collaboratively by the authors of this article. We understand legalization as a particular form of institutionalization characterized by three components: obligation, precision, and delegation. In this article, we introduce these three characteristics,explore their variability and the range of institutional forms produced by combining them, and explicate the elements of legalization in greater detail.
We examine why international actors—including states, firms, and activists—seek different types of legalized arrangements to solve political and substantive problems. We show how particular forms of legalization provide superior institutional solutions in different circumstances. We begin by examining the baseline advantages of “hard” legalization (that is, precise, legally binding obligations with appropriate third-party delegation). We emphasize, however, that actors often prefer softer forms of legalization (that is, various combinations of reduced precision, less stringent obligation, and weaker delegation). Soft legalization has a number of significant advantages, including that it is easier to achieve, provides strategies for dealing with uncertainty, infringes less on sovereignty, and facilitates compromise among differentiated actors.
Although our approach is largely interest-based, we explicitly incorporate the normative elements that are central in law and in recent international relations theorizing. We also consider the important role of nonstate actors who, along with states, are central participants in contemporary international legalization. We illustrate the advantages of various forms of international legal arrangements with examples drawn from articles in this special issue and elsewhere.
This chapter explores continuity and change in the multilateralism of the privileged states and social forces in the global political economy: what I call the ‘G-7 nexus’; the primary present-day example of a multilateralism from the ‘top down’. The G-7 nexus can be defined as the constellation of social and political forces which regulate, police and protect a disciplinary neo-liberal world order. It comprises a set of institutional arrangements, material capacities and discursive practices which have taken their contemporary form since the onset of the global economic crisis in the early 1970s. In this brave new world, financial capital has assumed a predominant position in channelling social choices and government programmes. Anglo-American models of the relationship between state and civil society have become more influential in shaping programmes of political and economic restructuring.
The end of the Cold War was a "big bang" reminiscent of earlier moments after major wars, such as the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the end of the World Wars in 1919 and 1945. Here John Ikenberry asks the question, what do states that win wars do with their newfound power and how do they use it to build order? In examining the postwar settlements in modern history, he argues that powerful countries do seek to build stable and cooperative relations, but the type of order that emerges hinges on their ability to make commitments and restrain power. The author explains that only with the spread of democracy in the twentieth century and the innovative use of international institutions--both linked to the emergence of the United States as a world power--has order been created that goes beyond balance of power politics to exhibit "constitutional" characteristics. The open character of the American polity and a web of multilateral institutions allow the United States to exercise strategic restraint and establish stable relations among the industrial democracies despite rapid shifts and extreme disparities in power. Blending comparative politics with international relations, and history with theory, After Victory will be of interest to anyone concerned with the organization of world order, the role of institutions in world politics, and the lessons of past postwar settlements for today. It also speaks to today's debate over the ability of the United States to lead in an era of unipolar power.
In addition to the explicit goal of advancing mutual economic interests, regional economic organizations (REOs) are intended to foster regional cohesion and peace. Drawing on a data set detailing the institutional features of 25 REOs established during the 1980s and 1990s, complemented by a case study of ASEAN, Yoram Z. Haftel investigates the factors that affect REOs' ability to mitigate interstate military conflict. He finds fewer interstate conflicts among REO members who have developed high levels of economic integration and who cultivate regular interaction among member-states' representatives. Haftel concludes that, with an appropriate institutional design and fully implemented agreements, an REO can indeed play a role in mitigating interstate conflict and make a meaningful contribution to regional peace.
This article explores the definition of public goods in order to highlight and examine the political issues central to public goods provision. The two defining properties of public goods, jointness in supply and nonexclusiveness, are discussed and shown to be logically interdependent. By distinguishing between nonexclusiveness and noncontrol over exclusion, the definition is recast to show the important role of property rights in public goods situations. Issues of optimality and fairness are discussed to clarify some of the confusion surrounding the problem of centralized provision. Finally, the concept of a quasi-public good (where exclusionary mechanisms are imposed on an erstwhile public good) is used to analyze the role of political organizations in public goods provision. The failure to deal adequately with public goods problems at the international level can be understood in terms of the weakness of political organizations at that level.
Why do states delegate certain tasks and responsibilities to international organizations rather than acting unilaterally or cooperating directly? Furthermore, to what extent do states continue to control IOs once authority has been delegated? Examining a variety of different institutions, including the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and the European Commission, this book explores the different methods that states employ to ensure their interests are being served and identifies the problems involved with monitoring and managing IOs. The contributors suggest that it is not inherently more difficult to design effective delegation mechanisms at the international level than at the domestic level. Drawing on principal-agent theory, they explain the variations that exist in the extent to which states are willing to delegate to IOs. They argue that IOs are neither all evil nor all virtuous, but are better understood as bureaucracies that can be controlled to varying degrees by their political masters.
Why do institutions emerge, operate, evolve and persist? 'Institutional Choice and Global Commerce' elaborates a theory of boundedly rational institutional choice that explains when states USE available institutions, SELECT among alternative forums, CHANGE existing rules, or CREATE new arrangements (USCC). The authors reveal the striking staying power of the institutional status quo and test their innovative theory against evidence on institutional choice in global commerce from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. Cases range from the establishment in 1876 of the first truly international system of commercial dispute resolution, the Mixed Courts of Egypt, to the founding and operation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Trade Organization, and the International Accounting Standards Board. Analysts of institutional choice henceforth must take seriously not only the distinct demands of specific cooperation dilemmas, but also the wide array of available institutional choices.
How is the United States able to control the IMF with only 17 per cent of the votes? How are the rules of the global economy made? This book shows how a combination of formal and informal rules explain how international organizations really work. Randall W. Stone argues that formal rules apply in ordinary times, while informal power allows leading states to exert control when the stakes are high. International organizations are therefore best understood as equilibrium outcomes that balance the power and interests of the leading state and the member countries. Presenting a new model of institutional design and comparing the IMF, WTO and EU, Stone argues that institutional variations reflect the distribution of power and interests. He shows that US interests influence the size, terms and enforcement of IMF programs, and new data, archival documents and interviews reveal the shortcomings of IMF programs in Mexico, Russia, Korea, Indonesia and Argentina.
Students of world politics have tended to assume that states act as units. Yet trans-governmental relations—direct interactions among sub-units not controlled or closely guided by the policies of cabinets or chief executives—are frequently important. Trans-governmental relations are facilitated by extensive personal contacts among officials and by conflicts of interest between departments or agencies within modern governments. International organizations can play important roles in transgovernmental networks by (i) affecting the definition of issues; (2) promoting coalitions among governmental subunits with similar interests; and (3) serving as points of policy intervention in trans-national systems. As policy interdependence among developed-country governments becomes more extensive and complex, these roles of international organizations are likely to become increasingly important. Internationalism of this relatively informal, non-institutionalized type is not a “dead end.”
This article summarizes the new Correlates of War 2 International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) data. The data in the Correlates of War IGO data sets capture state memberships in the network of international governmental organizations. The expanded version 2.0 updates the original Wallace and Singer (1970) data set to provide membership information from1964 to 2001. Following a brief review of the literature pertaining to IGOs and world politics, we provide descriptions of all three versions of the data (country-year, IGO-year, and joint dyadic membership), discuss coding rules and subsequent changes to the data, and present graphical representations of changes in the network of IGOs over time using all three versions of the data.
Regime analysis has focused on issues of market failure, the resolution of which depends upon knowledge and institution building. Global communications regimes, however, have been concerned either with issues of pure coordination or with coordination problems with distributional consequences. Outcomes have been decided by the underlying distribution of national power. In those areas where power was asymmetrically distributed and there was no agreement on basic principles and norms—radio broadcasting and remote sensing—no regime was formed. In those areas where distributional issues could not be unilaterally resolved—allocation of the radio spectrum and telecommunications—regimes were created, although both principles and rules changed with alterations in national power capabilities.
Mainstream comparative research on political institutions focuses
primarily on formal rules. Yet in many contexts, informal institutions,
ranging from bureaucratic and legislative norms to clientelism and
patrimonialism, shape even more strongly political behavior and
outcomes. Scholars who fail to consider these informal rules of the
game risk missing many of the most important incentives and constraints
that underlie political behavior. In this article we develop a
framework for studying informal institutions and integrating them into
comparative institutional analysis. The framework is based on a
typology of four patterns of formal-informal institutional interaction:
complementary, accommodating, competing, and substitutive. We then
explore two issues largely ignored in the literature on this subject:
the reasons and mechanisms behind the emergence of informal
institutions, and the nature of their stability and change. Finally, we
consider challenges in research on informal institutions, including
issues of identification, measurement, and comparison. a
The newest liberal institutionalism asserts that, although it accepts a major realist proposition that international anarchy impedes cooperation among states, it can nevertheless affirm the central tenets of the liberal institutionalist tradition that states can achieve cooperation and that international institutions can help them work together. However, this essay's principal argument is that neoliberal institutionalism misconstrues the realist analysis of international anarchy and therefore it misunderstands realism's analysis of the inhibiting effects of anarchy on the willingness of states to cooperate. This essay highlights the profound divergences between realism and the newest liberal institutionalism. It also argues that the former is likely to be proven analytically superior to the latter.
International regimes are defined as principles, norms, rules and decision making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue area. As a starting point, regimes have been conceptualized as intervening variables, standing between basic causal factors and related outcomes and behaviour. There are three views about the importance of regimes: conventional structural orientations dismiss regimes as being at best ineffectual; Grotian orientations view regimes as an intimate component of the international system; and modified structural perspectives see regimes as significant only under certain constrained conditions. For Grotian and modified structuralist arguments, which endorse the view that regimes can influence outcomes and behavior, regime development is seen as a function of five basic causal variables: egoistic self interest, political power, diffuse norms and principles, custom and usage, and knowledge
Have scholars properly understood, anticipated, predicted, and in any way helped to shape international organization developments since 1945? Or have they merely reported on events as they unfolded, shifting their research foci from one momentary concern to another in response to the ebb and flow of conditions in the world around them? One pattern that characterizes the maturation of the field of international organization in the postwar era is the steady disengagement of international organization scholars from the study of organizations, so that today one must question whether such a field exists any longer except in name only. The discussion traces the rise and fall of international organization as a field of study, first describing the origins and the evolution of the field, then analyzing the failure of international organization scholars generally to anticipate or shape international organization developments, and finally offering some suggestions for reviving the field and the institutions themselves which are its raison d' tre.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Oxford, 2003.
Hardly anyone expects public institutions to die. Yet a census reveals that fully one-third of the international governmental organizations (IGOs) in existence in 1981 had in fact become defunct by 1992. Most Eastern bloc and many regional developing country organizations vanished or became inactive. During this period a slightly larger number of new organizations was born. Not governments but other IGOs spawned most of the new offspring. Wealthy democratic countries increased their IGO memberships while poor unstable countries increasingly dropped out. This bifurcation was accompanied by greater reliance by all on set of core universal-membership institutions dominated by Western values. Functionalism, organizational ecology, and realism each partly help us to understand these trends but leave important dynamics unexplained. Copyright 1996 by MIT Press.
Informal agreements are the most common form of international cooperation and the least studied. Ranging from simple oral deals to detailed executive agreements, they permit states to conclude profitable bargains without the formality of treaties. Treaties are designed, by long-standing convention, to raise the credibility of promises by staking national reputation on their adherence. In contrast, informal agreements have a more ambiguous status and are useful for precisely that reason. They are chosen to avoid formal and visible national pledges, to avoid the political obstacles of ratification, to reach agreements quickly and quietly, and to provide flexibility for subsequent modification or even renunciation. They differ from formal agreements not because their substance is less important but because the underlying promises are less visible and more equivocal. The prevalence of of informal agreements thus reveals not only the possibilities of international cooperation but also the practical obstacles and the institutional limits to endogenous enforcement. Copyright 1991 by MIT Press.
Do international organizations really do what their creators intend them to do? In the past century the number of international organizations (IOs) has increased exponentially, and we have a variety of vigorous theories to explain why they have been created. Most of these theories explain IO creation as a response to problems of incomplete information, transaction costs, and other barriers to Pareto efficiency and welfare improvement for their members. Research owing from these theories, however, has paid little attention to how IOs actually behave after they are created. Closer scrutiny would reveal that many IOs stray from the efficiency goals these theories impute and that many IOs exercise power autonomously in ways unintended and unanticipated by states at their creation. Understanding how this is so requires a reconsideration of IOs and what they do.
This article discusses the dynamics between informal groups of states and the UN Security Council. First, I argue that informal groups have proliferated in response to systemic change. Second, these groups serve as a mechanism that allows for exit from structural constraints of the Security Council and voice for stakeholders in a conflict. In effect, they may narrow the operational and participatory gap growing out of the multiple incapacities that prevents the Council from formulating an effective response to crisis situations. Third, the processes of diplomatic problem solving and its collective legitimation have become increasingly decoupled. The former tends to be delegated to informal groups or coalition of states, while the Council provides the latter. I illustrate how these findings affect one s understanding of power, legitimacy, and change in the theory of international relations.This article is the extensively revised version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System in 2003. The project received financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom (Grant No. R42200024335), and the Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford. The UN Studies Program at Yale University was a frequent host and home over recent years. I would like to express my gratitude for the long-term support and advice of Karl Kaiser, Bruce Russett, James Sutterlin, and especially Neil MacFarlane. I also wish to thank Mats Berdal, Richard Caplan, Sam Daws, Kurt Gaubatz, Marrack Goulding, Jean Krasno, Edward Luck, David Malone, Lisa Martin, James Mayall, Joseph Nye, Adam Roberts, Avi Shlaim, Ngaire Woods, and two anonymous referees for comments and criticism.
This article examines the implications of the rising density of international institutions. Despite the rapid proliferation of institutions, scholars continue to embrace the assumption that individual regimes are decomposable from others. We contend that an increasingly common phenomenon is the regime complex: a collective of partially overlapping and nonhierarchical regimes. The evolution of regime complexes reflects the influence of legalization on world politics. Regime complexes are laden with legal inconsistencies because the rules in one regime are rarely coordinated closely with overlapping rules in related regimes. Negotiators often attempt to avoid glaring inconsistencies by adopting broad rules that allow for multiple interpretations. In turn, solutions refined through implementation of these rules focus later rounds of negotiation and legalization. We explore these processes using the issue of plant genetic resources (PGR). Over the last century, states have created property rights in these resources in a Demsetzian process: as new technologies and ideas have made PGR far more valuable, actors have mobilized and clashed over the creation of property rights that allow the appropriation of that value.We are grateful for comments on early drafts presented at Stanford Law School, New York University Law School, Duke Law School, Harvard Law School, and the American Society for International Law. Thanks especially to Larry Helfer, Tom Heller, Robert Keohane, Benedict Kingsbury, Peter Lallas, Lisa Martin, Ron Mitchell, Sabrina Safrin, Gene Skolnikoff, Richard Stewart, Chris Stone, Buzz Thompson, Jonathan Wiener, Katrina Wyman, Oran Young, and two anonymous reviewers for their feedback. Kal Raustiala thanks the Program on Law and Public Affairs at Princeton for support. We also thank our research assistants, Lindsay Carlson, Lesley Coben and Joshua House.
International institutions are central features of moderninternational relations. This is true of trade, international debt andnancial restructuring, and even national security, once the exclusiverealm of pure state action. It was certainly true of the two majormilitary engagements of the 1990s, the wars in Kosovo and the PersianGulf. As international institutions have gained prominence in thepolitical landscape, they have increasingly become prominent topics forstudy. The sharpest debate among researchers has been theoretical: Dointernational institutions really matter? Missing from this debate is asustained inquiry into how these institutions actually work. We shiftthe focus by posing researchable questions about how they operate andhow they relate to the problems states face.
Explaining G8 effectiveness The G8's role in the New millennium
- J J Kirton
Kirton, J. J. (1999). Explaining G8 effectiveness. In M. Hodges, J. J. Kirton, & J. P. Daniels (Eds.), The G8's role in the New millennium (pp. 45–68). Aldershot: Ashgate.
The Case for Messy Multilateralism
- R Haas
Haas, R. (2010). The Case for Messy Multilateralism. Financial Times, January 5 2010.
Challenges in global governance: Opportunities for G-x leadership. The Stanley Foundation: Policy Analysis Brief
- A S Alexandroff
- AS Alexandroff
Alexandroff, A. S. (2010). Challenges in global governance: Opportunities for G-x leadership. The Stanley Foundation: Policy Analysis Brief.
emphasize the varying degrees to which FIGOs are " institutionalized Haftel and Thompson (2006) argue that RTAs vary according to their level of " independence Both points are indicative of the continuum of intergovernmental arrangements Hard and soft Law in international governance
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For example, Boehmer et al. (2004) emphasize the varying degrees to which FIGOs are " institutionalized. " Haftel and Thompson (2006) argue that RTAs vary according to their level of " independence. " Both points are indicative of the continuum of intergovernmental arrangements. References Abbott, K., & Snidal, D. (2000). Hard and soft Law in international governance. International Organization, 54(3), 421–456.