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Ranjit Lall. 2023. Making International Institutions Work: The Politics of Performance. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
... This discourse indicates that institutional performance is crucial in supporting the Service Leadership as the actor to implement policies and transitional governance that provides policies for guiding the operation of public service delivery (Caicedo et al., 2022). In addition, Vabulas and Lall, (2023) agrees that "micro-foundational incentives" for the state are effective institutional performance through investing in policy, and the author also stresses that the role of bureaucrats in public services enhances Service Leadership in the transitional governance. States transitioning from political fragility to political stability are ubiquitously faced with numerous systemic vulnerabilities during the transitional periods. ...
This review paper presents a conceptual framework and analysis of strategy approaches to transitioning states, focusing on the case of South Sudan. The proposed framework encompasses service leadership, institutional performance, transitional governance, and transitional reforms, emphasizing their interrelationships and significance in facilitating effective transitions. Service leadership, characterized by principles such as trustworthiness and stewardship, plays a crucial role in creating awareness, persuasion, and conceptualization. Institutional performance, including factors like human capital and accountability, is essential for evaluating and improving the delivery of public services during transitions. Transitional governance involves processes and structures that enable the reconfiguration of governance roles and practices, guided by principles such as the rule of law and transparency. Transitional reforms, including peace agreements and governance enhancements, aim to reconstruct socio-economic development and enhance governance. Despite progress, challenges such as systemic vulnerabilities and political fragility persist, hindering the implementation of transitional government targets in South Sudan. The paper concludes by recommending consensus-building, prioritization of governance reforms, and finalization of a permanent constitution to address challenges and improve transitional governance.
The institutions of global governance have changed dramatically in recent years. New organizational forms—including informal institutions, transgovernmental networks, and private transnational regulatory organizations (PTROs)—have expanded rapidly, while the growth of formal intergovernmental organizations has slowed. Organizational ecology provides an insightful framework for understanding these changing patterns of growth. Organizational ecology is primarily a structural theory, emphasizing the influence of institutional environments, especially their organizational density and resource availability, on organizational behavior and viability. To demonstrate the explanatory value of organizational ecology, we analyze the proliferation of PTROs compared with the relative stasis of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Continued growth of IGOs is constrained by crowding in their dense institutional environment, but PTROs benefit from organizational flexibility and low entry costs, which allow them to enter “niches” with limited resource competition. We probe the plausibility of our analysis by examining contemporary climate governance.
Informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGOs) such as the Proliferation Security Initiative and G20 increasingly play a central role in governing international relations. IIGOs are based on recurrent meetings among high-level state representatives but are not legalized through a treaty and have no permanent secretariat. They allow states to organize internationally without sacrificing autonomy to a supranational entity. We present the IIGO 2.0 dataset, the most comprehensive compilation of these institutions to date, and illustrate the significance of IIGOs through several key empirical findings. First, while the creation of formal IGOs (FIGOs) has plateaued, states are increasingly creating IIGOs to address critical global issues. Second, states disproportionately use IIGOs for high politics issue areas including peace, security, and political agenda-setting which challenges conventional wisdom that IGOs (intergovernmental organizations) are less relevant in the security realm. Third, IIGOs are remarkably durable. Although states could readily formalize or abandon IIGOs, they generally organize cooperation informally for long periods. Finally, IIGOs are typically smaller than FIGOs and this design choice is increasingly used by states of all levels of development, power, and region. The availability of the IIGO 2.0 dataset will promote further analysis on the growing diversity of international institutions.
In the classic novel, Frankenstein, Doctor Frankenstein creates a living creature in the hope of cheating death. The monster turns against Doctor Frankenstein and kills several people, causing the doctor to regret his decision to make the monster in the first place. When states establish an international organization (IO), they create an institution with a life of its own. In doing so, states risk the institution becoming a monster and acting contrary to their interests. In contrast to Frankenstein, however, states are aware of this risk and are able to guard against it. This article explains that much of the existing landscape of international organizations has been formed by the state response to this 'Frankenstein problem'. The effort by states to avoid creating a monster explains, among other things, why there are so many IOs, why they vary so widely in scope, and the manner in which they are permitted (and not permitted) to affect international law and international relations. The article also identifies the four types of activities that IOs are typically allowed to undertake and explains how states choose which activities to place within which organizations. In addition to providing a new analytical perspective on IOs and how states use them, the article advances the normative argument that states have been too conservative. As if they learned the lessons of Frankenstein too well, states have been reluctant to give IOs the authority necessary to make progress on important global issues. Though there is a trade-off between the preservation of state control over the international system and the creation of effective and productive IOs, states have placed far too much weight on the former and not nearly enough on the latter. © The Author, 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of EJIL Ltd. All rights reserved.
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.