@article{SommererSquatritoTallbergetal.2021,
author = {Sommerer, Thomas and Squatrito, Theresa and Tallberg, Jonas and Lundgren, Magnus},
title = {Decision-making in international organizations},
series = {The review of international organizations},
volume = {17},
journal = {The review of international organizations},
number = {4},
publisher = {Springer},
address = {Boston},
issn = {1559-7431},
doi = {10.1007/s11558-021-09445-x},
pages = {815 -- 845},
year = {2021},
abstract = {International organizations (IOs) experience significant variation in their decision-making performance, or the extent to which they produce policy output. While some IOs are efficient decision-making machineries, others are plagued by deadlock. How can such variation be explained? Examining this question, the article makes three central contributions. First, we approach performance by looking at IO decision-making in terms of policy output and introduce an original measure of decision-making performance that captures annual growth rates in IO output. Second, we offer a novel theoretical explanation for decision-making performance. This account highlights the role of institutional design, pointing to how majoritarian decision rules, delegation of authority to supranational institutions, and access for transnational actors (TNAs) interact to affect decision-making. Third, we offer the first comparative assessment of the decision-making performance of IOs. While previous literature addresses single IOs, we explore decision-making across a broad spectrum of 30 IOs from 1980 to 2011. Our analysis indicates that IO decision-making performance varies across and within IOs. We find broad support for our theoretical account, showing the combined effect of institutional design features in shaping decision-making performance. Notably, TNA access has a positive effect on decision-making performance when pooling is greater, and delegation has a positive effect when TNA access is higher. We also find that pooling has an independent, positive effect on decision-making performance. All-in-all, these findings suggest that the institutional design of IOs matters for their decision-making performance, primarily in more complex ways than expected in earlier research.},
language = {en}
}
@article{LundgrenSquatritoSommereretal.2023,
author = {Lundgren, Magnus and Squatrito, Theresa and Sommerer, Thomas and Tallberg, Jonas},
title = {Introducing the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset (IPOD)},
series = {The review of international organizations},
volume = {19},
journal = {The review of international organizations},
publisher = {Springer},
address = {Boston},
issn = {1559-7431},
doi = {10.1007/s11558-023-09492-6},
pages = {117 -- 146},
year = {2023},
abstract = {There is a growing recognition that international organizations (IOs) formulate and adopt policy in a wide range of areas. IOs have emerged as key venues for states seeking joint solutions to contemporary challenges such as climate change or COVID-19, and to establish frameworks to bolster trade, development, security, and more. In this capacity, IOs produce both extraordinary and routine policy output with a multitude of purposes, ranging from policies of historic significance like admitting new members to the more mundane tasks of administering IO staff. This article introduces the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset (IPOD), which covers close to 37,000 individual policy acts of 13 multi-issue IOs in the 1980-2015 period. The dataset fills a gap in the growing body of literature on the comparative study of IOs, providing researchers with a fine-grained perspective on the structure of IO policy output and data for comparisons across time, policy areas, and organizations. This article describes the construction and coverage of the dataset and identifies key temporal and cross-sectional patterns revealed by the data. In a concise illustration of the dataset's utility, we apply models of punctuated equilibria in a comparative study of the relationship between institutional features and broad policy agenda dynamics. Overall, the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset offers a unique resource for researchers to analyze IO policy output in a granular manner and to explore questions of responsiveness, performance, and legitimacy of IOs.},
language = {en}
}
@article{HeckeFuhrWolfs2021,
author = {Hecke, Steven van and Fuhr, Harald and Wolfs, Wouter},
title = {The politics of crisis management by regional and international organizations in fighting against a global pandemic},
series = {International review of administrative sciences : an international journal of comparative public administration},
volume = {87},
journal = {International review of administrative sciences : an international journal of comparative public administration},
number = {3},
publisher = {Sage},
address = {Los Angeles, Calif. [u.a.]},
issn = {0020-8523},
doi = {10.1177/0020852320984516},
pages = {672 -- 690},
year = {2021},
abstract = {Despite new challenges like climate change and digitalization, global and regional organizations recently went through turbulent times due to a lack of support from several of their member states. Next to this crisis of multilateralism, the COVID-19 pandemic now seems to question the added value of international organizations for addressing global governance issues more specifically. This article analyses this double challenge that several organizations are facing and compares their ways of managing the crisis by looking at their institutional and political context, their governance structure, and their behaviour during the pandemic until June 2020. More specifically, it will explain the different and fragmented responses of the World Health Organization, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund/World Bank. With the aim of understanding the old and new problems that these international organizations are trying to solve, this article argues that the level of autonomy vis-a-vis the member states is crucial for understanding the politics of crisis management.
Points for practitioners
As intergovernmental bodies, international organizations require authorization by their member states. Since they also need funding for their operations, different degrees of autonomy also matter for reacting to emerging challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential for international organizations is limited, though through proactive and bold initiatives, they can seize the opportunity of the crisis and partly overcome institutional and political constraints.},
language = {en}
}
@article{FleischerReiners2021,
author = {Fleischer, Julia and Reiners, Nina},
title = {Connecting international relations and public administration},
series = {International studies review},
volume = {23},
journal = {International studies review},
number = {4},
publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press},
address = {Oxford},
issn = {1521-9488},
doi = {10.1093/isr/viaa097},
pages = {1230 -- 1247},
year = {2021},
abstract = {The recent debate on administrative bodies in international organizations has brought forward multiple theoretical perspectives, analytical frameworks, and methodological approaches. Despite these efforts to advance knowledge on these actors, the research program on international public administrations (IPAs) has missed out on two important opportunities: reflection on scholarship in international relations (IR) and public administration and synergies between these disciplinary perspectives. Against this backdrop, the essay is a discussion of the literature on IPAs in IR and public administration. We found influence, authority, and autonomy of international bureaucracies have been widely addressed and helped to better understand the agency of such non-state actors in global policy-making. Less attention has been given to the crucial macro-level context of politics for administrative bodies, despite the importance in IR and public administration scholarship. We propose a focus on agency and politics as future avenues for a comprehensive, joint research agenda for international bureaucracies.},
language = {en}
}
@article{Heucher2019,
author = {Heucher, Angela},
title = {Evolving Order? Inter-Organizational Relations in the Organizational},
series = {Forum for Development Studies},
volume = {46},
journal = {Forum for Development Studies},
number = {3},
publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group},
address = {Abingdon},
issn = {0803-9410},
doi = {10.1080/08039410.2018.1562962},
pages = {501 -- 526},
year = {2019},
abstract = {Global food security governance is fraught with fragmentation, overlap and complexity. While calls for coordination and coherence abound, establishing an inter-organizational order at this level seems to remain difficult. While the emphasis in the literature has so far been on the global level, we know less about dynamics of inter-organizational relations in food security governance at the country level, and empirical studies are lacking. It is this research gap the article seeks to address by posing the following research question: In how far does inter-organizational order develop in the organizational field of food security governance at the country level? Theoretically and conceptually, the article draws on sociological institutionalism, and on work on inter-organizational relations. Empirically, the article conducts an exploratory case study of the organizational field of food security governance in C{\^o}te d'Ivoire, building on a qualitative content analysis of organizational documents covering a period from 2003 to 2016 and semi-structured interviews with staff of international organizations from 2016. The article demonstrates that not all of the developments attributed to food security governance at the global level play out in the same way at the country level. Rather, in the case of C{\^o}te d'Ivoire there are signs for a certain degree of coherence between IOs in the field of food security governance and even for an - albeit limited - division of labour. However, this only holds for specific dimensions of the inter-organizational order and appears to be subject to continuous contestation and reinterpretation under the surface.},
language = {en}
}
@article{Busch2014,
author = {Busch, Per-Olof},
title = {The autonomy of international bureaucracies as agents of non-hierarchical policy transfers},
series = {Politische Vierteljahresschrift : Zeitschrift der Deutschen Vereinigung f{\"u}r Politische Wissenschaft},
journal = {Politische Vierteljahresschrift : Zeitschrift der Deutschen Vereinigung f{\"u}r Politische Wissenschaft},
publisher = {Nomos},
address = {Hannover},
issn = {0032-3470},
pages = {105 -- +},
year = {2014},
abstract = {International public administrations are increasingly perceived as autonomous actors prompting states to adopt policies without resorting to coercion or legal obligations. Starting from these observations, I determine abilities and characteristics of international public administrations that contribute to their autonomy as agents of non-hierarchical policy transfers. To this end, I draw on theoretical considerations and empirical results from policy transfer research. I find that the various abilities that contribute to this autonomy of international public administrations are essentially rooted in two structural characteristics: in as many states as possible their staff should (a) be present and (b) analyze the state, development and reform need of national policies on a regular basis.},
language = {de}
}