@article{GehringDorschDoerfler2019, author = {Gehring, Thomas and Dorsch, Christian and D{\"o}rfler, Thomas}, title = {Precedent and doctrine in organisational decision-making}, series = {Journal of international relations and development}, volume = {22}, journal = {Journal of international relations and development}, number = {1}, publisher = {Palgrave Macmillan}, address = {Basingstoke}, issn = {1581-1980}, doi = {10.1057/s41268-017-0101-5}, pages = {107 -- 135}, year = {2019}, abstract = {We examine how and under what conditions informal institutional constraints, such as precedent and doctrine, are likely to affect collective choice within international organisations even in the absence of powerful bureaucratic agents. With a particular focus on the United Nations Security Council, we first develop a theoretical account of why such informal constraints might affect collective decisions even of powerful and strategically behaving actors. We show that precedents provide focal points that allow adopting collective decisions in coordination situations despite diverging preferences. Reliance on previous cases creates tacitly evolving doctrine that may develop incrementally. Council decision-making is also likely to be facilitated by an institutional logic of escalation driven by institutional constraints following from the typically staged response to crisis situations. We explore the usefulness of our theoretical argument with evidence from the Council doctrine on terrorism that has evolved since 1985. The key decisions studied include the 1992 sanctions resolution against Libya and the 2001 Council response to the 9/11 attacks. We conclude that, even within intergovernmentally structured international organisations, member states do not operate on a clean slate, but in a highly institutionalised environment that shapes their opportunities for action.}, language = {en} } @article{GehringDoerfler2019, author = {Gehring, Thomas and D{\"o}rfler, Thomas}, title = {Constitutive mechanisms of UN Security Council practices}, series = {Review of International Studies}, volume = {45}, journal = {Review of International Studies}, number = {1}, publisher = {Univ.}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {0260-2105}, doi = {10.1017/S0260210518000268}, pages = {120 -- 140}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Based upon the current debate on international practices with its focus on taken-for-granted everyday practices, we examine how Security Council practices may affect member state action and collective decisions on intrastate conflicts. We outline a concept that integrates the structuring effect of practices and their emergence from interaction among reflective actors. It promises to overcome the unresolved tension between understanding practices as a social regularity and as a fluid entity. We analyse the constitutive mechanisms of two Council practices that affect collective decisions on intrastate conflicts and elucidate how even reflective Council members become enmeshed with the constraining implications of evolving practices and their normative implications. (1) Previous Council decisions create precedent pressure and give rise to a virtually uncontested permissive Council practice that defines the purview for intervention into such conflicts. (2) A ratcheting practice forces opponents to choose between accepting steadily reinforced Council action, as occurred regarding Sudan/Darfur, and outright blockade, as in the case of Syria. We conclude that practices constitute a source of influence that is not captured by the traditional perspectives on Council activities as the consequence of geopolitical interests or of externally evolving international norms like the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P).}, language = {en} } @article{DoerflerGehring2021, author = {D{\"o}rfler, Thomas and Gehring, Thomas}, title = {Analogy-based collective decision-making and incremental change in international organizations}, series = {European journal of international relations}, volume = {27}, journal = {European journal of international relations}, number = {3}, publisher = {Sage}, address = {London}, issn = {1354-0661}, doi = {10.1177/1354066120987889}, pages = {753 -- 778}, year = {2021}, abstract = {We examine how analogy-based collective decision-making of member states contributes to the endogenous emergence of informal rules and the incremental change of international organizations (IOs). Decision-making by analogy is an important characteristic of day-to-day decision-making in IOs. Relating current decisions to previous ones through analogies drives incremental change and simultaneously reinforces organizational resilience. Whereas the foreign policy analysis literature shows that analogies can be used as cognitive shortcuts in fuzzy and complex foreign policy situations, we focus on their use to overcome social ambiguity (indeterminacy) of coordination situations in IOs. Drawing on psychological conceptions, we develop two micro-level mechanisms that elucidate the effects of analogy-based collective decision-making in member-driven IOs. Analogy-based collective decisions emphasizing similarity between a current situation and previous ones follow an established problem schema and produce expansive and increasingly well-established informal rules. Collective decisions that are analogy-based but emphasize a crucial difference follow different problem schemas and trigger the emergence of additional informal rules that apply to new classes of cases. The result is an increasingly fine-grained web of distinct organizational solutions for a growing number of problems. Accordingly, an IO can increasingly facilitate collective decision-making and gains resilience. Empirically, we probe these propositions with a documentary analysis of decision-making in the Yugoslavia sanctions committee, established by the United Nations Security Council to deal with a stream of requests for exempting certain goods or services from the comprehensive economic embargo imposed on Yugoslavia in response to the War in the Balkans.}, language = {en} }