@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}
}
@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}
}
@phdthesis{Herold2019,
  author    = {Herold, Jana},
  title     = {International Bureaucracies as Governance Actors},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {233},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {This study assesses and explains international bureaucracies' performance and role as policy advisors and as expert authorities from the perspective of domestic stakeholders. International bureaucracies are the secretariats of international organizations that carry out their work including generating knowledge, providing policy advice and implementing policy programs and projects. Scholars increasingly regard them as governance actors that are able to influence global and domestic policy making. In order to explain this influence, research has mainly focused on international bureaucracies' formal features and/or staff characteristics. The way in which they are actually perceived by their domestic stakeholders, in particular by national bureaucrats, has not been systematically studied. Yet, this is equally important, given that they represent international bureaucracies' addressees and are actors that (potentially) make use of international bureaucracies' policy advice, which can be seen as an indicator for international bureaucracies' influence. Accordingly, I argue that domestic stakeholders' assessments can likewise contribute to explaining international bureaucracies' influence. The overarching research questions the study addresses are what are national stakeholders' perspectives on international bureaucracies and under which conditions do they consider international bureaucracies' policy advice? In answering these questions, I focus on three specific organizational features that the literature has considered important for international bureaucracies' independent influence, namely international bureaucracies' performance and their role as policy advisors and as expert authorities. These three features are studied separately in three independent articles, which are presented in Part II of this article-based dissertation. To answer the research questions, I draw on novel data from a global survey among ministry officials of 121 countries. The survey captures ministry officials' assessments of international bureaucracies' features and their behavior with respect to international bureaucracies' policy advice. The overall sample comprises the bureaucracies of nine global and nine regional international organizations in eight thematic areas in the policy fields of agriculture and finance. The overall finding of this study is that international bureaucracies' performance and their role as policy advisors and expert authorities as perceived by ministry officials are highly context-specific and relational. These features vary not only across international bureaucracies but much more intra-organizationally across the different thematic areas that an international bureaucracy addresses, i.e. across different thematic contexts. As far as to the relational nature of international bureaucracies' features, the study generally finds strong variation across the assessments by ministry officials from different countries and across thematic areas. Hence, the findings highlight that it is likewise important to study international bureaucracies via the perspective of their stakeholders and to take account of the different thematic areas and contexts in which international bureaucracies operate. The study contributes to current research on international bureaucracies in various ways. First, it directly surveys one important type of domestic stakeholders, namely national ministry officials, as to how they evaluate certain aspects of international bureaucracies instead of deriving them from their structural features, policy documents or assessments by their staff. Furthermore, the study empirically tests a range of theoretical hypotheses derived from the literature on international bureaucracies' influence, as well as related literature. Second, the study advances methods of assessing international bureaucracies through a large-N, cross-national expert survey among ministry officials. A survey of this type of stakeholder and of this scope is - to my knowledge - unprecedented. Yet, as argued above, their perspectives are equally important for assessing and explaining international bureaucracies' influence. Third, the study adapts common theories of international bureaucracies' policy influence and expert authority to the assessments by ministry officials. In so doing, it tests hypotheses that are rooted in both rationalist and constructivist accounts and combines perspectives on international bureaucracies from both International Relations and Public Administration. Empirically supporting and challenging these hypotheses further complements the theoretical understanding of the determinants of international bureaucracies' influence among national bureaucracies from both rationalist and constructivist perspectives. Overall, this study advances our understanding of international bureaucracies by systematically taking into account ministry officials' perspectives in order to determine under which conditions international bureaucracies are perceived to perform well and are able to have an effect as policy advisors and expert authorities among national bureaucracies. Thereby, the study helps to specify to what extent international bureaucracies - as global governance actors - are able to permeate domestic governance via ministry officials and, thus, contribute to the question of why some international bureaucracies play a greater role and are ultimately able to have more influence than others.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{HickmannWiderbergLedereretal.2021,
  author    = {Hickmann, Thomas and Widerberg, Oscar and Lederer, Markus and Pattberg, Philipp H.},
  title     = {The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat as an orchestrator in global climate policymaking},
  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    = {1},
  publisher = {Sage},
  address   = {Los Angeles, Calif. [u.a.]},
  issn      = {0020-8523},
  doi       = {10.1177/0020852319840425},
  pages     = {21 -- 38},
  year      = {2021},
  abstract  = {Scholars have recently devoted increasing attention to the role and function of international bureaucracies in global policymaking. Some of them contend that international public officials have gained significant political influence in various policy fields. Compared to other international bureaucracies, the political leeway of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has been considered rather limited. Due to the specific problem structure of the policy domain of climate change, national governments endowed this intergovernmental treaty secretariat with a relatively narrow mandate. However, this article argues that in the past few years, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat has gradually loosened its straitjacket and expanded its original spectrum of activity by engaging different sub-national and non-state actors into a policy dialogue using facilitative orchestration as a mode of governance. The present article explores the recent evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat and investigates the way in which it initiates, guides, broadens and strengthens sub-national and non-state climate actions to achieve progress in the international climate negotiations. <br /> Points for practitioners <br /> The Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has lately adopted new roles and functions in global climate policymaking. While previously seen as a rather technocratic body that, first and foremost, serves national governments, the Climate Secretariat increasingly interacts with sub-national governments, civil society organizations and private companies to push the global response to climate change forward. We contend that the Climate Secretariat can contribute to global climate policymaking by coordinating and steering the initiatives of non-nation-state actors towards coherence and good practice.},
  language  = {en}
}