@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} } @book{SommererAgneZellietal.2022, author = {Sommerer, Thomas and Agn{\´e}, Hans and Zelli, Fariborz and Bes, Bart Joachim}, title = {Global Legitimacy Crises}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, address = {Oxford}, isbn = {978-0-19-194674-5}, doi = {10.1093/oso/9780192856326.001.0001}, pages = {240}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Global Legitimacy Crises addresses the consequences of legitimacy in global governance, in particular asking: when and how do legitimacy crises affect international organizations and their capacity to rule. The book starts with a new conceptualization of legitimacy crisis that looks at public challenges from a variety of actors. Based on this conceptualization, it applies a mixed-methods approach to identify and examine legitimacy crises, starting with a quantitative analysis of mass media data on challenges of a sample of 32 IOs. It shows that some, but not all organizations have experienced legitimacy crises, spread over several decades from 1985 to 2020. Following this, the book presents a qualitative study to further examine legitimacy crises of two selected case studies: the WTO and the UNFCCC. Whereas earlier research assumed that legitimacy crises have negative consequences, the book introduces a theoretical framework that privileges the activation inherent in a legitimacy crisis. It holds that this activation may not only harm an IO, but could also strengthen it, in terms of its material, institutional, and decision-making capacity. The following statistical analysis shows that whether a crisis has predominantly negative or positive effects depends on a variety of factors. These include the specific audience whose challenges define a certain crisis, and several institutional properties of the targeted organization. The ensuing in-depth analysis of the WTO and the UNFCCC further reveals how legitimacy crises and both positive and negative consequences are interlinked, and that effects of crises are sometimes even visible beyond the organizational borders.}, language = {en} } @incollection{DuitLimSommerer2022, author = {Duit, Andreas and Lim, Sijeong and Sommerer, Thomas}, title = {Umweltschutz zwischen Staat und Markt}, series = {Parties, institutions and preferences}, booktitle = {Parties, institutions and preferences}, editor = {Baltz, Erik and Kosanke, Sven and Pickel, Susanne}, publisher = {Springer VS}, address = {Wiesbaden}, isbn = {978-3-658-35132-8}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-658-35133-5_12}, pages = {299 -- 329}, year = {2022}, abstract = {In diesem Beitrag untersuchen wir den Zusammenhang zwischen staatlicher Regulierung im Umweltschutz und der Umweltperformanz. Ausgehend von drei theoretischen Perspektiven, welche die Beziehung von Staat und Markt beim Umweltschutz unterschiedlich konzeptualisieren, identifizieren wir f{\"u}nf Pfade, wie staatlicher Eingriff und Umweltperformanz miteinander verkn{\"u}pft sein k{\"o}nnten. Wir untersuchen dann die empirische Relevanz dieser Pfade mit einer quantitativen Analyse, die 29 umweltpolitische Maßnahmen in f{\"u}r 37 L{\"a}nder und den Zeitraum von 1970 bis 2010 umfasst. Dabei finden wir zumindest f{\"u}r einige Politikbereiche und einige L{\"a}nder Hinweise, die auf eine Effektivit{\"a}t nationalstaatlicher Regulierung hinweisen. Zuk{\"u}nftige Forschung kann auf unserem Rahmen aufbauen, um weitere Hypothesen zum Policy-Outcome-Nexus zu generieren und zu testen.}, language = {de} } @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{LundgrenTallbergSommereretal.2023, author = {Lundgren, Magnus and Tallberg, Jonas and Sommerer, Thomas and Squatrito, Theresa}, title = {When are international organizations responsive to policy problems?}, series = {International studies quarterly : the journal of the International Studies Association}, volume = {67}, journal = {International studies quarterly : the journal of the International Studies Association}, number = {3}, publisher = {Oxford University Press}, address = {Oxford}, issn = {0020-8833}, doi = {10.1093/isq/sqad045}, pages = {14}, year = {2023}, abstract = {When are international organizations (IOs) responsive to the policy problems that motivated their establishment? While it is a conventional assumption that IOs exist to address transnational challenges, the question of whether and when IO policy-making is responsive to shifts in underlying problems has not been systematically explored. This study investigates the responsiveness of IOs from a large-n, comparative approach. Theoretically, we develop three alternative models of IO responsiveness, emphasizing severeness, dependence, and power differentials. Empirically, we focus on the domain of security, examining the responsiveness of eight multi-issue IOs to armed conflict between 1980 and 2015, using a novel and expansive dataset on IO policy decisions. Our findings suggest, first, that IOs are responsive to security problems and, second, that responsiveness is not primarily driven by dependence or power differentials but by problem severity. An in-depth study of the responsiveness of the UN Security Council using more granular data confirms these findings. As the first comparative study of whether and when IO policy adapts to problem severity, the article has implications for debates about IO responsiveness, performance, and legitimacy.}, language = {en} } @article{DuitLimSommerer2023, author = {Duit, Andreas and Lim, Sijeong and Sommerer, Thomas}, title = {The state and the environment}, series = {Politics \& policy}, volume = {51}, journal = {Politics \& policy}, number = {6}, publisher = {Wiley-Blackwell}, address = {Hoboken, NJ}, issn = {1555-5623}, doi = {10.1111/polp.12561}, pages = {1046 -- 1068}, year = {2023}, abstract = {The limitations and possibilities of the state in solving societal problems are perennial issues in the political and policy sciences and increasingly so in studies of environmental politics. With the aim of better understanding the role of the state in addressing environmental degradation through policy making, this article investigates the nexus between the environmental policy outputs and the environmental performance. Drawing on three theoretical perspectives on the state and market nexus in the environmental dilemma, we identify five distinct pathways. We then examine the extent to which these pathways are manifested in the real world. Our empirical investigation covers up to 37 countries for the period 1970-2010. While we see no global pattern of linkages between policy outputs and performance, our exploratory analysis finds evidence of policy effects, which suggest that the state can, under certain circumstances, improve the environment through policy making.}, language = {en} } @book{TallbergBaeckstrandAartScholteetal.2023, author = {Tallberg, Jonas and B{\"a}ckstrand, Karin and Aart Scholte, Jan and Sommerer, Thomas}, title = {SNS Democracy Council 2023}, publisher = {SNS F{\"o}rlag}, address = {Stockholm}, isbn = {978-91-89754-06-5}, pages = {199}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Transboundary problems such as climate change, military conflicts, trade barriers, and refugee flows require increased collaboration across borders. This is to a large extent possible using existing international organizations. In such a case, however, they need to be considerably strengthened - while current trends take us in the opposite direction, according to the researchers in the SNS Democracy Council 2023.}, language = {en} }