TY - JOUR A1 - Gehring, Thomas A1 - Dorsch, Christian A1 - Dörfler, Thomas T1 - Precedent and doctrine in organisational decision-making BT - the power of informal institutional rules in the United Nations Security Council’s activities on terrorism JF - Journal of international relations and development N2 - 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. KW - decision-making KW - doctrine KW - international organisations KW - precedent KW - Security Council KW - terrorism Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-017-0101-5 SN - 1581-1980 SN - 1408-6980 VL - 22 IS - 1 SP - 107 EP - 135 PB - Palgrave Macmillan CY - Basingstoke ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Sommerer, Thomas A1 - Squatrito, Theresa A1 - Tallberg, Jonas A1 - Lundgren, Magnus T1 - Decision-making in international organizations BT - institutional design and performance JF - The review of international organizations N2 - 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. KW - international organizations KW - institutional design KW - decision-making KW - global governance KW - performance Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-021-09445-x SN - 1559-7431 SN - 1559-744X VL - 17 IS - 4 SP - 815 EP - 845 PB - Springer CY - Boston ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Heinzel, Mirko Noa T1 - Mediating power? BT - Delegation, pooling and leadership selection at international organisations JF - The British journal of politics & international relations : BJPIR N2 - The selection of the executive heads of international organisations represents a key decision in the politics of international organisations. However, we know little about what dynamics influence this selection. The article focuses on the nationality of selected executive heads. It argues that institutional design impacts the factors that influence leadership selection by shaping the costs and benefits of attaining the position for member states’ nationals. The argument is tested with novel data on the nationality of individuals in charge of 69 international organisation bureaucracies between 1970 and 2017. Two findings stand out: first, powerful countries are more able to secure positions in international organisations in which executive heads are voted in by majority voting. Second, less consistent evidence implies that powerful countries secure more positions when bureaucracies are authoritative. The findings have implications for debates on international cooperation by illustrating how power and institutions interact in the selection of international organisation executive heads. KW - decision-making KW - delegation KW - executive head KW - institutional design KW - international organisations KW - pooling KW - selection Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148121992761 SN - 1467-856X SN - 1369-1481 VL - 24 IS - 1 SP - 153 EP - 170 PB - Sage CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dörfler, Thomas T1 - The effect of expert recommendations on intergovernmental decision-making BT - North Korea, Iran, and non-proliferation sanctions in the Security Council JF - International relations : the journal of the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies N2 - The article explores whether and to what extent expert recommendations affect decision-making within the Security Council and its North Korea and Iran sanctions regimes. The article first develops a rationalist theoretical argument to show why making many second-stage decisions, such as determining lists of items under export restrictions, subjects Security Council members to repeating coordination situations. Expert recommendations may provide focal point solutions to coordination problems, even when interests diverge and preferences remain stable. Empirically, the article first explores whether expert recommendations affected decision-making on commodity sanctions imposed on North Korea. Council members heavily relied on recommended export trigger lists as focal points, solving a divisive conflict among great powers. Second, the article explores whether expert recommendations affected the designation of sanctions violators in the Iran sanctions regime. Council members designated individuals and entities following expert recommendations as focal points, despite conflicting interests among great powers. The article concludes that expert recommendations are an additional means of influence in Security Council decision-making and seem relevant for second-stage decision-making among great powers in other international organisations. KW - decision-making KW - expert recommendations KW - international organisation KW - rationalism KW - sanctions KW - Security Council Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211033941 SN - 0047-1178 SN - 1741-2862 VL - 36 IS - 2 SP - 237 EP - 261 PB - Sage CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lundgren, Magnus A1 - Squatrito, Theresa A1 - Sommerer, Thomas A1 - Tallberg, Jonas T1 - Introducing the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset (IPOD) JF - The review of international organizations N2 - 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. KW - international organizations KW - policy KW - policy agendas KW - decision-making Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-023-09492-6 SN - 1559-7431 SN - 1559-744X VL - 19 SP - 117 EP - 146 PB - Springer CY - Boston ER -