TY - JOUR A1 - Hecke, Steven van A1 - Fuhr, Harald A1 - Wolfs, Wouter T1 - The politics of crisis management by regional and international organizations in fighting against a global pandemic BT - the member states at a crossroads JF - International review of administrative sciences : an international journal of comparative public administration N2 - 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. KW - autonomy KW - COVID-19 KW - crisis management KW - European Union KW - International KW - Monetary Fund KW - international organizations KW - multilateralism KW - World Bank KW - World Health Organization Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852320984516 SN - 0020-8523 SN - 1461-7226 VL - 87 IS - 3 SP - 672 EP - 690 PB - Sage CY - Los Angeles, Calif. [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Busch, Per-Olof T1 - The autonomy of international bureaucracies as agents of non-hierarchical policy transfers JF - Politische Vierteljahresschrift : Zeitschrift der Deutschen Vereinigung für Politische Wissenschaft N2 - 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. KW - international organizations KW - international bureaucracies KW - autonomy KW - policy transfer Y1 - 2014 SN - 0032-3470 SN - 1862-2860 SP - 105 EP - + PB - Nomos CY - Hannover ER -