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 -