TY - JOUR
A1 - Herold, Jana
A1 - Liese, Andrea
A1 - Busch, Per-Olof
A1 - Feil, Hauke
T1 - Why national ministries consider the policy advice of international bureaucracies
BT - survey evidence from 106 countries
JF - International studies quarterly : the journal of the International Studies Association
N2 - Scholars of international relations and public administration widely assume that international bureaucracies, in their role as policy advisors, directly influence countries' domestic policies. Yet, this is not true across the board. Why do some countries closely consider the advice of international bureaucracies while others do not? This article argues that international bureaucracies' standing as sources of expertise is crucial. We tested this argument using data from a unique survey that measured prevalent practices of advice utilization in thematically specialized policy units of national ministries in a representative sample of more than a hundred countries. Our findings show that ministries' perceptions of international bureaucracies' expertise, that is, specialized and reliable knowledge, are the key factor. International bureaucracies influence national ministries directly and without the support of other actors that may also have an interest in the international bureaucracies' policy advice. Our analysis also demonstrates that the effects of alternative means of influence, such as third-party pressure and coercion, are themselves partly dependent on international bureaucracies' reputation as experts. The findings presented in this article reinforce the emphasis on expertise as a source of international bureaucracies' influence, and provide a crucial test of its importance.
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqab044
SN - 0020-8833
SN - 1468-2478
VL - 65
IS - 3
SP - 669
EP - 682
PB - Oxford Univ. Press
CY - Oxford
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Liese, Andrea
A1 - Herold, Jana
A1 - Feil, Hauke
A1 - Busch, Per-Olof
T1 - The heart of bureaucratic power
BT - Explaining international bureaucracies’ expert authority
JF - Review of international studies : RIS
N2 - Expert authority is regarded as the heart of international bureaucracies' power. To measure whether international bureaucracies' expert authority is indeed recognised and deferred to, we draw on novel data from a survey of a key audience: officials in the policy units of national ministries in 121 countries. Respondents were asked to what extent they recognised the expert authority of nine international bureaucracies in various thematic areas of agricultural and financial policy. The results show wide variance. To explain this variation, we test well-established assumptions on the sources of de facto expert authority. Specifically, we look at ministry officials' perceptions of these sources and, thus, focus on a less-studied aspect of the authority relationship. We examine the role of international bureaucracies' perceived impartiality, objectivity, global impact, and the role of knowledge asymmetries. Contrary to common assumptions, we find that de facto expert authority does not rest on impartiality perceptions, and that perceived objectivity plays the smallest role of all factors considered. We find some indications that knowledge asymmetries are associated with more expert authority. Still, and robust to various alternative specifications, the perception that international bureaucracies are effectively addressing global challenges is the most important factor.
KW - Expert Authority
KW - International Bureaucracies
KW - International
KW - Organisations
KW - Neutrality
KW - Performance
KW - Survey
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S026021052100005X
SN - 0260-2105
SN - 1469-9044
VL - 47
IS - 3
SP - 353
EP - 376
PB - Cambridge Univ. Press
CY - Cambridge
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Busch, Per-Olof
A1 - Feil, Hauke
A1 - Heinzel, Mirko Noa
A1 - Herold, Jana
A1 - Kempken, Mathies
A1 - Liese, Andrea
T1 - Policy recommendations of international bureaucracies
BT - the importance of country-specificity
JF - International review of administrative sciences : an international journal of comparative public administration
N2 - Many international bureaucracies give policy advice to national administrative units. Why is the advice given by some international bureaucracies more influential than the recommendations of others? We argue that targeting advice to member states through national embeddedness and country-tailored research increases the influence of policy advice. Subsequently, we test how these characteristics shape the relative influence of 15 international bureaucracies' advice in four financial policy areas through a global survey of national administrations from more than 80 countries. Our findings support arguments that global blueprints need to be adapted and translated to become meaningful for country-level work.
Points for practitioners
National administrations are advised by an increasing number of international bureaucracies, and they cannot listen to all of this advice. Whereas some international bureaucracies give 'one-size-fits-all' recommendations to rather diverse countries, others cater their recommendations to the national audience. Investigating financial policy recommendations, we find that national embeddedness and country-tailored advice render international bureaucracies more influential.
KW - financial policy
KW - international administration
KW - international
KW - organizations
KW - multi-level government
KW - regime complexity
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211013385
SN - 0020-8523
SN - 1461-7226
VL - 87
IS - 4
SP - 775
EP - 793
PB - Sage Publ.
CY - Los Angeles, Calif.
ER -
TY - THES
A1 - Herold, Jana
T1 - International Bureaucracies as Governance Actors
BT - an assessment of national stakeholders' perspectives
N2 - 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.
KW - international bureaucracies
KW - international organizations
KW - governance
KW - expert authority
KW - policy advice
KW - national ministries
KW - internationale Verwaltungen
KW - internationale Organisationen
KW - Governance
KW - Expertenautorität
KW - Politikempfehlungen
KW - nationale Ministerien
Y1 - 2019
ER -
TY - GEN
A1 - Heinzel, Mirko Noa
A1 - Richter, Jonas
A1 - Busch, Per-Olof
A1 - Feil, Hauke
A1 - Herold, Jana
A1 - Liese, Andrea Margit
T1 - Birds of a feather?
BT - the determinants of impartiality perceptions of the IMF and the World Bank
T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe
N2 - The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank ascribe to impartiality in their mandates. At the same time, scholarship indicates that their decisions are disproportionately influenced by powerful member states. Impartiality is seen as crucial in determining International Organizations' (IOs) effectiveness and legitimacy in the literature. However, we know little about whether key interlocutors in national governments perceive the International Financial Institutions as biased actors who do the bidding for powerful member states or as impartial executors of policy. In order to better understand these perceptions, we surveyed high-level civil servants who are chiefly responsible for four policy areas from more than 100 countries. We found substantial variations in impartiality perceptions. What explains these variations? By developing an argument of selective awareness, we extend rationalist and ideational perspectives on IO impartiality to explain domestic perceptions. Using novel survey data, we test whether staffing underrepresentation, voting underrepresentation, alignment to the major shareholders and overlapping economic policy paradigms are associated with impartiality perceptions. We find substantial evidence that shared economic policy paradigms influence impartiality perceptions. The findings imply that by diversifying their ideational culture, IOs can increase the likelihood that domestic stakeholders view them as impartial.
T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 186
KW - impartiality
KW - bias
KW - International Financial Institutions
KW - International Monetary Fund
KW - World Bank
Y1 - 2020
U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-521690
SN - 1867-5808
IS - 5
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Heinzel, Mirko Noa
A1 - Richter, Jonas
A1 - Busch, Per-Olof
A1 - Feil, Hauke
A1 - Herold, Jana
A1 - Liese, Andrea
T1 - Birds of a feather?
BT - the determinants of impartiality perceptions of the IMF and the World Bank
JF - Review of international political economy
N2 - The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank ascribe to impartiality in their mandates. At the same time, scholarship indicates that their decisions are disproportionately influenced by powerful member states. Impartiality is seen as crucial in determining International Organizations' (IOs) effectiveness and legitimacy in the literature. However, we know little about whether key interlocutors in national governments perceive the International Financial Institutions as biased actors who do the bidding for powerful member states or as impartial executors of policy. In order to better understand these perceptions, we surveyed high-level civil servants who are chiefly responsible for four policy areas from more than 100 countries. We found substantial variations in impartiality perceptions. What explains these variations? By developing an argument of selective awareness, we extend rationalist and ideational perspectives on IO impartiality to explain domestic perceptions. Using novel survey data, we test whether staffing underrepresentation, voting underrepresentation, alignment to the major shareholders and overlapping economic policy paradigms are associated with impartiality perceptions. We find substantial evidence that shared economic policy paradigms influence impartiality perceptions. The findings imply that by diversifying their ideational culture, IOs can increase the likelihood that domestic stakeholders view them as impartial.
KW - Impartiality
KW - bias
KW - International Financial Institutions
KW - International
KW - Monetary Fund
KW - World Bank
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2020.1749711
SN - 0969-2290
SN - 1466-4526
VL - 28
IS - 5
SP - 1249
EP - 1273
PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY - Abingdon
ER -