The negotiation burden of institutional interactions: non-state organizations and the international negotiations on forests

The participation of non-state actors in international politics has been investigated since the creation of international institutions. Yet, the rules, principles and norms of global governance are no longer discussed in single isolated institutions. Rather, with the proliferation of international regimes and organizations, international issues are now negotiated in a context of institutional interactions known as ‘regime complexes’. This poses new questions, in particular on the negotiation burden that these new processes place on international actors. To answer this question, this contribution compares non-state participation in both contexts (single regimes and regime complexes), using the international forest negotiations as a case study. It uses quantitative methods to measure the negotiation burden of single regimes and compare it with the negotiation burden of regime complexes. The negotiation burden of single regimes is found to be insignificant, political interest being the major motivation for participation, while the negotiation burden of regime complexes is found to be real, demanding a certain type of material and organizational resources in order for non-state actors to participate. Yet a certain diversity of non-state representation is maintained within regime complexes, non-governmental organizations being dominant with respect to business groups.     

Transnationalizing democracy promotion: The role of Western political foundations and think‐tanks

Promoting democracy has developed into a common activity performed by a variety of actors in the post‐cold war world. While it is states and international institutions that receive most of the attention devoted to this increasingly important issue‐area, other non‐state actors also engage in democracy promotion. This article examines the activities of two such actors: political foundations ‐ quasi‐governmental organizations established in a number of advanced states ‐ and think‐tanks ‐ private institutions traditionally engaged in research and policy advocacy. It argues that the role and impact of these actors deepen the transnationalization of democracy promotion, which has important consequences for the international politics of democratization and international relations more generally.     

Diplomatic Interactions and Negotiations

This article examines the role of state actors, organization agencies, and individual agents in diplomatic interactions and negotiations. States as diplomatic actors, organizations as diplomatic agencies, and individuals as diplomatic agents enter into complex and interdependent relationships. Proposing a three‐level analysis of interstate interactions and diplomatic negotiations, I argue that no diplomatic negotiation happens without interactions between parties at the state, organizational, and individual levels. The agency–structure paradigm provides a conceptual framework for understanding behavioral and structural properties of international interactions and their influence on diplomatic negotiations. Diplomatic negotiation employs specific forms of interaction, using a distinct language, protocol norms, symbols, ceremonies, and rituals. The state's “self” (as a social conception of its identity, values, and interests) affects the process of diplomatic negotiation. By managing, organizing, and improving international interactions at the actor, agency, and agent levels, negotiating parties can advance the process and effectiveness of diplomatic negotiation.     

Foreign policy in the Muslim world: A dialogue between state and society

In the wake of the demise of communism and the advent of the 1990–1991 Gulf War, there is concern among some Western elites about a possible Islamic challenge to the prevailing international order. This paper explores the validity of that concern by looking at patterns of interaction and the notion of foreign‐policy change in four countries in the Muslim world—Iran, Egypt, Algeria, and Indonesia, as well as some developments in the larger Muslim world. Juxtaposing social change on foreign policy, the article postulates that economic realism is the definitive force in the international relations of these states; “militant Islam” is more a tool of radical diplomacy than a manifestation of transnationalism; and ties between states in the Muslim world display a regional regime‐style orientation. Domestic Islamization is found to be a force, which, overall, is contributing to accountability and, therefore, rationalization in the foreign‐policy realm.     

International relations: A theoretical synthesis

If the international system is envisaged as a trading network in which political, cutural and social mesotheses, as well as economic goods and services, are exchanged between Parsonian sectors (political, integrative and adaptive), then the behavior of governments, multinational corporations and other agencies can be modelled on those of actors exercising bounded rationality in a set of highly imperfect markets. Power can be conceptualized as a form of political credit, capable of investment, liable to inflation due to over‐extension, and subject to exhaustion—and the illegitimate substitution of force. Political actors attempt to optimize their legitimacy (or political solvency).

Thus global structure is envisaged as a more or less persistent network of exchanges, which necessarily assumes a market configuration, hierarchical and segmented. Then the nature of international relations varies as a function of the actors’ relative positions within this structure,—above/below, near/far—and of their relative systemic motions—fast/slow, rising/falling, approaching/receding.

It is proposed to accept the market structure as given, including the disparities in capacity between countries and their diverse institutions and cultures, in order to explain changes in international relations, i.e. changes in relative position. It is such change that chiefly concerns decision makers.

Several processes contribute to structural change. First, the great engine of change is “progress”: the market imperative for actors either to rise in the structure or to be taken over by others more progressive than they. Thus the whole system tends to “develop” upward. Second, cycles of deflation and inflation in various forms of “credit” operate to raise or lower the overall height of the market pyramid. Third, disparities in levels between Parsonian sectors give rise to turbulance within the global system.     

Sources of Transparency: Information Systems in International Regimes

Scholars and practitioners alike have stressed the important role of transparency in promoting international regime compliance and effectiveness. Yet many regimes fail to create high levels of transparency: governments and nongovernmental actors regularly fail to monitor or report on their own behavior, the behavior of other actors, or the state of the problem these regimes seek to resolve. If more transparency often, if not always, contributes to regime effectiveness, then identifying the sources of transparency becomes an important research task. Regime transparency depends upon both the demand for information and the supply of information. Specifically, regimes can seek "effectiveness-oriented" information to assess whether regime members are collectively achieving regime goals or "compliance-oriented" information to assess whether particular actors are individually fulfilling regime commitments. The incentives and capacities that relevant actors—whether governments, nongovernmental organizations, or corporate actors—have to provide such information depend on whether the regime's information system is structured around self-reporting, other-reporting, or problem-reporting. Although many of these factors are determined by characteristics of the actors involved or the structure of the problem, regimes can increase transparency by enhancing the incentives and capacity actors have to contribute to a particular regime's transparency.     

Governance through government networks: The G8 and international organizations

As an informal grouping without headquarters, permanent staff or legal powers, the world’s major industrialized countries must rely on other actors, in particular international organizations, to manage global problems. This article examines how the Group of Eight contributes to global governance by cooperating with international organizations in the cases of debt relief and the fight against terrorist finance. It shows that the G8 draws on international institutions with the aid of government networks and argues that this cooperation is stronger, the greater the Group’s concentration of relevant power and the more important it considers the institutions’ resources.     

Defending democracy with international law: preventing coup attempts with democracy clauses

In recent decades many regional inter-governmental organizations have adopted agreements committing all member states to maintain democratic governments, and specifying punishments to be levied against member states that revert to authoritarianism. These treaties have a surprisingly high enforcement rate – nearly all states subject to them that have experienced governmental succession by coup have been suspended by the relevant IGO(s). However, relatively little is known about whether these treaties are deterring coups. This article offers an original theory of how these international agreements could deter coups d’état, focusing on the way that a predictably adverse international reaction complicates the incentives of potential coup participants. An analysis of the likelihood of coups for the period of 1991–2008 shows that states subject to democracy were on average less likely to experience coups, but that this finding was not statistically significant in most models. However, when restricting the analysis to democracies, middle-income states with democracy clauses were significantly less likely to experience coup attempts. Moreover, the African democracy regime appears to be particularly effective, significantly reducing the likelihood of coup attempts for middle-income states regardless of regime type.     

The Moore thesis: what's left after 1989?

This article reconsiders the work of Barrington Moore and his critics on the historical emergence of democracy in the light of post-communist democratization. What are we to make of a region which violates Moore's dictum – “No bourgeoisie, no democracy”? Using the tools of comparative historical analysis, it makes sense of how democracy emerged in the region by developing a theory which both explains why this was possible and what social actors were essential to this outcome. With attention to patterns of social development in the region, the politics of elite alliance in the final phase of communism, the strength of civil society at extrication, and the role of the international system, it explains differences in regime outcomes across the region.     

Assessing international aid for local governance in the Western Balkans

This article investigates the impact of international efforts to cultivate effective and authoritative local governing institutions in the Western Balkans, a prime testing ground for democratization aid to post-war states. It explores three hypotheses, each of which argues that a particular approach of international actors toward domestic officials best improves the quality of local governance. The study's gathering of interview and survey data from field-based actors enables it to evaluate local government reforms' impact on domestic communities. This investigation arrives at three findings. First, in the view of Western Balkan peoples, local governance reforms do not produce benefits when they are either imposed or ignored by international authorities. Secondly, reforms produce benefits for local communities when they are designed to meet domestic concerns. More specifically, reforms valued by local communities are designed in ways that respond to domestic, rather than international, concepts of good local governance that emphasize socioeconomic aspects and produce tangible benefits. Well designed reforms also include significant aid targeting local governance that is coupled with the promise of a larger political settlement that is attractive to powerful domestic elites and contingent on clearly articulated local governance reforms. Thirdly, such aid best characterises European Union efforts only in Macedonia.     

The unexpected EU leadership on landmines: the influence of the Ottawa Convention on the EU

Abstract

The European Union (EU) has led international politics on antipersonnel landmines (APLs) for a decade now, and its foreign policy in this domain is perceived as a success story. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the negotiations that led to the Ottawa Convention, the EU looked unable to play any relevant part. This article addresses the emergence of the EU's foreign policy on APLs by arguing, in a second image-reversed way, that the corresponding international regime has deeply influenced the EU. It has changed Member States' and EU institutions' preferences, and it has empowered pro-Ottawa and pro-integration actors. This article explores the intra-EU conditions that have facilitated this influence and the way in which the regime itself has shaped them.     

The (IM)Morality of international governmental organizations

In this article, the authors apply standard population statistics to assess the durability of conventional international governmental organizations (IGOs) in the international system for the years 1865–1989. Following a brief discussion of IGOs and why institutions tend to persist (with examples from the literature on international relations, the U.S. bureaucracy, and international business), the authors examine infant mortality, average age at death, median age, the birth rate, and the death rate for conventional IGOs. The authors find that all of these measures vary considerably over time. The authors conclude that both neorealist and institutionalist expectations about the durability of international cooperation are realized in different eras, suggesting that both approaches are time‐bound and misspecify fundamental theoretical issues.     

The domestic and international quest for economic equality: The interactional process

The historic interaction between domestic and international interpretations of the meaning of equality involves today's economic equality. The economic demands of the Third World countries on the advanced countries find support in the social developments which earlier had occurred in the latter. But these demands have also important domestic consequences, both in the advanced and Third World countries.     

Leading by design: Informal influence and international secretariats

This article tests three hypotheses concerning the influence of international secretariats in world politics. This is a topic that has so far received limited systematic attention by IR theorists, who have tended to regard secretariats as bit players in global affairs. Drawing on institutional design literature, I develop a detailed theoretical explanation for both secretariat leadership and state mastery of international organizations. Because powerful actors anticipate channels for informal influence when designing secretariats, they seek to maximize formal bureaucratic autonomy. I assess the explanatory power of this theory through an analysis of negotiations over the design of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). A detailed archival investigation reveals that powerful countries, led by the United States, sought to maximize the autonomy of the UNEP secretariat. Developing countries, which expected to exert less informal influence on the new secretariat, sought to ensure strong intergovernmental control over UNEP’s secretariat. Since UNEP has been a frequently cited example of secretarial leadership and initiative, finding that the UNEP secretariat’s ability to act autonomously was in significant part determined by past institutional design choices holds relevance for theory development.     

What determines earmarked funding to international development organizations? Evidence from the new multi-bi aid data

Earmarked aid to international organizations has quadrupled over the last two decades and now represents almost 20% of total aid. This paper introduces a new dataset on earmarked aid, which alternatively has been referred to as multi-bi, restricted, non-core or trust fund aid. The data make it possible to track the rise of the new aid channel over an extended time period and in greater detail regarding, e.g., the implementing multilateral organizations. The data include more than 100,000 earmarked projects of 23 OECD donors to 290 multilateral institutions from 1990 to 2012. We graphically illustrate the patterns in earmarked aid for all actors: donor governments and their aid-providing agencies, multilateral organizations, and recipient countries. We also highlight promising research questions that can be analyzed with the multi-bi data. In a first empirical application of the data, we analyze four suggested donor motives for earmarked aid at the donor-recipient level. Contrary to donor claims, we find that earmarked aid and bilateral aid target the same recipients. We also find evidence that some donors use earmarked aid to bypass recipient countries with weak governance. Overall, our explorative analysis suggests that earmarked aid serves many purposes and that donors use it in different ways. This calls for more fine-grained research on the reasons and implications for earmarked aid.     

The domestic politics of international negotiations: The effects of state structures and policy making processes

Putnam's metaphor of a two‐level game that state representatives play when they face the dual constraints of international bargaining and domestic pressures has been applied across different political systems. This paper argues that it is important to take into account differences in state structures and political processes in the study of international negotiations. That state structures and processes are important has become a common theme in current research on foreign policy, decision making, and international conflict. Building on this literature, this study involves a meta‐analysis of existing case studies of two‐level games. The previously completed cases provide evidence of variation in the characteristics of two‐level games. Independent measures of the institutional structures of the states involved in the set of case studies are collected from the POLITY III dataset. Hypotheses on how differences in state structures might influence the characteristics of two‐level bargaining are then examined. The study finds that differences in state structures do influence the dynamics of two‐level games. Some of the results support the conventional wisdom on this relationship, while other results suggest counter‐intuitive insights. A framework conceptualizing state characteristics at three levels is proposed for future research.     

Trust in international organizations: An empirical investigation focusing on the United Nations

The literature on social capital has strongly increased in the last two decades, but there still is a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of international trust. This empirical study analyzes a cross-section of individuals, using micro-data from the World Values Survey, covering 38 countries, to investigate trust in international organizations, specifically in the United Nations. In line with previous studies on international trust we find that political trust matters. We also find that social trust is relevant, but contrary to previous studies the results are less robust. Moreover, the paper goes beyond previous studies investigating also the impact of geographic identification, corruption and globalization. We find that a higher level of (perceived) corruption reduces the trust in the UN in developed countries, but increases trust in developing and transition countries. A stronger identification with the world as a whole also leads to a higher trust in the UN and a stronger capacity to act globally in economic and political environment increases trust in the UN.

International Public Goods and Agency Problems in Treaty Organizations

This paper analyzes the extent to which international public goods and agency problems are present in international organizations. A noncooperative model of the funding choices of donor countries and the subsequent policy choices of an international agency is used to develop hypotheses about the behavior of ideal and problematic international agencies. The analysis suggests that international agencies are likely to be underfunded and undermonitored relative to that which maximizes the joint interest of signatory countries. The funding and policy implications of the model are tested using data from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The statistical results suggest that (i) treaty obligations affect behavior of Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 countries, (ii) GEF’s allocation of grants generally advances the international environmental agenda, and (iii) significant free-riding and agency problems exist in GEF as it is presently organized. Overall, the empirical results suggest that treaty organizations may be relatively effective, if not perfect, instruments of international public policy.      

The emerging international system: Policy implications

The foreign policy‐making of individual nations is seen as greatly affected by the international system, whether the actors are aware of it or not. A bipolar system is seen as requiring centralization of decision‐making authority within the two great powers which define the system. Under the emerging system of “polyarchical multipolarity,” military power will remain bipolar but will no longer determine the form of other international activities. The economic system has already been decoupled from the military system. With intelligent planning, the same could be done with the energy system. The centralization of decision‐making authority is no longer adaptive under these conditions, for the complexity of the global situation cannot be handled by a limited number of people. Decentralization of decision‐making would make it possible to implement policies based on analysis and planning rather than a perceived need for immediate action.     

Staff and status in international bureaucracies: a Weberian perspective on the EU civil service

Recent studies in international relations (IR) have devoted little systematic attention to the personnel of international organizations. This article argues that the works of Max Weber could provide an orientation for future research on the cohesion and autonomy of the staff in international bureaucracies. In his writings, Weber highlights the role of bureaucratic officials as an “occupational status group” or Berufsstand distinguished by their professional ethics, privileged positions, practices of social closure and a particular style of life, which is expressed in a claim to social prestige. Weber suggests a sociological analysis of bureaucratic staff, whose group character is determined by their occupation and profession. The article outlines Weber’s understanding of the administrative official by revisiting his seminal sociological and political writings. The added value of Weber’s conception for IR is demonstrated with an empirical sketch of the EU civil service, which can be analysed as a transnational status group in the making.