Reproduction Versus Transformation: The Case of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank

ABSTRACT

This article offers a constructive critique of Fehl and Freistein's argument that international organisations (IOs) significantly affect international stratification, either producing, reproducing or transforming inequality. It suggests that without reference to the specific purposes which individual IOs pursue and the forces driving global change, it is impossible to predict either when the goals of IOs and states might diverge, or when a particular IO might promote the reproduction of inequality on the one hand, or its transformation on the other. In particular, divergence between states on the one hand and IOs charged with the management of the global economy on the other is explained by the fact that the IOs concerned are committed to the reproduction of capital on a global scale, and therefore to the continuous transformation of global hierarchies. The argument is supported by a case study of IO support for China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).     

Small states and the ‘throughput’ legitimacy of international organizations

Abstract

The unequal participation of member states in international organizations (IOs) undermines IOs’ legitimacy as global actors. Existing scholarship typically makes this assessment by referencing a combination of input—the interests IOs serve—and output—the decisions they take. This scholarship does not, however, pay enough attention to how IOs have responded to these concerns. We argue that IOs have used the participation of small states—whose membership most studies typically ignore—as an important means of generating what Vivian Schmidt calls ‘throughput’ legitimacy for their operations. We organize our analysis of ‘throughput’ legitimacy in IOs around four institutional mechanisms—(1) agenda setting; (2) leadership (s)election; (3) management and operation; and (4) service delivery—in which all states seek to exert influence. What emerges is an account of IOs seeking to balance ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ by way of ‘throughputs’. We conclude by arguing for an expanded focus on the means by which IOs generate ‘throughput’ legitimacy in future research.     

The Dynamics of Enlargement in International Organizations

Most international organizations (IOs) expand their membership over the course of their lifespan. Although these enlargements tend to be heralded as normatively positive — for the IOs themselves, for the new members, and for cooperative outcomes more generally — expansions can also lead to conflicts in the organization. What conditions lead to enlargement rounds that reshape an organization in unexpected ways? We argue that, depending upon the diversity of the initial group of countries, members may vote to admit new entrants that can tilt organizational decision-making in unexpected directions. We anticipate fewer enlargements with lesser impact on the character of the organization among organizations that have either a smaller range of founding members or a relatively even initial dispersion. We develop an agent-based model that accounts for the complex decision-making environment and social dynamics that typify IO accession processes. The model helps us explain how the nature of decision-making in organizations can shift following enlargement, likely changing the organization’s output and goals.     

Legitimacy Deficits of International Organizations: design,drift, and decoupling at the UN Security Council

Despite ubiquitous calls for their reform, international organizations (IOs) often suffer from legitimacy deficits. What explains the emergence of legitimacy deficits and what effects do they produce? This article discusses the gradual emergence of legitimacy deficits through the concept of legitimacy drift. Legitimacy drift occurs when an organization loses legitimacy by failing to adapt itself to a changing environment. It identifies three sources of legitimacy drift: failure to live up to pre-existing standards (broken promises), changes in the standards of legitimacy by which organizations are assessed (shifting standards), and changes in an organization’s relevant public (audience shift). Legitimacy deficits typically prompt organizational responses. These include attempts at re-legitimation through institutional reform and operational adaptation, but also other ‘coping mechanisms’ such as promises of reform, the logic of confidence, and decoupling. Coping mechanisms are especially important where reform is blocked. This model is illustrated by the history of the United Nations Security Council, one of the oldest and most powerful IOs. A conclusion calls for bridging historical and sociological institutionalism to better understand IO legitimacy in time.     

Women in Command: The Impact of Female Leadership on International Organisations

After the unsuccessful search for a female UN General Secretary in 2016, the question about what would be the impact of more women leading international organisations (IOs) seems more relevant than ever. This study argues that female leaders of IOs are more inclined towards social policies than their male peers due to being socialised into the role of caregivers, and, therefore, provoke a change in the focus of their institutions’ agendas. First, it provides a detailed discussion of the presence of female leaders in IOs from 1875 to 2018. Then, it analyses both the policy agendas and the discourse of Sadako Ogata and Ruud Lubbers of UNHCR to emphasise the difference in terms of their policy outlook. Although the findings cannot definitely prove a causal relationship, they suggest that it is plausible that women promote more social policies than men, which could change the way international affairs are conducted if the number of female leaders keeps increasing.     

Designing Police: Interpol and the Study of Change in International Organizations

On those rare occasions when scholars of international organizations (IOs) consider the issue of change, they typically highlight the centrality of states. Although states are important for understanding when and why there is a change in the tasks, mandate, and design of IO, IOs themselves can initiate change. Drawing from sociological institutional and resource dependence approaches, in this article we treat IOs as strategic actors that can choose among a set of strategies in order to pursue their goals in response to changing environmental pressures and constraints that potentially threaten their relevance and resource base. We delineate six strategies—acquiescence, compromise, avoidance, defiance, manipulation, and strategic social construction, and suggest that the strategic choice by IOs is contingent on the level of both organizational insecurity and the congruence between the content of environmental pressures and organizational culture. We emphasize how IOs must make a trade-off between acquiring the resources necessary to survive and be secure, on the one hand, and maintaining autonomy, on the other. We apply this framework to the case of Interpol, investigating how different calculations of these trade-offs led Interpol staff to adopt different strategies depending on its willingness to accept, resist, or initiate changes that demand conformity to external pressures.     

International conflict,military rule,and violent authoritarian breakdown

ABSTRACT

Why do some transitions of power from military rule occur violently while others do not? What effect, if any, does the international security environment have on how violent breakdowns of authoritarian rule are? I argue a conflict-prone security environment ameliorates the commitment problem by ensuring an influential role for the military out of power. Therefore, when facing a domestic crisis in a threatening security environment, military leaders are more likely to peacefully cede power rather than wield violent measures to stay in office. Perhaps counter-intuitively, international conflicts thus lead to transitions of power from military rule that minimize violence and human costs. International conflicts do not have this moderating effect on other types of authoritarian rule.     

Exit, voice, and loyalty in international organizations: US involvement in the League of Nations

Recent challenges to traditional international relations theory have questioned the nature of international organizations (IOs) as agents of powerful state-members and have examined various conduits through which non-state actors can voice their concerns. Yet little work has focused on participation in IOs when a powerful state’s official position contradicts the goals of actors within it. This article examines the archival record of American involvement in the League of Nations’ economic section to explore such a circumstance. I correct the prevailing historical view of American isolationism in the interwar period and argue that participation by advanced, industrial democracies can better be understood as combinations of exit, voice, and loyalty on the part of individual components of state and civil societies.

Regional International Organizations and Individual Immigration Attitudes: Results from Finite Mixture Models

When are individuals more likely to support immigration? We suggest here that regional international organizations (IOs; for example, the European Union) publicly release reports about the scale and benefits of immigration to member states in the region in which these IOs operate. We argue that unlike individuals who are uninformed about immigration, informed individuals who have more knowledge of the main regional IO in which their country participates will be more likely to employ immigration reports released by their regional IO to construct their immigration attitudes. They will also perceive that these reports are credible. The credibility of these reports helps individuals with more knowledge about their region’s main IO to view immigrants favorably, which translates to support for immigration. We test our prediction by developing a finite mixture model that statistically accounts for the econometric challenges that emerge when uninformed individuals “save face” by disproportionately opting for the middle “status quo” category in ordinal survey response variables of immigration support. Results from the finite mixture model corroborate our prediction and are more reliable than estimates from a standard ordered probit model.     

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.     

Justifying Inequality as Equality: Germany and the Reform of Voting Weights in the Council of the European Union

ABSTRACT

Weighted voting institutionalises inequality in international organisations. How is it possible that states accept rules that formally privilege some over others even though this contradicts the sovereign equality of states and norms of democratic decision-making? This contribution to a special issue about global stratification shows that arguments about equality can actually serve to justify inequality in international institutions. This can be seen in moves by the German government to justify its proposals for a reform of voting in the Council of the European Union (1995–2008). Successive German governments focused on arguments about democracy based on the equality of states and of citizens to justify their push for a more privileged position for Germany in the Council. Efficiency also figured as a justification but was clearly less prominent.     

Issue linkage across international organizations: Does European countries’ temporary membership in the UN Security Council increase their receipts from the EU budget?

What explains the outcome of interstate negotiations in international organizations (IOs)? While existing research highlights member states’ power, preference intensity, and the IO’s institutional design, this paper introduces an additional source of bargaining power in IOs: Through issue linkage members of an IO leverage privileged positions in other IOs to obtain more favorable bargaining outcomes. Specifically, European Union members are more successful in bargaining over the EU budget while they hold a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Inside the UNSC EU members can promote security interests of other European countries, and they can use their influence to secure side-payments from the EU budget. The study tests this argument by investigating new EU budget data, and it shows that EU members obtain 1.7 billion Euro in additional net receipts during a two-year UNSC term, on average. Thus, bargaining processes in the EU and the UN are intricately linked.     

Control,soft information,and the politics of international organizations staffing

This article offers insights into the aggregate patterns of the geographical distribution of professional staff in some of the major international organizations (IOs). Building on the principal-agent framework, I argue that powerful member states seek dominant positions in IOs’ secretariats, in an effort to increase their ability to control them. At the same time, it is often the weakest low-income countries that are the IOs’ primary clients. Over-representation of the most powerful states is likely to lead to functional and legitimation problems for the IOs, in particular with regard to the IOs’ lack of access to ‘soft’ information about the countries in which they operate. Using a newly created dataset covering 19 major bodies of the United Nations family, I identify two aggregate patterns in the geographical distribution of their professional staff. First, the most powerful states dominate IOs’ secretariats. Second, however, many IOs systematically deviate in their staffing practices from this overall pattern, as well as from the existing rules that formalize it, and relatively over-represent also low-income countries. What results is a curvilinear (U-shaped) pattern where both powerful and very poor states are over-represented in many IOs’ professional staff.     

International regulation without international government: Improving IO performance through orchestration

International organizations (IOs) have been widely criticized as ineffective. Yet scholars and practitioners assessing IO performance frequently focus on traditional modes of governance such as treaties and inter-state dispute-resolution mechanisms. When they observe poor performance, moreover, they often prescribe a strengthening of those same activities. We call this reliance on traditional state-based mechanisms “International Old Governance” (IOG). A better way to understand and improve IO performance is to consider the full range of ways in which IOs can and do operate—including, increasingly, by reaching out to private actors and institutions, collaborating with them, and supporting and shaping their activities. Such actions are helping to develop an intricate global network of public, private and mixed institutions and norms, partially orchestrated by IOs, that we call “Transnational New Governance” (TNG). With proper orchestration by IOs, TNG can ameliorate both “state failure”—the inadequacies of IOG—and “market failure”—the problems that result when the creation and evolution of norm-setting institutions is highly decentralized. Orchestration thus provides a significant way for IOs to improve their regulatory performance. Some IOs already engage actively with private actors and institutions—we provide a range of illustrations, highlighting the activities of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Yet there remains a significant “orchestration deficit” that provides real opportunities for IOs. We draw on the lessons of existing IO activities to suggest additional possibilities for improving IO performance.     

Delegating divisible sovereignty: Sweeping a conceptual minefield

Delegating sovereignty to international organizations (IOs) is both increasingly common and controversial. I address the sources of current controversies in three claims. First, although alleged otherwise, sovereignty is eminently divisible. From practice, indivisibility should not be a barrier to delegating to IOs. Second, it is intuitive that longer chains of delegation will be more likely to fail. Yet, it is not the length of the chain per se that matters as whether identifiable conditions for successful delegation are satisfied. Third, although “delegation” is often used to refer to both, delegating and pooling sovereignty are distinct activities. Much of the concern with IOs is really about pooling rather than delegating sovereignty.

The politics of IO performance: A framework

Some international organizations (IOs) are subject to constant criticism for producing poor results while others are praised for accomplishing difficult tasks despite political and resource constraints. Indeed, IO performance varies substantially over time and across tasks, and yet the international relations literature has devoted little attention to why this occurs. This article provides a framework for studying IO performance. After addressing some of the distinct challenges of conceptualizing and analyzing performance in the context of IOs, we discuss the tradeoffs of using different performance metrics—from process indicators to outcome indicators—and present a typology of factors that influence performance. Finally, we discuss research strategies for those interested in studying performance rigorously. The policy relevance of studying IO performance is clear: only if we understand why some IOs perform better than others can we begin to improve their performance in a systematic way. As many organizations come under pressure to reform, while at the same time taking on new and more complicated tasks, scholars should be actively engaged in debates surrounding IO performance and its role in effective governance at the international level.     

United Nations Peacekeeping Decisions: Three Hierarchies,Upward Mobility and Institutionalised Inequality among Member States

ABSTRACT

This article explores the multiple and evolving hierarchies shaping UN decisions on peacekeeping operations. Three hierarchies—based on Security Council membership, financial assessments, and troop contributions—currently distribute influence over these decisions among UN member states. These hierarchies differ in their relationship to global stratification patterns, and in the states they empower. Their gradual “layering” has thus expanded the potential for upward mobility within the UN: states unable to increase their influence in one hierarchy can seek empowerment in another. Yet the UN peacekeeping case also highlights the limitations of hierarchy layering as an equalising mechanism in international organisations. New hierarchies supplement rather than replace older ones, and the degree to which they challenge existing rankings varies. Moreover, each new hierarchy inherently highlights, and creates institutional consequences for, a particular type of inequality among states. Consequently, hierarchy layering is best understood as recalibrating rather than eliminating institutionalised inequality in international organisations.     

Coup Risk,Counterbalancing, and International Conflict

Contrary to the literature on rallies-around-the-flag, this article argues that, in some circumstances, leaders may use international conflict to promote domestic divisiveness. More specifically, the threat of a military coup generally prompts leaders to divide their militaries (a practice known as counterbalancing), and even to engage in international conflict to ensure that various branches of their own armed forces remain distrustful of one another. Two empirical tests of these claims are offered: a large-N statistical analysis that examines whether coup risk leads to counterbalancing, and whether counterbalanced nations engage in more low-level military conflict (controlling for other causes of conflict); and a case study of Georgia shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Both empirical studies support the arguments advanced by the authors.

     

How Great Powers Rule: Coercion and Positive Inducements in International Order Enforcement

Despite a scholarly consensus that hegemony is exercised primarily through the use of coercion and positive inducements, scholars of international relations have devoted little attention to how dominant states choose between these influence tools to impose their desired international order on weak but recalcitrant states. This article presents an analytical framework to examine the determinants of such choices. In doing so, it develops three alternative theoretical models of international order enforcement from extant international relations literature and offers a preliminary assessment of their relative merits by way of a comparative study of two cases drawn from the nineteenth-century Pax Britannica. This plausibility probe shows that social conventions can play an important role in the choice of enforcement strategies and that neither realist nor domestic-politics explanations offer useful general models of the enforcement of international order.     

International Relations Theory and Minimum Deterrence

ABSTRACT

India’s government under Narendra Modi represents a return to single party rule. This paper investigates whether and why single party governments in India differ in their extremity of foreign policies from coalition governments. It particularly focuses on how different forms of government influence the saliency, contestation, and enactment of national conceptions about India’s global role. First, I situate India within the academic debate regarding coalitional governments and foreign policy. I suggest that one reason why India challenges scholars‘ assumption is the missing link between partisan conceptions of India’s global role and their institutional representation. Second, I propose a role theoretical approach and argue that the process of self-identification, consisting of ego and anticipated alter expectations, conditions a state’s role set and extreme foreign policy. It is hypothesized that the nature of contestation of national role conceptions varies between factions and fractions because of the nature of India’s party system, as well as the relative significance of external others for India’s identity. Third, I examine instances of role-taking in the field of nuclearization and Sino-Indian relations. Findings suggest that contested role conceptions during single-party rule caused more extreme variances in international role-taking, while coalition governments proved to induce more complementary role-taking processes.