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 silent revolution:” How the staff exercise informal governance over IMF lending

This paper examines how the staff exercise informal governance over lending decisions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF or Fund). The essential component of designing any IMF program, assessing the extent to which a borrowing country is likely to fulfill its policy commitments, is based partly on informal staff judgments subject to informal incentives and normative orientations not dictated by formal rules and procedures. Moreover, when country officials are unable to commit to policy goals of the IMF, the IMF staff may bypass the formal channel of policy dialogue through informal contacts and negotiations with more like-minded actors outside the policymaking process. Exercising informal governance in these ways, the staff are motived by informal career advancement incentives and normative orientations associated with the organization’s culture to provide favorable treatment to borrowers composed of policy teams sympathetic toward their policy goals. The presence of these sympathetic interlocutors provides the staff both with greater confidence a lending program will achieve success and an opportunity to support officials who share their policy beliefs. I assess these arguments using a new dataset that proxies shared policy beliefs based on the professional characteristics of IMF staff and developing country officials. The evidence supports these arguments: larger loan commitments are extended to countries where government officials and the Fund staff share similar professional training. The analysis implies informal governance operates in IOs not just via state influence but also through the evolving makeup, incentive structure, and normative orientations of their staffs.     

Civil Society Democratising Global Governance? Potentials and Limitations of “Counter-Democracy”

A major aspect of global interdependencies during the last two decades has been the intensified interactions between international organizations (IOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs). In this paper, we propose a new way of analysing the potential of CSO inclusion to democratise global governance. The aim is to explore the possibility for CSOs to function as a form of counter-democratic force. This approach contrasts with earlier research that has tended to focus on participation, voice or representation when evaluating IO-CSO interaction from a democratisation perspective. Using Pierre Rosanvallon's term, we argue that counter-democratic actors organise distrust against power-holders, pressuring them to strengthen accountability. Counter-democracy is manifested in the institutions, agents and functions that are committed to overseeing ruling institutions, expressing mistrust and channelling dissent. Importantly, counter-democracy is not contrary to democracy, but a vital and perennial aspect of it. Our argument is that Rosanvallon's concept of counter-democracy can help us understand how the monitoring activities of CSOs may restrain the power of IOs and make them more responsible which in turn can be related to democratic qualities of global governance. However, we maintain that not all activities of transnational CSOs have counter-democratic qualities. To examine if and how a specific CSO might serve as a democratising force in global governance, we suggest that the actors and their activities should be scrutinised according to an analytical framework centred on the concepts of power-resources, ideational foundations and activities. Empirically, we investigate three carefully selected cases of CSOs that perform monitoring activities in a global governance context: the Corporate Europe Observatory, the NGO forum on the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and NGO Monitor.     

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.     

A question of sovereignty?

Taiwan's efforts to take part in international organisations (IOs) have received little backing from the international community owing to Taiwan's contested sovereignty. This article investigates under what circumstances and how the European Union (EU) supported Taiwan's participation in IOs and agreements by examining the role of the EU in three success stories: the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The analysis of six factors that shaped the EU's approach shows that a strong EU interest in Taiwan's IO participation was a precondition for its support and that once this precondition was met, applicable membership/participation criteria and opportunities for circumventing or neutralising China's opposition then gained in importance. A supportive United States (US) stance could function as a trigger for EU support. Two counterintuitive findings are that the radicalisation of Taiwan's own strategy fostered increased EU activity in brokering compromises between Taiwan and China and that the EU's decision-making mechanisms did not play a decisive role in the formulation of its support policies.     

Controlling coalitions: Social lending at the multilateral development banks

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) dramatically increased social lending for health, education, and safety nets after 1985. Yet the great powers’ social policy preferences remained relatively static from 1980 to 2000. This contradicts the conventional view that powerful states control IOs. We argue that highly institutionalized IOs like MDBs require a complete model of possible member-state coalitions encompassing the preferences of all member states—not just major powers. We develop multiple measures of state preferences and include all member states in our coalitional model. We evaluate our model and alternatives with an analysis of more than 10,000 MDB loans from 1980 to 2000. We find that when we include all member states weighted by their voting shares, principal preferences are significantly related to lending outcomes.     

Comparing regional organisations in global multilateral institutions: ASEAN, the EU and the UN

Structural change brought about by the end of the Cold War and accelerated globalisation have transformed the global environment. A global governance complex is emerging, characterised by an ever-greater functional and regulatory role for multilateral organisations such as the United Nations (UN) and its associated agencies. The evolving global governance framework has created opportunities for regional organisations to participate as actors within the UN (and other multilateral institutions). This article compares the European Union (EU) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as actors within the UN network. It begins by extrapolating framework conditions for the emergence of EU and ASEAN actorness from the literature. The core argument of this article is that EU and ASEAN actorness is evolving in two succinct stages: Changes in the global environment create opportunities for the participation of regional organisations in global governance institutions, exposing representation and cohesion problems at the regional level. In response, ASEAN and the EU have initiated processes of institutional adaptation.     

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.     

Does participation in international organizations increase cooperation?

Recent research asserts that public commitments to international institutions promote behavior that is consistent with institutional purposes. Evidence for this proposition is based almost entirely on studies that compare the behavior of states that have and have not ratified treaties. This paper evaluates instances in which some member states temporarily experience increased entanglement with an IO because they or their nationals serve in a position of authority. Unlike selection into IOs, selection into positions of authority is often governed by a common, observable, and partially exogenous process. I exploit exogenous exit, random assignment to different term lengths, and competitive elections in three contexts: the International Criminal Court (ICC), the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), and the UN Security Council (UNSC). The evidence implicates that acquiring a position of authority can make states more willing to reject U.S. advances to sign non-surrender agreements, adopt domestic legislation that changes the penal code (ICC case), ratify legally binding treaties (UNHRC case), and contribute to peacekeeping missions (UNSC case). On the other hand, there is no evidence that UN institutions successfully select more cooperative states for positions of authority. Similar research designs can gainfully be employed to identify the causal effects of other forms of institutional participation.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Discursive Multilateralism: Global Benchmarks, Shame, and Learning in the ILO Labor Standards Monitoring Regime

A distinct feature of contemporary international relations is the proliferation of multilateral monitoring regimes. Despite the significance of this for the study of international law and organization, little empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of multilateral monitoring exists. This article examines the effectiveness of the supervisory system of the International Labor Organization (ILO), widely recognized as the prototypical model for all multilateral monitoring regimes. I examine the speech acts and rule-practices of the ILO regime within a hermeneutic/constructivist framework. This yields a set of heuristic hypotheses reflective of the "logic" that guides regime interactions with its member states. This asserts that "shame" influences member states to comply and respond positively to regime obligations. To test this, I statistically generate global benchmarks. These consist of world and regional averages in the behavioral patterns of member states. Quantitative findings demonstrate recidivist patterns of deviance by "global pariahs" set against a statistical background consisting of large-scale normative conformity on the part of ILO member states but configured around some regional variations. My analysis contends that global benchmarking reduces the risks of member state defection from core international labor standards and thereby promotes monitoring by learning or discursive multilateralism.     

What’s left out and why? Informal provisions in formal international law

When states face an international cooperation problem requiring enforcement, when do they decide to make that enforcement formal versus informal? I introduce a research design for investigating how informal mechanisms might be relevant to formal international agreements. I present an overall theory of punishment provisions and a set of hypotheses about whether any needed punishments will be formalized or not. This theory gives rise to a two-part empirical analysis conducted on a large-n dataset. First, the presence of enforcement mechanisms in agreements is predicted, and, second, those cases that are “misclassified”—ones in which the model predicts the presence of such mechanisms, but the agreements lack them—are analyzed. These misclassified agreements, candidates for informal enforcement, are characterized by regime heterogeneity and military asymmetries among parties. Case study evidence supports the results.     

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.     

A political settlements lens onto Egypt’s critical junctures and cyclic violence (2011–2014)

Abstract

While there is a copious body of literature explaining Egypt’s political trajectory post-Mubarak through the lens of democratisation and transition theory, this paper argues that by using a political settlements lens, a less linear reading of the events can be offered, which highlights several attempts through both peaceful and violent means of arriving at negotiated agreements. The paper analyses the forging of three political settlements, one informal (2011) and two formal (2012, 2013) following the demise of the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the influence of intrinsic, instrumental and resultant violence on power configurations. It argues that the formal political settlement forged in Egypt in 2013 following the ousting of President Morsi cannot be read independently of the exclusionary outcomes of the informal political settlement forged in 2011 and the demise of the Fairmont Agreement of 2012. The paper relies on empirical data, including survey and focus groups undertaken in 2013–2014, complemented with secondary literature in Arabic and English.     

Leaders or Laggards: engendering sub-national governance through women's policy machineries in Spain and Poland

More than three decades of international best practice and a rich body of scholarship demonstrate that women's policy machinery (WPM) is a crucial tool for promoting feminist policymaking. A new and unstudied form of WPM is emerging at the sub-national level. In this paper, we examine the effects of (1) regional leftist party governance and (2) sub-state durability on feminist policymaking. We employ Stetson and Mazur's model of effective, feminist WPM and operationalize policy Influence and Access provided to feminist groups. Drawing on four regional cases within Spain and Poland, we use field research, interviews, and party documents to examine whether regional leftist party governance and federalized state structure are associated with WPM ‘Leaders’ in feminist policymaking. We find that regional leftist governance is associated with WPMs that offer feminist policy and empower feminist groups; however, sub-state durability modifies the impact of party governance. We conclude with suggestions for further research.     

Democracies only: When do IMF agreements serve as a seal of approval?

Conditional lending by the IMF is predicated, in part, on the belief that IMF programs are associated with increased capital inflows to participating countries. This belief is generally consistent with theoretical arguments in the academic literature (e.g., Bird and Rowlands 1997; Bordo et al. 2004) but the empirical literature often finds otherwise (e.g., Jensen 2004). This paper argues that the effect of IMF agreements on a country’s access to foreign direct investment (FDI) depends on its domestic institutions. Access to FDI depends on a country’s ability to credibly commit to implementation, and this ability varies systematically across regime type. The theory is empirically tested using a treatment effects model with a Markov transition in the treatment equation in a dataset covering 142 countries from 1976 to 2006. We find that in democracies IMF program participation has a strong positive effect on FDI inflows and in autocracies participation has a weak negative effect.     

变迁中的地区环境治理——以东盟环境合作为例

自20世纪70年代以来国际社会应对环境问题的各种制度安排经历了重大的发展和演变，其标志性的事件包括1972年的联合国人类环境会议、1992年的联合国环境与发展会议以及2002年的约翰内斯堡地球峰会。在关注全球环境治理的同时，人们不能忽视的现实就是，一个地区内的生态环境变化更能影响人们的生活乃至生存，环境治理这一概念本身就侧重生态区域的理念，人类虽日益意识到全球性环境难题，但所见证和参与的大多数环境行动大都是地方化的。