国家与国际组织互动关系的“委托-代理”解释框架

在百年未有之大变局叠加新型冠状病毒肺炎疫情的冲击下,作为全球治理主干的众多国际组织面临着深度调整。在这一背景下,厘清主权国家与国际组织的互动机理,深入研究并思考中国应如何主动介入和引导国际组织的变革,已经成为具有重要战略价值的课题。与长期以来主导国际组织研究的主流国际政治理论不同,源于经济学的“委托-代理”理论为分析成员国与国际组织之间的复杂关系和互动逻辑提供了启发性视角。在国家与国际组织复杂的“委托-代理”模型下,国际组织的行为与政策偏好将综合取决于成员国、成员国在国际组织内部的代表、国际组织的秘书处和行政首长等主要行为体在国际组织的决策过程中处于什么位置以及能够施加多大影响。这为我们更全面地认识国际组织,提升我国在国际组织中的影响力与话语权带来了启示。     

A Partial Revolution: The Diplomatic Ethos and Transparency in Intergovernmental Organizations

The World Trade Organization and other intergovernmental organizations confront a crisis of legitimacy that is partly rooted in their perceived secretiveness. These organizations have attempted to address this crisis by promising "the maximum possible level of transparency," but in fact, the improvements have been modest. Policies regarding access to information about intergovernmental organizations' operations continue to accommodate conventions of diplomatic confidentiality. Such conventions are more likely to be breached in areas where disclosure of information is essential to economic liberalization. A true revolution in transparency would require more rigorous policies on disclosure of information held by intergovernmental organizations such as the World Trade Organization, and could be justified as a prerequisite for the exercise of basic human rights, such as the right to participate fully in the policy-making process.     

Veto players, electoral incentives and international commitments: The impact of domestic institutions on intergovernmental organization membership

Abstract.  The conventional literature on international cooperation in general, and intergovernmental organization membership in particular, depicts a regular, positive relationship between wealthy capitalist democracies and participation in international institutions. While empirical evidence supports this assertion, it says little about the mechanisms, and the accompanying variation among them, by which states enter into international institutions. This study distinguishes industrialized democracies along two dimensions: the nature of their constitutional structures and the organization of their electoral politics. Variations in these features produce variations in the institutional constraints and electoral incentives that matter in determining state participation in international organizations. Results of a pooled cross-sectional time series analysis of 23 democracies in 1981 and 1992 indicate that the structure of governing institutions and the nature of electoral systems account for much of the variation in intergovernmental organization membership. This study concludes that domestic institutions matter in determining international cooperation through international organizations – a novel insight overlooked by most international relations theories.     

Signaling Alliance Commitments: Hand‐Tying and Sunk Costs in Extended Nuclear Deterrence

How can states signal their alliance commitments? Although scholars have developed sophisticated theoretical models of costly signaling in international relations, we know little about which specific policies leaders can implement to signal their commitments. This article addresses this question with respect to the extended deterrent effects of nuclear weapons. Can nuclear states deter attacks against their friends by simply announcing their defense commitments? Or must they deploy nuclear weapons on a protégé's territory before an alliance is seen as credible? Using a new dataset on foreign nuclear deployments from 1950 to 2000, our analysis reveals two main findings. First, formal alliances with nuclear states appear to carry significant deterrence benefits. Second, however, stationing nuclear weapons on a protégé's territory does not bolster these effects. The analysis yields new insights about the dynamics of “hand‐tying” and “sunk cost” signals in international politics.     

Democratic Oversight in Fragile States: The Case of Intelligence Reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina

In most transition countries the main aim of ‘democratizing intelligence’ is to weaken the authoritarian governmental structures by introducing more transparency, legality and oversight. In Bosnia and Herzegovina however, the state-building efforts driven by international parties combined formal democratization processes such as independent oversight with the strengthening and operational capacity building of previously weak-to-non-existent intelligence structures. In parallel with the descent into war when Yugoslavia collapsed in the early 1990s, the State Security Service (SDB) in the Republic of Bosnia had split into three ethnically-based outfits answering to the political and military leaders of war. ‘Democratization’ of intelligence in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the establishment of a unified, state-level Intelligence and Security Agency (OSA) in 2004 has followed its own unique path reflecting the fragmented nature of politics in Bosnia and the leading role of international organizations in proposing and effectuating institutional reforms. Nevertheless, in terms of habits, operational methods and values many Bosnian intelligence officers went through similar adaptations and transitions as their colleagues in countries where institutions at the time of democratic transition were too strong and authoritarian rather than, as in the case of Bosnia, being deemed too weak and ineffectual.     

Improving the Budget Process in Fragile and Conflict‐Ridden States: Two Modest Lessons from Afghanistan

Both the donor community and scholars have created a cottage industry studying “fragile” states. International nongovernmental organizations that have developed indexes measuring corruption or governance have been unkind to Afghanistan. One index suggests a different and more optimistic story. The International Budget Partnership measures transparency every two years with its Open Budget Index. Afghanistan demonstrated dramatic improvement on this index between 2008 and 2012. The authors use the improvement in Afghanistan's transparency score as an entry point to explore how donors try to intervene and promote transparency as part of broader efforts in public financial management development and how legislative strengthening has also contributed to budget reform. The analysis offers a modest corrective to the overly pessimistic assessments of fragile states by showing that a fragile state can improve its budgetary transparency and enhance governance by strengthening the legislature's involvement in the budget process.     

Towards an International Antitrust Authority? Key Factors in the Internationalization of Competition Policy

Negotiated access to markets through the internationalization of business framework rules is of increasing importance. The article examines the political-economic factors that are contributing to, but also setting limits on, the greater internationalization of one such aspect of policy—competition policy. It analyzes whether internationalizing forces are likely to transform existing international arrangements in competition policy matters from those of a loose regime to that of a fully fledged international institutional system. The latter could be represented by recent proposals for an International Antitrust Authority. The four factors examined are: conflicting ideas about competition policy; the exercise of political power by nation states and business; the roles and stances of international agencies; and democratic concerns about the accountability, representativeness, and transparency of competition policy institutions.
The analysis concludes that future forms of institution-building at the international level of competition policy are important. This is so because, if lejt totally as a set of international regimes, competition policy may be arranged to an excessive degree in the interests of business power or in the interests of one or more dominant countries.     

Understanding Ripple Effects: The Cross–National Adoption of Policy Instruments for Bureaucratic Accountability

This article examines different explanations for the cross–national diffusion of three recent innovations in bureaucratic accountability—the institution of the ombudsman, freedom of information legislation and data protection (information privacy) law. The first two explanations are based on the assumption that these innovations are by–products of modernization, either the growth of the state or democratization. The third assumes that policy is shaped through processes of international communication. A combination of methodologies is employed to conclude that while the growth of government and liberal democratic values are necessary conditions for the adoption of all three policy instruments, they are not sufficient conditions. The pattern of adoption observed is best explained by examining how evidence about these respective policies flows from adopting states to non–adopters. In the case of the ombudsman, this process can be characterized as one of lesson–drawing; for freedom of information, evidence is used for legitimation purposes; for data protection, the diffusion is attributable to harmonization through international organizations. Policy transfer is hence a multi–faceted concept that embraces a number of distinct processes of transnational learning and communication.     

Protecting Sovereignty,Protecting the Planet: State Delegation to International Organizations and Private Actors in Environmental Politics

As global interdependence grows, states often use international organizations to achieve both domestic and foreign policy goals. One way states respond to demands for cooperation is to delegate to international organizations and private actors. In this article, we use new data spanning a century of international environmental law to understand when and why states delegate to international organizations to manage environmental problems. We find that delegation is a persistent phenomenon that facilitates the implementation of states' preferences. However, they make this decision with care: States tend to delegate functions with lower sovereignty costs, such as implementation and monitoring, but rarely delegate rule making and enforcement. We also find that heterogeneous preferences among states increases the likelihood of delegation. Overall, our results suggest that states seek to delegate out of a motivation both to reduce transaction costs and to establish credible commitments.     

Book reviews

Oscar Wilde captures the deep challenges relating to intelligence when he states that, ‘it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors’. This statement elucidates the negative force of cognitive closure on intelligence, as well as bringing attention to the importance of an understanding of the human factor in intelligence production, and its relationship to discourse failure. Intelligence literature after 9/11 has focused on the causes and nature of intelligence failure, though few inquests have conceived intelligence as a deeply cognitive, and therefore mental and moral landscape that needs to be explored in all its complexity. Intelligence operators, like art spectators, perceive reality filtered through all sorts of implicit and explicit ideological prisms, and these ideologies, whether they are political assumptions or social orthodoxies, manifest themselves as cognitive closure, and shape the discourse in intelligence organizations, as well as between these organizations and society at large. This paper consequently argues that discourse failure is increased because of a flaw in the epistemic process among intelligence operators and consumers.     

The Latest Intelligence Crisis

In the autumn of last year the National Intelligence Council issued a National Intelligence Estimate that states (in a portion of the NIE that has been published) with ‘high confidence’ that Iran years ago suspended its development of nuclear weapons. This paper questions the wisdom of a consensus intelligence document bound to be published in one form or another, and the soundness of the analysis in it, which pivots on speculation about Iranian decision making and on an ambiguity in the very meaning of ‘suspending’ a nuclear-weapons program while continuing to produce highly enriched uranium. These questions lead in turn to questions concerning the ambitious reorganization three years ago of the US intelligence system.     

Opaque transparency: an analysis of the Israeli lobbying regulatory regime of 2008

After some failed attempts to regulate the lobbying, the Israeli Parliament—the Knesset—passed the Lobbyist Law on April 2nd 2008. Although lobbying is a common and legitimate part of the democratic process, it raises issues of trust, equality of access, and transparency. What motivated the MKs to regulate lobbying—public interest, private interest, or symbolic politics? The MKs claimed that the law was needed for improving transparency whereas MK Yechimovich declared that it balances the strength of the rich, represented by lobbyists and the wide public. Assessing the achieved transparency in the comparative framework of other lobbying regulatory regimes, we see that the law confers tangible benefits on powerful interest groups, while providing only symbolic gestures to the public. Lack of information available for MKs creates a need for lobbyists for political intelligence and MKs need to identify the interests in play to guarantee for themselves the necessary legislative subsidy. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Getting the right picture for the wrong reasons: intelligence analysis by Hezbollah and Hamas

This article analyses intelligence assessment as performed by Hezbollah and Hamas and similar Violent Non-State Actors (“VNSA”). VNSA’s seek to inflict the highest level of harm on adversary states without provoking full-scale wars, which they avoid due to military asymmetry. Improved intelligence regarding a state’s cost/benefit analysis of unleashing full-scale war thus enables VNSA’s to “safely” calibrate operations to maximize harm. Such efforts might prove error-prone for three reasons: the authoritarian structure characterizing VNSAs; psychological bias regarding both self and enemy; and a “transparency fallacy” concerning target states. Assessments of Hezbollah (2006) and Hamas (2014) serve as case studies.     

Civil Society in World Politics: How Accountable are Transnational CSOs?

Transnational civil society organizations (CSOs) are often said to lack accountability. Taking issue with this claim, we report the results of a study on the accountability regimes of 60 transnational CSOs engaging in political advocacy. We scrutinize their transparency, opportunities for internal participation, evaluations and self-regulation, complaint procedures, and their independence from the state and intergovernmental organizations. We find that most transnational CSOs are reasonably transparent and offer participatory opportunities at least for members. They are organizationally independent from states and intergovernmental organizations, but dependencies on public funding are striking in some cases. Independent evaluations of their activities are scarce and codes of conduct, often suggested as an avenue towards better self-regulation of CSOs, do not seem to play a major role in practice. We conclude that the debate over transnational CSO accountability should focus on the most critical issues. In the case of general interest organizations, this seems to be the danger of co-optation through public financing. Special interest organizations, by contrast, are highly independent but have deficits in external transparency, especially regarding their budget.     

‘The importance of being honest’: Switzerland,neutrality and the problems of intelligence collection and liaison

This paper seeks to contribute to a number of debates that have attracted scholarly attention over the last few years. Firstly, by examining the experiences of the Swiss foreign intelligence service, the paper takes issue with what one scholar has dubbed ‘intelligence history snobbery’; a process that has privileged the study of the major powers and overlooked the contribution made to the secret world by the intelligence agencies of small states. Secondly, the paper explores the extent to which a state's engagement in the secret world is affected by its preconceived ideas over its place and standing in the international community. It asks whether the behaviour of a neutral foreign intelligence service is likely to differ from that of any other ‘small’ state, and whether neutrals can be both honest brokers in international affairs, and earnest players in the field of secret intelligence. The final section of the paper looks at the impact of the end of the Cold War and the emerging ‘global war on terror’ on the shape of the Swiss intelligence community.     

The debate on a regional arms register in Southeast Asia

Abstract

ASEAN member states are no longer opposed in principle to military information sharing and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is now actively considering ideas for new confidence‐building measures in this area. The first specific transparency measure supported by ARF was the UN Register of Conventional Arms, whose success in the region has been a result, at least in part, of its flexibility. Because of the limited scope of the UN Register, debate has continued on the possibility of a regional Register. As this debate has proceeded, however, it has become apparent that the creation of such a Register will require a number of complex and difficult issues to be resolved. What additional data should such a Register include? Who should be responsible for operating such a Register? Which countries should be included? Because of these difficulties, the prospects of a regional Register being established in the near future are rather slender. But, as they become more comfortable with the concept of transparency, there is still considerable scope for ARF members to do more to adopt regional ‘best practice’ in their replies to the main UN Register. The Register formula of framework plus flexibility could also be used as a model for the development of parallel transparency arrangements in areas other than arms transfers. The experience of the Register debate suggest that the development of concrete confidence‐building measures in the ARF region is likely to be a gradual process. Progress is possible, but is unlikely to transform levels of national openness on military affairs overnight. The main obstacles to increased transparency may prove to be domestic and political rather than international and military: demonstrating once again the way in which the confidence‐building agenda is linked to broader debates about the necessary political foundations of a secure regional order.     

‘Stella polaris’ and the secret code battle in postwar Europe

Much has already been written about the September 1944 evacuation of the Finnish intelligence service to Sweden, which was designated Operation ‘Stella Polaris’. Newly declassified intelligence documents found at the US National Archives provide a fresh perspective on the role of the American wartime foreign intelligence service, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and its successor, the Strategic Services Unit, in ‘Stella Polaris’ and its aftermath. The documents reveal that throughout World War II, the OSS secretly obtained sensitive intelligence information concerning America's wartime ally, the Soviet Union, from agents within the Finnish intelligence service. The OSS Stockholm Station purchased Soviet and other foreign government code and cipher materials from the Finns, not realizing until later that the Finns had sold the same material to other states. The Americans responded by recruiting some well-placed agents within the Finnish ‘Stella Polaris’ organization, who provided detailed information about the intelligence activities of the Finns in Sweden, and the work of Finnish intelligence officers in France after the end of the war. Among the key pieces of intelligence obtained was the fact that the French intelligence service was intercepting American radio traffic.     

Determinants of Financial Transparency in Government

ABSTRACT

The search for enhanced transparency and accountability in government organizations has inspired studies to identify the key factors that facilitate greater disclosure of public financial information. With the advantages provided by the meta-analysis technique, applied to a sample of studies, we identify the most significant factors and incentives underlying the decisions adopted by public managers on policy strategies regarding information transparency and public responsibility. Our study shows the variables analyzed to be positively associated with the disclosure of public financial information, but also that this depends on the context in which the research is carried out. The most influential variables were the moderator variables of the administrative culture and of the measurement unit for the variables.     

Budget Transparency, Fiscal Performance, and Political Turnout: An International Approach

This paper attempts, for the first time, to assess the relationships between budget transparency, fiscal situation, and political turnout using a comparative international approach. With this aim, the authors build a comprehensive index of budget transparency encompassing 40 budget features based on international standards for a sample of 41 countries. They find a positive relationship between national government fiscal balance and budget transparency: The more information the budget discloses, the less the politicians can use fiscal deficits to achieve opportunistic goals. The univariate analysis shows a positive relationship between political turnout and transparency. This result gives some evidence of a positive answer to the question raised by James Alt and David Dreyer Lassen: Does transparency affect political outcomes such as turnout? To some extent, that the more transparent the budget reports are, the more incentives people have to vote. With respect to three variables—transparency, government fiscal balance, and electoral turnout—three clusters of countries arise: low transparency–fiscal imbalance, low transparency–small fiscal imbalance and high transparency–fiscal surplus.     

Is E-Government Promoting Convergence Towards More Accountable Local Governments?

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes how extensively European Union local governments are using their websites to disseminate financial information in order to evaluate whether electronic-government (e-government) is promoting convergence towards more accountable local governments. We also posit and test various hypotheses about the influence of internal and contextual factors on Internet financial reporting (IFR) practices. Results show that the public administration style, the size of the city, and the audit of financial information by private firms are significant explanatory factors of IFR practices. Our findings also suggest that multilateral organizations are overly optimistic about the possible convergence in transparency and financial accountability through the use of common modes of IFR. That is, the introduction of information and communication technologies without the corresponding institutional reform is leading to limited success of IFR.