Frank Biermann and Bernd Siebenhüner. 2009 (eds.). Managers of Global Change: The Influence of International Environmental Bureaucracies (Cambridge: MIT Press)

Abstract

Managers of Global Change addresses a long-standing question in international relations scholarship: “Do international organizations (IOs) matter?” In answering this question, the authors narrow down the focus of their study to bureaucracies (IBs) within IOs. International civil servants have largely remained outside of international relations research, even though IOs have long been recognized as actors capable of autonomous action. The book centers on IBs and their influence on behavior of states and other actors and evaluates this influence systematically, using an impressive wealth of information presented in case studies. The authors begin the book with a review of the literature that has previously examined the role and effect of IOs. They note that the current state of this research leaves the study of IBs and their influence on the periphery, despite numerous studies of IOs. The authors emphasize that their framework shares similarities with two theoretical approaches that have been used to analyze IBs: principal-agent theory and sociological institutionalism. Yet, there are also important differences. One shortcoming of the principal-agent approach that the authors try to overcome is its focus on variation in IBs’ behavior stemming from differences in principal-agent relations. As a result, principal-agent theory is less useful when variation in IBs’ choices is observed under similar principal-agent relations. In addition, this approach fails to analyze the preference formation in IBs. In the case of sociological institutionalism, the authors credit this perspective for advancing the study of IBs as autonomous actors in international politics, but critique the failure to separate IBs from IOs. The authors argue that the study of IBs as autonomous agents requires a more precise conceptualization in order to distinguish the influence of IBs—groups of international civil servants—from that of IOs—institutional structures encompassing collectives of member states, normative frameworks, and IBs. Rev Int Organ (2011) 6:105–108 DOI 10.1007/s11558-010-9087-0