Institutional pioneers in world politics: Regional institution building and the influence of the European Union.

Tobias Lenz,Alexandr Burilkov

doi:10.1177/1354066116674261

Abstract

What drives processes of institution building within regional international organizations? We challenge those established theories of regionalism, and of institutionalized cooperation more broadly, that treat different organizations as independent phenomena whose evolution is conditioned primarily by internal causal factors. Developing the basic premise of ‘diffusion theory’ — meaning that decision-making is interdependent across organizations — we argue that institutional pioneers, and specifically the European Union, shape regional institution-building processes in a number of discernible ways. We then hypothesize two pathways — active and passive — of European Union influence, and stipulate an endogenous capacity for institutional change as a key scope condition for their operation. Drawing on a new and original data set on the institutional design of 34 regional international organizations in the period from 1950 to 2010, the article finds that: (1) both the intensity of a regional international organization’s structured interaction with the European Union (active influence) and the European Union’s own level of delegation (passive influence) are associated with higher levels of delegation within other regional international organizations; (2) passive European Union influence exerts a larger overall substantive effect than active European Union influence does; and (3) these effects are strongest among those regional international organizations that are based on founding contracts containing open-ended commitments. These findings indicate that the creation and subsequent institutional evolution of the European Union has made a difference to the evolution of institutions in regional international organizations elsewhere, thereby suggesting that existing theories of regionalism are insufficiently able to account for processes of institution building in such contexts.

Highlights

In 2000, African heads of state strengthened the main framework for institutionalized cooperation on the continent by replacing the Organization of African Unity with the African Union
This episode poses an important theoretical question: which factors drive processes of institution building within regional international organizations (RIOs)? what role does the European Union (EU) play in them? Most theories of regionalism, and of international cooperation more broadly, are ill-equipped to capture such ‘outside-in’ influences because they locate the main drivers of institution building within each respective region
This article offers the first systematic attempt to gauge the effects of the EU on other RIOs by drawing on a new and original data set that measures variation in the institutional design of 34 such organizations on an annual basis in the period from 1950 to 2010

Summary

Introduction

The creation of a Commission with a codified right to initiate legislation and to bring infringement cases to a new African Court of Justice or Pan-African Parliament led many observers to comment on the apparent ‘organisational mirroring’ occurring between the two bodies (Haastrup, 2013: 789) This episode poses an important theoretical question: which factors drive processes of institution building within regional international organizations (RIOs)? Of international cooperation more broadly, are ill-equipped to capture such ‘outside-in’ influences because they locate the main drivers of institution building within each respective region They view institutions primarily as reflecting the processes and structures of a given region, ones that operate from the ‘inside out’.

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