Formal International Institutions Research Articles

Bureaucratic Autonomy and the Performance of International Institutions

Abstract Despite longstanding scholarly interest in international institutions, remarkably little research has been conducted in variation in performance across organizations. In this essay, I review Ranjit Lall's book, which aims to fill that gap. Lall argues that the chief impediment to high-functioning international organizations (IOs) are member-states with particularistic interests that attempt to capture the institutions. The solution, he maintains, is to bolster the de facto autonomy of the bureaucrats who staff these institutions by forging operational alliances with nonstate stakeholders and mandating that they perform functions that are difficult for members to monitor. I evaluate Lall's argument and evidence. I then discuss a set of additional issues that are related to the performance of international institutions. First, why do stakeholders often continue to support those organizations that perform poorly? Second, what mechanisms exist for improving the performance of ailing IOs? Third, how does the widely documented backlash against globalization that has transpired during the past few decades bear on IOs? Fourth, Lall and others tout the benefits of well-performing IOs, but such institutions, nonetheless, can have costly and unanticipated side effects that merit greater scrutiny. Finally, formal international institutions have been key features of world politics. However, additional research is needed on whether and, if so, why they have become less important aspects of global governance.

To reform or to replace? Succession as a mechanism of institutional change in intergovernmental organisations

AbstractGiven high costs of negotiating formal international institutions, states are widely expected to adapt, reform, and repurpose existing institutions rather than create new ones. Nevertheless, during the past century some 60 intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have been directly replaced by a legal successor. Why do states sometimes dissolve an existing IGO only to replace it with a new one that takes over the incumbent organization’s mandate and assets—a practice known as institutional succession? We offer a theory of institutional succession and illustrate with examples. Against the dominant belief that creating new IGOs is a choice of last resort, we argue that reform and succession are equally expedient tools for achieving institutional change but address different negotiating hurdles. By creating a new institution (as opposed to amending an existing one) succession bypasses veto players that may stunt reform. However, succession suffers from potential diseconomies-of-scale (since not every member of an existing IGO may join the successor) which reform does not. Depending on which negotiation hurdle prevails, reform will be preferred to succession or vice versa. Our analysis advances existing understandings of institutional contestation and change within the life cycle of an international organisation.

Sustainable international business model innovations for a globalizing circular economy: a review and synthesis, integrative framework, and opportunities for future research

AbstractThe global imperative has increased in recent years for international firms to respond to major threats such as unintended environmental, social, and economic problems arising from ecological destruction, population growth, and economic activity. To respond to this confluence that has created an emerging existential crisis, we identify that a globalizing circular economy (CE) is required and subsequently define a new construct: sustainable international business model innovations. In doing so, we introduce circular inputs, sharing platforms, product as a service, product use extension, and resource recovery as business models that contain the potential to reply to these grand challenges. Based on CE principles, the innovations and designs introduced are contrasted with the traditional linear economic model and are presented as actionable standardization/adaptation alternatives for companies responding to differing informal and formal international institutions. Based on the theoretical underpinnings of the resource-based, dynamic capabilities, and international business model innovation perspectives, we introduce an integrative framework that is accompanied by a series of detailed research questions to provide future research opportunities for the domain. This conceptual approach holds that international resource design influences marketing capabilities adaptation which, in turn, impacts international performance and offers a foundation from which to build the literature.

Flexible Institution Building in the International Anti-corruption Regime: Proposing a Transnational Asset Recovery Mechanism

AbstractAsset recovery is a fundamental principle of anti-corruption law, without which the financial damage from corruption cannot be repaired. Yet recovering assets is notoriously difficult and time-consuming, and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption provides little technical or institutional support to facilitate such returns. To remedy this, we propose the creation of a transnational asset recovery mechanism that could provide myriad services to states upon request, including gathering and publishing information, providing technical assistance and capacity building, helping to conclude agreements on asset return, and monitoring returned funds. Theoretically, we introduce the concepts of customizability and selectability to explain why a flexible transnational asset recovery mechanism has advantages over more formal international institutions, such as an international anti-corruption court. These benefits include lower financial and political costs, enhanced adaptability, and a greater likelihood of enhancing interstate cooperation regarding asset returns.

An international hierarchy of science: conquest, cooperation, and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty System

The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), created in 1959 to govern the southern continent, is often lauded as an illustration of science’s potential to inspire peaceful and rational International Relations. This article critically examines this optimistic view of science’s role in international politics by focusing on how science as a global hierarchical structure operated as a gatekeeper to an exclusive Antarctic club. I argue that in the early 20th century, the conduct of science in Antarctica was entwined with global and imperial hierarchies. As what Mattern and Zarakol call a broad hierarchy, science worked both as a civilized marker of international status as well as a social performance that legitimated actors’ imperial interests in Antarctica. The 1959 ATS relied on science as an existing broad hierarchy to enable competing states to achieve a functional bargain and ‘freeze’ sovereignty claims, whilst at the same time institutionalizing and reinforcing the legitimacy of science in maintaining international inequalities. In making this argument, I stress the role of formal international institutions in bridging our analysis of broad and functional hierarchies while also highlighting the importance of scientific hierarchies in constituting the current international order.

Emergent Flexibility in Institutional Development: How International Rules Really Change

AbstractHow do formal international institutions change and adjust to new circumstances? The conventional wisdom in international relations, outlined by rational design, is that the answer lies in designed flexibility, which allows states to adjust agreements. Drawing on rich but disparate literatures across subfields of political science—especially constructivism and historical institutionalism—we propose an alternative, which we call “emergent flexibility.” Emergent flexibility is a property of international institutions that is not intentionally crafted by rule-makers when a rule is formally established, but is subsequently discovered, activated, and accessed by creative rule-users in ways unintended by designers. Rich case studies trace how rule-users have accessed emergent flexibility through the legal interpretive strategy of subsequent practice to change rigid rules of the UN Charter and the European Convention on Human Rights. A key implication of emergent flexibility is that, contrary to rational design expectations, international institutions designed to be rigid can adjust to unforeseen circumstances even in the absence of formal redesign, allowing cooperation to continue. The broadening of flexibility from designed to emergent reveals the politics of flexibility between formal design moments, provides a more nuanced notion of intentionality, and equips us to better address fundamental positive and normative questions of institutional development.

Tracking organizations in the world: The Correlates of War IGO Version 3.0 datasets

This article summarizes the Correlates of War Intergovernmental Organizations (IGO) Version 3.0 datasets. The new datasets include information about the population of IGOs in the international system and state participation in those formal international institutions from 1816 to 2014. Consistent with Versions 2.0 and 2.3, Version 3.0 of the IGO data comes in three forms: country-year, IGO-year, and joint dyadic membership. This article briefly describes the data collection process and identifies important changes to the dataset before moving to analyze fundamental patterns in the data. Most notable among the changes from earlier versions of the data is the inclusion of annual membership data for the 1815–1964 time period. In addition, we present information about the overall trends in the institutionalization of cooperation at both the global and regional levels, with the latter focusing on the interesting membership dynamics in Asia and Africa. We then track and discuss patterns in state memberships and examine how these changes manifest in the dyadic data. The article concludes with a discussion of how the COW IGO 3.0 data compare to other prominent datasets on state participation in international institutions and highlights some new areas of research that will benefit from the release of the updated IGO membership dataset.

Drivers of consensus‐based decision‐making in international environmental regimes: Lessons from the Southern Ocean

Abstract The global environmental crisis (characterized by declines in biodiversity, transboundary pollution, habitat degradation, and climate change) has inspired international environmental regimes, such as the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), to establish large‐scale networks of marine protected areas (MPAs) in areas beyond national jurisdiction. The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica comprises roughly 10% of the global ocean and plays a crucial role in regulating global climate and marine ecosystems. Although the Antarctic marine environment currently remains one of the most intact on Earth, it is threatened by fishery expansion and a rapidly changing climate. In response, CCAMLR has been developing a representative network of MPAs to sustain ecosystem structure and function, protect areas vulnerable to human activities, and conserve biodiversity. Whereas significant research has focused on the role of formal mechanisms and state power in international environmental regimes, very little is known about the role of non‐state actors and informal approaches, particularly in the negotiation of agreements to establish large‐scale networks of MPAs. Case analysis of the 2016 Ross Sea Region MPA agreement reveals that CCAMLR is undergoing a significant period of learning and institutional evolution, as actors seek novel ways to negotiate a network of Southern Ocean MPAs. Key drivers of consensus include external political dynamics, internal leadership and group dynamics, and shared concern for the future of CCAMLR and Antarctic MPAs. Actors also rely on informal principles of negotiation (such as increasing transparency, developing trust, and engaging in dialogue) to fill institutional gaps in both CCAMLR's formal structure and the current process for developing and negotiating MPAs. As environmental threats grow in complexity and scale, non‐state actors and informal negotiations will become increasingly critical to support the ongoing success of formal international institutions dedicated to protecting the ecological integrity and function of the global environment.

Private Governance in Developing Countries: Drivers of Voluntary Carbon Offset Programs

In the Paris Agreement era of climate governance, private market-based initiatives are expected to play a catalytic role in achieving global commitments. However, the literature has been largely silent on the political causes of the variable and often limited uptake of such initiatives in the Global South. This article uses original project-level data to investigate the participation in voluntary carbon offset (VCO) programs across developing countries. We argue that, paradoxically, access to formal international institutions and linkages with domestic priorities are key factors for participation in voluntary carbon markets, reducing asymmetries in information, capacity, and interest in developing contexts. Our statistical analysis finds that institutions such as the Clean Development Mechanism and targeted foreign aid, as well as domestic concerns such as climate vulnerability and advancing renewable energy, shape in important ways the variable engagement in VCO projects. Our analysis also suggests that the design of private regulations can be fine-tuned to better capture synergies between local concerns and transnational climate action.

Capacity and Constraint: Governance Through International and Transnational Law

Transboundary problems have provided serious challenges for states’ governance capacity for long. As a result, the modern state has not only begun to adapt its own administrative and regulatory structures; it has also come to rely increasingly on effective institutional structures for cooperation and governance on a regional and global scale. The classical instrument for international cooperation, international law, can only provide such structures under certain conditions and within strict limits. Governments have therefore turned to alternative forms of transnational ordering, which in some cases have indeed led to more effective decision-making – key among them formal international institutions, informal government networks, extraterritorial regulation, and links with private forms of regulation. However, all of these tools come with drawbacks – some are more effective than others, and the more they are effective, the more they tend to entail a loss of control for national governments, regulators and administrators. Domestic authorities have sought to readjust and develop new forms of influence in transnational regulatory contexts, some of them resulting in asymmetrical structures that increase the capacity of some countries’ institutions while constraining those of others. In this paper, I analyze the different forms of transnational law- and rule-making with respect to their varying impacts on, and links with, domestic governance institutions, and I place a particular focus on the most prominent example – the rise of informal institutions and transgovernmental networks in global regulation.

Global Nollywood: The Nigerian movie industry and alternative global networks in production and distribution

While Nollywood, Nigeria’s video industry, is largely separate from dominant global cultural industry networks of production inputs and distribution, it is an industry that is still globally linked in a number of ways. In this article, I investigate the nature and layout of these connections via interviews with those populating these networks, from key Nollywood producers to shop owners thousands of miles from Lagos. I conclude that, instead of the formal links of dominant cultural industry networks, these links are mostly via alternative global networks, forged on the flipside of – or the gaps between – the connections that link the Network Society. Some formal international institutions have a presence, but these are largely mediated through Nollywood’s situation in global cultural industry networks. I argue that this renders Nollywood as situated in an alternative media capital, central to alternative networks, while too informal to integrate into dominant networks, and it is from this position that we can best understand Nollywood’s position in global media flows.

Global governance in the context of climate change: the challenges of increasingly complex risk parameters

It is well-acknowledged that there is an imbalance between the existing structures and processes for global governance and the threats that the world is facing to its environment and natural resources. When swift responses to risk and uncertainty are required, formal international institutions and legal frameworks are found wanting. Climate change is accelerating and exacerbating worst case scenarios in the areas of energy, fisheries, forests, food, water and desertification, to name but a few, and intensifying pressures of poverty on natural resource management. The importance of avoiding policy failures of the past and failures of global governance has thus become more urgent. This article reviews the global governance challenges arising from complex resource risks and explores what has been learnt about effective risk governance. Global governance can not continue as though the world faces a ‘business as usual scenario’ and climate-related risks—systemic, complex, uncertain and ambiguous—require us to focus on particular aspects of global governance, many of which are those where performance has hitherto been weakest.

Where is the Governance in Internet Governance?

In this paper we take issue with the prevailing conceptualization of Internet governance. Our quarrel isn’t so much with the verbal definition itself; it is with the way the term “Internet governance” is used and applied. Currently, the label is routinely applied to the study of a few formal global governance organizations such as ICANN, the Internet Governance Forum and its predecessor, the World Summit on the Information Society. A very large part of the Internet governance field’s scholarly literature tends to focus almost exclusively on these formal international institutions involved in explicit discussions of the global governance of the Internet. On the other hand, the term “Internet governance” is not normally applied to studies of many real-world activities and problems that play a crucial role in shaping and regulating the way the Internet really works. Interconnection agreements among Internet service providers, routing arrangements, content filtering, the control of spam, phishing and botnets, for example, are not, for the most part, grouped under the field label.

The Move from Institutions? Examining the Phenomenon in Africa

INTRODUCTION The recently issued National Security Strategy of the United States (March 2006), reaffirms the preference for informally created institutions or networks with selective membership increasingly favored in U.S. policy. It describes them as partnerships that emphasize international cooperation, not international bureaucracy; rely on voluntary adherence rather than binding treaties; and are oriented towards action and results rather than legislation and rulemaking. (1) Some commentators have concluded that these networks manifest a move away from institutions. One of my copanelists, Prof. Eyal Benvenisti, has described this trend in his presentation and in a forthcoming publication as thus: This new attitude toward international obligations reflects both the availability of novel ways for governments to interact across political borders, as well as new concerns about international legal tools, especially the formal international institutions. This preference for informal lawmaking suggests that international cooperation can be achieved without recourse to international legal tools and that the informality offers significant benefits to some governments. (2) The phenomenon of of the willing as an informal mechanism for circumventing the bureaucratic strictures and international rule-making or legislative processes of formal international institutions has become more pronounced lately with the proliferation of various coalitions of like-minded states led or inspired by the United States. Yet, the history of this phenomenon has a far longer and more complex life. (3) Most of these coalitions involve countries from the global North, but they are by no means limited to these states. Similar developments--albeit of a limited nature and scope, and of more recent pedigree--can be identified among states of the global South as well. My presentation focuses on the emergence of this phenomenon in the global South and is aimed at demonstrating that the move away from institutions may be occurring not only with respect to the universal or global institutions but also at the level of regional institutions, such as the African Union (AU). In my view, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) presents the closest example of this phenomenon in Africa. NEPAD: A MOVE FROM THE AU? NEPAD is nowadays commonly described as an integral program of the AU, the regional organization that superseded the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in July 2002. Yet, NEPAD originally was conceived as a separate framework for interaction and cooperation among a self-selected group of African states, operating as a parallel structure to the OAU. Although African political leaders subsequently decided to adopt it as a program of the OAU, I would argue that NEPAD was intended to be, and remains, an exclusive, voluntary coalition of like-minded states. From a structural and operational point of view, it remains a separate entity from the AU, notwithstanding the political rhetoric suggesting otherwise. The establishment of a separate small, core secretariat for NEPAD in Midrand, South Africa, away from the headquarters and international bureaucracy of the AU in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is itself a manifestation of this position. In addition, the different approaches taken by the AU and NEPAD leaders in presenting the two initiatives to African governments, civil society groups and Africa's external development partners, in particular the G8 countries, reinforces this view. Time constraints do not permit me to discuss in any meaningful detail the history, process and content of NEPAD or its relevance for solving Africa's developmental problems, etc. In any case, not all these issues are pertinent or relevant to the examination of the phenomenon of the move from institutions. …

International Institutions and Social Learning in the Management of Global Environmental Risks

This article investigates the role played by formal international institutions in the broader process of international efforts to respond to and manage global and transboundary environmental risks. Because few international institutions are designed to deal with the broad nature of environmental risks, it focuses on institutional learning. By analyzing the experiences of the United Nations Environment Program, World Meteorological Organization, and other international institutions involved with global warming, this article identifies institutional properties (or functions) that encourage or inhibit social learning in the management of global environmental risks by international institutions, and that influence the adoption of such lessons by their constituent members.