Looking beyond States: Openings for international bureaucrats to enter the institutional design process

Tana Johnson ()

The Review of International Organizations, 2013, vol. 8, issue 4, 499-519

Abstract: Surprisingly little research investigates a stark reality: the vast majority of today’s international intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) were crafted not by states alone, but with participation by international bureaucrats working in pre-existing IGOs. What explains this phenomenon? Drawing on international relations scholarship, this article develops predictions involving the capabilities of states, or a matter’s salience to states. The predictions are tested with a new and original dataset that captures, for the first time, variation in the roles that international bureaucrats play in the institutional design arena. Statistical analyses find that states’ need for expertise, as well as the design negotiations’ distance from high-politics, leave openings for international bureaucrats to enter institutional design processes. The findings enhance our understanding of institutional design, principal-agent relationships, non-state actors, and divisions of labor in contemporary global governance. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Keywords: Institutional design; Bureaucracy; International organizations; Global governance; F50; F53; F55; F59; F60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11558-013-9166-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:revint:v:8:y:2013:i:4:p:499-519

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... iology/journal/11558

DOI: 10.1007/s11558-013-9166-0

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of International Organizations is currently edited by A. Dreher

More articles in The Review of International Organizations from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().