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Does unipolarity select for unilateralism? Theories that derive the behavior of a hegemonic state -and particularly with respect to unilateralism - exclusively from the distribution of relative power are notoriously underdetermined; neorealism suggests that leading states use asymmetries in power to their unilateral advantage, whereas the hegemony literature suggests that leading states leverage potentiall temporary advantage into locking in a favorable institutionalized status quo. This paper argues that the current American response these competing international logics is mediated by political-intellectual traditions about American power. The paper will address why certain unilateral/multilateralist foreign policy traditions are priveleged at certain times, and how these traditions determine - or provide a casual condition for - how the United States responds to structural pressures towards international institutions and cooperation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of international organizations has come a long way, from benign neglect in the past to a widespread recognition of their importance. This paper seeks to weave together two salient trends in the literature: Organizational aspects of IO’s, and their relation with international norms and ideas. It has been argued elsewhere that IO’s can enhance and facilitate the spread of new ideas by adopting them in their policies. There are good reasons to think this was the case with the World Bank’s state reform policies, which changed quite massively at the same time the ‘New Institutional Economics’ rose to prominence among practitioners and scholars of development. This paper will proceed in three steps. First, two models of change will be developed, each giving different emphasis to organizational factors. Second, the changing state reform strategies from the late 1980s until today will be documented. Third, we will analyze how new ideas were put into practice, if at all. What emerges is a complex picture of bottom-up and top-down changes inside a huge organizations, where often only ideas that fit emerging problems get promoted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the first of May 2004 ten new member states will join the EU. Yet, another enlargement process has passed largely unnoticed. For the first time in the history of international organization an international institution seeks to formally adhere to another international body. Indeed, the EU is preparing itself to adhere to the European Convention on Human Rights, the Council of Europe?s main human rights protection instrument. How does it come that an international body seeks accession to another one, especially while large pans of international relations theory assume that international institutions, at the most, provide for increasing cooperation and interdependence between their contracting parties, and refuse to consider international institutions as actors of international relations and, more precisely, of the configuration of European (supranational) governance? If the Draft Constitutional Treaty elaborated by the Convention for the Future of Europe states that: ?the Union shall seek accession to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom?, this paper argues that the Member states have been pushed to proceed to such an EC accession to the ECHR as a result of the rather turbulent interaction between the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. EU member states merely follow the way paved by the European Courts. The interaction between supranational courts has progressively entangled their respective organizations and their member states in a jurisprudential cobweb via both courts? case law politics. Put differently, this paper argues that supranational actors are able to influence norms, have interests and seek for power. Remarkably, the protection of human rights did not get lost over institutional rivalries, There are now two courts at a supranational level that protect human rights and they both play a major role in the process of European integration. Their interaction has progressively lead to a dynamic of convergence that has transformed two separate legal orders into one single, but highly fragmented supranational constitutional space of multiple hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Organization of the Democratic Peace matters. Interdemocratic institutions are particularly suited to block escalation pathways in world politics. By this, they prevent political conflicts among their member states to result in war. This is the core argument of the present paper. It builds on findings from three fields of research which still wait for integration: (a) the liberal analysis of the democratic peace, (b) systemic approaches to international institutions, and (c) new quantitative studies of armed conflicts between states beyond the democratic peace proposition. In a nutshell, the paper sets out to identify three core contributions of international institutions to peaceful conflict management. International institutions can be used to overcome the security dilemma among states and to tame power competitions. They sustain international cooperation under conditions of anarchy and forestall the recourse of governments to unilateral self-help strategies. Finally, international institutions increase the autonomy of issue areas, which decreases the risks of destabilizing spill-over effects from other international policies. In the paper, it is stated that these three core functions are extra-ordinarily well performed by interdemocratic institutions. Therefore, interdemocratic institutions can be considered the missing link in the explanation of the democratic peace. The paper presents preliminary evidence for its core claims from two case studies on the management of security relations between France and Germany on the one hand and Greece and Turkey on the other hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussion on global governance in IR implies the perception that IGOs fulfil important functions in world politics. They do not merely facilitate cooperation among states but develop global rules and norms, establish a frame for states' behaviour, monitor agreements, settle disputes etc. Although some approaches highlight that IGOs become partially autonomous actors, relatively little is known if and to what extent their status is legitimized respectively how they can actively increase their legitimacy or even lose legitimacy. In order to explore these problems the paper is divided in four steps. First, the paper concentrates on IGOs as actors and describes how they can establish a certain level of world order. Second, the paper deals with the notion of legitimacy and how it can be applied to IGOs. Against this background the paper uses in the third step a system-theoretical approach from Organizational Studies perceiving (international) organizations as social systems that consist of decisions. Emancipation from states' couplings occurs if IGOs are able to construct and reconstruct their component, e.g. their decisions, identities, borders, in self-referential circles. This understanding can be applied to IGOs and can be exhausted to analyze their legitimacy. In this respect IGOs can increase legitimacy to the extent they link their decisions to law-like rules und institutionalized procedures. The theoretical concept will be illustrated by focussing on the dispute settlement mechanism within the WTO. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the relevance of the institutionalization process of ad hoc multilateral conferences and their follow-up conferences. This process resulted in organizations characterized by such elements as continuity, rational-legal authority, hierarchy, independence and entrepreneurship.Under certain conditions (which refer to both the internal functioning of an international organization and its external environment) the international secretariat may develop leadership which allows international organizations to play roles that go beyond what the founders had in mind and also go beyond their means of control (constitution, regulations, bodies).The paperdiscusses relevant internal aspects of the policy cycle, such as agenda setting, a participative subsystem, decision-making arrangements, an international secretariat, international law, monitoring and feedback mechanisms as well as bureaucratic pathologies. The paper uses examples from the history of international organizations in the 19th and 20th century, which highlight the relevant mechanisms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reform of the United Nations has been proposed since its inception. The recent Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, made strenuous efforts to modernize the structures of the institution,but to little avail. In the literature much attention is paid to the "what" of reform. Most specialists have their priority list of what should be changed. But, the question of "how" to bring about reform has received scant attention. This paper focuses on a strategy for how civil society can help to transform the UN's structures based not only on the need for global reform but also new theoretical perceptions that entrepreneurially driven change in the international system is now posssible. As a "normative project", the paper spans the gap between empirical research and normatively driven goals. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on global governance has focused either on theoretical accounts of the overall phenomenon, or on empirical studies of distinct institutions that serve to solve particular governance challenges. In this paper we focus instead on the overall "governance architecture," which we define as the overarching system of public and private institutions, principles, norms, regulations, decision-making procedures and organizations that are valid or active in a given issue area of world politics. Within this larger context, we analyze one aspect that is turning into a major source of concern for observers and policy-makers alike: the increasing "fragmentation" of governance architectures in important policy domains. Increasing fragmentation is prevalent in particular in the current gov¬ernance of climate change, which we have hence chosen as empirical illus¬tration for our discussion. The paper offers a first typology of different degrees of fragmentation, which we describe as integrative, cooperative and conflictive fragmentation. Based on this, we assess major scholarly literatures relevant in this debate—namely cooperation theory, environmental policy theory, and international law—and argue that all literatures offer conflicting statements regarding the relative advantages and disadvantages of fragmentation. While we conclude that on balance, fragmentation of global governance architectures brings more harm than positive effects, and that it can generally be seen as a major burden on the overall performance of the system, we also argue that different types of fragmentation have different degrees of performance, and that "integrative fragmentation" might be a realistic second-best option in a world of diversity and difference in which purely universal governance architectures are more a theoretical postulate than a real-life possibility. In the final section, we outline a number of political and institutional strategies to deal with fragmentation of governance architectures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If states are rational, and institutions reflect the will of the powerful, then why do we observe such variation in the design of international organizations? This paper attempts to answer this question by examining several motivations that states, and in particular major powers, have for preferring some institutional design features over others. To this end, the analysis focuses on variation in voting rules across institutions and examines contrasting arguments asserting that voting protocols are avenues through which strong states can institutionalize power or they are ways in which decisions made by international institutions can be self-enforcing. The paper also looks at the importance of other factors such as superpower rivalry and institution size in determining institutional voting rules. To evaluate the role of these multiple factors on voting rule selection, we employ statistical methods and use an original data set of voting rules in a subset of major power intergovernmental organizations. Our main finding is that that voting rules are affected by power considerations when institutions can require policy adjustment by member states and when superpower rivalry is a factor in the institution. On the other hand, we find less support that compliance considerations are important to institutional founders. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite scholarly interest in identifying the linkages between internal unrest and external aggression, there is a significant lack of consensus among these studies regarding the strength or even the existence of a relationship. In this paper, I construct a theoretical framework based on the interaction of state extractive capacity and level of domestic unrest, which integrates a range of policy options available to the state in response to domestic turmoil into a single model (viz., enacting reform measures, diversionary war, internal repression, and military aid from other states or international organizations). By yielding more determinate predictions of when states will enact specific policy responses and not others, the model reconciles many divergent findings in the literature on domestic unrest and war. I find, for instance, that leaders of states with low extractive capacity who are experiencing a high level of domestic unrest are more likely to adopt a bellicose foreign policy to divert the public’s attention away from problems at home than are leaders of states with high extractive capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the origins and evolution of the UNHCR’s core goals. I open by comparing two theories for the origins and evolution of UNHCR’s goals: environmental and sociological. Environmental models posit external forces, including state pressures and global culture. Organizational models posit internally-directed change, including adaptation and learning. I suggest that to understand UNHCR’s evolving interests requires a consideration of how it is that this international organization that lacks much relative autonomy responds to environmental pressures and resource constraints, and that these environmental factors as they are mediated by UNHCR staff represents a good predictor of the direction and content of its organizational interests. Specifically, the content and drift of UNHCR’s interests have been generally in the direction of what powerful states want and a global culture that orients actors toward building responsible states. I demonstrate these changing organizational interests in the context of the transforming the meaning and practice of humanitarianism at UNHCR. Whereas once UNHCR defined humanitarianism as respect for state sovereignty and the principle of noninterference, over the last few decades it includes the involvement in the internal affairs of states. This humanitarianism, though, arguably represents a stealth form of containment that potentially violates refugee rights. This distinct possibility is traced through the organization’s policies on repatriation, internally-displaced peoples, and reintegration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional analysis places social movements in the category of a global civil society, often as secondary actors to states and international organizations. Furthermore, movements have been studied traditionally in the context of real social interaction, not the virtual to which the internet gives special impetus. This paper challenges the conventional approach. Instead of presupposing a given place or role for transnational social movements in global politics, I ask questions about the new political reality they may be shaping. What does the social look like in the world space outside anything governed by law and the political? How do we capture moves toward global responsibility, as well as resistance to assuming it? Why do people, for the most part, not resist? What blocks this realization? How are the barriers being challenged by new technology? To understand the reconfiguration of the social, the analysis draws on the works of such scholars as Dewey, Rousseau, Kac and Bergson. The argument then examines technology’s impact on social relations, in particular, the way it puts people in contact who would never otherwise be in contact with each other?hence the move from the physical to a different kind of space, the virtual space of the internet, and the possibilities it holds/as well as barriers to transforming society itself. Among the key questions to be addressed are: What is the promise of technology? What is the role of US hegemony in this? Why do people go to the internet to transform social realities?why not just transform groups already existing in their immediate environs? Or, what are the connections between mobilizing on the internet and hitting the street? How does the virtual inform the real? Why are people not responding to traditional political spaces, but creating new ones in virtual arenas? Is the internet the new social? Finally, how can we understand its educational and democratic potential? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The neo-liberal institutionalist literature in international relations theory generally asserts that the presence of international institutions facilitates international cooperation by helping to overcome the problem of commitment and mutual compliance. While this dynamic may be true (and this assertion has been greatly contested), the claim is only valid for those instances in which the interaction is largely characterized by the dynamics of an iterated prisoner’s dilemma---that is, one where both parties can benefit through cooperation, but cannot achieve cooperation given the structure of the interaction. While interactions among willing members of a particular institution may well be characterized as such, the interaction between an institution and a recalcitrant third party---as is usually the case for multilateral enforcement action---do not fit this pattern. The traditional literature on international institutions has very little to say on such interactions. Moreover, the bargaining that takes place within international institutions may affect the bargaining that takes place in the context of enforcement action. The paper analyzes a very simple model of three way bargaining to explore this interaction. We find that intra-institutional bargaining may in fact make enforcement less effective and conflict more likely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The child soldiers phenomenon concerns 300.000 children around the globe, but it is partilarly preoccupying in areas where internal conflicts take place. Our concern will be here to try to analyse the actions and programs of international organisations, NGO or IGO, in order to stop the recruitment of children, to identify their failures and to propose some solutions. Our approach will be inspired from peace studies and human security theories. Both cause and consequence of the new kind of conflicts the world is facing today, child soldiering is closely related to the present expressions of violence, caracterized both by the absence of legitimization and decentralization.The study of a global management of conflicts will allow us to go back to the roots of the recruitment of children. The traditional schemes of crisis management are necessarily reconsidered considering that a social violence ultimately calls for a social response through the satisfaction of individual and communitarian primary needs. As a case studies for international actions, this paper on child soldiering also brings us to look closely at the relationship between hegemony, both international and regional, IGO and NGO means, and consequently the efficiency of the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has developed the premier humanitarian assistance capability in the world today. It is involved in many more types of situations than its originators intended and it finds itself embedded in contemporary conflict. As a result it has expanded its mandate and developed a certain level of independence. At the same time, it is part of a state-based international organization, and thus finds itself at the mercy of the states who provide its funding and sit on its Executive Committee. It is evident that states, especially Western, industrialized states, and especially the United States, attempt to use and manipulate UNHCR to perform certain of activities in conflict zones where these states may have an interest. Yet, at the same time, some of these activities conflict with the humanitarian mandate and ethos of the organization, and there is resistance to to being used as an agent of hegemony. As a result, UNHCR becomes a site of a strategic contest among a wide variety of actors. This paper will explore these dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several recent books (Jackson 1999, Krasner 2001, Lake 1999, Philpott 2001, K. Weber 2000) evaluate the meaning of state sovereignty and its possible erosion. But not all authors think of reduced sovereignty in the same way. As a result, the literature threatens to be diminished by conceptual stretching, a term used by Collier and Mahon in reference to democracy. (1993). For example, the relationship between France and the EU, the US and Puerto Rico, the United Nations and Kosovo, and the internet and China have all been considered cases of reduced sovereignty. Yet, each of these relationships has fundamentally different properties. In this paper, I suggest five ways of distinguishing between the many types of reduced sovereignty: by arena (domestic and international); issue area (security, economics, environment, social policy); origins (none, negotiated, coerced); maintenance (physical and in absentia); and leader (state, coalition, international organization, none). These categorizations reveal new research questions, such as Are IO-led hierarchies more common in some regions than state-led hierarchies? Who stays longer: IOs or states? Have different types of sovereignty been reduced more over time than others? Is there more hierarchy in some issue areas than others? Is hierarchy contagious across issue areas (economics spreads to security, e.g.)? Is there a correlation between reductions in international sovereignty and in domestic sovereignty? Is there a correlation between physical presence and endurance of the hierarchy? Why do states choose state-run hierarchies over IO-run hierarchies? Furthermore, a typology such as the proposed one will assist scholars in developing a database of reduced sovereignty, enabling analysts to use quantitative analysis as a complement to the qualitative analysis already being done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do governments create IOs and delegate tasks and authority to them rather than merely act unilaterally or cooperate without delegating? Once created, how (and how successfully) can IOs be controlled? What features of IOs generate opportunities for independence from member governments? More generally, how can we understand the delegation relationship between governments and international organizations? This paper introduces these problems and offers some initial definitions and arguments. We define delegation as a conditional grant of authority by a Principal to an Agent to act on its behalf. The grant is limited by time or scope and is revocable by the principal. We identify seven reasons why states delegate to IOs rather than pursue alternatives such as unilateral action or multilateral cooperation without delegation. We also discuss various control mechanisms used by principals and we analyze the problems of agent slack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will address the issue of state participation in international institutions. Very frequently, studies of international organisation look at state membership as the most obvious quantitative indicator of state participation in different institutional webs. However, state participation in international institutions varies significantly, although there are several methodological dilemmas as to how it would be possible to account for such variation. The paper will attempt to analyse what will be termed as institutional participation and what will be referred to as normative participation. It will seek to map the criteria that can be used for identifying various degrees of state participation in international institutions. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on realism and neoliberalism to explain how rising powers respond when their expanding interests conflict with those of the declining power. I hypothesize that when confronted with this dilemma, rising powers respond by challenging the declining power through international institutions, such as the United Nations. While more direct means of pursuing their competing interests may be available, these measures may be construed as provocative at best and threatening at worst. Instead, rising powers will seek to allay the concerns of the declining power by pursuing their competing interests through institutions. The reasons for this are twofold. First, institutions are considered to be a legitimate forum for debate and opposition. Second, institutions, by design, contain mechanisms capable of constraining the declining power. I test my hypotheses by: conducting a statistical analysis to determine whether changes in state power are associated with fluctuations in UN General Assembly behavior as reflected in votes cast; and conducting a case study of U.S.-China interactions in the UN Security Council. The principle data sources are: Erik Voeten and Adis Merdzanovic's "United Nations General Assembly Voting Data," The World Bank World Development Indicators, and press that covers UN Security Council developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diffusion of norms in the international sphere is usually described as a process at the interface directly between countries or via international organizations which are engaged in the legitimation of particular norms. This paper looks at the role of ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union is not yet "good enough at multilateralism" and plays only a limited role thus far in international organisations. The latest attempts for constitutional change (Constitutional Treaty and Treaty of Lisbon) reflect the consensus among EU member states that a modified setup is necessary to live up to the Union's ambitions. The authors argue that the EU's capability to act effectively within multilateral frameworks is to a great extent dependent on the efficiency of its institutional architecture. The paper analyses relevant provisions of the Treaties of Nice and Lisbon (with a focus on CFPS) in order to identify existing problems and to assess the new setup in view of the EU's capability for internal coordination and external representation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do instruments of legalization and flexibility influence environmental regime performance? Although policymakers increasingly acknowledge international regimes to be of substantial importance, it remains unclear how to establish or restructure effective international institutions along the frames of both variables. This paper explores the impact of both legalization and flexibility on regime performance by a first large-N study, using data on international environmental regimes. The main implications are that "precision" is a necessary requirement for environmental regimes to be effective. If a regime's rule and norm system is well defined, well understood, and clear, i.e. very precise, then a regime tends to be more effective in addressing an environmental problem. We do not find evidence, however, that "hard law" is more effective than "soft law" or that delegation mechanisms may be of relevance. Second, flexibility in the regime structure promotes regime performance. Regular instead of subsidiary bodies seem to enhance flexibility and thus effectiveness. However, contrary to our expectations, flexibility in states' agenda setting power, membership or decision-making seem not to be of crucial importance for the effectiveness of international environmental regimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can an international ranking have an impact on one country while others are not affected at all? Or to put it differently: under what circumstances can such ratings and rankings produced by an international organization (IO) have influence? This paper examines the "power of numbers" on the example of the OECD's PISA study and its diverting impact on national education policy making. We argue that ratings & rakings (R&R) have an impact if the evaluated topic is framed as crucial (for state purpose) and if, at the same time, a substantial gap between the national self perception and the empirical results can be observed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most profound trends in global governance over the past two decades is the growing extent to which transnational actors have been granted access to international institutions. The source of this development is a subject that so far has received limited systematic attention by international relations theorists. This paper addresses that gap by suggesting three alternative approaches, each offering a distinct explanation of transnational access to international institutions. The first approach privileges concerns about functional efficiency, highlighting the benefits to states and international institutions of engaging transnational actors. The second approach emphasizes concerns about democratic legitimacy, and suggests that we have witnessed the spread of a new norm of what constitutes legitimate governance at the international level. The third approach stresses concerns about power distribution, conceiving of transnational actors as instruments in state competition. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International institutions increasingly affect each other’s development, maintenance and ef-fectiveness. Research so far has merely focused on the issue of effectiveness and broader con-sequences. The paper argues firstly that theoretical progress could be promoted by integrating variables explaining the formation and maintenance of international institutions into a dynamic and complex model of institutional interplay. Secondly, research ought to be extended to institutions governing issue areas like trade, finance, and standards as well as their respective interactions. Thirdly, East Asia is a highly interesting region regarding regime interaction, since regional cooperation is slowly but steadily evolving in different issue areas as a reaction to institutional operations on the global level of governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is increasingly depicted as a security issue. However, different conceptions of security, ranging from traditional to broad understandings of human security underly these securitization moves. The paper traces these conceptions and investigates their relative weights in international policy discourses as well as material action by international organisations and national governments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) have been used as instruments of countries as a way to approach particular issues shared by their members. Even tough IGOs were primarily created by states, they usually function as autonomous units. However, it is important to mention that most of the studies related to IGOs have been in the context of states, since they are the composition of such institutions. Thus, it is easy to think of a network of states that are in contact with one another through different IGO memberships, and this is the area in which most scholars have focused on the study of IGOs. Even though we know that there are many approaches to the study IGOs, sometimes it is hard to find a wider context that explains the dynamics of networks of IGOs. Thus, I present in this paper a scheme with which to measure IGO connectedness. Furthermore, I provide a basic description of variables defining within a network of IGOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper looks at domestic conditions under which states approach international organizations. It particularly examines if and when states (ab)use international organizations. In the first part, I explore current approaches to studying international organizations, focusing on the literature about delegation to IOs, as based on principal-agent theory. I argue that this approach mainly regards international cooperation as the motive for delegation and does not sufficiently acknowledge the aspect of domestic reasons, such as the lack of expertise and the need to overcome barriers, as to why states delegate to international organizations. As case study, I focus on the OECD's tool of multilateral surveillance, namely peer-reviewing in the field of education. The empirical findings show how particularly small states consult international organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I study the optimal conditioning of international cooperation on domestic outcomes in a political environment with private information and changing domestic circumstances. I address the implications of such incentives for two central aspects of international organization: the optimal structure of cooperation agreements and the empirical pattern of compliance with cooperation agreements. An optimal cooperation agreement between governments that cannot perfectly observe their domestic circumstances reconciles a trade-off between political efficiency of international cooperation and incentives to misrepresent domestic circumstances. The possibility that some governments would misrepresent their domestic circumstances in order to achieve a more favorable cooperation outcome leads to the inability of reaching efficient cooperation outcomes in a range of plausible scenarios. The main theoretical contribution is to establish a new causal link between domestic political transparency and the structure of cooperation rules. When transparency can be measured in terms of the transparency of the political process, this argument implies different contracting opportunities for democracies and autocracies. With respect to the observed compliance pattern of the two regime types, the argument provides a new explanation for why democracies defect from fewer international agreements than autocracies, and why democracies cooperate more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, international organizations (IOs) have become increasingly pervasive features of the global landscape. The implications of this development have been studied extensively and hotly debated in the field of international relations. In contrast, little research has been conducted on the factors that lead states to enter international organizations. This gap in the literature is both surprising and important. While many countries have rushed to join international organizations, others participate in few of these organizations. What determines the propensity of states to join IOs? We argue regime type and change in regime type are crucially important in this regard. To test these claims, we examine whether the regime types of states and changes in their regime type have influenced the rate at which they joined IOs from 1965 to 2000. We find that democratic countries and those undergoing a democratic transition are much more likely to enter IOs than other countries. Furthermore, democracies and states in the throes of democratization enter IOs at about the same rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A burgeoning body of literature assesses the socio-political factors that influence investment decisions, including the nature of domestic institutions, societal rights, and participation in international institutions and agreements. Oddly enough, these have evolved largely as separate lines of research and little effort has been made to compare the relative importance of these socio-political factors in making investment decisions. Moreover, though the diverse nature of FDI is widely noted, extant research relies almost exclusively upon the examination of aggregate FDI. As a result, scholars have little insight into the ways that investors prioritize these factors, or how they vary across different industries. In an effort to synthesize these strands of research and further deepen our understanding of the determinants of investment decisions, this study models the prospective impact of several factors that have been found to significantly influence FDI - human rights, democratic governance, and commitment to international trade agreements and investment treaties - across multiple investment sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores international institutions with a focus on effective and high performance financing systems to promote climate change adaptation activities in developing countries. Two approaches are used: 1) a new analytical framework and indicators to evaluate the effectiveness and performance of existing financing systems for adaptation, which are based on studies of international politics and development financing; and 2) the analyses of case studies of developing countries that are vulnerable to climate change in the Asia-Pacific region. The results of the analyses show that the effective combinations of donors and recipients to promote adaptation are different among developing countries, and that it is important to account for the domestic conditions of each developing country in financing adaptation. This research implies that future financing architecture for adaptation needs to be developed based on the best match between the needs and national situations of developing countries, and the characteristics of financing systems with different financing sources and targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do democratizing states form and join international organizations? We make the case that democratizing states initially have good reasons to establish new IOs instead of joining existing ones. Democratizing states face different governance problems than established democracies, and existing IOs often do not provide solutions to these problems. Additionally, established democracies may initially hesitate to allow democratizing states to join the most lucrative existing IOs. Quantitative analysis shows that democratization has a strong and consistent effect on the probability of forming a new IO, but not on the probability of joining an existing IO. Interestingly, this difference holds even for IOs that are designed to enable credible commitment. More detailed analyses show that this finding holds for most issue areas, and reveals substantial differences between the IOs that democratizing states join versus form. Qualitative analysis also reveals that the causal mechanisms we have highlighted exerted inuence on outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government is no longer the exclusive business of the state but involves an increasing range of international institutions and private agents. While the institutional modes and policy effects of this development have been widely analyzed, we know fairly little about their implications for politics. The recent growth in popularity of the concept of politicization in the fields of International Relations (IR) and European Integration (EI) research provides a promising path in this direction. The research agenda emerging around this concept assumes that the growing public contestation of international institutions has the potential to transform international governance as it is today. Yet, whether such a process really takes place is by no means clear and theory building on its causes and consequences is still quite diverse. Hence, this contribution aims to advance this research by providing an empirical analysis of patterns of societal politicization for three major international governance arrangements. It asks whether the EU, the UN, and the G7/8 - representing three major international organizations - become more publicly contested over time and whether this politicization can be attributed to structural factors such as institutional or societal change or whether political entrepreneurship plays a crucial role. The empirical section demonstrates on the basis of a corpus of press articles - drawn from US, British, German and Swiss high-quality newspapers over 17 years (1993-2009) - that particular patterns of politicization differ across countries and organizations. We observe varying politicization intensities, developments over time, witness a strong focus on decision-making bodies and an almost equal distribution of input and output criteria that are applied to evaluation of the selected organizations. Regarding the explanation of these results, empirical evidence suggests a mixture of structural variables of institutional and societal change and highlights at the same time the relevance of particular patterns of mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do intra-regime dynamics affect domestic decisions to sign, ratify, and comply with international human rights law? Scholars in this area still typically assume that the same domestic actors are responsible for treaty signing, ratification, and compliance. But under an individual government, the domestic actors responsible for treaty signing are rarely the same as those who are expected to ratify the treaty or comply with its terms. More importantly, these different actors often have divergent preferences about the extent to which they believe the state should internationally commit to respecting domestic human rights. Although executives of newly-transitioned democracies are more likely to sign onto human rights treaties to limit the use of torture (Moravcsik 2000, Simmons 2009), I argue that legislatures in newly transitioned and unconsolidated democracies are less likely to ratify (and bureaucracies and militaries are less likely to comply with) these treaties as the domestic presence of the former dictatorial regime increases. I test my hypotheses taking advantage of variation in the number of states that sign, ratify, and comply with the Optional Protocol on the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Great Powers have long been viewed as one of the traditional institutions of international soceity. The position of Great Powers rests both on material power but also on understandings of legitimacy and authority. A rising state can claim Great Power stat ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organized hypocrisy is a common phenomenon in international organizations, but remains poorly understood. Organized hypocrisy (OH) consists of contradictions or disparity between talk, decisions, and actions, arising from inconsistent material and normative-ideational pressures on organizations or on actors in institutional settings. What accounts for variations in organized hypocrisy across a range of international institutions? What exactly is the nature of perceived hypocrisy we observe in these cases? Who or what is responsible for the apparently hypocritical behavior we observe? And most importantly, what role does hypocrisy - perceived and actual - play vis-à-vis the legitimacy and effectiveness of international institutions? We address these questions in terms of case studies of World Bank environmental policies, and Nuclear Weapon State behavior in the nuclear nonproliferation regime -- cases that reflect different conceptions of organized hypocrisy developed by, respectively, Nils Brunsson and Stephen Krasner. We argue that despite the negative connotation attached to the word hypocrisy, organized hypocrisy can be functional, even rational and necessary international organizations and regimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European foreign and security policy is an issue area characterized by multiple international institutions with overlapping jurisdictions and duplicative memberships. How do states decide which institution or institutions to use when they want to cooperate on foreign policy? What factors matter when they make that decision â€" characteristics of the institution, or characteristics of the issue? This investigation into forum shopping behavior in European foreign policy cooperation goes beyond existing studies of forum shopping in three ways. First, it examines both the choice among institutions as well as the choice to use an institution; unilateral behavior and ad hoc multilateral cooperation are also outcome of interest. Second, its sample consists of a random set of international events drawn from .Keesing’s Contemporary Archive.. This innovative sampling approach helps to correct for the selection bias that would arise from studying only examples of successful cooperation. Third, it uses a seemingly unrelated probit approach to explore the dynamics of complementarity and substitution among the outcomes of interest. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the possibilities for theoretical synthesis and scientific progress in the study of international organizations (IOs). It notes that meta-theoretical debates have distracted IO scholars leading to a greater gap between the study and the empirical reality of IOs. It explains that the two possibilities for creating synthetic models of IO are when rationalists require a structure that will handle casual work and when the two-step model by political scientist Jeffrey Legro are repeated in a dynamic process.

Why do states resist membership in some international organizations? This paper develops a framework that demonstrates that the choice of institutions for resolving cooperation problems depends upon the verifiability of players' actions. Action non-verifiability issues can inhibit efficacy of some international organizations and lead to the punishment of compliant states. If actions are observable and verifiability, states can achieve first-best outcomes through a complete contract agreement enforced by a benevolent international organization. If actions are unobservable, second-best outcomes result due to costs of information rents. However, if one state's actions are observable and verifiable but the other state's actions are observable but nonverifiable, then the state with nonverifiable actions will exploit the other's enforced compliance in the international organization. The disadvantaged state will attempt to renegotiate for the enforcement of an incomplete contract by the international organization. If the enforcement of the incomplete contract is too costly, then either the disadvantaged state will continue to be exploited, retaliate with a nonverifiable response, or exit the international organization and devise a bilateral mechanism to capture the gains from trade. The paper examines the effects of nonverifiable nontariff barriers on international trade agreements and develops some policy implications for international organizations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UNHCR’s work, like that of many other international organizations, has been characterized by a fundamental tension between the interests of states with its normative agenda. On the one hand, UNHCR’s mandate has been to ensure that states maintain a commitment to a normative framework based on principles of humanitarian and human rights. On the other hand, states’ contributions to refugee protection have been shaped by power and interests. The challenge posed by this tension took on an increasingly North-South dimension with the expansion of the regime over time from a European focus to a focus on the Global South since the 1960s. The shift brought a host of latecomers to the regime, with Southern states adopting the regime on the terms largely pre-determined by Northern states. Likewise, UNHCR exists within a broader and changing UN system, which has posed particular challenges to the Organization. Finally, the changing nature of conflict and displacement has confronted UNHCR with a new array of challenges, including internal displacement, post-conflict reconstruction and protracted refugee situations. Many academics and practitioners have highlighted the concern that expanding UNHCR’s work to cover these new activities has risked compromising the Organization’s core mandate. In response to these concerns, this paper will examine the origins and interaction of these various challenges for UNHCR. Drawing from a consideration of the evolution of UNHCR’s work since the 1960s, with particular focus on the range of tensions that currently affect the organization, the paper will draw on a broader international relations perspective to examine the nature and consequences of these tensions. The paper will conclude by considering ways that the Organization can efficiently and equitably reconcile its protection mandate with the constraints and challenges posed by world politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organizations have intervened extensively in the transformation process of the countries in (South) Eastern Europe, in particular for the sake of democratization. Especially the European Union (EU) has heavily drawn on strict conditionality in order to make these countries comply with its political, democratic accession criteria. However, as demonstrated by Schimmelfennig and others (2005) in particular, EU political conditionality has proven rather irrelevant in autocratically ruled states. Furthermore, in unstable democracies where EU conditionality has been apparently successful by strengthening liberal politics immediately and fast, its long-term outcome might be much more shallow and also reversible (Goetz 2005). This paper aims to explain these discrepancies by bringing the factor ‘national identity’ back into focus.Constructivist approaches show that national identity can hinder successful external democratization. This is particularly true for nationalistic identities whose fundament contradicts liberal democratic norms and values. The reasons for the importance of identity can be twofold. Conditionality as an incentive-based democratization strategy aims at influencing the cost-benefit-calculation of the target state’s government. However, albeit the huge incentive of membership, (semi-) autocratic leaders were often not responsive to the sticks & carrots in fields considered as crucial for national identification processes at that time. Secondly, conditionality proved to be successful in transferring rules in countries where an initial change towards democracy had already taken place. However, transitologists argue that ‘deep’ democratization, i.e. democratic consolidation in the sense of cultural adaptation of democratic norms and practices in the medium and long run, requires substantial change of preferences which cannot be achieved by strict conditionality. If the underlying nationalistic identity resists the initial democratization efforts, it will hamper further political-cultural consolidation of democracy in the respective country. The region of South Eastern Europe shows exemplarily how nationalistic identities limit the impact of external actors’ engagement. In this region identity-related issues play a central role in the political arena. The case of Croatia is a particularly suitable example to illustrate the theoretically elaborated arguments. In the 1990s conditionality has proven rather irrelevant in inducing decisive changes since compliance with the EU conditions meant for Tudjman co-operating with countries which were still seen as ethnic rivals. Although the more progressive governments Racan and Sanader quickly transformed their country into a democratic functioning state, they were, however, always reluctant to sustainable reforms as far as cornerstones of the national identity were concerned, such as the integration of the Serb minority.The paper proceeds as follows. In the first part, we briefly outline political conditionality as an instrument of democracy promotion. Secondly, we identify the conditions under which national identity hinders the internalization of democratic norms and principles. This will lead us to the main part of the paper in which we discuss the capacity of political conditionality to bring about democratization beyond superficial compliance with formal political criteria. We illustrate our argument using the example of Croatia with some spotlights on the Former Yugoslavia/Serbia. In sum, we argue that the strong and ‘top-down’ accession conditionality imposed by the EU in (South) Eastern countries could well have the effect of hindering democratic socialization so as to result in only ‘shallow democratization’ at best. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the possibilities for transforming global governance. After discussing what transformation actually means, it argues that it is a complex undertaking involving more than the incorporation of previously excluded actors into structures of global governance. Different sites of global governance offer very different challenges and possibilities for transformation. The paper goes on to assess the opportunities and limitations of gender mainstreaming ? a strategy that has become central to many attempts to transform institutions from the inside and has been adopted as a policy goal by many feminists and institutions alike. Using the contrasting examples of attempts to mainstream gender into human rights regimes and economic governance, the paper argues that the political opportunity structure, the ways in which issues are framed as well as the actions of key actors, both inside and outside institutions, are crucial. It also reflects on the opportunities that can be offered by the creation of new institutions. Transforming global governance is a multi-faceted task. No one strategy is sufficient to change all institutions and their cultures, making them transparent, accountable and open to previously excluded groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at how the WTO Secretariat matters. With the exception of narratives on the Director-General?s role in decision-making in the biannual Ministerial meetings, there is great lack of understanding of the functioning of the secretariat. The first part of the paper reviews the role of the secretariat from a rational design view in a historical perspective and describes the secretariat?s functions in rule-making and rule-implementation. The puzzle to be addressed is why in rule-implementation the agent holds substantial discretion, while in rule-making the agent enjoys only few delegated powers. The paper applies a principal-agent framework and puts forwards scope conditions ? derived from sociological and rational institutionalism ? for the agent to matter. Empirically the paper traces the discretion the secretariat holds and focuses on the dominating factors that explain the modes (and variance) of agency behaviour. Finally, the paper tests a number of alternative explanations for agency behaviour dominant in the literature on international organizations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]