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Voicing criticism seems to be a difficult task for employees in international organisations (IOs), as numerous anecdotes in the literature suggest. This observation is alarming, since internal criticism is an indispensable resource for organisational learning processes. So why are IOs apparently not using this resource to its full potential? The present article is the first to provide a comprehensive answer to this question by combining insights from organisation theory with an empirical case study of the UN Secretariat. My general argument is that 'criticism from within' is ambivalent. It can be a resource for, but also a threat to IOs: internal criticism can endanger an IO's external reputation as well as destabilise the organisation from within. Based on this theoretical understanding, I identify and empirically examine three specific reasons for the UN Secretariat's weak criticism culture: (1) Criticism is suppressed due to a widespread fear of leaks resulting from external pressures. (2) Criticism is avoided as a strategy of self-protection in the face of (inevitable) failures. (3) Constructive criticism is difficult to express in settings where organisational hypocrisy is necessary.

For two decades scholars have used insights from constructivist approaches and principal-agent (P-A) theory to understand the relationship between states and international organisations (IOs). Together, these works identify the conditions under which IOs can operate independently of states, although they have yet to explain when and why IO bureaucrats are likely to do so. Nor do they articulate a clear and consistent definition of autonomy. In this article, we seek to fill these gaps. We advance a narrow understanding of autonomy that distinguishes unintended behaviour from the intended independence of IO bureaucrats, before developing a three-stage, integrative explanation for the conditions under which IO bureaucrats act autonomously. First, we borrow from constructivist approaches a focus on staffing rules and the identity of IO bureaucrats to explain the sources of these agents’ preferences. Second, we add insights from work on exogenous pressures for change—crises and critical junctures—to explain when and why IO bureaucrats will advance their preferences. Third, we incorporate P-A theory’s attention to an IO’s institutional design, along with insights from literature on domestic institutions, to explain when bureaucrats can implement their preferences. Case studies of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) illustrate our argument.

This article seeks to bridge the gap between the literature on international organisations (IO) and the field of crisis management (CM) by focusing on two themes: how crisis conditions lead organisations to centralise decision-making and how this subsequently affects an international organisation's autonomy. We do this based on two dimensions inspired by the CM literature, that is, the degree of the perceived time pressure and the precrisis legal institutional framework. The plausibility of the analytical framework is assessed on the basis of three cases: the WHO's dealing with the SARS crisis; the European Commission's dealing with the Mad Cow Disease crisis; and the UN's handling of the humanitarian crisis in the Great Lakes region. The results show that the perceived time pressure affected IO autonomy in so far as higher time pressure that rendered IO autonomy stronger, whereas with regard to the institutional framework no stringent pattern could be seen. Moreover, based on our findings, we propose that IO autonomy in crisis situations also depends on the framing of an issue in terms on impartiality, on the extent to which the IO in question is subject to politicisation, as well as on the degree to which it possesses specific technical expertise.