Bureaucrats working in international intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) regularly help states design new IGOs. Sometimes international bureaucrats possess only limited discretion in institutional design; at other times, they enjoy broad discretion. In fact, they gain discretion even when they openly oppose state preferences. This contravenes conventional thinking about delegation: discretion should decrease as preference divergence between states and international bureaucrats increases. We develop a principal-agent theory of how much discretion states grant to international bureaucrats in the design of new IGOs. This is novel: while principal-agent theories of international delegation are common, scholars have not analyzed principal-agent relationships in the creation of new IGOs. We argue that even an international bureaucracy that disagrees with states' design preferences may enjoy substantial design leeway, due to states' need for bureaucratic expertise. In developing this argument, we employ a formal principal-agent model, case studies, and an original dataset.
States frequently disagree on the importance of cooperation in different issue areas+ Under these conditions, when do states prefer to integrate regimes instead of keeping them separated? We develop a strategic theory of regime integration and separation+ The theory highlights the nature of spillovers between issues+ Positive spillovers exist when cooperation in one issue area aids the pursuit of objectives in another issue area; negative spillovers exist when cooperation in one issue area impedes this pursuit in another issue area+ Conventional wisdom suggests that both positive and negative spillovers foster greater integration+ We argue that negative spillovers encourage integration while positive spillovers do not+ States integrate not to exploit positive spillovers between issues but to mitigate negative spillovers+ To test our theory, we examine the degree of integration or separation among environmental regimes+
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