This article analyses the emergency governance of international organizations by combining securitization theory with legal theory on the state of exception. Our main argument is that where issues are securitized as global threats, exceptionalism can emerge at the level of supranational bodies, endowing them with the decisionist authority to define emergencies and guide political responses. We theorize the 'emergency trap', which is triggered when the emergency powers of international organizations reduce the obstacles to, and increase the incentives for, the securitization of further issues. Based on the idea that the emergency trap functions as an institutional driver of securitization, we also highlight the importance of the constitutional containment of emergency competencies as an alternative to discursive desecuritization strategies. We illustrate this security-emergency dynamic in a case study of the recent empowerment of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the governance of global health emergencies. The article shows how WHO's exceptional response to the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crisis paved the way for an institutionalization of emergency powers within the organization and contributed to securitizing the 2009 swine influenza outbreak as a global pandemic. However, WHO's crisis governance has also triggered internal and external processes of constitutional contention.
This research note discusses limitations of principal-agent (PA) analysis in explaining gradual change in international organisations (IOs). It suggests that historical institutionalism (HI) can fill important gaps left by the PA approach and identifies scope conditions for both approaches. For this purpose, a distinction is made between two sources of state power that PA usually treats as synergistic -namely the formal control of IO decisions and material power resources. While PA analysis is best applicable where reform coalitions of like-minded member states control both formal and material resources, in many contexts there exist frictions between material and formal power in IOs. In these constellations recent HI-inspired works on gradual modes of change such as 'layering' and 'drift' are of particular relevance. This research avenue is illustrated with empirical examples from a variety of international organisations.
The article puts forward a historical institutionalist account of how international organizations are 'designed.' I argue that deliberate institutional design is circumscribed by path-dependent power dynamics within international organizations. Power-driven path dependence is used to explain that organizations lock in and reinforce historical privileges of international organization subunits. Early winners in the international organization lock in their privileges with the support of member-state allies, and reap increasing returns from their positions over rounds of reform. They thereby amplify features of international organization design that reformers would otherwise change later on. The argument is illustrated with a historical case study of the World Health Organization's unique federal design, which grants the regional offices near autonomy from headquarter oversight. Vocal criticisms of the World Health Organization's regionalization and repeated centralization attempts notwithstanding, the powers of the regions have increased over time. The case study retraces the path-dependent struggles over the World Health Organization's federal design since its creation in the 1940s. While the literature on international organizations tends to reserve inertia and path dependence for constructivist analysis, this article offers a rationalist account of inertia in international institutions.
In 1990, the World Health Organization (WHO) started to downsize its renowned Global Programme on AIDS, despite continued donor and member state support. This turnaround has decisively contributed to WHO's loss of leadership in HIV/ AIDS politics. From the viewpoint of both rationalist and constructivist theories of international organisation (IO) agency, an IO engaging in 'mission shrink' is a striking irregularity. In order to account for such apparently self-defeating behaviour, this article adopts an open systems view of IOs and identifies trans-organisational coalitions as important agents of IO change. I argue that subunit dynamics rather than systemic conditions drive IO behaviour, in particular where member states' material power and their formal control of organisational veto positions do not coincide. This approach will be used to retrace the changes in subunit coalitions that drove WHO's erratic HIV/AIDS programme and thus to solve this puzzle of 'mission shrink'. On the basis of insights from the WHO case, the article concludes by offering a heuristic of trans-organisational coalitions and the types of IO change associated with them.
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