Creating Space for Public Administration in International Organization Studies

Abstract

The emergent global administrative order includes more than 800 international and regional organizations. Just as the rise of the modern state placed greater importance on the study of public administration, the growth of multistate organizations, their agendas, and personnel require research that draws upon contemporary and classical public administrative thought. This article employs multiple lenses to explore the utility of public administrative theory and empirically based knowledge in analyzing the behavior of international and regional organizations. Specifically, while remaining cognizant of differences between international organizations and sovereign states, we consider the utility of the politics–administration dichotomy, representative bureaucracy, individual and employee due process and other rights, and broader questions of accountability in understanding the administrative life and influence of international organizations in global governance.

Unboxing International Public Administrations: The Politics of Structural Change in the UN System (1998–2019)

“…Second, we showed political features of the principals in the UN system are comparatively more important than bureaucratic features to explain structural change in international bureaucracies. We therefore conclude that research on international bureaucracies should put more emphasis to the management of the politics-administrative nexus and take the political context and its peculiarities at the international level more strongly into account (see Christensen &Yesilkagit, 2019 andMoloney andRosenbloom, 2020).…”

“…This will ultimately influence how IPAs fulfil their role both vis-à-vis their IO as well as in the realm of global public policy. Moloney and Rosenbloom (2020) have recently called in this journal not to leave international bureaucracies solely to the hands of the IR field but to make use of the specific expertise that public administration researchers hold in dealing with large and complex public administrations. We respond to this call by proposing a public administration centred view on the formal changes taking place within the formal organizational structures of IPAs.…”

“…This state-centric view focused on capacities and preferences of states acting as unitary actors and thus being the crucial determinants for IOs’ effectiveness. More recently, and as logical step following up the studies understanding IOs as policy actors, this black box has been opened up by constructivist IR and public administration (PA) researchers turning towards 'international bureaucracies’ or ‘international public administrations’ (IPAs) as actors servicing and thereby shaping the preferences and policies of IOs (Moloney and Rosenbloom, 2020). Thus, the last decade has been marked by the (re)discovery of bureaucracy in IR and analyses of IO bureaucracies have increasingly achieved a solid basis by relying empirically and theoretically on organization theory (Barnett & Finnemore, 2004; Bauer, 2006; Dijkzeul & Beigbeder, 2003; Manulak, 2017).…”

Deconcentrated global governance, transnational administration, and the public administration discipline

“…Such research will rightfully challenge the methodological nationalism of typical public policy and public administration-a long overdue challengemost especially for scholarship located outside studies of the European Union. In addition, if public administration scholars are also open to disciplinary engagement with scholars of international relations and international organizations (Bauer et al, 2017b;Knill & Bauer, 2016;Moloney & Rosenbloom, 2020), improved disciplinary outputs are likely. This may eventually include offering a public administration perspective on how to close international relations' "middle range" theoretical gap (e.g., Checkel, 1998).…”

Avoiding disciplinary garbage cans: a pledge for a problem-driven approach to researching international public administration

“…Two research perspectives stand out. First, IPAs are studied from a disciplinary perspective grounded in Public Administration (PA) and Public Management (Moloney & Rosenbloom, 2020). Given that IPAs are bureaucratic structures, the relative dominance of this approach is hardly surprising.…”