International Bureaucrats and the Formation of Intergovernmental Organizations: Institutional Design Discretion Sweetens the Pot

Johnson, Tana; Urpelainen, Johannes

doi:10.1017/s0020818313000349

Cited by 76 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…On the "bureaucratic turn" in IO more generally I have in mind e.g. Johns 2007;Johnson and Urpelainen 2014. contributes to that turn by focusing on the under-explored actor in principal-agent models of IO bureaucracy, the agent. As Hawkins & Jacoby put it, "In spite of the growing sophistication of the principal-agent literature, it still contains a remarkably thin view of agent behavior."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation

Honig¹

2018

Int Org

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Bureaucracies with field operations that cannot be easily supervised and monitored by managers are caught between two sources of dysfunction that may harm performance. The first source of dysfunction is straightforward: field workers can use operating slack and asymmetric information to their own advantage, thwarting an organization's objectives. The second source of dysfunction is often overlooked: attempts to limit workers’ autonomy may have deleterious effects, curbing agents’ ability to respond efficaciously to the environment. I find that the parliaments and executive boards to whom International Development Organizations (IDOs) are accountable differentially constrain IDO organizational autonomy, which in turn affects management's control of field agents. Tight management control of field agents has negative effects, particularly in more unpredictable environments. Attempts by politicians to constrain organizations in an effort to improve performance can sometimes be self-undermining, having net effects opposite those intended.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation

Honig¹

2018

Int Org

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“…When drawing on the primary legal texts, we mostly concentrated on the position of the governing body, which excludes the perspective of the secretariats and the role bureaucrats can play in embracing the concept of policy integration. As Johnson and Urpelainen (2014), for example, have shown, bureaucrats can be influential in shaping the institutional design of IGOs and therefore expanding the empirical focus to the secretariats might be instructive.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since we are interested in the IGOs' commitment to EPI in their primary laws, we consider EPI to represent one dimension of the IGOs' design -this point will become more plausible in the next sections when we turn to the coding of the data. The design of IGOs is, inter alia, the outcome of the characteristics of its membership base (see Tallberg et al, 2016), its voting rules (see Blake and Payton, 2015), and the preferences and strategies of bureaucrats working in the IGOs (see Johnson and Urpelainen, 2014).…”

Section: Theoretical Considerations and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intergovernmental organizations’ normative commitments to policy integration: The dominance of environmental goals

Tosun

Peters

2018

Environmental Science & Policy

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Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) influence policymaking in states by devising and promoting policy ideas. In this study, we examine to what extent a set of IGOs make normative commitments to integrate environmental concerns as well as to contrast this commitment to environmental policy integration (EPI) with climate policy integration (CPI) and energy policy integration (EnPI). Which characteristics of an IGO increase its likelihood to make a normative commitment to EPI? Do environment-related IGOs commit themselves to integrate environmental policy with concerns regarding climate change and/or energy? What is the ratio between the IGOs' normative commitments to EPI relative to CPI and EnPI? Drawing on primary law texts of 78 IGOs, we find that organizations concentrating on Europe and IGOs in which the European Union (EU) Commission participates are more likely to commit themselves to EPI. Furthermore, the sectors covered by IGOs matter: organizations active in the field of general economic concerns and multi-issue IGOs are more likely than IGOs assigned to the 'other' category for embracing EPI. These findings still hold when controlling for the time when an IGO adopted its original or amended relevant primary law, its membership size and whether it is a United Nations organization. Environment-related IGOs commit themselves to a limited degree of CPI and EnPI. More broadly, the IGOs' normative commitment to EPI clearly dominates over their commitment to EnPI and CPI.

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“…From a theoretical perspective, the rise of trust funds can be studied within a principal-agent framework. The principals are the member states, acting collectively through the governing board or individually as donors, while the agent represents the multilateral bureaucracy (e.g., Nielson and Tierney 2003;Hawkins, Lake, Nielson, and Tierney 2006;Johnson and Urpelainen 2014).…”

Section: Theoretical Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organizational reform and the rise of trust funds: Lessons from the World Bank

Reinsberg

2017

Rev Int Organ

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Over the past two decades, earmarked funding to international development organizations through special-purpose trust funds has increased greatly. This paper studies the incentives for trust funds from the perspective of multilateral agencies, notably the World Bank. A theoretically intriguing type of funds are so-called "pass-on funds," in which one unit hosts the fund, then passes on its resources to another type of unit for implementation. Each unit has different preferences for the specific types of activities to be supported by the fund. Interviews with World Bank staff and complementary documents demonstrate the rationale for pass-on funds and the associated division of labor between fundraising network units and implementing regional units. While pass-on funds reflect an efficient division of labor between functionally specialized units, they increase the misalignment between sector-specific global priorities and country-specific needs. Organizational reform drove the sudden explosion of pass-on funds around the millennium turn, facilitated by growing availability of donor monies for specific sectors and by lenient internal regulation. Organizational reform undermined budget autonomy of sector units, causing those units to seek new funds in their areas of expertise. A number of reform features also reduced administrative budgets of country units, increasing their demand for pass-on funding grants. The results contribute to the emerging literature on earmarked funding and highlight the need to consider international organizations as heterogeneous actors.

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International Bureaucrats and the Formation of Intergovernmental Organizations: Institutional Design Discretion Sweetens the Pot

Cited by 76 publications

References 25 publications

When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation

When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation

Intergovernmental organizations’ normative commitments to policy integration: The dominance of environmental goals

Organizational reform and the rise of trust funds: Lessons from the World Bank

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