International bureaucrats and the formation of intergovernmental organizations: Institutional design discretion sweetens the pot
Abstract
Bureaucrats working in international intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) regularly
help states design new IGOs. Sometimes international bureaucrats possess limited discretion
in institutional design; sometimes, 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, because of states' need for
bureaucratic expertise. In developing this argument, we employ a formal principal-agent
model, case studies, and an original data set. © 2014 by The IO Foundation.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6991Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1017/S0020818313000349Publication Info
Johnson, TANA; & Urpelainen, J (2014). International bureaucrats and the formation of intergovernmental organizations: Institutional
design discretion sweetens the pot. International Organization, 68(1). pp. 177-209. 10.1017/S0020818313000349. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6991.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Tana L. Johnson
Associate Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy
(On leave during 2019-2020)Tana Johnson (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is a political
scientist working in the field of international relations and international/global
policy. Her work is driven by big puzzles in international relations and by important
problems in the real world. In global affairs, what makes delegation and institutional
design so challenging? Why do nation-states delegate to international institutions
in spite of the challenges? And how c

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