Making Global Governance Accountable: Civil Society, States, and the Politics of Reform

Abstract

Recent decades have witnessed the adoption of unprecedentedly broad and inclusive accountability mechanisms by many major international institutions, from grievance redress systems to transparency policies. What explains the establishment of these mechanisms—and why have only some institutions embraced them? I argue that adoption is more likely when member states, in particular the most powerful, face “bottom‐up” pressures for accountability from dense transnational civil society networks—networks with the capacity to build leverage through agenda setting, coalition building, and advocacy strategies—and when institutions perform governance tasks that are costly to monitor. Analysis of a rich new dataset shows that adoption is positively related to the density of international nongovernmental organizations in an institution's issue area—including only those based in powerful member countries—and that this relationship is stronger when governance tasks entail high monitoring costs. Statistical tests are complemented by qualitative evidence from interviews and other primary sources.