The review of international organizations最新文献

This paper presents the first theoretical and large-scale empirical account of the visibility of major global international organizations (IOs) in news media around the world. It focuses on the everyday, continuous coverage of IOs, through which knowledge and support of IOs can be built over time. Synthesizing insights from Media Studies and International Relations (IR), I develop a theoretical framework centered on the tangibility of IOs’ work—its concreteness and proximity to audiences—as the key driver of variation in IOs’ media visibility across states. Empirically, I study the media visibility of the 40 IOs and IO bodies that form the UN System broadly defined, including virtually all the major formal global IOs. I find that the IOs are systematically more visible in states where they conduct tangible development-focused operational activity. The differences are sizeable: IO media visibility in states with the lowest levels of human development is approximately 75% higher than in highest-development level states, typically Western. The empirical analysis is based on a novel dataset of more than 3.4 million news articles in 63 languages and 135 states, accounting for 96% of the world population, spanning 2018–2021. Natural language processing-based analysis is complemented with human coding of the content of a sample of articles, further highlighting the importance of the development-focused operational activity of IOs for their media visibility. The findings have important implications for our understanding of the public image of IOs in Western states and beyond.

Do foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) utilize the political experience of domestic firms that they have acquired? If so, why? Little is known about the ways in which foreign MNCs gain political influence outside their home countries. And yet, foreign MNCs that acquire or merge with politically active domestic firms may inherit host country- and firm-specific political influence mechanisms on day-one of entry. To test this idea, I assemble novel panel datasets of all American firms that completed mergers and acquisitions (M &A) while connected to an active Political Action Committee (PAC) or reported to lobby the U.S. government between 1997 and 2018. With these data, I show that the survival rates of connected PACs and lobbying relationships post-M &A are significantly higher for firms with a new foreign owner, compared with those with a new American owner. In addition, newly foreign-owned firms tend to maintain – or even increase – the intensity of political activities post-M &A. Finally, following cross-border M &A, I observe a greater lobbying emphasis on issue areas of interest to foreign MNCs such as trade, intellectual property rights, and telecommunications. One implication of this study is that MNCs may gain political leverage in other countries by acquiring politically active domestic firms.

Over the past two decades, donor funding of international organizations (IOs) such as the United Nations, has shifted from core resources toward earmarked contributions. While core resources provide IOs with discretion how to achieve their mandates, earmarked contributions require IOs to focus their assistance on specific themes, sectors, countries, or projects, as determined by the donors. Our understanding of the drivers and effects of earmarked funding has been limited by the lack of systematic data. To address this gap, we introduce the Earmarked Funding Dataset. The dataset contains 342,812 earmarked aid activities from nearly 50 donors with over 340 IOs with a mandate in international development from 1990 to 2020. We first explore the data descriptively to cast light on the evolution of the multilateral development system. We then use the data to examine whether and how donors financially reward well-performing IOs. To that end, we combine our data with newly available performance data synthesized from Multilateral Organization Performance Assessment Network (MOPAN) evaluations of 32 IOs in 2009–2020. Using difference-in-difference estimations, we find a significantly positive relationship between outcome performance and earmarked contributions. In contrast, performance does not seem to affect core resources. These patterns suggest that donors reward well-performing multilaterals with more funding, albeit based on development outcomes which are not easily contractible. From a policy perspective, these findings suggest that performance-based approaches to aid allocation—as they are currently practiced—upload the financial risks of organizational reform processes to international organizations.

States use symbolic gestures to increase their international status, or relative po- sition, within the international community. But how do the status-seeking actions of one state affect the status of others? The common assumption is that improvements in one state’s status lead to the relative deterioration of other states’ status by compari- son. In this paper, we focus on status’ social qualities to delineate multiple theoretical pathways through which one state’s status can change – or not – relative to another. Status is not conferred in a vacuum and the consequences of status-altering activities may spill over to third parties. We field an original survey and reanalyze several exist- ing studies to understand how relative status operates in the case of foreign aid; these surveys reveal novel empirical patterns about the circumstances under which a state’s status will update relative to other states. We extend the analysis to examine who updates perceptions, what actions change status, and for whom status changes. Our findings suggest that status-enhancing actions may be successful at augmenting status amongst peers, but ultimately unsuccessful at changing global hierarchies.

Country participation in one-state, one-vote forums like the United Nations General Assembly often reflects underlying power asymmetries and endogenous political processes. Voting alignment is undoubtedly an important preference indicator. However, this paper contends that it is incomplete; silence is politically significant as well. Weak states use absence as a form of institutional power that shields them from geopolitical pressure and competing-principals problems. While abstention is a public signal of neutrality that undercuts voting unanimity, the ambiguous intent of absence makes it a distinct form of political expression. We examine the politics of absences at the General Assembly, highlighting how states may be strategically absent from select votes for political reasons. Building on the Bailey et al. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 61(2), 430–456, 2017 roll-call voting data, we distinguish strategic absences from other types of absence and provide evidence that such behavior is linked to US interests and competing-principals problems. Taking these non-random reasons for missingness into account provides a fuller picture of how weak states engage with international institutions and highlights how silence can be a consequence of larger political processes.

Why would weak states accept rules which authorize strong states to take coercive action against them? I argue that, in some cases, this is a way of creating constraints over the exercise power in the form of procedural checks, or rules delineating the process through which power can legitimately be exercised. If stronger states become willing to exercise power against weak states in the absence of rules formally authorizing their behavior, this presents their actions as the new status quo. In response, weak states can attempt to re-establish constraints over the exercise of power by formally sanctioning unwanted actions, but doing so alongside procedural checks. To assess this argument, I examine the addition of a human rights suspension clause to the Lomé Convention, an aid and preferential trade agreement between the European Economic Community and the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) group of states. The ACP states accepted a suspension clause after nearly twenty years of arguing that such a clause was paternalistic and violated the norm of non-interference. Explanations for this decision that point to one-sided dominance of IOs by the strong or straightforward support for policies on the part of the weak cannot account for important dynamics, including continued objections to the practice of suspension by ACP states and the willingness of European states to accept and utilize procedural checks.

Who adjusts under International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs and why? In this paper, I demonstrate that labor groups adjust when there is a fixed exchange rate regime and international financial groups are strong enough to defend the peg. In that case, the Fund substitutes currency devaluation with lowering labor costs via labor market reform. Lower wages are used to increase competitiveness and support exports. In other words, the Fund makes labor ‘cheaper’ through its labor market reform when money cannot be made ‘cheaper’ due to strong international financial interests. To test this theory, I use a mixed-method approach. I complement the case comparison of Latvia and Hungary in 2008–two very similar cases except for their exchange rate regime and the influence of international finance on their economy–with a large-N study using a global sample of IMF borrowers over the years 1989 and 2014. The paper shows that international organizations such as the IMF might amplify the voice of the strong (financial interests) while making the ‘weak’ (labor groups) weaker via their conditionality.

The United States has helped create and lead many international organizations (IOs). Yet in the last six years, the US announced its withdrawal from several IOs including the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and the Universal Postal Union. Do Americans care about US withdrawals from IOs? When do Americans support withdrawing from IOs and support candidates who propose this? We argue that Americans’ support for multilateralism tends to divide along party lines, and that IO withdrawal can activate those preferences. We also argue that framing an IO withdrawal as benefiting US national interests can make Americans more likely to favor IO exit. Data from four US survey experiments during the 2016–2020 Trump administration support these arguments. Democrats tend to oppose IO withdrawals while Republicans tend to support them. Further, results show that IO withdrawal (and how it is framed) affects candidate choice and policy support. This suggests that announcing IO withdrawal can be used to rally domestic electoral support. Still, the data also show that a large proportion of the US public values remaining in IOs, even when IOs are imperfect or challenging. In these cases, we note that sunk cost fallacies, status quo bias, and loss aversion may pose friction points for supporting withdrawal. Our findings have important implications for research on public opinion about international cooperation, backlash against IOs, and their life cycles.

When countries are confronted with a crisis and have no alternative but to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), speed is of the essence. Why do some countries negotiate IMF loans more quickly than others? We introduce an original dataset on the timing and intensity of negotiations between the borrowing government and IMF staff for more than 700 IMF loans agreed between 1985 and 2020. Applying concepts from this special issue on the “Power of the Weak” (Snidal et al., 2024), we argue that although borrowing countries are in a weak position when they approach the IMF, they nonetheless sometimes achieve more rapid negotiations. In particular, we argue that borrowers can obtain speedier negotiations on the basis of their ties to major IMF shareholder states, specifically through shared membership in other international organizations and financial exposure. Importantly, we suggest that well-placed borrowers can hasten the conclusion of negotiations without compromising on the conditions attached to IMF programs. We use our original data and an illustrative case study of Côte d’Ivoire to support our claims.