The review of international organizations最新文献

How do hard economic times affect countries’ foreign policy and, specifically, their international commitments? Although a large body of literature assumes that economic crises lead to the prioritization of domestic politics at the expense of international cooperation, these claims are rarely subjected to systematic empirical tests. This study examines one important aspect of these relationships: the consequences of economic crises for the survival of international organizations (IOs), a question that attracted only scant scholarly attention to date. Theoretically, we argue that even though economic crises can weaken member states’ commitment to IOs, they also underscore their ability to tackle the root causes of such crises and mitigate their most pernicious effects. As such, economic crises are actually conducive to IO longevity. We expect this effect to be especially pronounced for currency crises, IOs with an economic mandate, and regional IOs, given their particular relevance for international cooperation during hard economic times. These conjectures are tested with a comprehensive sample of IOs and data on currency, banking and sovereign debt crises from 1970 to 2014. Using event history models and controlling for several alternative explanations of IO survival, we find ample empirical support for the theoretical expectations.

International Organizations (IOs), such as the United Nations (U.N.), engage in statebuilding in a range of post-conflict states. Statebuilding scholarship largely assumes that IOs, backed by their powerful member states, have at least temporary authority over the seemingly “weak” states in which they intervene. We argue, in contrast, that many post-conflict states shape IO statebuilding efforts through many statebuilding contracts, which we call incomplete arrangements, that give the post-conflict state the residual rights of control over the unnegotiated components of these statebuilding contracts with IOs. These incomplete arrangements, as opposed to complete takeovers, which are the other type of statebuilding contracts, provide procedural “weapons of the weak state” that enable the post-conflict state to influence what the IO mandate contains, where it intervenes, whom it hires, and when it exits. Using in-depth case studies of Burundi, Guatemala, and Timor-Leste, as well as analysis of 36 U.N. interventions in post-conflict states from 2000–2020, this article demonstrates the potential of incomplete arrangement statebuilding contracts to give post-conflict states institutional power over IO statebuilders, with important implications for scholarship on statebuilding and global governance.

I argue that treaty withdrawal has two opposing effects on the development of international law. First, it directly impacts the treaty where it occurs by pushing the remaining members to adopt reforms to maintain cooperation. Second, it indirectly affects the development of other treaties by damaging diplomatic relations between the withdrawing state and other members, hindering negotiations in other areas of cooperation. Consequentially, treaty withdrawal has a mixed impact on the development of international law: it expedites the reform of one treaty while inhibiting reform elsewhere. I test this argument by applying a difference-in-differences design to an original panel of treaties built from the records of the United Nations. My findings reveal that while withdrawal increases the number of reforms in treaties where it occurs, it decreases reforms in similar treaties with comparable memberships. The indirect effect more than cancels out the direct effect. Overall, treaty withdrawal impedes the creation of new international laws.

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.