Enforcing International Deals: The System of International Organizations from a Politics-as-Exchange Perspective

The possibility of opportunistic reneging often blocks the exchange of support on political matters. Reneging is particularly likely when central enforcement is lacking. This challenge exists for intertemporal deals among politicians in both international and domestic political markets. Theories of legislative organization have pointed out that a tailored set of institutions can support legislative exchange by reducing room for opportunism. This article presents a novel theoretical framework applying similar logic to the international political market and the system of international institutions. International institutions define agenda setting rights for specific policy domains and allow members of a group of leading states to acquire influence over policy domains they value relatively more in exchange for giving up authority over issues they value less. This exchange is entrenched in a system of functionally differentiated single-issue international institutions, a system which compartmentalizes international politics into separate domains. It is argued here that this facilitates the exchange of support among leading states by allowing the apportionment of agenda setting rights. Leading states exchange authority over agenda setting and each leading state exercises this authority in the international organizations that oversee their most preferred issues. Consequently, each leading state enjoys gatekeeping power over some domains. This means that newly formed coalitions of states cannot change policy against a leading state’s objection for its preferred domains. Leading states’ exercise of authority over the agenda is not necessarily formally defined; it can rest primarily on informal influence. The results of applying the theoretical framework differ from the predictions of some existing rationalist theories of international institutions. For example, international institutions should be thought of as less independent from control by particular member states than some existing theories stipulate.