IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/111834.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decision-making in international organizations: institutional design and performance

Author

Listed:
  • Sommerer, Thomas
  • Squatrito, Theresa
  • Tallberg, Jonas
  • Lundgren, Magnus

Abstract

International organizations (IOs) experience significant variation in their decision-making performance, or the extent to which they produce policy output. While some IOs are efficient decision-making machineries, others are plagued by deadlock. How can such variation be explained? Examining this question, the article makes three central contributions. First, we approach performance by looking at IO decision-making in terms of policy output and introduce an original measure of decision-making performance that captures annual growth rates in IO output. Second, we offer a novel theoretical explanation for decision-making performance. This account highlights the role of institutional design, pointing to how majoritarian decision rules, delegation of authority to supranational institutions , and access for transnational actors (TNAs) interact to affect decision-making. Third, we offer the first comparative assessment of the decision-making performance of IOs. While previous literature addresses single IOs, we explore decision-making across a broad spectrum of 30 IOs from 1980 to 2011. Our analysis indicates that IO decision-making performance varies across and within IOs. We find broad support for our theoretical account, showing the combined effect of institutional design features in shaping decision-making performance. Notably, TNA access has a positive effect on decision-making performance when pooling is greater, and delegation has a positive effect when TNA access is higher. We also find that pooling has an independent, positive effect on decision-making performance. All-in-all, these findings suggest that the institutional design of IOs matters for their decision-making performance, primarily in more complex ways than expected in earlier research.

Suggested Citation

  • Sommerer, Thomas & Squatrito, Theresa & Tallberg, Jonas & Lundgren, Magnus, 2021. "Decision-making in international organizations: institutional design and performance," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 111834, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:111834
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/111834/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel Finke & Stefanie Bailer, 2019. "Crisis bargaining in the European Union: Formal rules or market pressure?," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(1), pages 109-133, March.
    2. Jon CW Pevehouse & Timothy Nordstrom & Roseanne W McManus & Anne Spencer Jamison, 2020. "Tracking organizations in the world: The Correlates of War IGO Version 3.0 datasets," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(3), pages 492-503, May.
    3. Slapin, Jonathan B., 2008. "Bargaining Power at Europe's Intergovernmental Conferences: Testing Institutional and Intergovernmental Theories," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 131-162, January.
    4. Vreeland,James Raymond & Dreher,Axel, 2014. "The Political Economy of the United Nations Security Council," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521740067, October.
    5. Anonymous, 2013. "Introduction to the Issue," Journal of Wine Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(2), pages 129-130, November.
    6. Alberto Alesina & Ignazio Angeloni & Ludger Schuknecht, 2005. "What does the European Union do?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 123(3), pages 275-319, June.
    7. Manfred Elsig, 2010. "The World Trade Organization at work: Performance in a member-driven milieu," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 345-363, September.
    8. Liesbet Hooghe & Gary Marks, 2015. "Delegation and pooling in international organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 305-328, September.
    9. Jonas Tallberg & Thomas Sommerer & Theresa Squatrito, 2016. "Democratic memberships in international organizations: Sources of institutional design," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 59-87, March.
    10. Mark Pollack & Emilie Hafner-Burton, 2010. "Mainstreaming international governance: The environment, gender, and IO performance in the European Union," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 285-313, September.
    11. Shanks, Cheryl & Jacobson, Harold K. & Kaplan, Jeffrey H., 1996. "Inertia and change in the constellation of international governmental organizations, 1981–1992," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(4), pages 593-627, October.
    12. Randall Stone, 2013. "Informal governance in international organizations: Introduction to the special issue," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 121-136, June.
    13. Claus-Dieter Ehlermann & Lothar Ehring, 2005. "Decision-Making in the World Trade Organization," Journal of International Economic Law, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(1), pages 51-75, March.
    14. Edward D. Mansfield & Helen V. Milner & B. Peter Rosendorff, 2015. "Why Democracies Cooperate More: Electoral Control and International Trade Agreements," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Edward D Mansfield (ed.), THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE, chapter 11, pages 227-263, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    15. Lall, Ranjit, 2017. "Beyond Institutional Design: Explaining the Performance of International Organizations," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(2), pages 245-280, April.
    16. Anonymous, 2013. "Introduction to the Issue," Journal of Wine Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(3), pages 243-243, December.
    17. Ronald B. Mitchell, 2002. "A Quantitative Approach to Evaluating International Environmental Regimes," Global Environmental Politics, MIT Press, vol. 2(4), pages 58-83, November.
    18. Bart Joachim Bes & Thomas Sommerer & Hans Agné, 2019. "On Legitimacy Crises and the Resources of Global Governance Institutions: A Surprisingly Weak Relationship?," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 10(3), pages 313-326, September.
    19. Koremenos, Barbara & Lipson, Charles & Snidal, Duncan, 2001. "The Rational Design of International Institutions," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(4), pages 761-799, October.
    20. Pollack, Mark A., 1997. "Delegation, agency, and agenda setting in the European Community," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 51(1), pages 99-134, January.
    21. Daniel Blake & Autumn Payton, 2015. "Balancing design objectives: Analyzing new data on voting rules in intergovernmental organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 377-402, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas Sommerer & Theresa Squatrito & Jonas Tallberg & Magnus Lundgren, 2022. "Decision-making in international organizations: institutional design and performance," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 815-845, October.
    2. Adela Toscano-Valle & Antonio Sianes & Francisco Santos-Carrillo & Luis A. Fernández-Portillo, 2022. "Can the Rational Design of International Institutions Solve Cooperation Problems? Insights from a Systematic Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-22, June.
    3. Axel Dreher & Katharina Michaelowa, 2008. "The political economy of international organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 3(4), pages 331-334, December.
    4. Bernhard Reinsberg & Oliver Westerwinter, 2021. "The global governance of international development: Documenting the rise of multi-stakeholder partnerships and identifying underlying theoretical explanations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 59-94, January.
    5. Charles B. Roger & Sam S. Rowan, 2022. "Analyzing international organizations: How the concepts we use affect the answers we get," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 597-625, July.
    6. Oliver Westerwinter & Kenneth W. Abbott & Thomas Biersteker, 2021. "Informal governance in world politics," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 1-27, January.
    7. Andrew Lugg, 2024. "Re-contracting intergovernmental organizations: Membership change and the creation of linked intergovernmental organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 19(3), pages 545-577, September.
    8. Oliver Westerwinter, 2017. "Barbara Koremenos. 2016. The continent of international law. Explaining agreement design. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 647-651, December.
    9. Felicity Vabulas & Duncan Snidal, 2013. "Organization without delegation: Informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGOs) and the spectrum of intergovernmental arrangements," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 193-220, June.
    10. Klaus H. Goetz & Ronny Patz & Bernhard Reinsberg, 2017. "Trust Funds as a Lever of Influence at International Development Organizations," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 8, pages 85-95, August.
    11. Christoph Knill & Louisa Bayerlein & Jan Enkler & Stephan Grohs, 2019. "Bureaucratic influence and administrative styles in international organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 83-106, March.
    12. Melissa Carlson & Barbara Koremenos, 2021. "Cooperation Failure or Secret Collusion? Absolute Monarchs and Informal Cooperation," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 95-135, January.
    13. Alice Iannantuoni & Charla Waeiss & Matthew S. Winters, 2021. "Project design decisions of egalitarian and non-egalitarian international organizations: Evidence from the Global Environment Facility and the World Bank," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 431-462, April.
    14. Lara Merling & Timon Forster, 2024. "Climate policy at the International Monetary Fund: No voice for the vulnerable?," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 15(3), pages 539-553, June.
    15. Lang, Valentin F. & Presbitero, Andrea F., 2018. "Room for discretion? Biased decision-making in international financial institutions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 1-16.
    16. Tobias Lenz & Besir Ceka & Liesbet Hooghe & Gary Marks & Alexandr Burilkov, 2023. "Discovering cooperation: Endogenous change in international organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 631-666, October.
    17. John W. McArthur & Eric Werker, 2016. "Developing countries and international organizations: Introduction to the special issue," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 11(2), pages 155-169, June.
    18. Strand, Jonathan R. & Zappile, Tina M., 2015. "Always Vote for Principle, Though You May Vote Alone: Explaining United States Political Support for Multilateral Development Loans," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 224-239.
    19. Dreher, Axel & Lang, Valentin F. & Richert, Katharina, 2019. "The political economy of International Finance Corporation lending," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 242-254.
    20. Bernhard Reinsberg & Oliver Westerwinter, 2023. "Institutional Overlap in Global Governance and the Design of Intergovernmental Organizations," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 18(4), pages 693-724, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    international organizations; institutional design; decision-making; global governance; performance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:111834. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.