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A conference paper related to financial relationship between International Organizations (IOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to be presented on the 2014 Conference of the American Political Science Association. Topics discussed include publishing of the European Union (EU) legislation by the European Commission in October 2003, rally against the law organized by the trade group European Chemical Industry Council (CECIC),and expansion of the EU's power to meet democratic deficit.

Recent works argue intergovernmental organizational (IGO) membership can costly signals of low political risk in foreign investments, thereby incentivizing FDI. I ask a related question in this paper: can different institutional mechanisms within IGO membership send different levels of costly signals against political risk in FDI? This article explores two institutional compliance verification mechanisms: submitting evidence for compliance verification and passing a third-party assessment of compliance. I argue how differences between these institutional mechanisms exemplify how IGOs theoretically have different signaling costs of political risks. Through the examination of FDI inflows from 1988 to 2010, this project explores whether passing a third party audit of compliance with banking regulations designed by the Bank of International Settlements significantly reduces fears of political risk in a country and, in turn, results in more FDI inflows than a government submission of records for verification. Specifically, this project lays out a statistical analysis to explore whether investment into a country's banking sector increases after a state voluntarily undergoes an audit by the Bank of International Settlement's monitoring arm, the Financial Stability Assessment Program (FSAP). I find statistical evidence that passing a Financial Stability audit sends a stronger signal of low political risk than the act submitting records for banking rule compliance verification and results in comparatively more FDI inflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When and how do elite messages shape mass opinion on international issues? Debate remains over whether the informational or partisan components of elite cues dominate. To help reconcile the relative influence of these mechanisms, we argue that their influence varies systematically across issues, depending on the baseline distribution of mass opinion on the issues themselves. Two characteristics of underlying opinion are crucial: the share of those not aligned with expert opinion, and the degree of partisan polarization. Where polarization is limited, information effects should dominate, but where issues are polarized, information intake should be limited by partisan attribution. We test these hypotheses using nine survey experiments across a range of issues, including the rise of China, climate change, international institutions, and the use of force. At one extreme, all messages, even those endorsed by generic or opposition experts, can shift opinion; at the other, only partisan-attributed messages matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses media reporting on rape across Africa and within the Democratic Republic of Congo. The central question is whether Congo deserves the title of "rape capital of the world." We find that not only is this question difficult to answer with existing data on rape in Congo, but that media reporting suffers from a number of biases in its reports on rape. The paper concludes that the emphasis on description of a general environment of rape rather than on description of ground-based facts makes it difficult to decipher what we actually know about the underlying dynamics of rape in Congo. Regardless of the merits of the bestowing of the title initially, we highlight how a pernicious circle emerges as the title is perpetuated by international agents and reinforced in the media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter is the conclusion to an edited volume on "orchestration," a mode of governance widely used by international organizations (IGOs) and other governance actors, but rarely identified or analyzed. IGOs engage in orchestration when they enlist public or private intermediary actors on a voluntary basis, by providing them ideational and material support, to address target actors in pursuit of IGO governance goals. Orchestration is thus both indirect and soft. In the framework paper for the volume, we develop six hypotheses as to the conditions under which governance actors, and IGOs specifically, are likely to rely on orchestration. Twelve chapters then explore IGO orchestration in diverse issue areas, providing empirical evidence on our hypotheses. Here we assess that evidence. Our hypotheses provide valuable explanations of many cases of orchestration (and non-orchestration). But the cases suggest important modifications. Most significantly, we find that states often approve of or initiate IGO orchestration, even when they are its targets. Where states rather than IGOs initiate orchestration, certain factors we hypothesized would foster IGO orchestration - notably goal divergence among member states - actually discourage it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why does the United States operate outside international organizations when projecting military force in some instances but request international authorization for others? I compare three cases that exhibit variation in their outcomes: Operation Desert Fox (1998), the Iraq War (2003), and Libya (2011). I assess the competing explanations for these different decisions. I find that the U.S. decision makers sought to conform to the normative standard of international authorization but only sought international authorization when they thought they could secure the sanction from an IO. This explanation is compared to explanations which emphasize the role of the informational properties of UN Security Council decisions and spreading the costs of military force. This research makes a theoretical contribution by demonstrating how state leaders behave under circumstances where they do not expect to secure international authorization. This is demonstrated in the empirical cases which present a strong test for the influence of international norms on the decision making of states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do international institutions affect world politics? Since Keohane, a common answer has been informational accuracy: regimes gather and share information reassuring cautiously cooperating states. The Non-Intervention Committee (NIC), an institution created to police foreign involvement in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), represents a puzzle. Rather than clarify facts about the war, the NIC ritually overlooked or dismissed evidence of external intervention. Yet the institution was a hothouse of diplomacy and a media lightning rod throughout the war. Why was such an ineffective institution treated as so important? To answer this puzzle, I develop a theory of the role of international organizations in legitimizing how events are classified. When ambiguous or borderline events arise, international organizations often help states designate what the event is a case of and their verdict holds special legitimacy. Because classification often has serious legal, reputational, and domestic political consequences, accuracy is not always the goal. In fact, states can use institutions to bolster a politically convenient but misleading classification. I show powerful states, often in explicit or tacit coordination, are particularly guilty of this practice when three common features of institutions are present. I then analyze foreign involvement in the Spanish Civil War and the operations of the Non-Intervention Committee. I show how an ineffective institution still helped make sense of an ambiguous conflict in ways that were politically useful but ultimately misleading; I also show this reflected the tacit cooperation of powerful states. The theory suggests a political logic for ineffective but useful institutions that synthesizes insights from across theoretical paradigms. It also presents a more critical view of global governance by suggesting institutions that allow the "international community" to speak with one voice about ambiguous events may, in practice, allow some voices to speak louder than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have states requested international authorization for projecting of military force more often after 1989? One perspective suggests powerful states should not make such requests. Instead they should only look to their own power to determine the legitimacy of their foreign policy rather than international organizations (IOs). A different perspective suggests states use IOs as credible sources of information about other states' intentions and foreign policies. A third perspective suggests that states view the authorization of the projection of military force by formal international organizations as the appropriate way for states to act. In this dissertation project I first establish states have changed their behavior and document that states request international authorization more often after 1989. Then I examine several potential and competing explanations based on the three perspectives of the apparent change in the behavior of states towards IOs. These explanations include burden-sharing, informational signaling, strategic restraint, and international norms. The United States provides a good example of a powerful state which requests international authorization more frequently after 1989. I find the expectation that states would request international authorization emerged after the U.S. set a precedent the Persian Gulf War. In looking at these explanations this dissertation project engages the issues surrounding international organizations and changes in their authority over states. This research identifies a specific change in the constraints faced by states from the Cold War compared to the post-Cold War international environment. Prior research on why states request international authorization assumes states face the same constraints and opportunities between these two periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examine the role of reputation as a motivating factor in the behavior of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The NGO-donor relationship is crucial to the existence and choices made by the internal governing body of any NGO. A competent NGO is able to use the resources provided by the donors to achieve real, tangible progress toward its policy goals.

The article focuses on how an alliance of human rights advocates, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and members of the U.S. Congress, de-legitimated the common Cold War practice of entrusting illiberal, anti-communist agents with American arms and training. The Congressional-NGO alliance framed the risk of human rights abuse as the salient agency cost within the U.S. principal-agent relationship.

Past decades have witnessed a shift in international cooperation toward growing involvement of transnational actors (TNAs), such as non-governmental organizations, multinational corporations, and philanthropic foundations. This article offers a comprehensive theoretical and empirical account of TNA access to IOs. The analysis builds on a novel dataset, covering formal TNA access to 298 organizational bodies from 50 IOs over the time period 1950 to 2010. We identify the most profound patterns in TNA access across time, issue areas, policy functions, and world regions, and statistically test competing explanations of the variation in TNA access. The central results are three-fold. First, the empirical data confirm the existence of a far-reaching institutional transformation of IOs over the past sixty years, pervading all issue areas, policy functions, and world regions. Second, variation in TNA access within and across IOs is mainly explained by a combination of three factors: functional demand for the resources of TNAs, domestic democratic standards in the membership of IOs, and state concerns with national sovereignty. Third, existing research suffers from a selection bias that has led it to overestimate the general importance of a new participatory norm in global governance for the openness of IOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Organizations (IOs) are nowadays independent and central actors in global affairs. They are, however, faced with unprecedented challenges arising from the increasing interdependence in economic, political and financial affairs. Those new circumstances do not only call for novel institutional and procedural approaches that can offer efficient solutions to the problems, but must also satisfy the condition of public accountability and legitimacy. This paper explores the IOs' deliberative capacity, and suggests that deliberative forms of communication can help IOs to make up for these shortcomings. It conceptualizes 'deliberative capacity as the capability to engage in 'high-quality deliberation with effect'. 'High-quality' deliberation refers to the process of making decisions in ways that allow for the inclusion of a wide range of interested actors and authenticity of arguments; deliberation 'with effect' means that the agreed outputs are of import. The paper illustrates IOs' deliberative capacity in the fields of human rights and environment through two examples: the working practices of the newlyestablished Universal Periodic Review (UPR) operating under the auspices of the Human Rights Council (HRC) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) working in collaboration with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has come to be seen as a promising avenue for boosting economic development. As a consequence, most developing countries now seek to attract FDI, often by making ex ante promises to foreign investors not to pass laws or regulations--or refrain from other actions--that would diminish the value of the investment ex post. But how credible are such promises? A number of recent studies have examined the effect of domestic institutions (veto players, democracy, etc.) on the credibility of commitments by developing country governments toward foreign private economic actors, such as foreign investors. In addition, a few studies have examined the effect of international institutions on the credibility of such commitments. We examine the interaction of domestic and international institutions in promoting FDI. We show theoretically and empirically that democratic domestic institutions help attract more FDI into developing countries only in the context of economically liberal international institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulating labor markets has always been at the center of political struggles, juxtaposing employers and workers' interests. Not surprisingly, these political conflicts have never solely taken place within clearly defined national boundaries. International organizations (IOs) such as the OECD and EU have actively been engaged in defining "appropriate" levels of labor market interventions since the 1960s and 1990s respectively. In this paper, the question is raised if, and if so how, the recommendations of these IOs have influenced national reform agendas since the end of World War II. The paper's main contention is that the OECD's recommendations have given rise to a phase of "institution building" during the 1960s and 1970s, times during which Public Employment Services (PES) were introduced and/or modernized, legislation passed to institutionalize active labor market policies (ALMP), and unemployment insurance systems extended and made more generous. During the 1980s, however, phase of labor market divergence followed as the OECD -- caught in ideological clashes about the best way forward -- was unable to put forward a commonly acceptable portfolio of choices. Accordingly, the 1980s were times during which labor markets were further regulated and social protections schemes expanded in Continental and Northern Europe, while the Anglo-Saxon world pursued a path of deregulation and welfare retrenchment. When the European Union entered as a player during the 1990s, the "activation turn" became a common feature in all worlds of welfare. If, and if so how, the Great Recession has reshuffled economic interests and perhaps undermined this new paradigmatic policy outlook is at the heart of this paper's final discussions and its conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks whether interaction within intergovernmental organizations covering different issue areas lead to a convergence in member state interests over time or whether there are differences in that process across issue areas. I start by presenting a general theory of how the interaction of state agents within intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) leads to a convergence in member state interests over time. The theory is based on the notion that, all else being equal, IGOs that facilitate more interaction between individuals from various states are conducive to greater member state interest convergence over time because there are more opportunities for agents from one or more member states to persuade agents from other member states to accept new ideas that affect how they define their states' interests. I argue that such persuasion does not necessarily have to involve a shift in state identities, but can also involve a diffusion of ideas about cause-and-effect relationships. Also, by focusing on IGOs as structures within which state agents interact, I argue against a narrow focus on socialization defined as the induction of new members into community norms. I do not expect this process to be different within different issue areas because state representatives can share ideas regarding any issue area in a variety of different for a, both formal and informal. Using an original IGO dataset, I test these hypotheses in a series of statistical models. The findings are generally supportive of my theory, but do show differences between issue areas. I conclude by suggesting ways to further evaluate the question herein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many political philosophers hold the Feasible Alternatives Principle (FAP): we have a duty to implement some reformof international institutions P only if P is feasible and P improves upon the status quo from the standpoint of justice. The FAP implies that any argument for a duty to implement P must incorporate analyses of extant causal processes that are empirically and theoretically rigorous enough to show that P is likely feasible and likely to be justice-enhancing. Yet, philosophers routinely neglect the need to attend to actual causal processes. This undermines their arguments concerning our duties to reforminternational institutions. The upshot is that philosophers' arguments must engage in causal analysis to a greater extent than is typical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do international institutions affect trade with sanctioned states? Despite the central role played by international institutions in theories of sanctions success, little is actually known about the direct effects they have on state behavior. This paper explores the effects that institutional membership and institutional sanctions have on states' proclivity to sanctions-bust. We test the literature's assumption that international institutions' sanctions are capable of preventing their members from undercutting sanctioning efforts by trading heavily with the sanctions' target. We test this hypothesis and others via an analysis of the trade conducted with the targets of 164 sanctions episodes from 1950-2004 and the role played by five different international institutions. Surprisingly, we find only weak evidence that institutional sanctions actually reduce their members' likelihoods of sanctions-busting and no evidence that U.N. sanctions do. We also find that members of the European Union avidly sanctions-bust-even when the institution participates in sanctioning efforts. These findings indicate that international institutions play a far more complicated role in affecting sanctions outcomes than previously assumed and have salient policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International institutions, such as international criminal courts, are often given mandates without the authority or resources to enforce those directives. Given this, how do international criminal courts try to achieve their objectives? We argue that in the case of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the court has created an "accountability network" of governmental and non-governmental organizations that work in overlapping, reinforcing ways to try to push Balkan states to change their behavior. Utilizing correspondence data from the ICTY, we create a unique dataset that allows us to demonstrate how the court has engaged in extensive outreach to create an accountability network of public and private organizations that work in separate but overlapping ways to influence policies and behavior in the Balkans. We continue this analysis using case studies and process tracing to show how governmental actors taken on the ICTY's goals as their own and similarly try to get Balkans states to comply with ICTY dictates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to understand how international institutions influence state behavior, we must first examine the selection process that brings states into an institution. What accounts for the variation in when states choose to apply for membership? This paper looks at the growth of membership in the trade regime from a small club of 23 founding countries in 1948 to an organization of nearly universal membership with 153 member countries today. We argue that both economic interests and geopolitics have formed the basis for expanding membership in the trade regime. In statistical analysis, we estimate a duration model of time to application for all potential members. We assess the role of trade dependence, domestic institutions, and foreign policy. Our findings challenge the view that states liberalize first in order to join the regime. Democracy and foreign policy similarity with members are important conditions that encourage states to join. In case studies we examine the accession decisions of Japan, Korea, and Mexico. States seek market access, but also want to protect their own markets. Common interests with current members help to push forward applicants who are not yet committed free traders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent renaissance in the theoretical analysis of intergovernmental organizations has focused on formal IGOs-legalized interstate arrangements coordinated through permanent secretariats with varying degrees of autonomy. But many intergovernmental organizations are informal in nature-they are subject to no formal treaty and/or have no permanent secretariat. Important examples include the various G-groups that are the locus of much high-level interaction among states. What does the broader set of informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGO) look like? How can they best be conceptualized in relation to the full spectrum of international institutions? Why would states choose to create and work through an IIGO rather than a formal IGO? We build on the analysis of soft law, informal agreements, and informal governance to understand why IIGOs are important in their own right as more than just stepping stones to more formal organizations-although we are also interested in that possibility. IIGOs act as complements for formal IGOs when states face high uncertainty surrounding other states' preferences and the state of the world; IIGOs offer a low risk forum for creating focal point solutions that can be implemented through coordinated state action or through formal entities. IIGOs act as substitutes for formal IGOs when states need increased flexibility, speed, ambiguity or weaker enforcement. We locate IIGOs along the spectrum of intergovernmental arrangements with varying degrees of formality and we supplement this theoretical analysis with an empirical analysis that develops a comprehensive list of informal intergovernmental organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hallways of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are no longer just occupied by state delegations, but instead, a majority of IGOs in existence today grant access or participatory rights to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) too. Many NGOs can therefore attend IGO conferences, participate in day-to-day IGO working groups, implement the projects sponsored by IGOs, push items onto the agendas of IGO meetings, and provide background research for contentious topics. Existing explanations privilege the idea that NGOs help IGOs accommodate a growing democratic deficit or the legitimacy of the IGO, ignoring states as the central actors in international politics. But why would states want to bring NGOs into the already complex coordination problems that exist within IGOs? I argue that states primarily employ NGOs to help monitor and enforce their own positions in international politics. This chapter looks specifically at one IGO-the UN ECOSOC-to test this theory. I analyze the rotating 19 member ECOSOC NGO committee which helps to eliminate some of the predominant research challenges in IGO-NGO research. I show that (1) when a state is represented in the ECOSOC NGO committee, they are more likely to grant access to NGOs whose preferences align with the state's and (2) the more pro-US the ECOSOC NGO committee, the more likely it is that pro-US NGOs are granted access. These relationships emphasize that state-level motivations and benefits are at the heart of explaining IGO-NGO access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a research paper on legitimacy in international law and international relations. Topics discussed include changing conceptions of legitimacy in international society and world society, and different types of legitimacy of international institutions like global governance organizations and international financial institutions.

Oil-exporting states occupy a paradoxical position in the international system. Economically, they are highly globalized, as large flows of goods, services, capital, people, and information travel across their borders. They are also the source of the world's single most valuable commodity, and hence influential. Yet politically, they are strikingly unglobalized: they are exceptionally reluctant to participate in international institutions that require binding commitments. We demonstrate empirically that oil wealth is associated with both high levels of economic and social integration and low levels of political integration - a condition we call "unbalanced globalization," in contrast to more balanced globalization of other countries. We also develop an explanation for it, based on the unique advantages in trade and finance of the oilexporting states, and their tendency to export an unusually narrow range of goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do domestic politics influence the formation of international institutions, and what are the effects of international institutions on domestic politics? In this article, we examine how leaders use preferential trading agreements (PTAs) with major powers (European Union and the United States) to promote liberal economic policies. We argue that under democratization, new leaders would benefit the most from credible commitment and side payments to compensate vulnerable domestic constituencies for their losses. Thus, they have strong incentives to negotiate a PTA with a major power. Using original data on treaty negotiations, our empirical analysis shows that under democratization, leader change greatly increases the probability that the government of a developing country begins treaty negotiations. We also demonstrate that PTAs induce liberalization in different sectors of the economy, and this effect is the most pronounced if it follows a leader change under democratization. These findings support the notion that international institutions allow leaders to surmount domestic obstacles to economic reform. The theory can help scholars explain and predict the timing of treaty formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major empirical challenges in the study of international institutions and organizations is assessing their impact on state policy and behavior. As social scientists, political scientists focus on inferring the causal effect of institutions from observed patterns of behavior. However, in the operationalization of the effects of institutions, much empirical work has chosen to borrow a legal concept, compliance, as the measured outcome variable. This essay evaluates and critiques the empirical literature on compliance, while drawing lessons from this literature for the systematic study of institutional effects. The concept of compliance, while central to the analysis of lawyers and of legal scholars, is inappropriate as a measure of institutional effects and has led to misallocation of research resources. Instead, political scientists need to return to more standard approaches to assessing causal effects, including clear specification of counterfactuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exporting democracy has become a significant element of the foreign policy of many countries and of the operation of many international organizations. Much of our knowledge about democracy promotion, however, comes from studying the activities of a few Western countries. In this paper, I look instead at a group of little-studied but ardent democracy promoters - the Eastern European members of the EU. I ask: What motivates their efforts and what is the logic behind them? In answering this empirical question, I am also interested in what these democracy exporters teach us about democracy promotion in general. Accordingly, I build on existing studies of Western support for democracy abroad to define two distinct approaches to understanding the place of democracy promotion in the foreign-policy process: democracy promotion as a normative commitment and democracy promotion as a strategic commitment. I then examine the activities of Poland and Slovakia - typical cases among the Eastern EU democracy promoters - as new cases against which to test and then refine the two types of previous accounts of democracy promotion. I find that like most Western democracy promotion and despite its reputation as "idealism," Eastern European democracy promotion is best understood as a strategic commitment - a means to creating a more secure international environment. In Poland, democracy promotion became an element of a geo-political strategy to deter Russian aggression and in Slovakia, democracy promotion emerged as the solution to the political and economic destabilization in the neighboring former Yugoslav and Soviet republics. Moreover, I find that these logics of Eastern European democracy promotion were defined by the norm entrepreneurs who prepared the democratic transitions in these countries and who subsequently also sought to incorporate democracy promotion in their country's foreign policy by arguing for its strategic benefits. This paper thus suggests that studies of democracy promotion should pay more attention to the role of domestic (civil society) actors in formulating the motivations behind democracy promotion as well as to the interactions of strategic and principled commitments through the deliberate strategic framing of moral causes by these norm entrepreneurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty years ago, Myron Weiner described the laggard condition of mass education in India in a groundbreaking book, The Child and the State in India. Relative to other countries with similar economies, India trailed across almost every single educational measure. Weiner ascribed much of India's shortcomings in education to lack of governmental support from the leaders at the Centre, leaders whom he suspected would always resist improving mass education. Since the publication of Weiner's book, however, governmental support for Indian education has improved dramatically. In this paper, I examine what influences national-level government support for social development in the developing world. I do so by examining why Indian national-level government officials have shown a serious commitment to mass education reform when they have historically refused to do so. More than rising incomes, ethnic considerations, or pressures from domestic business, I find evidence that international factors - such as foreign aid and the demands from international institutions such as the World Bank - have played a critical role in bringing education to the forefront of Indian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We put forth an alternative explanation for how globalization is impacting the network of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Using Hierarchical Link Clustering (HLC) and a computational approach to yearly IGOs networks from 1971 to 2005, our analysis shows that globalization is making the structure of the world polity both more fractured and more cohesive. The mechanism for explaining this seemingly contradictory result lies in the behavior of IGOs, which depends largely on the organizations' geographic focus: regionally focused IGOs create more communities, thereby fracturing the world polity, while globally focused IGOs create relationships across communities, thereby bringing communities together and creating a core. Furthermore, the same mechanism creates a significant turnover in the set of global IGOs located at the core of the yearly networks. These findings are only partially consistent with the predominant, network-focused approaches to international relations and suggest that a more complex model is needed in order to study the network of IGOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how the World Bank and the United Nations (UN) Development Programme (UNDP) as intergovernmental organizations discuss the general problems of development. It mentions the influence of both agencies in development discussions. It notes the annual reports of both organizations that outline the general economic situation globally and the leading themes of their work. It also emphasizes the less emphasizes of the annual reports of the agencies on environmental aspects.

Outsiders often try to influence outcomes of internal conflicts. A growing body of literature explores the effects of third-party intervention, focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on states' military and, more recently, diplomatic interventions. Non-state actors have become central players both in the conduct of war - e.g. rebel groups, terrorist networks or mercenaries - and in efforts of conflict resolution. Regional organization, churches and professional conflict management organizations are examples of groups that try to end wars. Such conflict management initiatives conducted by non-state actors are proliferating - but how relevant are they in an international system still dominated by states? Can actors without the means of state power affect the behavior of conflict parties and help end conflicts? Considering the growing number of NGOs and individuals getting involved in conflict resolution, it is worthwhile to analyze their effectiveness. I focus my research on track-two diplomacy in ongoing internal conflicts, where track two is defined as any conflict management initiative that is led by an individual or organization not directly tied to a government or an intergovernmental organization and targets the leadership level of parties in a conflict. The focus on internal conflicts is practical: Non-state actors find more political space to insert themselves into negotiations in civil wars than in interstate conflicts. Thus, if non-state conflict management has the effect it aims for- contributing to conflict resolution - then this effect should be most pronounced in intrastate wars. Using a new data set of track two diplomacy, I develop a duration model of African civil conflicts in the time period 1990-2010, hypothesizing that civil conflicts that experience non-state conflict management efforts will end earlier than those in which no non-state conflict management takes place, all else being equal. Early models find statistical significance for the main explanatory variable, but not in the expected direction. More work is needed to understand the relationship between non-state conflict management and conflict dynamics. This paper and the larger project it is part of contribute to the literature on civil war, mediation and conflict resolution and non-state actors in international relations. Findings will be interesting for states and non-state actors engaged in mediation and conflict management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the largest emerging economies-Brazil, India, and China (the BICs)-efforts to expand their influence in global governance have centered on key formal institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the World Trade Organization (WTO). Less attention has been given to the rapid growth of alternative modes of global governance that deviate from the traditional model of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). BIC participation in and influence over four alternative modes are considered: informal groups of governments that produce soft law; informal governance structures within existing IGOs; networked governance in the form of transgovernmental networks (TGNs); and hybrid alternatives that include non-state actors, particularly non- governmental organizations (NGOs). Investigation of the logic of BIC participation in these alternative institutions produces three tentative conclusions, supported by illustrative rather than conclusive evidence. The rise of these new powers has coincided with the expansion of alternative modes of global governance, but parallel emergence has not meant alignment or promotion. Only the first of these alternative modes, state- centered production of soft law within ad hoc or informal groups of governments, coincides closely with the preferences of the rising powers. Overall, the governments of these newly influential powers have been conservative in their preference for intergovernmental organizations. Second, in confronting the new landscape of alternatives to intergovernmental organizations, the BICs have found that incumbent powers are often entrenched as deeply as they are in peak IGOs. Finally, the ability of the rising powers to expand their influence in these new forums will accelerate or decelerate depending on domestic political and economic resources that they bring to these new sites of global governance. Brazil, India, and China vary in the resource endowments that their domestic political configurations provide for this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the argument of the author that in practice and across a wide range of issue areas, the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) have been less cooperative in sustaining international institutions and international order. The author says that the engagement of the U.S. is not only essential for reasons of national interest, but that it is vital for sustaining global order.

Partnerships have become an important mechanism to foster closer cooperation between international institutions and countries that are interested to develop closer relations with these institutions. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) introduced a number of initiatives in the last two decades including Partnership for Peace (PfP), Mediterranean Dialogue, Istanbul Cooperative Initiative, and others. These forms of international cooperation constitute an important element of NATO's cooperative security and play a crucial role in the promotion of smart defense, i.e. one that "provides greater security with fewer resources but also needs higher level of coordination and coherence." The literature recognizes some inherent advantages of NATO partnerships as they engage non-members to work closely with the Alliance in areas where there are mutual benefits of such cooperation. Nonetheless, current studies fail to address the extent to which NATO is able to persuade it partners to accomplish two specific goals: (1) manage more effectively their limited resources (e.g. personnel and military equipment); and (2) increase partner contributions to overseas operations. This paper explores the extent to which NATO partnerships can be an effective tool that persuades participating nations to modify their own security policies and expand their involvement in international operations. The paper offers theoretical and policy findings about the impact of security cooperation with nations from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa about the benefits of smart defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and policy-makers frequently use the term 'global health agenda' or some variant, usually because they are expressing a concern that an issue is neglected. Rarely do they define what they mean by the concept, making it unclear what they are referring to. We offer a working definition: 'the list of health issues that a set of elite organizations involved in global health are paying attention to at any given point in time.' We then offer some recommendations on how the agenda status of any given health issue might be measured and draw some initial findings from these measures, examining which issues get attention, whether attention corresponds to burden, and how different dimensions of agenda status such as media attention and donor funding relate to one another. The aim of offering definitional clarity and a means of indicating agenda status is to advance the study of agenda-setting in global health, so that we might move beyond impressionistic statements and toward empirical measures of what issues are and are not receiving attention in global health, and in which arenas that attention is appearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While International Relations has for a long time been informed by state-centric approaches, processes of globalization, the emergence of transnational actors and their increased cross-border activities have contributed to a disciplinary opening in terms of which actors are considered to be important. Both transnational networks and private actors such as NGOs and multinational enterprises ("MNEs") interacting within these networks have become popular research topics. However, research on MNEs and their contributions within transnational networks suffers from two conceptual shortcomings as corporate rationality and interests are essentialized and parsimony is favored over complexity. Due to this essentialization and complexity reduction, research questions on transnational networks are limited to legitimacy, efficiency and external effects. Instead of conceptualizing MNEs as having clear and exogenously defined interests, the paper considers enterprises as social actors, constituted through and influenced by interaction. Such a perspective informed by a pragmatist theory of action implies that corporate action is context-bound, creative and thus contingent. If MNEs are conceptualized as socially constituted actors, corporate participation within both binding and non-binding networks influences their meanings and roles. The theoretical argument is empirically illustrated by analyzing the emergence and development of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. Thus, the paper looks at one particular transnational network and its meaning for two participating enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the authors' views on the borders and frontiers of various global organizations. They refer to claims and sympathies of organizations on the limits and authority of academic communities in terms of national origin, networking, and advocacies at nongovernment organizations. The authors reveal that the growing literature on international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) indicates its vast influence in changing state policy and shaping global social practices.

A conference paper about the legitimacy of state support of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Kenya. It offers information on the implications of NGo growth on state and society relations. Moreover, it examines the relations between service provision of NGO and legitimacy of government in Kenya.

Constructivist and World Society scholars study the adoption of good (i.e., liberal) norms often embodied in programs which are supported by intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Analytically separating norms from programs, we examine the cross-national diffusion of a voluntary program which, while embodying a widely accepted norm, is criticized for its weak institutional design. We focus on the conflicting roles of IGOs and INGOs, the two networks identified as key agents of diffusion by constructivists and World Society scholars. Empirically, we study the United Nations Global Compact which embodies the norm of corporate responsibility. The Compact encourages businesses to voluntarily embrace ten principles in the areas of human rights, labor standards, the environment, and corruption. However, the Compact has been criticized by NGOs because it does not specify concrete, verifiable goals, and does not provide for credible monitoring and enforcement. Our examination of the cross-national diffusion of the Global Compact for the period 2001 to 2007 suggests that while embeddedness in IGO networks encourages program adoption in a given country, embeddedness in INGO networks discourages it. Thus, key networks which often work together to spread good norms embodied in strong policies, work in opposition to each other in the context of a good norm which is embodied in a weak policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a theory of informal governance - uncodified rules of behavior running parallel to formal treaty rules - in international institutions. It builds on, and develops, rational institutionalist approaches in International Relations that explore how provisions for flexibility allow states sustain cooperation in the face of change in their strategic environment. The central argument advanced in this article is that in order to maintain a mutually beneficial depth of cooperation, governments devise, in parallel with formal rules, a "norm of discretion" prescribing that governments facing unmanageable pressure for defection be accommodated. Because some governments face incentives to exploit this norm, the task of adjudicating its use is delegated to a government that stands to lose from excessive accommodation. The norm consequently manifests itself in practices of informal governance as states collectively depart from formal rules in order to exercise discretion. The resulting mix of informal and formal governance is functional in that it renders the institution dynamic and therefore adaptable to contingent domestic demands for cooperation. The plausibility of the theory is probed using the example of European economic integration, but it can be extended to international organizations more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a research paper which focuses on identifying, measuring and systematically analyzing the structure and performance of bureaucracies in international institutions. It refers to case studies of European Union security and defense organizations, and global financial institutions like International Monetary Fund. It analyzes international organizations as bureaucracies to understand their role as structural features of the international system or the interests of states.

Each International Organization (IO) is composed of both big and small states. While the former are often in the centre of scholarly attention, the latter face several structural disadvantages in pursuing national policy preferences in international negotiations. Small states have less political leverage and fewer economic capacities, which reduces their bargaining power significantly. In addition, they have less financial and administrative resources necessary for building up policy expertise and exerting influence through argumentative power. How do small states cope with these structural disadvantages? How can they nevertheless actively engage in international negotiations and influence outcomes? In drawing on negotiation theory, this paper systematically explores different shaping strategies. Based on the example of the European Union (EU) and a comprehensive survey of all 27 member states, the paper shows that not all states are equally active and successful in influencing policies according to their national positions. The paper develops a set of competing explanations and proceeds to empirically test them. This reveals that the frequent usage of networking and arguing, and to a lesser extent bargaining strategies, increases the chances of states successfully influencing policies in day-today negotiations in the EU. The paper also shows that small states can punch above their weight especially if they have been members of the respective IO for some time, in which they experienced a steep learning curve which improved the knowledge of the institutions, internal procedures and policies, and if they use this experience to actively engage in a variety of policy shaping strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even IR scholars who believe international institutions can have independent effects upon state behavior generally dismiss the possibility that international organizations (IOs) possess independent enforcement power because they do not trade, cannot tax, and are unable to conscript militaries. I argue an IO can contribute to enforcing compliance with international norms and rules if it has some autonomy from its state masters and the capacity to punish noncompliance or reward compliance on their behalf. A study of enforcement of the nuclear nonproliferation regime against North Korea by the international community is used to illustrate that the International Atomic Energy Agency independently contributed to international enforcement when it was authorized to do so. This finding has clear policy implications for states seeking to strengthen international cooperation in areas experiencing problems with compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter documents local demand for HIV/AIDS services in sub-Saharan Africa and seeks to explain patterns of demand using an original dataset from Malawi, a country hard-hit by the AIDS pandemic. As international agencies and national governments rapidly scale up HIV and AIDS interventions in sub-Saharan Africa, my analysis of cross-national public opinion data paired with survey and in-depth interviews of villagers and their headmen in rural Malawi suggest weak prioritization of HIV/AIDS programs. In this chapter, I test whether self-interest predicts policy preference; specifically, I look at whether HIV serostatus or being affected personally by AIDS predicts demand for HIV/AIDS programs. I find that though HIV-positive respondents are more likely to prioritize HIV/AIDS programs, demand for increased HIV/AIDS programs remains very low in high-prevalence settings. The data illustrate a misalignment of policy preferences in the global-to-local hierarchy of actors involved in HIV and AIDS interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the author's views on how international organizations achieve a balance between general interests and compliance with their norms. He argues that operating formal and informal rules allows international organizations to achieve such balance. He proposes a formal model for informal governance of international organizations. The author concludes that the susbtantial structural power inherent in some countries makes it possible for them to give up the formal control of organizations without threatening their core interests.

The article investigates the politicization of the United Nations (UN) Security Council (SC) and the role played by the civil society and non-government organizations (NGO) in this process. It considers the expansion of the scope and authority of the SC after the Cold War, the response of the SC to criticism and resistance and the opening up of the institutional design of the SC to non-state actors. The interactions between international institutions and civil society are discussed.

When it comes to embracing the European Union's vision of building a fully integrated financial market, central and east Europeans have far out-performed their West European counterparts. This paper addresses both why levels of foreign ownership in banks is on average so much higher in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) than in Western Europe, but also why there is variation among CEE states in how willing they have been in accepting those high levels of foreign ownership. I develop a theory of international institutional influence on target states that suggests compliance with international institutions' conditionality and advice depends on the existence of a particular social context. I test the argument in five post-socialist states: Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia and Ukraine. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interstate cooperation through an international institution is only one of the many options available to states to respond to foreign policy issues. When do they choose it, instead of some form of unilateral action, an extra-institutional 'coalition of the willing,' or even doing nothing? I argue that the choice of cooperation in a particular institution is conditioned on the existence both of consensus around an acceptable policy outcome and of sufficient capacity to execute that policy successfully. In the absence of one or both of these, non-cooperation outcomes are likely to occur. I test these claims by examining the case of Albania's near collapse in early 1997. Several enormous Ponzi (pyramid) schemes collapsed, and impoverished citizens rioted in the streets. The country tottered on the brink of civil war for several weeks, while Western European stated argued over what form of response to take and which institution(s) should be involved in the response. Using a method of structured, focused comparison, I examine the behavior of several European states on two aspects of the crisis. What were the states' preferred outcomes (their ideal points) on the two issues? What were their preferred strategies to obtain those ideal points - and in particular, how did concerns about the twin needs for consensus and capacity influence? How did these strategies interact with the strategies of others and with external constraints to produce the observed outcomes? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some countries more technologically innovative than others? The dominant explanation amongst political-economists is that domestic institutions determine national innovation rates. However, after decades of research, there is still no agreement on precisely how this happens, exactly which institutions matter, and little aggregate evidence has been produced to support any particular hypothesis. This paper will review the equivocating evidence for domestic institutions explanations of national innovation rates. Its survey will show that, although a specific domestic institution or policy might appear to explain a particular instance of innovation, they generally fail to explain national innovation rates across time and space. Instead, the empirical evidence suggests that certain kinds of international relationships (e.g. capital goods imports, foreign direct investment, educational exchanges) affect national innovation rates in the aggregate, and that these relationships are not themselves determined by domestic institutions. In other words, explaining national innovation rates may not be so much a domestic institutions story as it is an international story. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a new theoretical framework of international unions qua coalitions of countries adopting a common policy and common supranational institutions. We introduce a general class of non-cooperative spatial bargaining games of coalition formation among three countries in order to examine the endogenous strategic considerations in the creation and enlargement of international unions. Why would we observe a gradualist approach in the formation of the grand coalition even if the latter is assumed to be weakly efficient? We propose uncertainty about the benefits of integration as a mechanism that can generate gradual union formation in equilibrium. As it turns out, it may well be in the 'core' countries' interest to delay the accession of a third, peripheral country in order to i) stack the institutional make-up of the initial union in their favor and ii) signal their high resolve to wait out the expansion of their bilateral subunion. A related case from the European Union provides an interesting illustration. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the dynamics of issue definition and agenda-setting, seeking to explain how and why the problems of modern conflict and conflict prevention have been defined to include a role for the private sector, and how that issue has been taken up to varying degrees by governments, activists, and international organizations. The issue was defined and the agenda set as a result of two processes: the development of a broader corporate social responsibility agenda which has become a focal point for activism, as activists engage in a learning and emulation process across issue areas; and the movement by public authorities to strategically delegate authority and contract out conflict prevention to non-state actors, both to reduce the costs of intervention and in response to their own learning and emulation. The campaign by activists thus became part of a broader effort to institutionalize corporate participation in conflict prevention initiatives, although, as will be discussed below, this has met with only partial success. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]