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Funding is an oft-overlooked but critically important determinant of what public institutions are able to accomplish. This article focuses on the growing role of earmarked voluntary contributions from member states in funding formal international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Heavy reliance on such funds can erode the multilateral governance of international organizations and poses particular risks for two kinds of undertakings: normative work, such as setting standards and identifying best practices; and evaluating the conduct of member states and holding those states accountable, including through public criticism, when they fall short. International organizations have devised strategies for mitigating these risks, but those strategies are generally not codified in formal policies and are not visible to the public. This Article argues that more formal regulations are needed and outlines some possibilities for the form they might take. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States address many of today's global problems in international organizations (IOs). At the same time, regional international organizations (RIOs) play important roles in IOs, as a series of case studies suggests. RIO member states can speak on behalf of an RIO in IO negotiations. This paper explores under what conditions states voice RIO positions instead of national ones in IOs and thereby turn into agents of regionalization. Based on a novel dataset of more than 500 international negotiations and a quantitative analysis of theory-guided International Relations hypotheses, this paper shows that states are increasingly likely to negotiate on behalf of an RIO, when they regard grouping positions into regional blocs in IO negotiations as more effective, when they have a formal role as RIO chair, and when they possess financial and staff capacities needed in order to voice a regional position in international negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to analyse Turkey's contribution to the United Nations (UN) system in comparison with those of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries between 2008 and 2014 on three levels: personnel, financial, ideational. Employing an integrated methodology of a global governance contribution index (GGCI) and statistical analysis of complementary raw data, this study empirically reveals the degree to which Turkey was able to transfer its capabilities into an effective contribution to the UN system on the three levels. Drawing on the findings of its quantitative analysis, this paper further qualitatively assesses the reasons behind the gap between Turkey's global governance motivations and its contribution to the UN system. In doing so, this study, first, deals with the main motivational drivers of its activism in global governance in the 2000s. After unpacking its integrated methodology, the second part of this study quantitatively compares Turkey's contribution to the UN system to that of the BRICS. The third part of this study delves into the main trends and deficiencies in Turkey's contribution to the UN system. Finally, this study concludes that Turkey, despite its high motivations for activism in global governance, has not performed well in transferring its capacities into contributions to the UN system, particularly on financial and personnel levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) is a regional and inter-governmental organization which provides a trading block like the European Union and this paper attempt to understand the undercurrents of it. ECO provides a trading block like the European Union and committed to achieve its objectives. Its main members are Iran, Pakistan and Turkey and in fact this organization is a continuation of the multi-government organization; the RCD started in 1964 and ceased working in 1979. ECO emerged as a replacement of RCD in 1985, with inclusion of seven more countries including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan. For achieving its objectives ECO's work-plan was prepared in three, cultural, economic and scientific, domains. The geographical situation of these countries not only provides road, air and sea-links for each other but also can connect the countries of central Asia as well. Land locked, Central Asian countries to date are linked to Mediterranean Sea through Turkey, Persian Gulf through Iran and by developing ECO Pakistan can provide access to these countries to Arabian Sea. This paper argues that if the strategic goals set in ECO and CPEC are achieved Pakistan can emerge as one of the fastest growing regional markets, possibly globally, as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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As political authority shifts to the global level, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) increasingly attempt to influence policy-making within international organisations (IOs). This article examines the nature and sources of non-governmental organisations' advocacy strategies in global governance. We advance a twofold theoretical argument. First, non-governmental organisation advocacy can be described in terms of inside and outside strategies, similar to interest group lobbying in American and European politics. Second, non-governmental organisations' chosen combination of inside and outside strategies can be explained by their organisational goals and membership base. Empirically, this argument is corroborated through a large-n analysis of original data from structured interviews with 303 non-governmental organisation representatives active in relation to the United Nations (UN), complemented by 19 semi-structured interviews with UN and state officials. The article's findings have implications for the theory and practice of non-governmental organisation involvement in global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earth's life-support system is facing megaproblems of sustainability. One important way of how these problems can be addressed is through innovation. This paper argues that responsible innovation that contributes to sustainable development (SD) consists of three dimensions: (1) innovations avoid harming people and the planet, (2) innovations 'do good' by offering new products, services, or technologies that foster SD, and (3) global governance schemes are in place that facilitate innovations that avoid harm and 'do good.' The paper discusses global governance schemes based on deliberation as a means to foster such responsible innovation. These schemes can provide voluntary soft-law regulations that complement and extend national and international hard-law regulations and facilitate collective innovation that contributes to SD goals. The article addresses the facilitative role of governments and international organizations in overcoming problems of deliberation and offers illustrative examples of such governance schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines attempts by professionals in the Danish branch of the environmental NGONatureAidto optimize their practice by developing a local standard. Describing these efforts as an experiment in optimization, we outline a post-critical alternative to critiques that centre on the reductive effects of management and audit. The notion that reduction is inherently negative fails to recognize that achieving specific forms of reduction is often the reflexive aim of standardization. Rather than resisting monitoring and evaluation, the environmental consultants we study try to create a system capable of constraining their work in theright way. Focusing on this experiment in optimization allows us to redescribe audit as a varied set of practices and aspirations, embedded in standards that generate relative forms of organizational transparency and opacity. This offers a view of management as ‘broken up’; as a distributed, ambient activity, variably performed by different actors using different standards. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I assume that global intergovernmental organizations (GIGOs) function as enablers of interstate liberal politics by way of their multilateral institutional frameworks. To support this view, I recall and adapt the classical concept of ‘polyarchy,’ coined in the early 1950s by Robert A. Dahl. It consists of a two‐dimensional theoretical construct applicable for measuring the level of liberalization in modern political societies. It follows that the more actors who take part in politics, and the more such institutions allow political opposition, the more open a society (of states) is likely to be. I therefore assess and rate the level of polyarchization of 23 GIGOs that cover various issue areas and fit some specific criteria (for example, more than one hundred member states from at least three different continents). Methodology includes a scorecard developed to help achieve these research objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the social aspects of what the author refers to as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) open door membership policy as of 2016, and it mentions the implications of NATO's decision to accept Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the organization. Global alliances are addressed, along with the history of NATO and concerns about who is allowed to join NATO and when should the organization stop admitting additional members. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe is examined, along with the potential inclusion of Russia and Ukraine in NATO.

Combating threats of infectious diseases has been increasingly framed as a global shared responsibility for a multi-actor framework of states, international organisations and nongovernmental actors. However, the outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) has shown that this governance framework has not been able to limit the spread of this virus, despite the normative and legislative changes to global disease control. By unbundling the concept of responsibility, this article will assess how global shared responsibility may have failed because accountability does not fall on any one state or stakeholder, highlighting an inherent weakness in the global disease governance regime. The paper concludes that a move towards multiple responsibilities may prove a more effective mechanism for ensuring global health security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More and more, international institutions pursue their objectives together in the form of partnerships. Partnerships are established to work towards important policy objectives in relation to global health, environmental protection, and so on. However, the activities of partnerships may lead to questions of responsibility when such objectives are not achieved, or when third party interests are affected. This Forum explores questions of responsibility—the term responsibility being used in a broad sense—that may arise in relation to partnerships and in particular the question of whether responsibility can be shared between the actors that participate in a partnership. These introductory notes provide the necessary background by defining the concepts of partnerships and shared responsibility, and identify ten conclusions on shared responsibility that can be drawn from the case-studies on particular partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of national representatives on the management boards ( MBs) of European Union agencies ( EUAs) is crucial in two respects. From a democratic point of view, national MB representatives' accountability may constitute a possible additional source of legitimacy for these technocratic bodies. From the perspective of European integration, their relationship with national institutions tells us about the status of EUAs and the extent to which their MBs constitute an intergovernmental control tool in the hands of the Member States. Contrary to their formal design, the collected data suggest that MBs have a rather supranational, technocratic character. With regard to their contribution to EUAs' democratic accountability, although the general level of accountability is high, the findings are more diverse. However, rather than reflecting control intentions by the Member States, different levels of accountability can best be explained by functional and institutional rather than strategic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to unpack the implications of contemporary peacebuilding for technocratic, bureaucratic organizational forms. It argues that if the contemporary peacebuilding literature is taken as given, fundamental alterations are required in predominately Western peacebuilding systems—specifically in the structure and function of bureaucratic organizations that typically fund, manage and execute peacebuilding interventions. The analysis proceeds by matching five ‘peacebuilding principles’ derived from contemporary literature, with an organizational framework that highlights key structural and functional aspects of bureaucracies, thus allowing organizational deficiencies to be identified. The article argues that current peacebuilding scholarship would benefit from theoretically guided organizational research on the various organizations and systems involved in peacebuilding implementation. It concludes that peacebuilding scholars can be informed by the significant body of knowledge in the fields of public administration and policy, which bring a rich history of studying implementation situations that parallel in many ways complex peacebuilding interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Currently two contrasting perspectives dominate the literature on interest group community development. The collective action perspective presumes that interest group communities tend to be dominated by groups with few obstacles for political mobilization. The neo-pluralist perspective instead stresses that many interest group communities have inherent balancing mechanisms, assuring that over time these communities become increasingly diverse. Both perspectives, however, have primarily been developed and used in domestic settings. I argue that these traditional perspectives also are highly useful in studying transnational interest group communities. I analyze the mobilization patterns of 6,655 interest groups active at UN climate summits between 1995 and 2011. While the results mostly confirm a neo-pluralist perspective, which entails more diverse mobilization patterns, business and highly specialized interests did have a clear, and possibly crucial, advantage in the early stages of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]