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Sociologists have long examined how states, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and professional groups interact in order to institutionalize their preferred norms at the transnational level. Yet, explanations of global norm-making that emphasize inter-organizational negotiations do not adequately explain the intra-organizational script-writing--that is, the codification of norms in prescriptive behavioral templates--that underpins this process. This article opens the black box of how scripts emerge and institutionalize within IGOs. Script-writing is a function of both world-cultural frames and material interests, held by different intra-organizational actors: scientific IGO staff and state representatives in governing bodies, respectively. The interplay between these frames and interests determines whether scripts will institutionalize. In this theoretical model, world-cultural and power-political explanations are pertinent to different, mutually informing, and coexisting aspects of the script-writing process. As a corollary of our approach, we present a conceptual framework for the study of intra-IGO script-writing, which is contingent on three normative struggles: among IGO staff, within an IGO's board of directors, and between the staff and the board. To empirically substantiate our arguments, we examine scripts on taxation and capital controls by the International Monetary Fund. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of our model for the study of international organizations and the engines of global norm-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The risk of interacting planetary boundaries highlights the challenge for contemporary institutional structures. This article shines light on the need to better understand how regime complexes manage overlaps. In developing this understanding, the article explores overlaps and coordination in the forest regime complex. By examining the work of an informal high level agency, the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, the article investigates how coordination in a dense regime complex could be achieved. In pursuing this analysis, the article draws lessons for how to manage increasingly complex problems that interacting planetary boundaries could give rise to. The article draws on the literatures of institutional interplay and institutional design in order to understand the more subtle forms of institutional decision-making. The article shows that there are many overlaps among international institutions with forest related mandate, and identifies the innovative mechanism as important in managing these linkages, although it does not take part in actual decision-making. In sum, the article''s findings suggest that carefully designed mechanisms might be one way to, if not to overcome, at least to facilitate the institutional response of governance challenges in the complex setting of planetary boundaries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Scholars and policy makers have for centuries constructed and used developmental hierarchies to characterize different countries. The hypotheses motivating this paper are that such social constructions have been circulated internationally, are constructed similarly in various countries, and follow the social constructions of elite international organizations, such as the United Nations. This paper uses data from 15 surveys in 13 diverse countries to study how developmental hierarchies are understood in everyday life. Our research shows that most people have constructions of developmental hierarchies that are similar across countries and are similar to the developmental hierarchies constructed by the United Nations. These findings suggest that developmental hierarchies are widely understood around the world and are widely available to ordinary people as they make decisions about many aspects of life. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article examines two spheres of global governance in which the World Health Organization (WHO) has sought to exercise international leadership - combating 'counterfeit' medicines and illicit trade in tobacco products. Medicines and tobacco products lie at polar opposite ends of the health spectrum, and are regulated for vastly different reasons and through different tools and approaches. Nevertheless, attempts to govern counterfeit trade in each of these products raise a host of somewhat similar challenges, involving normative and operational conflicts that cut across the crowded intersection of health protection and promotion, intellectual property protection, and activity to combat transnational organized crime. As negotiations of an illicit trade protocol to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control enter their final stages, lessons learned from counterfeit medicines governance need to be applied to ensure that the most appropriate governance arrangements are adopted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the analytical framework of the collection on the performance of the EU in international institutions and summarizes its main findings. We focus on the role of the EU in the decision-making within international organizations and regimes as a major locus of global governance. We suggest unpacking the concept of EU performance into four core elements: effectiveness (goal achievement); relevance (of the EU for its priority stakeholders); efficiency (ratio between outputs accomplished and costs incurred); and financial/resource viability (the ability of the performing organization to raise the funds required). Based on the case studies of the collection, the findings presented in the second part of the article relate to the identified core elements of performance with a particular emphasis on the dimensions of ‘effectiveness’ and ‘relevance’. Most notably, the EU appears, on balance and over the past two decades, to have become much more relevant for its member states when acting within international institutions. Moreover, the findings highlight four particular factors explaining EU performance in international institutions: the legal framework conditions (including the relevant changes that the Lisbon Treaty has brought about), domestic EU politics, the status of relevant EU legislation and policies, and the international context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article critically examines the concept of 'partnership', ubiquitous in contemporary development aid discourses. It investigates whether the language of 'partnership' signifies a change in aid relations away from the stark exertion of power characteristic of the conditionality decades of the 1980s and 1990s, or, conversely, whether 'partnership' is merely the latest guise behind which power-based relations continue to operate. A conceptual framework facilitates the deconstruction of the recently established 'Partnership for Governance Reform' in Indonesia, posited as a co-operative venture between national stakeholders and the international community. Elements of partnership or of power are sought through an examination of decision-making structures and activities. Findings are of the largely rhetorical and instrumental use of 'partnership' by international actors. Although there is nominal control by Indonesian actors, decision-making bodies are constructed in a manner which ensures that the reform agenda of international agencies remains relatively unchallenged, both in terms of what is included and excluded. Contrary to the official discourse of partnership as encouraging locally formulated reform strategies, the notions of 'partnership' and 'local ownership' simultaneously disguise and legitimise the interventions of international agencies in domestic reform processes, serving to mystify power asymmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]