The Application of Democratic Norms to Decision-making Rules in Intergovernmental Organizations.

This paper discusses the application of democratic principles to the decision-making rules in Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs). It focuses on three such basic principles a) participation of all member-states in decision-making; b) involvement of transnational civil society groups in the deliberative processes within IGOs; c) public access to information regarding IGO deliberations. The paper makes two basic arguments that have either run counter to traditional views of IGOs or, at least, have been downplayed by most of the literature: 1) democratic principles have always been applied, at least to some extent, to the functioning of IGOs; 2) the degree to which the principles were applied did not vary in a linear fashion over the past century. I first develop several measures of the application of democratic principles in order to illustrate these arguments. I then offer a series of hypotheses to explain the variation in the application of democratic principles. I test them across developments in the League of Nations, International Labour Organization and United Nations over approximately ninety years. I find that the power of domestic democratic norms can account, at least in part, for such variation. Moreover, I find that the three democratic principles have not been applied simultaneously across IGOs. I suggest that one reason why these three norms have not gone hand is hand is that member-states have used norms instrumentally, promoting those that support their specific interests and downplaying the ones that run counter to such interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]