Intergovernmental Organizations, Socialization, and Member-State Interest Convergence

Abstract

This article explores the constructivists' institutional socialization hypothesis, positing that intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) make member-state interests more similar over time, thus promoting interest convergence. We first show how this hypothesis can be tested systematically using relatively new data on dyadic interest similarity and joint structured IGO membership, and then we conduct a series of empirical tests. Our results show strong statistical support for the institutional socialization hypothesis, using both global and more restricted regional samples. We also demonstrate how our results are consistent with a longer-term socialization process and cannot be explained by the short-term effect of institutional information. Finally, we show some limits to the institutional socialization hypothesis. Unstructured IGOs reveal no effect in promoting member-state interest convergence. Following recent theory arguing that great powers in the international system often use IGOs for coercive means, we find that institutional socialization gets weaker as the power imbalance within the dyad grows.Thanks to Chuck Boehmer, Heather Elko McKibben, Kate Floros, Erik Gartzke, Chuck Gochman, Michael Goodhart, Yoram Haftel, Volker Krause, Dan London, Andrew Long, Ed Mansfield, Lisa Martin, Tim Nordstrom, Zeki Sarigil, Meg Shannon, Dan Thomas, Lora Viola, Basak Yavcan, and two anonymous reviewers for data, comments, and/or helpful suggestions.

A community of values: Democratic identity formation in the European Union

“…Two related hypotheses had been raised and examined in the literature. One posits a socializing effect of the EU on national elites and democratic institutions (for example, Bearce and Bondanella, 2007;Checkel, 2005;Schimmelfennig, 2007), but not on citizens. The other, explored by Inglehart and Welzel (2005), probes the effect of socio-economic conditions on individuals' priorities with regard to values.…”

National culture trumps EU socialization: the European central bankers’ views of the euro crisis

“…Bearce and Bondanella 2007;Radaelli and O'Connor 2009). To determine these specific national features, it is imperative to study the history of central bank independence, as well as the domestic political and economic cultures of the governors.…”

“…The jury is still out on this question, for 'there appear to be some fairly large differences in whether the empirical evidence does or does not show socialization' (Johnston 2005(Johnston : 1014 cf. Bearce and Bondanella 2007;Beyers 2010). The euro crisis has brought renewed relevance to this debate, since it demonstrates the urgent need for concerted European crisis management that is rooted in shared identities, norms and policy views, which raises the question to what extent EU socialization is present in the case of the high-level leaders making decisions during crises.…”

“…On the one hand, the conditions for socialization identified in the literature suggest that the ECB has institutional and interactional characteristics that strongly foster socialization (Bearce and Bondanella 2007;Beyers 2005;Checkel 2005;Hooghe 2005;Johnston 2005). Moreover, European central bankers have been portrayed as the prototypical example of an epistemic community within which a farreaching consensus on economic and monetary views exists (McNamara 1998;Verdun 1999Verdun , 2000.…”

Why Engaging with More Institutions?: Changes in Economic Power Distribution and Levels of Economic Cooperation

“…PTA proliferation is also the consequence of the policy choices of governments that are influenced by the actions of their peers and/or competitors (Lee and Bai 2013;Soĺ ls, Stallings and Katada 2009;Simmons, Dobbin and Garrett 2006). In such cases, intergovernmental organizations have often been channels for the diffusion of PTA policies (Cao 2009;Bearce and Bondanella 2007;Kono 2007).…”