Measuring International Authority

Abstract

This book sets out a measure of authority for seventy-six major international organizations (IOs) from 1950 to 2010 in an effort to provide systematic comparative information on international governance. On the premise that transparency is key in the production of data, the authors chart a path in laying out the assumptions that underpin the measure. Successive chapters detail the authors’ theoretical, conceptual, and coding decisions. In order to assess their authority, the authors model the composition of IO bodies, their roles in decision making, the bindingness of IO decisions, and the mechanisms through which they seek to settle disputes. Profiles of regional, cross-regional, and global IOs explain how they are composed and how they make decisions. A distinctive feature of the measure is that it breaks down the concept of international authority into discrete dimensions. The Measure of International Authority (MIA) is built up from coherent ingredients—the composition and role of individual IO bodies at each stage in policy making, constitutional reform, the budget, financial compliance, membership accession, and the suspension of members. These observations can be assembled—like Lego blocks—in diverse ways for diverse purposes. This produces a flexible tool for investigating international governance and testing theory.

Beyond Institutional Design: Explaining the Performance of International Organizations

“… 40. I distinguish between three levels of geographical focus—global, regional, and national—and twenty-five issue areas based on a list constructed by Hooghe et al 2017. …”

The constitutions of international organisations: How institutional design seeks to foster diplomatic deliberation

“…Most importantly, IO openness brings about promises for democratic global governance, although biased transnational access leads to an unequal representation of civil society interests in global governance arrangements (Tallberg et al 2013). A third prominent IO institutional design approach examines how and why IOs differ with respect to the pooling and delegation of authority (Hooghe and Marks 2015; Hooghe et al 2017). This strand of institutional design scholarship sheds light on how IO set-up influences dynamics and outcomes of governance beyond the nation state (Hooghe and Marks 2015; Hooghe et al 2017).…”

Elite legitimation and delegitimation of international organizations in the media: Patterns and explanations

“…I analyze the effect of IO authority with the help of data on the level of formal authority pooling in intergovernmental IO-bodies and authority delegation to IO bureaucracies, judicial bodies, and parliamentary assemblies provided by Hooghe et al (2017). The data provide time series information on the annual development of authority for 76 IOs, including the EU and the UN, from 1950 to 2010.…”