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

Abstract

Abstract:Whether we look at constitutions of states or founding treaties of International Organisations (IO), it is striking that many rules on interaction between delegates create room for deliberation, whilst simultaneously limiting the time for discussion. While the latter speeds up decision making, it risks reducing its quality and legitimacy by hampering the exchange and contestation of information and ideas. How are these competing elements balanced in IOs? Do IOs differ in this respect, and if so, how and why? The article draws on a unique and novel dataset and assesses variation in the extent to which institutional design fosters or inhibits diplomatic deliberation in more than 110 diverse IOs. To this end, the article uses a combination of theories of functionalism, rational choice institutionalism and liberal approaches on variation, fit, and mismatch of deliberative institutional design within and across IOs. The hypotheses are analysed with quantitative methods. The article shows that diplomatic deliberative institutional design elements are the most pronounced when IOs are small in size, deal in high politics, and are regional in character.

Satisfied or not? Exploring the interplay of individual, country and international organization characteristics for negotiation success

“…For our IO-level independent variables, we have mainly drawn on data from a novel dataset that constitutes numerous measures on IOs' institutional characteristics (Panke et al 2019). For hypothesis 5, "IO size" counts the number of member states with full membership rights in 2016 based on the official IO websites.…”

“…Two additional institutional design features might be important: rules that seek to create room and time for debates between the actors, and rules that allow for the interruption of debates (Panke et al 2019). The former should increase outcome satisfaction as it provides a context in which states can formally engage with each other and push their respective national positionseither through argumentative or based on bargaining-oriented strategies.…”

Who performs better? A comparative analysis of problem-solving effectiveness and legitimacy attributions to international organizations

“…Applying these criteria to the IO yearbook and Correlates of War (COW) database, a total of 114 IOs remained (c.f. Panke et al, 2019; Panke et al, 2021b). 4 In a second step, a representative subsample of these IOs was selected according to size, policy fields covered, as well as regional vs. global reach.…”