Trading control: national fiefdoms in international organizations

Abstract

According to principal-agent theory, states (the principals) delegate the implementation of a legalized agreement to an international organization (the agent). The conventional wisdom about states’ capacity to control international organizations is that differences among the member states impede control and consequently enhance the agent's autonomy, whereas agreement allows for effective control and limited autonomy. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, this article argues that conflicts among states need not always impede effective control. On the contrary: if an international organization comprises a sufficient number of policies, there are gains from the exchange of control over its portfolios that are of special sensitivity to different member states. As a result, international organizations exhibit informal spheres of national control, or national fiefdoms. The article demonstrates the theory's plausibility using the example of the European Union and other international organizations. It has implications for the literature on delegation and informal governance.

Designing a Collective Agent for Trilogues in the European Parliament

“…While the Commissioners are officially neutral, scholars have shown that having "their commissioner" allows the member states to protect their interests during the actions of the agent (Wonka 2007;Thomson 2008). Likewise, Kleine (2013) argued that this mirroring nature of the College allows member states to exchange control over policy areas, creating "national fiefdoms" inside the Commission, which increases their grip on the agent. Similar delegation structures, in which all member states have representatives, are also common in the board of the agencies of the EU.…”

Functionalism, multiple principals and the reform of the NATO secretariat after the Cold War

“…Substantive reform after the Cold War became inevitable for the survival of the alliance. To use the a popular phrase from a US senator, NATO had to go "out-of-area or out of business" (Lugar 1993 (Kleine 2013), while lower positions may be subject to geographical balance. Third, contract policy also affects control with staff on permanent contracts having more autonomy than 'temporaries' or 'secondees' (Trondal 2006;Trondal, van den Berg and Suvarierol 2008).…”

“…It is useful to shortly discuss these senior posts further, as they are an important way for the member states of exerting influence (Kleine 2013 This article has shown that institutional form does not automatically follow function.…”

Who Runs the International System? Power and the Staffing of the United Nations Secretariat

“…By identifying the distribution of positions in the Secretariat, we provide an objective measure across all nations of a zero-sum dimension of power, the power to control international institutions (Bachrach and Baratz, 1962;Barnett and Duvall, 2005), that appears to be of significant concern to governments around the world. This method of comparing power across nations addresses some of the critiques in the literature on the empirical measurement of power, European Commission and NATO (Kleine, 2013), and increasing evidence suggests that the national identities of bureaucrats affect the decision-making of institutions (Kaja and Werker, 2010;Johns, 2007).…”

“…One is the study of how individual nations exert influence within international institutions (Robert and Jacobson, 1973). Much of the recent work in this field focuses on the role of major powers in shaping outcomes including loans, agendas, concessions, votes, or peacekeeping scope (Allen and Yuen, 2013;Kaja and Werker, 2010;Kilby, 2011;Kleine, 2013;Kuziemko and Werker, 2006;Lim and Vreeland, 2013;Stone, 2004). A small but growing area of literature takes advantage of the unique institutional environment of the United Nations to answer broader questions (Gartzke, 1998;Fisman and Miguel, 2007).…”