The Influence of International Public Administrations on Public Policy and International Organizations

Abstract

International public administrations (IPAs), i.e., the secretariats of international (governmental) organizations (IOs) that constitute the international counterparts to national administrative bodies, wield independent influence on the development and implementation of public policies. Previous research has successfully identified different administrative, political and context-related factors that might enable bureaucratic influence to occur. However, integrative approaches that allow for a comparative empirical analysis of several explanatory factors under a common theoretical framework are rare. Thus, we still lack systematic knowledge of how international administrative bodies affect policy-making processes of IOs and global governance more generally (Ege, Bauer, and Wagner 2019). Against this background, the panel aims to contribute to the current debate about the policy impact and autonomous behavior of international bureaucracies (Barnett and Finnemore 2004). Starting from the observation that policy-making is a result of strategic interactions among multiple political, administrative and societal actors that vary substantially in terms of constraints and resources, the panel aims to combine two major questions: - Focusing on the dependent variable: How can we conceptualize and observe the role and influence of IPAs (broadly defined) within and outside IOs? This can be related to particular tasks of IPAs such as internal/external coordination, policy formulation or monitoring and include particular strategies related to issue expansion, autonomy and bureaucratic entrepreneurialism. - Focusing on the independent variables: What are relevant context conditions and strategies under which influence is enabled or restricted? The panel features empirical papers studying the role of IPAs in the provision of (global) public policy that come from a variety of disciplines such as Public Policy, Public Administration, International Relations and Comparative Politics. References Barnett, Michael, and Martha Finnemore. 2004. Rules for the World: International Organizations in Global Politics. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press. Ege, Jörn, Michael W. Bauer, and Nora Wagner. 2019. “Improving Generalizability in Transnational Bureaucratic Influence Research: A (Modest) Proposal.” International Studies Review 95 (3): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viz026.

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