Comparing International Organizations' Agency and Influence

Abstract

Comparatively assessing IOs’ actorness and agency, as well as their concrete influence on policy outputs, impacts and processes poses a series of theoretical, conceptual, and empirical challenges. Notoriously difficult to define as such, it remains unclear how efforts, cultures, or traits of IO secretariats can be analytically connected to concrete changes that would (not) happened if IOs were truly only the sum of their member states’ interests. The diversity of organisational structures, functions, outputs, and membership further complicates comparison.This panel seeks to go beyond existing case studies to allow for general and comparative assessments of IPA policy influence and agency. Papers in this panel cover a range of policy domains, IOs, and IPAs, utilize qualitative, quantitative or mixed method design, and seek to advance the discussion on innovatively measuring and appropriately comparing IOs’ influence or agency.

Title	Details
Mapping Economic and Political Characteristics of International Organizations: a New Dataset.	View Paper Details
More Control – Less Agency Slack? Refining Principal-Agent Theory	View Paper Details
Enforcing, Managing, Legitimating? How World Bank Bureaucrats Can Foster Compliance with Aid Agreements	View Paper Details
Explaining Institutional Development in Global Financial Regulation Over Time	View Paper Details