International Bureaucracies' Influence on Public Policy and International Organizations

Abstract

There is little doubt that International Public Administrations (IPAs) exert autonomous influence on public policy-making. They do so, for example, by inducing change in the institutional and normative frameworks of their own international organizations or through interaction with their environment, whether in contact with national administrations and other international bureaucracies or by orchestrating non-governmental and private actors. However, we know little about the mechanisms and scope conditions of such influence of international bureaucrats and bureaucracies. This Panel therefore brings together contributions that map existing knowledge and that propose new theoretical and empirical insights advancing our understanding on why IPAs manage to influence policy - and why they fail. The papers include conceptual discussions on various forms of influence, and they cover policies from international peace and security to the protection of minorities, from institutional design to global governance. The organizations and bureaucracies studied range from the the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to the Council of Europe (CoE), from various United Nations (UN) bodies to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).