International Bureaucracies' Influence 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 allows 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. Against this background, the panel aims to contribute to the current debate about the policy impact of international bureaucracies. 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 policy-making constraints and resources, the panel aims to combine two major questions: • Focusing on the dependent variable: How can we conceptualize and measure the influence of IPAs on policy-making within and outside IOs? • Focusing on the independent variables: What are relevant administrative tools and strategies and how are they used during the interaction with political and societal actors? The panel invites conceptual and empirical papers on the role of IPAs in the provision of (global) public policy that may come from a variety of disciplines such as Policy Analysis, Public Administration, International Relations and Comparative Politics. Preferential treatment is given to comparative papers that combine theoretical work with systematic empirical analyses.