NGO-IGO Relations and the Accountability of Intergovernmental Organisations

The denationalization of governance functions and the trend toward growing supranational authority have raised concerns about the legitimacy of international institutions both among academia and in the wider public. Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) have expanded their authority with regard to the scope of issue areas they are active in as well as to the depth of their activities, which to a growing extent directly affect individuals. As IO authority increases, demands for IGO accountability have been raised, especially from those who argue that authority has to be legitimate in order to ensure compliance. The proposed paper explores the conditions under which IGOs are not only accountable toward their member states but also toward NGOs and other actors. It argues that the traditional vertical accountability model established by the principal-agent-literature has been challenged since IGOs have started themselves delegating the tasks to other actors, namely to NGOs, private actors, states, or other intergovernmental organizations. How does this increased openness impact accountability? When do NGOs become accountability-holders that a) generate standards for appropriate behavior, b) monitor actions and policies, and c) sanction misbehavior through reputational shaming or appealing to courts? When do IGOs and their member states accept NGOs as horizontal accountability-holders? What impact does this horizontal accountability have on the role of member states as the traditional accountability-holders? These are the questions that are going to be explored in order to identify the conditions for horizontal and vertical IGO accountability. Human rights violations in NATO and UN peace operations, more specifically a) sexual exploitation and abuse through peacekeepers and b) violation of due process rights through detention policies, will serve as cases for empirically exploring and testing the assumptions on how different ways of NGO-IGO relations contribute to the differences in IGO accountability.