Does Formal Engagement with Non-State Actors Assist IOs and their Member-States in Breaking through Policy Gridlock?

Global cooperation, some IR scholars argue, is failing, resulting in policy gridlock in issue domains as varied as the environment, security, and the global economy. And yet when presented with these scholarly claims, Geneva-based United Nations (UN) officials point to issue domains that have seen substantial policy breakthrough and innovation, such as human rights, health, and intellectual property. These policy breakthroughs, some UN officials claim, are in part due to the ability of International Organisations (IOs) to assess their policy processes, to adapt to today’s policy challenges, and to reform. One aspect of institutional reform cited as positively contributing to policy breakthrough is an IOs ability to formally engage non-state actors in policy processes, as evident at the Human Rights Council. But is there an observable relationship between the degree of reform any given IO has undergone, and in particular the degree of formal engagement with non-state actors in policy processes, and the degree of policy gridlock or breakthrough those IOs oversee? This paper posits that IOs with a record of institutional reform, and in particular those which now formally engage non-state actors in their policy processes, are more likely to enjoy policy breakthroughs than those IOs that show few signs of reform, and whose policy processes remain formally closed to non-state actors. To test this hypothesis, this paper qualitatively examines five International Organisations/UN agencies—the World Health Organisation, the World Intellectual Property Organisation, the World Trade Organisation, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the UN Environment Programme—and assesses the degree of reform they have each undergone (including the degree and areas of engagement with non-state actors), against the degree of policy gridlock/ breakthrough these organisations oversee (i.e. the ability of member-states to collaboratively produce concrete policy outputs through each respective IO).