Institutional Dynamics in International Policy Evaluation (treaty monitoring)

The suggested paper investigates the topic of institutional innovation and gradual elaboration of rules and practices of country monitoring and evaluation within procedures of international treaties’ follow-up. As a rule, international texts laying down the basis for treaty monitoring within international organizations are vague and ambiguous, reflecting common disagreements between states. Consequently, operational rules of monitoring and evaluation are crystallized within the respective treaty body and require an important amount of organizational and ideological innovation and adjustment. In terms of theory of international relations, this means that international organizations should be conceptualized not as merely instruments of states or arenas for discussion and bargaining, but as actors with their own interests and logics of action (theoretical argument in Barnett and Finnemore 1999, literature overview in Archer 2001: 79-92, empirical evidence in Alston and Crawford 2000). Constructive process by which actual mechanics of international treaty follow-up are put in place and gradually adjusted may be pioneering (as in the case of the United Nations’ Covenants) or borrow from the existing mechanisms (as in the case of the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, or FCNM), and result in configurations of varying effectiveness. The suggested paper focuses on the institutional dynamics of organization and meaning in the case of the FCNM, presenting the important innovations introduced by the Convention’s Advisory Committee from 1999 on in organizational, historical and ideological context and discussing theoretical implications of these dynamics. References: Ph. Alston & J. Crawford, eds. (2000), The Future of UN Human Rights Treaty Monitoring, Cambridge UP; C. Archer (2001), International Organizations, London and New York: Routledge, third edition; M. N. Barnett & M. Finnemore (1999), “The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations”, International Organization 53/4, pp. 699-732.