Policy punctuations in global governance: evidence from five international organizations, 1980-2015

We investigate the impact of institutional characteristics on the distribution of changes in policy output of five international organizations (IOs) between 1980 and 2015. We find that all distributions exhibit high kurtosis values, suggesting that policy processes in these five IOs are subject to policy punctuations. We also find that IOs with higher institutional friction, as determined by institutional design and membership characteristics, display more frequent punctuations. The results suggest that the theory of punctuated equilibrium in public policy, which has been demonstrated in a wide range of contexts at the domestic level, extends to the level of global governance institutions. This paper represents the first systematic, multi-N study of policy punctuations in the international domain.