International Secretariats and their Executive Heads

Having been interested in autonomous policy making by intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) for a longer time, my present focus is on international secretariats, as the place where IGO actorness originates, and secretaries-general (SGs), whose leadership of IGOs and secretariats matters. To be successful as an executive head, leadership matters both internally (performing as leader of the bureaucracy and actor in IGO decision making) and externally (performing as actor in international relations, including inter-organizational relations). The paper will engage in rethinking the position of the international secretariat (e.g. through Cox and Jacobsen’s subsystems, Biermann and Siebenhüner’s problem solving and organization theory). It also requires discussing the role of individuals in international relations, in particular, on the one hand, how an IGO offers an executive head the floor and means to play a role and, on the other hand, the individual qualities and capacities that are needed. Being part of a research team, based at the University of Ghent, which researches the International Union of Associations’ centennial (the UIA dates back to 1907), I attempt to find out how the development and changes of international secretariats are reflected in UIA publications, a.o. the Yearbook of International Organizations. The UIA beginning coincides with Murphy’s calculations that international secretariats started to play roles of their own by 1910. Differences between executive heads can be analysed by making use of the database and career descriptions, published by IO BIO, the Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-General of International Organizations.