Seeing like an International Organization - How Perceptions of the Context 'on the Ground' Matter for International Organizations’ Governance

International organizations (IOs) are central actors in the field of international development and humanitarian assistance and conduct a myriad of operations throughout most of the world. With regard to these operations, we posit that it is not only the organizational mandate, donor interests and transnational guidelines/ principles which impact how IOs act. Rather, we suggest that how an IO perceives its environment, understood to comprise inter alia the context “on the ground” in specific country settings, matters for how IOs design and implement their programs and projects. Accordingly, we take a constructivist stance in arguing that perceptions matter. On the one hand, international organizations are composed of member states and become active on behalf and with the consent of their members. On the other, they are also bureaucracies with a distinct identity and mandate. As bureaucracies, IOs interpret and make sense of their environment in a way which might differ from member states’ expectations. Therefore, we advance the proposition that organizational activities also reflect organizational perceptions of as well as expectations vis-à-vis the recipient country. In particular, this relates to the degree of statehood – understood as the state’s ability to control the means of violence and to implement and enforce rules – as a central feature or characteristic of the state. Given that we observe varying degrees of statehood throughout the world, we advance the following research question: In how far do IO perceptions of the operating environment “on the ground” have an impact on IO governance? To do so, we first analyze how IOs perceive their environment in different country contexts with varying degrees of statehood. Therein, we also seek to address the question of whether different IOs perceive the same environment differently. Perceptions do not necessarily only depend on the context on the ground; rather, they might also be shaped by and reflect an IO’s identity, mandate, and the composition of its principals. In a second step, we study the linkages between these perceptions and IO governance, i.e. the means and mechanisms by which IOs set up and conduct their operations, thus also elaborating upon the question of which (statehood) conditions are necessary from an IO perspective in order to become active. For our analysis, we select two countries along a continuum of severely to moderately limited statehood, to account for variation in the organizational environment regarding statehood criteria. Furthermore, we systematize different types of IOs according to their respective roles (e.g. donor, humanitarian or development organizations, broker, mediator). Therein, the paper draws on findings from a qualitative content analysis of a) interviews conducted with staff of international organizations at headquarter and country office level and b) selected organizational documents, such as country strategies/ frameworks, evaluations or project outlines.