Growth and Complexity of International Secretariats

The first Secretariats of international organizations (IOs) emerged in the nineteenth century against the background of repeated multilateral conferences, path dependency with regard to chosen solutions and processes of institutionalization. Leadership, professionalization and bureaucratization were added elements when the number of international civil servants began to grow and Secretariats became more complex bodies of IOs, which also had to deal with inter-organizational relations (relations between IOs), relations with non-state actors, such as private organizations and lobbyists, and ways to deal with (new forms of) public opinion. The creation of a group of related IOs (such as the League of Nations System and the United Nations System) added another dimension, with the emergence of regional IOs as well as relations between regional IOs adding a further layer of complexity. Furthermore, formal access to private organizations widened strongly. This paper attempts to map these phases of growing complexity and to understand how Secretariats and their Executive Heads have followed, or adapted to, these developments. It uses literature about IO Secretariats as well as information available through the IO BIO Project (Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-General of International Organizations).