Does Transnational Actor Participation Affect Global Politics? Trust, Actor Influence, Democratic Quality and Problem-Solving Capacity in International Organisations

Hans Agné, Lisa Dellmuth, Andreas Duit, Jonas Tallberg The policy-procedures of international organizations (IOs) have in the last two decades become increasingly open to participation by transnational actors (TNAs), that is, to non-state actors operating across national borders or at the international level. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), expert networks, multinational corporations, and labor unions, nowadays interact with IOs in all policy fields and at all stages of the policy process. Does increasing participation of TNAs in IOs affect what IOs do, what aims they can achieve, and ultimately what kind of organizations IOs are? Existing theoretically informed answers vary dramatically. Some see increasing participation of TNAs in IOs as largely inconsequential because ultimate power remains with governments. Others see participation of TNAs as a step towards a new structure of world politics where global civil society contributes to limited form of global democracy. This paper qualified these and other views by testing the effects of transnational openness in IOs on set of variables, namely the influence of TNAs over the policies of IOs; the democratic qualities of IOs, including deliberation, representation, and accountability; the level of trust among participants in IOs; and the ability of IOs to address and to solve what TNAs consider to be important real-world problem. The analyses are based on new data from a phone survey among approximately TNAs within the UN system and web-surveys completed by TNAs active within the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States, the African Union, and the Organization for Economic Development.