Enhancing the Scope of Action: The Multilevel Institutional Interplay of International Treaty Secretariats in Global Environmental Governance

Over the past two decades, numerous scholars concerned with global affairs have set out to improve our understanding of the role and function of international bureaucracies in world politics. In the field of global environmental governance, several authors have focused on assessing and explaining the influence of intergovernmental treaty secretariats on global policy outcomes. Compared to other international bureaucracies, the political leeway and decision-making capacity of these secretariats has traditionally been considered as being rather limited, which is mainly due to their narrow mandates. Yet, in the past few years, intergovernmental treaty secretariats have adopted a more active role in global environmental policy-making by engaging in a multilevel institutional interplay with other secretariats and with different types of sub- and non-state actors. Building upon a qualitative case study approach, the aim of this paper is to explore the type, degree, and consequences of the multilevel institutional interactions of three intergovernmental treaty secretariats in the field of global environmental governance, i.e. the biodiversity secretariat, the climate secretariat, and the desertification secretariat.