The Authority of Peer Reviews Among States - Evidence from the UN, the OECD, the WTO, and the Council of Europe

The authority of international monitoring instruments is a perennial problem. Why would states heed the recommendations or commands emanating from such instruments? This paper surveys and explains the authority of one specific type of monitoring procedures, namely peer reviews among states. We do so in three distinct ways: First, we define authority as a relational concept, denoting the extent to which review participants consider the mission, procedures, and outcomes of peer reviews as legitimate, and act in ways that are consistent with such authority beliefs. Second, we use a mixed-methods-approach, combining the results of a large scale online survey among participants in the peer reviews under research and qualitative sources (elite interviews, document analysis). Third, we provide a comparative study of six different peer reviews set up in different policy fields (anti-corruption, trade and economic policies, and human rights) and in different regional and global organizations (OECD, Council of Europe, UN, WTO). We show how authority beliefs and behaviour differ across these eight peer reviews. Explanations for the observed differences focus on the institutional design of the various reviewing schemes, the policy field in which they operate, and variables pertaining to the size and heterogeneity of IO membership. This paper speaks to the section theme through its focus on peer reviews among states as one specific tool at the global level for the measurement and monitoring of policy performance at the domestic level. As a non-binding instrument, peer reviews can only generate effects on domestic policy if their mission, procedure, and outcome as well as the standards of assessment that are being used during the reviews are considered legitimate. Shared views about what constitutes 'sound policy' and about appropriate ways of governing thus play a key role for the authority of peer reviews. The paper zooms in on this latter question by showing how the authority of peer reviews (defined as a fusion of legitimacy beliefs and compliant behaviour) differs between the reviews, and by providing explanations for these differences.