Local Capture or Linkage? Evidence from International Organizations

Studies on international organization (IO) rarely account for the fact that the majority of IO bureaucrats are not "international" bureaucrats, but are locally recruited. Theoretically, local bureaucrats are of particular relevance in IOs with implementation tasks. To accomplish their missions in complex environments, implementing IOs require contextual information on local politics, culture and customs. Local bureaucrats help soliciting such information, what we call linkage. But information advantages create new principal-agent problems with local capture as one possible consequence. We scrutinize this fundamental dilemma by studying the country share of local bureaucrats in all non-headquarter duty stations of 24 IOs in the UN system. We find this share to be associated with the scope of implementation taking place at a duty station. But depending on the IO, this relation can be either positive (signal for linkage) or negative (signal for capture). We find that the task profile of IOs can explain these differences, indicating that the activity the IO is performing affects its awareness for capture or willingness to establish links locally.