Collective Agency of Horizontal Organizations: Specialization as an Institutional Source in Global Environmental and Financial Market Governance

How can international organizations without substantial bureaucratic structures gain collective agency and independence from their member states? In contrast to full-fledged international organizations, horizontal regulatory organizations (HROs) in global environmental and financial politics lack extensive bureaucracies and are dominated by their (state and non-state) members. Examples include the Basel Committee of Banking Supervision (BCBS) or the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). Despite their horizontal design, these organizations display varying degrees of collective agency that cannot be reduced to individual activities of their member. We argue that specialization in otherwise horizontal IOs generates organizational autonomy even without large bureaucratic structures. To support this argument, we first outline a concept that elucidates the origins of organizational agency in the absence of delegation to administrations. We argue that organizations gain agency, if they are authorized to make governance decisions, such as regulation, and if they acquire some autonomy (develop a specific organizational rationale). Second, we develop causal mechanisms showing how, and under which conditions, horizontal organizations can gain autonomy through functional differentiation and specialized organizational bodies, despite close control by their members. Third, we introduce a new dataset for the empirical assessment of the presence of decision-making authority and autonomy-generating institutional arrangements for 40 horizontal organizations in environmental protection and financial market regulation.