21st Century International Organizations: Power, Politics, and Global Policy Making

This Section addresses the design, dynamics, and impact of 21st century international organizations (IOs). The panels raise questions about if, how, and why state power, bureaucratic politics, or stakeholder groups influence IO policymaking and crisis management. Papers encompass diverse IOs – global and regional, formal and informal, traditional and new multi-stakeholder partnerships – in a variety of policy domains. With the field of IO studies diversifying, the Section encourages theoretical, conceptual, methodological, and empirical conversations within and between different (sub-)disciplines, from International Relations and International Public Administration to Global History, International Political Economy, Organizational Sociology, or Global Public Policy. Panel 1: International Bureaucracies’ Influence on Public Policy and International Organizations Co-Chairs: Jörn Ege (University of Konstanz & University of Bern) & Michael W. Bauer (EUI) Previous research has successfully identified different conditions that enable international bureaucracies to wield influence on the development and implementation of public policies. Scholars have used case studies to trace the specific mechanisms and influence strategies of international bureaucracies. What is largely missing, are integrative approaches that allow for a comparative analysis of several explanatory factors under a common theoretical framework. The panel aims to contribute to the current debate about the influence of international bureaucracies and invites conceptual and empirical papers on their role in the provision of public policy and the interaction with other IOs. Panel 2: Agency of International Organizations in 21st Century World Politics Co-Chairs: Michael Giesen & Marlene Joger (Bamberg University) This panel explores the agency of IOs. While IOs have long been conceptualized as forums for or instruments of state actors, they are now widely recognized as actors in their own right. The literature commonly locates their agency in secretariats and other intra-institutional agents, including supranational bodies. However, the past decades have witnessed a remarkable diversification of IO types, including informal, horizontal, conference, and private, multi-stakeholder organizations that eschew conventional IO agency conceptions. This panel invites theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions to the sources, nature, and effects of IO agency. Panel 3: Text Analysis and International Organizations: From Methods to Insights Chair: Michal Parizek (Charles University Prague) This panel brings together contributions that use text-as-data approaches to deliver substantial insights into the politics of IOs on global and regional levels. Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques have been advancing abruptly, especially in the domain of Machine Learning. These advances promise to bring progress in large-scale analysis of IO-relevant political texts, hardly foreseen several years ago. Through empirical applications, this panels explores the strengths of various text-as-data techniques for different research purposes. It thus serves the growing community of IO scholars who use these techniques as a venue for mutual learning and discussion. Panel 4: China’s Expanding Clout across International Organizations Co-chairs: Rosemary Foot (University of Oxford) & Sebastian Haug (DIE) Over the last decade, the Chinese government has expanded its commitment to and interactions with IOs. The normative, institutional, and geopolitical implications of this expanding presence have been felt across different dimensions of IO work, from inter-governmental negotiations and staffing practices to peacekeeping operations and development projects. This panel analyzes how IOs are part of, react to or engage with China’s expanding clout. We are interested in contributions that provide insights into changes over time and/or compare Chinese engagement with that of other states to analyze China’s current position(s) and role(s) across IOs. Panel 5: Navigating Institutional Complexity in World Politics Co-Chairs: Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni (Cambridge University) & Oliver Westerwinter (University of St. Gallen & EUI) Global governance structures are increasingly described as highly complex. Recent work in international relations acknowledges the importance of institutional complexity for understanding global governance. However, much work focuses on developing typologies to grasp the phenomenon and, empirically, is often based on single cases and issue-areas and does not pay enough attention to non-state actors and informal institutional arrangements. The papers on this panel address this research gap. Using new data and innovative methods, they develop new theoretical arguments to explain the emergence, development, and consequences of institutional complexity. Panel 6: International Organizations and the Management of Transboundary Crises Co-Chairs: Christian Kreuder-Sonnen (Jena University) & Mor Mitrani (Bar-Ilan University) Transboundary crises are a key challenge for global governance. While IOs are central to the crises management, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has also revealed their vulnerabilities. Generally, there is interesting variation how well IOs cope with crises. Sometimes IOs collaborate within and across issue-areas, sometimes they conflict. And sometimes they are complemented or superseded by ad hoc and/or informal governance arrangements. This panel explores IOs’ role in transboundary crises, analyzes factors that may explain their conduct, and assesses future trajectories for governance in a post-COVID world. Panel 7: Contestation Management in International Organizations Co-chairs: Tim Heinkelmann-Wild (LMU Munich & University of Oxford) & Leonard Schütte (Maastricht University & University of Oxford) IOs face fierce contestation. Rising powers challenge the legitimacy and distributional consequences of existing international institutions created by and for Western states. In the West, multilateral cooperation is questioned by constituencies, while IOs also compete for mandates and scarce resources. This panel shifts the perspective to IOs’ responses to contestation: Who responds to contestation? How do powerful member states or autonomous IO administrations manage contestation? When are they successful? To advance our understanding of IO resilience, we welcome contributions from different theoretical perspectives employing both qualitative and quantitative methods. Panel 8: Representation in International Organizations Co-Chairs: Mirko Heinzel (WZB & University of Potsdam) & Catherine Weaver (University of Texas at Austin) Although IOs are supposed to address the concerns of people globally, their decision-making bodies and bureaucracies often do not conform to their constituencies’ diversity. IOs privilege powerful member states, choose their leaders from selected countries, discriminate against women for top jobs, or ignore workforce diversity. Why does underrepresentation persist in IOs? How does it affect the IOs’ ability to address the global problems they are meant to solve? The panel aims to bring together scholars interested in the causes and effects of (under)representation of countries and people within IOs.