Explore the vast range of titles available.

In recent years, there is growing interest in the study of cross-national policy convergence. Yet we still have a limited understanding of the phenomenon: Do we observe convergence of policies at all? Under which conditions can we expect that domestic policies converge or rather develop further apart? In this article, we address this research deficit. From a theoretical perspective, we concentrate on the explanatory power of three factors, namely international harmonization, transnational communication, and regulatory competition. In empirical terms, we analyze if and to what extent we can observe convergence of environmental policies across twenty-four industrialized countries between 1970 and 2000. We find an impressive degree of environmental policy convergence between the countries under investigation. This development is mainly caused by international harmonization and, to a considerable degree, also by transnational communication, whereas regulatory competition does not seem to play a role.

While extensive research shows that policies and institutions spread across states through processes of diffusion, we know little about diffusion among international organizations (IOs). We develop a novel approach for the study of diffusion among IOs. This approach consists of three components: a theoretical focus on connectivity among IOs as pathways for diffusion; a conceptual differentiation between alternative types of convergence effects; and a methodological strategy combining dyadic and spatial analysis of diffusion. We illustrate the usefulness of this approach through an empirical case: the diffusion of participatory governance arrangements among IOs from 1970 to 2010. The analysis shows that connectivity among IOs contributes to convergence, which typically is manifested through imitation of very specific institutional models. The article's findings have implications both for the study of IOs and for the general study of diffusion.

Past decades have witnessed a shift in international cooperation toward growing involvement of transnational actors (TNAs), such as nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations, and philanthropic foundations. This article offers a comprehensive theoretical and empirical account of TNA access to IOs. The analysis builds on a novel data set, covering formal TNA access to 298 organizational bodies from fifty IOs over the time period 1950 to 2010. We identify the most profound patterns in TNA access across time, issue areas, policy functions, and world regions, and statistically test competing explanations of the variation in TNA access. The central results are three-fold. First, the empirical data confirm the existence of a far-reaching institutional transformation of IOs over the past sixty years, pervading all issue areas, policy functions, and world regions. Second, variation in TNA access within and across IOs is mainly explained by a combination of three factors: functional demand for the resources of TNAs, domestic democratic standards in the membership of IOs, and state concerns with national sovereignty. Third, existing research suffers from a selection bias that has led it to overestimate the general importance of a new participatory norm in global governance for the openness of IOs.

This article introduces a new data set on the access of transnational actors (TNAs) to international organizations (IOs). While IOs were long the exclusive preserve of member governments, recent decades have witnessed a shift toward more inclusive forms of governance, involving participation by non-governmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, multinational corporations, and other forms of TNAs. Yet existing research has lacked the data necessary to map this phenomenon and its variation over dimensions such as time, issue areas, and world regions. The TRANSACCESS data set is designed for this purpose and contains information on the level of openness in 298 bodies of 50 IOs from 1950 to 2010. On the basis of this data set, we also introduce a first quantitative measure of institutional openness in the shape of a composite index, available at both the IO and body levels. This index can be used to compare TNA access across and within IOs but also as a variable in large-N studies on global and regional governance, where IO openness is potentially relevant.

In the face of escalating conflicts or atrocities, international organizations (IOs), alongside nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), often vocalize public condemnation. Researchers have examined NGO shaming, but no extant literature has comparatively explored if, how and why IOs shame. This article fills this gap. We conceptualize IO shaming as condemnatory speech acts and distinguish between the agent, targets and actions of shaming. We theorize how compliance and socialization are motives that lead IOs to shame. Empirically, we use new data on more than 3000 instances of IO shaming, covering 27 organizations between 1980 and 2015 to examine empirical patterns across the three dimensions of agents, targets and actions. We find that the majority of IOs do employ shaming but to varying degrees. Global, general-purpose IOs shame the most and regional, task-specific IOs the least. IOs mainly shame states, but there is a rise in the targeting of non-state and unnamed actors. While many condemned acts relate to human rights and security issues, IOs shame actions across the policy spectrum. These findings indicate that IO shaming is driven by compliance and socialization motives and that it is a wider phenomenon than previously recognized, suggesting possible avenues for further inquiry.

Domestic regime type has emerged a powerful explanation of multiple phenomena in world politics. This article extends this argument to the design of international organizations (IOs), where a profound development in recent decades is growing access for transnational actors (TNAs). While earlier research has shown that democracy in IO memberships helps to explain IO openness, we know little about the mechanisms that drive this effect. This article unpacks the relationship between democratic memberships and IO design by theorizing and assessing the impact of three different constellations of democracies on the openness of IOs. Empirically, we conduct a multivariate analysis of TNA access to 50 IOs from 1950 to 2010, combined with a case study of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Our main findings are three-fold. First, democracy’s effect on openness is primarily a product of the combined weight of democracies within IOs and their resulting capacity to secure support for their polity preferences. Second, in contrast, we only find limited support for a specific influence of new democracies and democratic major powers on IO openness. Third, decision rules that allow for openness reforms to be adopted by a majority of member states facilitate and strengthen the influence of democracies, by reducing the ability of autocracies to block change. The findings have implications for our understanding of institutional design in global governance and democracy’s effects in world politics.

This article introduces a new dataset on the access of transnational actors (TNAs) to international organizations (IOs). While IOs were long the exclusive preserve of member governments, the past decades have witnessed a shift toward more inclusive forms of governance, involving participation by non-governmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, multinational corporations, and other forms of TNAs. Yet existing research has lacked the data necessary to map this phenomenon and its variation over dimensions such as time, issue areas, and world regions. The TRANSACCESS dataset is designed for this purpose, and contains information on the level of openness in 298 bodies of 50 IOs from 1950 to 2010. On the basis of this dataset, we also introduce a first quantitative measure of institutional openness, in the shape of a composite index, available at both IO and body level. This index can be used to compare TNA access across and within IOs, but also as a variable in large-N studies on global and regional governance where IO openness is potentially relevant.

In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten hat sich die Rolle nichtstaatlicher Akteure in der internationalen Politik stark verändert. Parallel zur Ausbreitung von Dissidenz in Form von transnationalen Protesten, Demonstrationen und Kampagnen haben auch die Möglichkeiten der Partizipation zivilgesellschaftlicher Akteure in intergouvernementalen Strukturen deutlich zugenommen. Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der Frage, inwiefern zivilgesellschaftliche Proteste mit der demokratischen Öffnung Internationaler Organisationen zusammenhängen. Welche Erklärungskraft besitzt die zivilgesellschaftliche Herausforderung für die Ausweitung der Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten? Auch eine umgekehrte Kausalität ist denkbar, wenn durch mangelnde Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten Dissidenz entsteht. Die empirische Analyse beruht auf der statistischen und qualitativen Auswertung von Zugangsregeln für transnationale Akteure in 50 Internationalen Organisationen und Daten zur Medienberichterstattung über Proteste gegen diese Organisationen zwischen 1980 und 2010. Sie findet keine Belege für einen systematischen Zusammenhang und zeigt, dass transnationale Proteste ein seltenes und oft kurzlebiges Phänomen darstellen, das bislang wenig Einfluss auf Strukturreformen Internationaler Organisationen ausgeübt hat.//Recent decades have witnessed a change in the role of non-state actors in international politics. The access of civil society actors to formal structures of global and regional governance has increased in parallel with the rise of transnational protests. This article addresses the relationship between protests and the democratic opening of international organizations. Has the public challenge by non-state actors led to the extension of formal access rights? Or has frustration from insufficient opportunities to participate caused protest? The empirical analysis of non-state actors' formal access to 50 international organizations and media coverage of transnational protests between 1980 and 2010 provides an initial comparative and systematic assessment of these questions. The analysis finds no broad support for a causal link. It shows that transnational protest still represents a relatively rare and often short-lived phenomenon with limited effects on international organizations' structural reforms. Reprinted by permission of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft

In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten hat sich die Rolle nichtstaatlicher Akteure in der internationalen Politik stark verändert. Parallel zur Ausbreitung von Dissidenz in Form von transnationalen Protesten, Demonstrationen und Kampagnen haben auch die Möglichkeiten der Partizipation zivilgesellschaftlicher Akteure in intergouvernementalen Strukturen deutlich zugenommen. Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der Frage, inwiefern zivilgesellschaftliche Proteste mit der demokratischen Öffnung Internationaler Organisationen zusammenhängen. Welche Erklärungskraft besitzt die zivilgesellschaftliche Herausforderung für die Ausweitung der Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten? Auch eine umgekehrte Kausalität ist denkbar, wenn durch mangelnde Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten Dissidenz entsteht. Die empirische Analyse beruht auf der statistischen und qualitativen Auswertung von Zugangsregeln für transnationale Akteure in 50 Internationalen Organisationen und Daten zur Medienberichterstattung über Proteste gegen diese Organisationen zwischen 1980 und 2010. Sie findet keine Belege für einen systematischen Zusammenhang und zeigt, dass transnationale Proteste ein seltenes und oft kurzlebiges Phänomen darstellen, das bislang wenig Einfluss auf Strukturreformen Internationaler Organisationen ausgeübt hat. Recent decades have witnessed a change in the role of non-state actors in international politics. The access of civil society actors to formal structures of global and regional governance has increased in parallel with the rise of transnational protests. This article addresses the relationshiop between protests and the democratic opening of international organizations. Has the public challenge by non-state actors led to the extension of formal access rights? Or has frustration from insufficient opportunities to participate caused protest? The empirical analysis of non-state actors' formal access to 50 international organizations and media coverage of transnational protests between 1980 and 2010 provides an initial comparative and systematic assessment of these questions. The analysis finds no broad support for a causal link. It shows that transnational protest still represents a relatively rare and often short-lived phenomenon with limited effects on international organizations' structural reforms.