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"International political organizations"
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Vote-Buying by the United States in the United Nations
Scholars find a clear link between a state’s election to a rotating membership on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and increased receipt of foreign aid, especially that provided by the United States. Most researchers view this finding as evidence of Washington’s attempts to buy the votes of rotating members of the UNSC. If this is the case then it raises serious concerns about the legitimacy of UNSC decisions. However, while current statistical tests show an association between US foreign aid and holding one of the rotating seats on the UNSC, they do not establish the underlying causal mechanism. We seek to do so by generating theoretically motivated hypotheses about the relationship between relative voting congruence with the United States and the receipt of US foreign aid. Leveraging natural variation from the rotating structure of nonpermanent UNSC members, we uncover a causal relationship consistent with the claim that the United States uses foreign aid to procure support for its positions on the UNSC.
Journal Article
Credible Commitments? Explaining IGO Suspensions to Sanction Political Backsliding
Why do intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) that espouse democratic commitments suspend the membership of some states that backslide on those commitments, while leaving that of others intact? We argue that a combination of geopolitical factors and institutional rules help explain this inconsistent pattern. Remaining member states insulate geopolitically important states—particularly those with large endowments of oil resources—from suspension. Institutional factors, such as voting rules and the size of the IGO, create veto points that reduce suspensions. Using an original global data set of IGO suspensions and charter commitments from 1980 to 2010, we find strong support for our argument. We test a key assumption of existing scholarship that claims IGOs serve as credible-commitment devices for political reform and democratization. We show that once a state becomes an IGO member, it can often remain in the IGO even after violating its democratic commitments.
Journal Article
The credibility of transnational NGOs : when virtue is not enough
\"We rely on NGOs to monitor the ethical practices of governments and for-profit firms and to undertake many humanitarian tasks that public and private actors will not do. While we are critical of public and private sector failures, we do not reflect enough on the credibility of the NGOs which take their place. Can we be sure that products NGOs label as child-labor free are in fact so, that the coffee labeled as 'fair trade' is farmed in sustainable ways, or that the working conditions monitored by NGOs are safe and that the wages are reasonable? Can we know that humanitarian organizations are, in fact, using our donations to alleviate human suffering rather than pursuing other goals? This book explores the problems of establishing the credibility of NGO activities as they monitor working conditions, human rights and elections and provide finance through microcredit institutions, development aid and emergency assistance\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Firms and Global Value Chains
Trade policy has become increasingly multidimensional. Current trade agreements not only address market access but also encompass rules and provisions related to flexibility of commitment, investment protection, and dispute settlement mechanisms. Yet, rigorous evidence about how interest groups evaluate each of these in relation to the others remains scarce. We develop a firm-level theoretical framework to explain how firms’international operations affect their preferences on different trade policy measures. We experimentally evaluate preferences over multiple policy dimensions using a conjoint analysis on firms in Costa Rica. Notably, for many types of firms, the standard trade policy measures of yesteryear—tariffs and subsidies—are no longer their most important concerns. Instead, the degree of firms’involvement in global value chains shapes their preferences. Multinational corporations care most about protection of their foreign investments. Those exporters who are not central to global supply networks most value strong dispute settlement procedures. Finally, we find that preferences over these policy dimensions are more likely to vary by firm than by industry, which calls into question the existing literature’s focus on interindustry distinctions.
Journal Article
Negotiating trade liberalization at the WTO : domestic politics and bargaining dynamics
\"This book shows how domestic political institutions and the lack of time pressure have an impact on negotiations at the WTO. It provides detailed information on WTO ministerial meetings as well as on the political economy of trade policy in the EU, U.S., Brazil, and Australia\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Explaining the Transnational Design of International Organizations
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.
Journal Article
Faith-based organizations at the United Nations
\"\"Finally there is a book that addresses the increasing presence and relevance of faith-based organizations at the UN. In his coherent and accessible analysis, Jeffrey Haynes shows how FBOs navigate UN's liberal secular ethos with an eye on their ideological differences. With its stimulating discussion of issue areas ranging from reproductive health rights to economic development, the book will generate considerable reflection on the role of FBOs in global governance.\" Nukhet A. Sandal, Director, War and Peace Studies, Ohio University, USA and co-author, Religion and IR Theory (Routledge) The book examines selected faith-based organisations (FBOs) and their attempts to seek to influence debate and decision-making at the United Nations (UN). Increasing attention on FBOs in this context has followed what is widely understood as a widespread, post-Cold War 'religious resurgence', which characterises a novel 'postsecular' international environment. One aspect of the new postsecular environment is increasing focus on global public policy at the UN, from FBOs from various religious traditions, especially Christianity, Islam, and Judaism\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Donor Political Economies and the Pursuit of Aid Effectiveness
In response to corruption and inefficient state institutions in recipient countries, some foreign aid donors outsource the delivery of aid to nonstate development actors. Other donor governments continue to support state management of aid, seeking to strengthen recipient states. These cross-donor differences can be attributed in large measure to different national orientations about the appropriate role of the state in public service delivery. Countries that place a high premium on market efficiency (for example, the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden) will outsource aid delivery in poorly governed recipient countries to improve the likelihood that aid reaches the intended beneficiaries of services. In contrast, states whose political economies emphasize a strong state in service provision (for example, France, Germany, Japan) continue to support state provision. This argument is borne out by a variety of tests, including statistical analysis of dyadic time-series cross-section aid allocation data and individual-level survey data on a cross-national sample of senior foreign aid officials. To understand different aid policies, one needs to understand the political economies of donors.
Journal Article