Poli 151 Final Flashcards
Delegation
A conditional grant of authority by member states to an independent body
Why Delegate?
Overcome issue cycling, there is efficiency through specialization, sustain credible commitments, provide information that states might not otherwise share and, in general, reduce the transaction costs of decision making
What is the difference between standard international cooperation and delegation?
Delegation involves principles delegating power to Agents, SIC involves governments adjusting their policies themselves
What is pooling?
We define pooling as joint decision making among the principals themselves, like the EU with majority rule (though the EU is also somewhat independent)
Three Dimensions of Pooling
Formal power, decision making rules, and informal power.
Formal Power
Literal formal power in an IO (ie number of votes based on population or economic contribution, this is related to the voting structure)
Informal Power
The ability of a state to influence decision outcomes by means outside the formal rules: personal charisma, negotiation ability, trust & legitimacy, administrative competence, expert knowledge, outside opinions, structural power (ex: the post WW2 IO’s set up to benefit the US)
What are variations in pooling?
Voting and decision making rules, like majority rule vs unanimity
What are the costs of delegation?
Delegation can leave issues up to specific agents that have their own interests, and states will use IGOs to their own interests, also there is a tradeoff here between state autonomy and delegation
What is the tradeoff of delegation?
With more delegation comes more efficiency and less autonomy for each state
What is the tradeoff with decision making rules?
We see different structures have different advantages (think the House vs the Senate but for IO voting) where some IGOs would benefit from having votes given based on population, while others benefit from having vote individual (like with the UN compared to say an ‘ideal’ proportional democracy).
Agent
People who do not work on behalf of their own country, they fulfill some goal of that IGO
Their job is to work in administrative, information gathering, coordination, agenda setting, arbitration, enforcement, rule making sectors
What is the tradeoff of delegating to an IO Agent?
Agents are rational self interested actors whose opinion can vary from that of states. They can pursue their own goals, withhold information, conceal their actions, or use their independence against the principle. As we delegate more to an agent, we get closer to agency slippage
How can states control agents?
We have Ex ante (before) control: threats, agent screening, institutionalized checks and balances, monitoring
And Ex post (after) control: sanctions, renegotiation of the contract
How is controlling agents costly?
Limiting independence decreases efficiency (think the general tradeoff between efficiency and autonomy)
The ability to control and sanction is reliant on a number of factors (IGO size, voting structure, regional vs universal, economic structure, purpose)
There is a tradeoff here between oversight costs and efficiency losses
Effectiveness
We can define this in a number of ways depending on perspective: is it the ability to achieve country goals, at in emergencies, achieve IGO goals, enforce decisions, delegate sovereignty (trust in an IGO?), ability to change a states domestic policies
And then there’s the benchmark: do we use the status quo? Or the IO preference?
And if member states are heterogenous whose perspectives/goals are we aiming to realize?
How do we assess effectiveness?
We can look to a number of factors here like an IGOs power and the compliance of its members, but have to take into account structural limitations (homogeny, cooperation costs, power)
What are three strategies democratizing IGOs can utilize? Upsides and downsides?
IGOs can foster democracy through control incentives and conditionality
Control
Control can be through sanction or forced military occupation following an invasion, but is costly militaristically, isn’t always effective, and isn’t always seen as legitimate
Incentives
Incentives can come as economic aid, counseling, guarantees to key groups, credibility, but there are incentives to defect, there are coordination problems, and strategic interests of powerful states will always be at play.
Conditionality
IGO requires from a sovereign state to install or consolidate democracy before receiving the promised benefits, but the credibility of sanctions can vary
Principle Agent Theory / Problem
Because the agent is a rational actor, they might have different preferences, and can take actions to pursue their own goals. There is a payoff here between increased control and efficiency, as ex ante and ex post control can both be utilized by the principle to ensure control over the agent.
Agency Slippage
Occurs when agents overuse power and policy autonomy begins to slip away; an agency’s influence increases with independence and its information advantage
IGOs (and a way they vary)
Formal entities built upon treaties, constitutions, or emanations (formed from other IGOs) that have a permanent secretariat, acting office, HQ, or other permanent structure, and they are comprised of a number of players: IO bureaucrats, member states (at least 3).
One dimension they can vary within is their geographic requirements! We have universal IOs, regional IOs and cross regional IOs
Why is international cooperation difficult?
We have collective action dilemmas: the free rider /collaboration problem (where lack compliance doesn’t hinder payoff), coordination problems (where cooperation is wanted but the means is discrepant), and distributional problems (how do we ensure everyone gets their proper payoffs?)
Public Goods
Benefits that cannot be withheld from members of the group regardless of their participation, and the lack of a single state’s cooperation will not significantly effect the public good
Collective Action Dilemas
States all want the same thing but cannot guarantee other states will act in a similar way: We can remedy this with an increase to the payoffs by changing the structure of benefits, increasing gains from cooperation, having reciprocal bargaining strategies, increasing the amount of information, decrease the heterogeneity of preferences, decrease the number of players
Preference Heterogeneity
When there are a number of players all wanting different things it becomes harder and harder to agree on something.
Information in International Cooperation
Information (and its lack) can serve as a major problem in international cooperation because information problems hinder the ability for a heterogenous body to come to a conclusion, ensuring everyone helps (no free rider problem) or will agree in a given vote (no coordination dilemma)
Collaboration Dilemma
Also known as the free rider problem, this is when the payoff will happen regardless of compliance (think NATO with security guarantees regardless of the gap requirements)
NGO
Nongovernmental voluntary private orgs that are often comprised of businesses, interest groups, and individuals
Universal vs Regional vs Cross
Universal aren’t restricted to territory, regional are, and cross regional are like NATO
Abbott & Snidal
Why States Act through Formal International Organizations
Scientific article looking at IR theories in relation to the existence of IO’s. Discusses different potential strengths and weaknesses of IO’s, explaining things like pooling (the push and pull between states veto power) and looks at how structures like that can contribute to the efficacy of an IO through its structure and size
Pevehouse
International Governmental Organizations (chapter)
His diachronic analysis leads us to see: IGOs grew faster than states did, cross regional is now more common than universal, IGO numbers have skyrocketed over the past few decades
Oye
Explaining Cooperation Under Anarchy
Looks at an IR theory Game Theory perspective for why states ever cooperate, and sees they lengthen the shadow of the future and increase the need for reciprocity; they change the structure to make it advantageous for players to be nice
Magliveras
Are International Organizations Effective?
They argue yes! Through five factors:
- The ever-increasing number of states willing to join IOs.
- That states keep on establishing new IOs, despite the existence of other IOs covering the same or similar areas of activities.
- The tendency among states in all parts of the world to abandon bilateral or small group diplomacy and move towards multilateral diplomacy managing their relations mainly through IOs.
- The recent trend to transform successful but “soft IOs” into “hard IOs” as a means to consolidate their achievements and
move forwards. - The competition among IOs shows that some IOs have been more efficient and effective than other similar IOs and, as a consequence, have prevailed over their competitors.
Hard vs Soft IOs
Hard IOs are defined by Magliveras as IGOs with formal political or security mandates (UN) while soft IOs are those without these features like these
What is Magliveras’ example
SAARC is a soft IO in South Asia but it has created a number of subsidiary IOs in recent times like SARSO that are hard IOs with with binding agreements on terrorism and trafficking
Suzanne Nossel - The World Still Needs the UN.
Head of PEN America and HR Advocate Nossel
argues the UN must be retailored to a new century through
globalizing the idea of democracy
she notes the prevalence of social media
she proposes UN powers face public forums for their vetoes
Meredith Crowley - An Introduction to the WTO and GATT
Economist Crowley
Explains the history of the WTO and GATT
Discusses the effects of reciprocity and non-discrimination and how a
precedent of exchanging tariff concessions
treating all trading partners equally
enhances the efficiency and welfare of the world trading system.
explores antidumping and measured retaliation
It is impossible to tell for certain what the most effective path is in economic development because economies are almost always growing
Worland - Why The Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala wants to reform the WTO and clean up after Trump
She is the expected next director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
She believes the WTO can help address global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and inequality, but it needs extensive and serious reform.
Power - Bystanders to Genocide
Admin for the US Agency for International Development
Discusses what went wrong in Rwanda.
A slow and uninformed response (Hutu Tutu)
Congress nor the White House would stand by
One staffer compared the withdrawal of troops to the revocation of a babysitter
The US’s hesitation because it would effect their credibility and the credibility of peacekeepers
Human rights watch and NGO’s tried but it didn’t do a whole lot
Staffers now argue at worst we could have saved 75-100K people
All means of pressure were muted when it comes to Rwanda
Miller
Basically the position NATO gives to the US - as a credible, long lasting, alliance building, security guaranteeing world leader - benefits the US both politically and economically
McInnis
Researcher who argues basically the position NATO gives to the US - as a credible, long lasting, alliance building, security guaranteeing world leader - benefits the US both politically and economically
Neumayer
Examines the factors that influence the aid allocation by four regional development banks and three UN agencies looking through statistical methods on data aid flows and various explanatory variables, such as recipient need, donor interest, good governance, population size, colonial experience, and geographical distance
Most multilateral donors exhibit a bias in favor of less populous countries and former colonies. The author argues that this bias is not justified by the needs of the poor people in more populous and non-colonial countries
UN agencies take a broader view of recipient needs than regional development banks. UN agencies consider both economic and human development needs, reflecting the different mandates and goals of the different multilateral donors.
Rewards countries with higher respect for political freedom
Iida
Explores the effects of the WTO on state’s actions and global wellbeing, very much echoing the class’ like argument that effectiveness of an IGO is difficult to measure because success of this measure is largely based on perspective
an example used in the reading is WTO patent laws protecting largely Western individual’s property rights, which then block the availability of of the creation of vaccines in the global south without safeguards’
Specifically focuses on the judicial branch of the WTO, which settles these disputes
Discusses the history of the WTO, notably the GATT (which was an agreement with a miniscule body of bureaucrats)
Cases are unaffordable for developing nations, so inequity has to be considered as a flaw to effectiveness
But has also stunned the US, any 301 case (type of legal dispute measured in the article) will trigger a counter case creating novel and often deterring costs
Example: Canadian official noting Canada is hesitant to sanction poorer countries like Brazil due to reputation, so other factors are at play here too
IMF Reading
IMF promotes monetary cooperation, exchange rate stability, and balanced trade among its 184 member countries
Brief history - The IMF was created in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference, the og purpose to oversee the fixed exchange rate system and help countries with balance of payments difficulties. Over time
surveillance, lending, and technical assistance. Surveillance involves monitoring and advising countries on their economic and financial policies, as well as assessing global and regional trends and risks. Lending involves providing temporary financing to countries with balance of payments problems, under certain conditions and safeguards. Technical assistance involves sharing expertise and training with countries to help them improve their economic institutions and policies.
The IMF also helps poor countries by providing concessional loans, debt relief, and policy support.
Honig
Prof of public policy - Aid Agencies more agency autonomy translates into more personnel empowered to act effectively in their assigned countries.
argues we keep in mind unknown unknowns and how amenable are the tasks to monitoring and development?
Diehl
He argues that the post cold war world has new factors to consider with regard to peacekeeping: which agency organizes, what is the timing, he considers host state consent as a pressing and novel matter, third party states and other minor actors, and type of conflict: ie civilian (conflicts have more than two sides)
Outlines a best-case scenario: peacekeeping operation organized by the UN with full support of major powers and put in place following a comprehensive peace agreement between two states, both protagonists would be strongly supportive of the operation, as would any regional
Actors.
The peacekeeping operation might be assigned monitoring functions and
be located along a narrow international border in a sparsely populated area that
would make detection of military and other movements easy, while not offering
opportunities for the peacekeepers themselves to come under fire
In other words a lot can go wrong.
What is the concept of collective security?
Agreement between states to abide by certain norms to maintain peace
Global Governance
Miller, Lynn H Reading:
Can be complicated
Can only happen if there is “strong political will and consensus”
What are the major assumptions of collective security theory?
States are willing to participate
Members can agree who the aggressor is
Members agree on how to constrain aggressor
Identical freedom of action and ability
There is enough power when members get together
Negotiation skills
How likely are the assumptions of collective security theory met? Which ones are the most problematic?
It seems like the assumptions would hold on paper, but usually they fail when put into practice.
States are not willing to cooperate
Difficulties to contain nuclear powers
Unknown and alignment of military
How does collective security differ from collective defense?
Collective security is preventing aggression within a community, like the UN or the League of Nations,
Collective defense is preventing aggression from OUTSIDE the community, like NATO.
Is NATO a collective defense or a collective security organization?
Collective defense
Why did NATO not cease to exist in the 1990s?
The end of the Cold War is primarily why NATO did not end in the 1990s, with NATO adapting to changing times by transforming into an expanded membership for Central and Eastern Europe.
Kathleen J. Mclnnis: The article claims that NATO helps with
strategic leadership
Economic prosperity
Security cost
Burden-sharing
The article argues that NATO is not only a military alliance but also a political and economic one.
Integrated Military Structure
