The Authority of International Organizations* Liesbet Hooghe

W. R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Political Science at UNC Chapel Hill and Chair in Multilevel Governance, VU University Amsterdam.

Gary Marks

Burton Craige Professor of Political Science at UNC Chapel Hill and Chair in Multilevel Governance, VU University Amsterdam

ABSTRACT

This article introduces a cross-sectional dataset for 72 intergovernmental organizations and evaluates hypotheses that seek to explain variation in the delegation and pooling of authority in IO decision making. We find that the broader the policy responsibilities of an IO, the more willing are members to delegate, but the less willing they are to pool authority. Whereas delegation tends to be high in general purpose IOs which are characterized by uncertainty and issue cycling, these same features limit the willingness of states to surrender the national veto by pooling authority. We also find powerful confirmation for the notion that member states pool authority through majoritarian voting when confronted with the threat of decisional blockage in large-N organizations. Finally, we relax the assumption that the predictors of IO design are independent. We set out a simple, robust model in which the scale of an IO’s membership, its normative diversity, and policy breadth are a) interdependent and b) determine the extent to which authority is delegated and pooled in international organizations.

* This project is financed by the European Research Council Advanced Grant #249543 “Causes and Consequences of Multilevel Governance.” Jeanine Bezuijen, Besir Ceka, Svet Derderyan, Catherine de Vries, Benjamin Neudorfer, Henk-Jan Van Alphen, and the authors of this paper are responsible for the dataset. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Hertie School, Berlin; the Free University of Berlin; the Council of Europeanists, Boston; Munich University; New York University; Nuffield College, Oxford University; the Munk Centre, University of Toronto; the VU University Amsterdam; and the ETH in Zurich. The authors are grateful for comments from participants at these seminars, and wish to thank in particular Thomas Bernauer, Tanja Börzel, Eugenia da Conceicao-Heldt, Ben Crum, Catherine de Vries, Markus Jachtenfuchs, Christiane Lemke, Tobias Lenz, David Levi-Faur, Walter Mattli, Kimberly Morgan, Kalypso Nicolaidis, Diana Panke, Thomas Risse, Berthold Rittberger, Frank Schimmelfennig, Erik Voeten, Bernhard Zangl, Michael Zürn, and the anonymous referees. We wish to give special thanks to Emanuel Coman for research assistance and to the KollegForscherGruppe ‘The Transformative Power of Europe’, and its co-directors Tanja Börzel and Thomas Risse, for hosting us as postdoctoral fellows.

KEYWORDS: international organization, supranationalism, delegation, pooling

* Draft 3.0 (Sept 2012) – comments welcome, please do not quote without authors’ permission *

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International governmental organizations (IOs) raise fundamental questions about

governance in the absence of centralized coercion.1 IOs exist in the grey zone between

anarchy and hierarchy. Their most fundamental characteristic is that they are voluntary

organizations formed by states that wish to place themselves under some form of durable

rule-based constraint to produce goods that would not be created (or created so efficiently)

if states made spot contracts or acted individually. But IOs lack the quality that classic social

contracts convey to government: a monopoly of legitimate coercion.

Conceptualizing international authority is correspondingly an exercise in subtlety and

interpretation. As scholars moved away from the arid debate about the possibility of

international cooperation to examine its variation, they produced a range of concepts that

seek to capture authority in the absence of coercion. We draw on this literature to

operationalize authority and its ingredients. We go on to estimate authority in 72 IOs, and

then test some theoretically motivated claims that have been kicking around for some time.

We conclude by presenting a model that explains IO authority in terms of scale, scope, and

community.

Our project builds on efforts of IO scholars since the early 1960s, and particularly

over the past decade. The first attempts to estimate international organizations—including

the work by Mitrany,2 Haas,3 and Nye4—were put aside when the field shifted from

studying how formal organizations acquire authority to the more general question of how

increasing interdependence was eroding state sovereignty.5 The comparative study of

international organization became a backwater, and case studies of particular organizations

1 We follow Barnett and Finnemore (1999) in using the terms international organizations and IOs to refer to international intergovernmental organizations. 2 Mitrany [1943] 1966. 3 Haas 1964. 4 Nye 1968. 5 For overviews, see Martin and Simmons 1998 and Thompson and Snidal 2011.

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were framed within the parameters of the regimes paradigm. These case studies would

prove useful because the refinement of concepts by applying them carefully to one or a few

cases is a sine qua non for reliable and valid estimation over a large-N. In the 1980s and

1990s, the study of formal international organization regained attention.6 The intellectual

breakthrough seems to have been the shift from debate about whether institutions matter,

to the study of their functions, and the attendant shifts from two-by-two games to

“conditional and nuanced theories,”7 from informal to formal institutions, and the

introduction of approaches from other fields and disciplines, including principal-agent

theory and organizational sociology.8 However, the landmark studies of the structure of IOs,

the legalization and rational design projects, were more successful in framing plausible

hypotheses than in systematically testing their validity in a multivariate setting.

We must scale a ladder of conceptual and measurement decisions to do so. In the

next section we derive two concepts from the IR literature—delegation and pooling—that

encompass the meaning of authority when it is applied to international organization. We

conceive delegation and pooling as latent concepts and, in a subsequent section, we set out

institutional indicators for each concept. We take pains to detail the measurement model

because, as Lakatos argues, observations do not sit in judgment of theories, but are

themselves interrogated.9

We then derive and test some plausible expectations drawn from the major theories

of international organization. Our purpose is not to adjudicate among functional, ideational,

and power theories of international relations, but to examine the validity of proximate

6 Abbott and Snidal 1998. 7 Koremenos forthcoming. 8 Goldstein et al. 2000; Koremenos et al. 2001; Bradley and Kelley 2008; Hawkins et al. 2006; Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Powers and Goertz 2011. 9 Lakatos 1970; Marks 2007.

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factors, such as the membership size and policy breadth of the organization, the extent to

which its member states share basic values, and the extent to which one state is singularly

powerful. We find that the broader the policy responsibilities of an IO, the more willing are

members to delegate, but the less willing they are to pool authority. Whereas delegation

tends to be high in general purpose IOs which are characterized by uncertainty and issue

cycling, these same features limit the willingness of states to surrender the national veto by

pooling authority. We also find powerful confirmation for the notion that member states

pool authority when confronted with the threat of decisional blockage in large-N

organizations and that delegation is advanced in IOs where no single state is predominant.

Hence the causal logic underlying delegation cuts against that for pooling authority.

Finally, we relax the assumption that the predictors of IO authority are independent

and we set up a structural equations model confirming that three interrelated variables—

the number of member states in the IO, their normative congruence, and the policy scope of

the IO—provide a key to institutional design.

Conceptualizing International Governance

Diverse concepts have been proposed to capture variation in international governance,

including legalization,10 autonomy,11 independence,12 institutionalization,13 centralization,14

control,15 delegation,16 and pooling.17

10 Abbott et al. 2000; Goldstein et al. 2000. 11 Abbott and Snidal 1998; Barnett and Finnemore 2004. 12 Haftel and Thompson 2006. 13 Boehmer, Gartzke, Nordstrom 2004. 14 Abbott and Snidal 1998; Koremenos et al. 2001. 15 Koremenos et al. 2001. 16 Bradley and Kelley 2008; Hawkins et al. 2006; Koremenos 2008; Pollack 2003. 17 Lake 1996; Moravcsik 1998.

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There are several points of convergence. Each is concerned with the authority of an

international organization with respect to its member states. To what extent are states

“bound by a rule or commitment” that requires, authorizes or proscribes certain actions?18

Theorists and practitioners of international organization have summarized this as a

dimension from intergovernmentalism to supranationalism.19 Supra is Latin for “above,

over, before, beyond;” inter is Latin for “between, among.” So the dimension that connects

these concepts is the extent to which an institution is determined above or among its

member states.

The distinction between above and among member states is a second point of

convergence, implicit in most conceptualizations and made explicit by Lake.20 Member

states can delegate authority above them to an agent, or member states can pool authority

among them by relinquishing the national veto and introducing some form of majority rule.

Delegation in an IO is the conditional transfer of authority by principals, the member states,

to an agent, a general secretariat, in order to provide expertise, overcome cycling, and

provide credible commitments.21 Pooling in an IO is the transfer of authority from individual

member states to “a collective body of states within which they may exercise more or less

influence” in order to reduce decisional blockage.22

18 Abbott et al 2000, 401; Koremenos et al 2001, 762. 19 One of the first public uses of the term “supranational” was recorded at the establishment of the International Telegraphic Union in 1865 in Paris. Supranationalism came in vogue in post-war Europe, and was used to describe the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community (Art 9, 1951 Paris Treaty). The term does not appear in subsequent treaties. Innis Claude and Ernst Haas contrast intergovernmentalism and supranationalism as modes of international organization (Claude 1968; Haas 1968), and the terms have dominated the characterization of the European Union. See Haas 1958; Marks et al. 1996; Moravcsik 1998; Tsebelis and Garrett 2000; Tallberg 2002. The terms have also been applied to NAFTA (Monaghan 2007), the WTO (Lake 2010), the United Nations (Auvachez 2009; Tallberg 2010), regional organizations (Hooghe and Marks 2011; Lenz 2012), and international organizations (Nye 1968; Gruber 2000; Goodheart and Tanichev 2011). 20 Lake 2007; also Rittberger and Zangl 2006, 11. 21 Hawkins et al 2006; Pollack 2003. 22 Lake 2007, 220.

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A third convergence is an emphasis on formal political institutions, that is,

contractually articulated and politically recognized rules.23 “Formal rules are an

indispensable element of social organization . . . Formal rules represent standard operating

procedures – voting rules, property rights, a status quo distribution of costs and benefits.”24

Students of international regimes who wish to investigate implicit understandings that

undergird behavior are well advised to take the explicit rules of an organization into

account. A focus on explicit rules allows for rigorous examination of how international

organizations specify obligations, and avoids the inferential circularity of identifying

“regimes on the basis of observed behavior, and then . . . [using] them to ‘explain’ observed

behavior.”25

The formal rules of an organization can be specified independently of behavior, and

can be inferred descriptively. Observing treaties, constitutions, conventions, special

statutes, protocols, and rules of procedure—the approach taken here—facilitates

comparison by using information that is public and therefore accessible and replicable.

Disaggregating International Authority

Two challenges confront the researcher who wishes to estimate IO authority. The first is to

navigate from the abstract to the particular. Despite its centrality to political science,

23 Goldstein et al. 2000; Koremenos et al. 2001. 24 Stone 2010, 13. 25 Keohane 1993, 27. The view that formal rules are the natural starting point for understanding outcomes is also accepted by skeptics of formal IO authority. Randall Stone (2010) conceives formal rules as a base line for member state behavior in international organizations, from which a dominant power may depart to rely on informal processes, but a departure from formal rules usually carries a price tag in long-term influence. In his analysis of three recently declassified US state department studies that assess U.S. government capacity to influence financial international organizations, Timothy Mckeown (2009, 283) concludes that U.S. government officials hold “an instrumental view of formal authority” whereby formal rules are understood to be one of several ways to attain influence. He also finds that as financial institutions have progressively become more transparent in their decision making, it has become more difficult for dominant powers to depart from formal rules. “Thus those of us who study the operations of these institutions find our own empirical findings are endogenous to these organizations’ politics” (McKeown 2009, 288).

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authority cannot be observed directly. The art of measurement is to disaggregate a concept

so that variation on its constituent domains can be reliably evaluated while preserving its

meaning. Each step along the way—breaking the concept down into domains, summarizing

each domain in a limited number of dimensions, operationalizing the dimensions as rating

scales and, finally, observing variation on these scales—is a step from the abstract to the

concrete.

A second, related, challenge is to “seek a middle ground between a universalizing

tendency, which is inattentive to contextual differences, and a particularizing approach,

which is skeptical about the feasibility of constructing measures that transcend specific

contexts.”26 Each international organization is, in certain respects, unique, yet our purpose

is to score them within a common conceptual frame. This is a tension noted by Weber and

diagnosed by Sartori: extending a concept to a greater range of cases by scaling the ladder

of abstraction risks connotative imprecision.27 Hence, our challenge is to specify institutional

possibilities that have similar connotations for the extent of authority across diverse

organizations.

The sample consists of international governmental organizations listed in the

Correlates of War Dataset28 that meet at least six of the following seven criteria:

• having three or more member states

• having a formal constitution or convention

• having a legislative body, executive, and administration

• having a permanent staff of 50 or more

• having at least one annual meeting of the executive or legislature

26 Adcock and Collier 2001, 530. 27 Weber 1949; Sartori 1970. 28 Pevehouse et al 2004.

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• excluding bodies that are designated emanations by the Correlates of War dataset

• having an address and website

Seventy-two IOs, listed in the appendix, fulfill this condition.

Table 1 lists four datasets that estimate IO decision making.29 Boehmer et al.

evaluate the authority exercised by an IO across three categories that tap the degree to

which an IO is institutionalized and its capacity to enforce its will on its member states.

Blake and Payton examine the voting rule in the IO body that they judge to be the most

consequential in setting policy. Each of these measures summarizes an important indicator

of IO authority. Haftel and Thompson add a dimension for council decision making and one

for bureaucratic initiative. Goertz and Powers have the most encompassing

operationalization to date which includes also whether an IO has dispute settlement,

emanations, and international legal personality.

[Table 1 about here]

These data sets have been used to good effect, but they have some fairly basic

limitations. A more refined measure would seek to a) develop separate indicators for

delegation and pooling of authority; b) distinguish super-majoritarian from simple

majoritarian voting rules, as well as between these and unanimity; c) distinguish among the

diverse decision fields in which delegated actors may or may not play a role; d) take into

account whether IO decisions come into force only if they are ratified by member states;

and e) take into account the extent to which IO decisions formally bind member states.

29 The Boehmer et al. (2004; see also Ingram et al. 2005, 855) and Haftel and Thompson (2006) datasets are publically available; the Blake and Lockwood Payton (2009) and Goertz and Powers (2012) are, as yet, unpublished.

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We proceed by steps in order to disaggregate IO decision making into its component

parts—up to 70 observations for each organization—which are the building blocks for the

summary measures used in the analysis. This reduces random error by increasing the

number of indicators for each latent variable and allows researchers to re-combine items to

produce alternative summary measures.

Our first move is to identify the bodies involved in decision making within the IO.

This varies from two in the case of IWhale to six in the Andean Community.30 We ask what

decision rules determine the composition of the body, the extent to which the body is

monopolized by member states, and the mode of member state representation (whether

decision makers are delegates of member states or trustees). We then ask which of these

bodies are involved under what decision rules in agenda setting and in decision making in

the following domains: a) policy making; b) the financial envelope, budgetary allocation,

and financial non-compliance c) membership accession, suspension, and expulsion; and d)

constitutional reform. Finally, we investigate how binding the decision is, and whether the

decision has to be referred back to member states for ratification. The dataset is cross-

sectional, covering 72 IOs in 2010.

Delegation in decision making is a grant of authority to an independent non-state

body. Every IO in our dataset has a secretariat with infrastructural functions such as running

the IO’s headquarters, organizing meetings, and maintaining records. However, the extent

to which the secretariat carries out executive functions, monitors compliance, and facilitates

member state bargaining varies considerably. In the domain of accession, for example, a

30 Most IOs have more than one assembly, executive, or secretariat and each features in our coding. For example, we identify two assemblies, Leaders Meeting and Ministerial Meeting, in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and three in the Andean Community: the Presidential Council, the Council of Foreign Ministers, and the Community Commission (the Andean Parliament is a consultative body).

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secretariat may be charged with soliciting or vetting candidates, evaluating whether a

prospective member meets accession criteria, or negotiating the conditions of accession.

We assess whether a general secretariat exercises executive powers, sets the policy

agenda, drafts the IO’s budget, monitors member state non-compliance, negotiates

member state accession to the IO, and initiates amendments to the IO’s charter.

• Executive powers. Is the secretariat of the IO authorized to carry out executive

functions, such as framing multi-year strategic plans, drafting policy, or turning

general legislation into directives?

• Monopoly of executive powers. Does the secretariat monopolize these powers or

does it share them with another body?

• Policy initiation. Is the secretariat authorized to propose a) recommendations,

resolutions, or declarations; b) programs or projects; c) laws, regulations, decisions,

or directives; and/or d) protocols or conventions?

• Policy initiation role. Is the role of the secretariat in initiating policy a) shared with

another body, routinized in secondary legislation but not anchored in the IO’s

founding document; b) shared with another body and anchored in the IO’s founding

document; c) exclusive and anchored in the IO’s founding document?

• Drafting the budget. Is the secretariat authorized to (co-)draft the annual budget of

the IO?

• Substantive non-compliance. Is the secretariat authorized to initiate a formal

proceeding against a member state in non-compliance with IO rules?

• Financial non-compliance. Is the secretariat authorized to initiate a proceeding

against a member state in financial arrears?

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• Membership accession. Is the secretariat authorized to vet, solicit, or negotiate

membership of the IO?

• Constitutional amendments. Is the secretariat authorized to initiate or negotiate

constitutional amendments?

The dependent variable, Delegation, can be calculated as a summated rating scale by

adding scores across these items or as a latent factor where each item is conceived as an

indicator. A summated rating scale produces scores that are not affected by the

composition of the sample, whereas the latent factor uses the available information more

efficiently by weighting each indicator according to its contribution to the score for a given

IO. As it turns out, the two measures are strongly correlated (R=0.97). The Cronbach’s alpha

(0.71) among the items is within acceptable bounds.31 We use the factor scores in this

article.

Pooling refers to the transfer of authority from individual member states to a

collective body in which individual states cede their capacity to block decisions. Three things

have to happen before we can say that member states have pooled authority in an IO: first,

the decision rule must depart from unanimity to involve some form of

(super)majoritarianism; second, the decision must be binding rather than voluntary; third,

the decision must come into force without requiring ratification by individual member

states. We estimate the extent to which member states pool authority by assessing voting

rules, bindingness, and ratification in the domains of policy making, allocation of the IO’s

budget, budgetary non-compliance, accession of a member state to the IO, suspension of a

member state, and constitutional revision.

31 PCA factor analysis produces acceptable uniqueness factors, with six of nine items well below the conventional norm of 0.4 and three items (drafting the budget, and the two items on facilitating bargaining) with uniqueness factors of 0.57, 0.58, and 0.69 respectively.

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• Voting. What is the voting rule (unanimity, super-majoritarian, majoritarian) for

decision making in each of the domains listed above?

• Bindingness. Are collective decisions in each of these domains a) binding; b) partially

binding; or c) non-binding on member states? A decision is considered binding if

there is a formal legal provision to this effect or if there is no provision for a member

state to opt out or postpone implementation of a decision. A decision is partially

binding if there is a procedure for an individual member state to opt out or postpone

a decision, but this does not affect its binding character for other member states. A

decision is nonbinding if there is a voluntary provision or if objections by one or

several countries postpone or annul the decision.

• Ratification. Do IO decisions have to be ratified to come into effect? We distinguish

three possibilities: a) the decision comes into force for all states if ratified by all, or

comes into force only for those member states that ratify; b) the decision comes into

force for all states after ratification by a subset of states; c) the decision comes into

force without ratification.

The dependent variable, Pooling, is first calculated for each issue area as a non-linear

interaction between the decision rule, bindingness, and ratification. The maximum score is

majority voting over a binding decision without ratification. The minimum score is

unanimous decision making, followed by nonbinding decision making under supermajority.

Supermajoritarian decision rules, ratification, and partial bindingness produce intermediate

scores. Scores for each domain can be treated as indicators of a latent factor or as elements

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of a summated rating scale. The Cronbach’s alpha across the six domains is 0.84 and the

correlation between the summated rating scale and latent factor is 0.998.32

The information necessary for interpreting IO decision making is drawn primarily

from founding IO documents, protocols, rules of procedure, and annual reports, all of which

are in the public realm and can be accessed on the web, at the Union of International

Associations library in Brussels, or by writing to the relevant IO. Case studies, amounting to

210,000 words, detail and explain coding decisions and can be accessed at [URL]. Their

purpose is to make our judgments explicit, and therefore open to amendment or refutation.

Theories of International Organization

International governmental organizations are barely two centuries old. Around three

quarters of the IOs in our dataset were established after 1945. Yet few political

organizations have a richer or more diverse set of literatures. The design of international

organizations has been theorized to depend on functional variables, such as the type of

coordination problem,33 the number of participants,34 interdependence,35 uncertainty,36 or

the incompleteness of the contract;37 ideational variables, such as convergence or diffusion

32 PCA factor analysis produces uniqueness factors ranging between 0.35 and 0.46. We use factor scores in this article. The association between Delegation and Pooling is 0.047. 33 Koremenos et al. 2001; Snidal 1985; Zürn 1992. 34 Haftel and Thompson 2006; Zamora 1980. 35 Keohane 1982; Mattli 1999; Stone Sweet and Brunell 1998. 36 Koremenos 2005; Thompson 2010. 37 Kahler 2000; Hawkins et al. 2006.

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of legal norms,38 liberalism,39 or professional norms;40 and power, including hegemony,41

asymmetry in capabilities,42 domestic coalitions,43 and national institutions.44

This list is incomplete, but it conveys both the remarkable diversity of expectations

and the impossibility of testing them all here. Fortunately, sufficient information exists for

the IOs in this study to assess a small, but theoretically interesting, subset of expectations.

Functionality

Since Keohane’s 1982 paper, the predominant approach to explaining international

organization conceives states as rational actors that sacrifice some freedom of action to

achieve the benefits of cooperation.45 IOs serve particular functions that shape both the

willingness of states to sustain them and the character of their institutions.46 Hence states

find it useful to cede authority to an IO agent or pool authority in (super)majoritarian IO

decision making to the extent that they help them solve the dilemma of producing collective

goods among national sovereigns.

The chief conceptual lens has been principal-agent analysis, which theorizes that

incomplete contracting induces principals (states) to delegate authority to non-state actors

in order to reduce uncertainty in interstate relations.47 International organizations, then, are

agents of state principals, and they enjoy more or less slack from state control. Third parties,

such as general secretariats, have a comparative advantage in facilitating deals in the face of

38 Alter 2012; Duina 2010. 39 Hurrell 1995; Simmons and Elkins 2004; Levi-Faur 2005; Simmons, Dobbin, Garrett 2006. 40 Barnett and Finnemore 2004. 41 Hancock 2009; Krasner 1991; Cooley and Spruyt 2009. 42 Haftel and Thompson 2006; Koremenos 2008. 43 Kahler 2000; Solingen 2008. 44 Hallerberg 2002; Keefer and Stasavage 2002. 45 Keohane 1982. 46 Abbott and Snidal 1998. 47 Hawkins et al. 2006; Pollack 2003.

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coordination problems or policy externalities. Hence a general secretariat may be granted

agenda setting powers to avoid issue cycling, to fill in the details of incomplete contracts,

generate expert policy-relevant information, or monitor compliance.48

Policy Scope. Principal-agent theory implies that the greater the extent of incomplete

contracting, the greater the danger of issue cycling, and the greater the need for an expert

agent to set the agenda. Incomplete contracting cannot be observed directly, but it covaries

with the policy breadth of an IO. An IO that approximates a general-purpose government by

encompassing a variety of policy areas will tend to be less contractually complete than an IO

that is dedicated to a particular task or policy area. So one would expect to find delegation

to the general secretariat of an IO where its contract does not specify “the full array of

responsibilities and obligations of the contracting parties, as well as anticipate every

possible future contingency”49 and where, as a consequence, there is “persistent

uncertainty surrounding the distribution of future gains.”50

H1: The broader the policy scope of an IO, the more delegation to a general

secretariat.

It is one thing to establish a general secretariat that can frame policy proposals to

avoid issue cycling and another to relinquish the capacity to block decisions when

governments cannot be sure about what is coming down the pike. Member states can be

expected to guard their capacity to block decisions in IOs based on highly incomplete

contracts where future issues are hidden behind a curtain of uncertainty. Further, IOs of

broad policy scope are likely to engage domestic issues—issues of domestic concern to

48 Pollack 2003, 378; see Bradley and Kelley 2008 for a detailed conceptualization. 49 Cooley and Spruyt 2009, 8. 50 Koremenos 2005, 550.

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national governments—with greater frequency than narrowly focused IOs. For both

reasons, one can expect member states to be reluctant to pool authority in IOs with broad

policy scope.

H2: The broader the policy scope of an IO, the less will member states pool

authority.

This line of argument appears consistent with the history of international

organization. The first instances of majority voting took place in technical IOs because, as

Zamora stresses, supranationalism was most palatable in task-specific organizations that

dealt with specialized issues which did not much impinge on domestic policy.51 The

International Telegraphic Union (ITU), the largest international organization in the world

with twenty members when established in 1868, was the first to introduce majority voting.

By 1914, several organizations followed, including the Universal Postal Union in 1874 and

the International Institute of Agriculture, forerunner of the Food and Agriculture

Organization, in 1905. After the First World War, majority rule was adopted by several task-

specific organizations.

We estimate policy scope as the number of policies in which an IO has substantial

involvement. An IO is coded as having substantial involvement in a policy area if it meets

two or more of the following criteria: a) the policy is mentioned in the constitution/founding

documents; b) the IO has a distinct organizational component for the policy (agency,

department, office, unit); c) the IO collects or spends money on policy (budget category,

taxes, fees, fines, penalties); d) there is a consistent policy pattern (laws, decisions,

regulations, conventions, protocols, rulings); e) the policy is in the mission self-description

on the IGO website. Policy scope was assessed by two independent coders for each of 72

51 Zamora 1980, 574-5.

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IGOs from a list of 25 policies. Krippendorff’s alpha is 0.70, which indicates reasonably high

intercoder reliability.

Number of member states. IO authority can be understood as a functional response to the

problem of social choice in large-N scenarios.52 Research on common pool resource settings

highlights design principles that mediate the effect of large numbers by aggregating actors

into organizations that can produce collective goods.53 The possibility of coordination

among populations living in different parts of the globe is only possible because they are

aggregated into hierarchical organizations that can themselves coordinate. However, it is

reasonable to believe that the number of such organizations makes a difference. The notion

that collective action becomes more difficult as the number of actors increases has been

often observed.54

The principle of national sovereignty—i.e. the entitlement of a state to veto

decisions to which it is opposed—is a potent barrier to the production of joint public goods.

Unanimity can be a cold shower on decision making, as will be obvious to anyone who has

sat around a table with a dozen or more veto players. When that number goes into the

dozens, or the high hundreds, the problem grows. If costs stemming from a large number of

member states threaten future joint gains, rational state actors will have an incentive to

relinquish individual state control to facilitate collective decision making.

H3: The larger the membership of an IO, the more member states will pool

authority.

52 Olson 1965; Shubik 1982. 53 Ostrom 1990, 188-9, 212. 54 Snidal 1995, 57.

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Several studies test this conjecture, but the evidence is ambiguous. The rational

design project hypothesizes that a larger membership induces states to cede control

through the introduction of majoritarian voting and to centralize tasks in the general

secretariat, but case studies provide little confirmation.55 Pahre finds that the more players

involved in trade negotiation, the more they cluster in groups.56 Pahre and Koremenos et al.

interpret this as support for the hypothesis that larger membership leads to centralization,

but clustering, defined as “a state’s simultaneous negotiations with two or more countries

on the same issue,” is not equivalent to pooling or delegation.57 Richards’ study of the air-

traffic regime in the same volume observes that growth in membership has led to less

centralization and more “unanimity voting rules govern[ing] annual IATA fare

conferences.”58

Among large-N studies, Koremenos finds that international agreements with more

members are more likely to delegate tasks to a third party, usually a secretariat.59 Blake and

Lockwood Payton focus on pooling and find that majority voting in 135 IOs is more likely as

membership grows.60 For a sample of 30 regional IOs, Haftel and Thompson find no support

for the hypothesis that large-scale IOs are more independent.61 And for 111 IOs, Johnson

cannot confirm that secretariats are more influential in IOs with larger membership.62

55 Koremenos et al. 2004, 28, 31. 56 Pahre 2001, 128, 116. 57 Pahre 2001, 101. Clustering has an affinity with Elinor Ostrom’s (1990, 188-9) concept of “nested enterprises” which manage local common pool resources by organizing individuals in small groups that later combine into larger groups. 58 Richards 2001, 235, 240-1, 255-6. 59 Koremenos 2008, 170. 60 Blake and Lockwood Payton 2009, 23. 61 Independence combines pooling and delegation, though it is biased to the latter (Haftel and Thompson 2006, 269). 62 Johnson 2010, 120. The European Union is interesting in this respect because it suggests that increasing the number of member states produces pressure for majoritarian voting (Hertz and Leuffen 2011; Scharpf 2006; Schneider 2002). Carrubba and Volden (2001, 23) note that “as the size of the EU increases, voting rules must be made less inclusive to sustain vote trades.”

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We measure size of membership as the log of the number of member states on the

intuition that the marginal effect of an additional member declines as the absolute number

of members increases. We take the number of states at two time points: 2010 and the year

in which the IO’s constitution or convention was last reformed.

Norms and Preferences

Norms—the mental maps that underpin values—and preferences—ideal points over

political objects—are viewed as affecting supranational decision making.63 The grounds for

this encompass liberal institutionalist and constructivist theories.64 They derive from the

proposition that conflicting norms and preferences make states less willing to shift authority

out of their own hands.65

Preference heterogeneity. The argument that preference heterogeneity discourages

supranationalism applies to both delegation and pooling. “Delegation typically requires

states to resolve their policy conflicts before they can decide to grant conditional authority

to an agent . . . The greater the preference heterogeneity of any group of states, therefore,

63 Acharya 2004; Duina 2006; Katzenstein 2005; Keohane and Ostrom 1995. 64 For an argument about how diversity constrains delegation, see Hawkins et al. (2006, 20-21) and Pollack 2003. It is worth noting that principal agent theory expects the effect of diversity on delegation to be double-edged. While diversity inhibits the genesis of delegation, it may help agents increase their autonomy once delegation rules are in place (Lake and McCubbins 2006, 345). Building on constructivist and liberal institutionalist literature, Blake and Lockwood Payton (2009) hypothesize that heterogeneity in domestic institutions impedes majority voting in IOs. For a general statement, see Kahler and Lake 2009. 65 Diversity can be expected to increase with the number of member states, which implies that as the membership of an IO expands, its authoritative depth decreases. See Kahler 1992; Taylor 1983. Downs et al. (1998) propose a variant: large multilaterals starting out with smaller membership tend to become more authoritative than those starting out with a large number of members. This is so if existing members are able to manage enlargement by selectively admitting members, hence producing a series of structurally induced equilibria that are biased in favor of the original bargain.

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the less likely they will be to delegate to an IO”.66 Pooling authority is more palatable when

states have similar preferences over the relevant set of IO competences. “[A] nonunanimous

rule is more likely to be adopted in more homogeneous organizations” even if “there is no

external enforcement mechanism.”67 This reasoning is not uniformly accepted. Some

scholars make a functional argument that leads to the opposite prediction: divergent

preferences increase delegation to cope with the increased transaction costs of

administration and decision making.68

H4a: Preference heterogeneity among the members of an IO reduces delegation and

pooling of authority.

H4b: Preference heterogeneity among the members of an IO increases delegation.

The conjecture that preference heterogeneity inhibits supranationalism receives

little support in empirical tests. In her study of international agreements, Koremenos finds

that preference heterogeneity—operationalized as a function of voting patterns in the UN—

correlates positively, not negatively, with delegation.69 Using the same operationalization,

Haftel and Thompson find preference heterogeneity has no significant effect on IO

independence.70 Blake and Lockwood Payton employ regime diversity as a proxy for

preference heterogeneity, and find no significant effect on the incidence of majoritarian

voting.71

66 Hawkins et al. 2006, 21; also Epstein and O’Halloran 1999; Haftel and Thompson 2006. We are unable to test the nuanced hypothesis that heterogeneity of preference intensities facilitates issue linkage (Martin 1995). The effect of preference heterogeneity on cooperation may also vary by policy sector. Keohane and Ostrom (1995, 8) hypothesize that, controlling for capabilities, heterogeneous preferences may facilitate gains from trade in market situations but inhibit cooperation where public goods are involved. Models 10-13 in Table 2 provide a preliminary test of this argument. 67 Maggi and Morelli 2006, 1138. 68 Koremenos et al. 2001; Koremenos 2008; Snidal 1995; Young 1994. 69 Koremenos 2008. 70 Haftel and Thompson 2006. 71 Blake and Lockwood Payton 2009, 22.

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In the absence of policy-specific measures, we follow prior research and use the

Affinity of Nations Index.72 This indicates preference heterogeneity on the basis of voting in

the United Nations General Assembly.73 Measures that tap normative heterogeneity,

including regime diversity, are discussed below.

Community. Shared norms facilitate focal points for jurisdictional design, reduce compliance

costs, overcome collective action problems, and facilitate issue linkage.74 The role of norms

for institutional design is stressed in the comparative regionalism literature.75 Powers and

Goertz propose that the institutional depth of a regional organization “is in large part a

function of the strength, stability, and political homogeneity of the member states.”76 The

most prominent example is the European Union, “a club whose members have high levels of

institutional, political, and economic isomorphism.”77 Hence, shared norms among member

states can be expected to facilitate pooling and delegation.

H5: The greater the underlying commonalities among the member states of an IO,

the greater their willingness to delegate and pool authority.

Community is estimated as a latent factor indicated by the diversity of member

states in an IO on the following dimensions: political regime; continental location; religion;

“civilization;” and per capita GDP.78 The Cronbach’s alpha for these five variables is 0.88.

The factor is reversed so that higher values indicate more commonality.

72 Gartzke and Jo 2002 [version 4.0]. 73 The index averages mean values for the years 2000-2005 for each dyad of IO members. High scores indicate similarity in voting patterns, excluding abstentions, in the United Nations over the past five years. The index is reversed to signal preference heterogeneity. 74 Habyarimana et al. 2007; Ostrom 1990, 2005; Putnam 1993. 75 Acharya and Johnston 2007; Börzel 2011; Hurrell 2007; Mansfield and Solingen 2010. 76 Powers and Goertz 2011. 77 Powers and Goertz 2011, 2410-1. 78 Diversity of political regime is the standard deviation of member state scores on the 14-point Freedom House scale of political and civil rights. Diversity in continental location is Rae’s index of fractionalization

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Democracy. Democracy is perceived to facilitate international cooperation on the grounds

that, since Kant and the Enlightenment, international norms have been central to the liberal

political project.79 Most research finds that democratic polities are disposed to trade,

cooperate, and ally,80 though this is contested. Shanks, Jacobson, Kaplan note that

democratizing countries tend to shed international commitments.81 Gartzke and Gleditsch

find that democracies are less reliable alliance partners, and Gartzke and Weisiger argue

that the democratic propensity to ally with each other weakens as democracies abound in

the system.82 However, the dominant view is that democracies are more likely to join

international organizations, and accept supranational governance. Democracies can make

more credible commitments because democratic checks on executive power and more

transparent decision making make cheating more costly.83 This is consistent with Kahler’s

argument that precise norms, binding provisions, and delegation are more in line with the

practice of liberal democratic states than autocratic regimes.84

∑=

−m

1i

21 is where is is the share of a region in an IO’s membership, and m refers to the number of regions

relevant for this IGO. The classification of regions follows Shanks et al. 1996. Diversity of religion is the Rae index, where is is the share of a religion in an IO’s membership and m is the number of religions relevant for

this IO. Source: CIA factbook. Diversity of civilization is the Rae index, where is is the share of a civilization in an IO’s membership, and m is the number of civilizations relevant for this IO. Sources are Huntington 1996 and Russett, Oneal, and Cox 2000. Diversity of GDP per capita is the standard deviation of the GDP per capita among the individual members of an IO. Data come from Penn World Data. Source: Heston et al. 2009. All indicators are standardized before the principal component factor analysis. 79 Doyle 2005; Kant [1795]; Russett and Oneil 2001. 80 Pevehouse 2005 for an overview; Mansfield 2002; Risse-Kappen 1997; Russett, Oneal, and Davis 1998. 81 Shanks, Jacobson, and Kaplan 1996. 82 Gartzke and Gleditsch 2004; Gartzke and Weisiger 2012. 83 Cowhey 1993; Mansfield et al. 2000; Martin 2000. Moreover, liberal (or democratic) states are more likely to accept third-party mediation (i.e. delegation) “because this is an appropriate way of resolving inter-party disputes” (Acharya and Johnston 2007, 17). 84 Kahler 2000; see also Haas 1968. There are some complexities that we are not able to test here. For example, when IO membership becomes politicized, democracies may be less—not more— amenable to ceding authority (Hooghe and Marks 2009a; Zürn, Binder, and Ecker-Ehrhardt 2012).

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H6: The higher the mean level of democracy among the member states of an IO, the

more extensive delegation and pooling of authority.

Democracy is the average score for the member states of an IO on the Freedom

House index with high values for more democratic countries.

Power

There is a widely shared expectation in the IR literature that supranationalism is stunted by

power asymmetry. This argument finds its home in neorealist theorizing, but has gained

acceptance beyond.85

Power asymmetry. Neorealists emphasize the impediments to cooperation resulting from

relative gains concerns and predict that supranational organizations will be weak and lacking

in enforcement. At most, hegemons may be willing to shoulder the costs of regime creation,

even if smaller states free-ride, provided the anticipated benefits are high enough.86 But by

and large, a hegemon will prefer relations of power to the rule of law. Least of all do they

wish to be constrained by a supranational regime.87

H7: The greater the predominance of one member state, the lower the extent of

delegation and pooling of authority in an IO.

Big power reluctance may be selective rather than wholesale. Abbott and Snidal

suggest that powerful states may be reluctant to delegate and pool authority, but may value

binding and precise rules when their loss in bargaining power is offset by lower long-term

85 Grieco 1990; Krasner 1976, 1991. 86 Solingen 2008, 263. 87 Drezner 2007.

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bargaining costs.88 Kahler concurs when he notes that the United States and the leading

states of Europe have played a predominant role in shaping global and regional

institutions.89

A counterargument focuses on major powers as suppliers of international

institutions. This view can be traced to theories of hegemonic stability, which hold that

dominant states may be willing to pay the costs of supplying public goods such as

international economic institutions and stability because they can internalize their

benefits.90

Hancock develops the notion of “plutocratic governance,” whereby policy making is

delegated by weaker states to powerful and wealthy states in return for bankrolling

integration.91 While plutocratic governance stops short of supranationalism, it is decidedly

not intergovernmental. One implication is that greater power asymmetry among IO

members should be associated with more—not less—supranationalism.

Weighted voting. The upshot is that major powers may accept supranationalism if it is

accompanied by measures that lock in their advantage or provide them with

disproportionate influence. This can be done through weighted voting and reserved seats on

executive bodies.92

H8: Weighted voting and reserved seats facilitate delegation and pooling of authority

in an IO.

88 Abbott and Snidal 2000. 89 Kahler 2000, 671. 90 Heterogeneity of capabilities undergirds hegemonic stability theory, which argues that public good provision may be easier to provide if a preponderant actor foots the bill. See Keohane 1982; Krasner 1976; Mattli 1999; Mearsheimer 1994; Snidal 1995; Stone 2010. 91 Hancock 2009. 92 Abbott and Snidal 1998; Cogan 2009; Lockwood Payton 2010; Solingen 2008; Viola 2008.

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The empirical evidence on power asymmetry and weighted voting is mixed. In her

study of international agreements, Koremenos finds that the presence of a superpower is

inconclusive for the incidence of delegation.93 Haftel and Thompson find that IOs with

greater power asymmetry tend to be less independent, but the effect is not robust.94

Johnson finds no confirmation that IO bureaucracies are less involved in constitutional

design when great powers are members.95 Blake and Lockwood Payton conclude that

majority voting is significantly less likely when the difference in capabilities across an IO’s

founding members is high. They also find that the presence of a major power (US, France,

Germany, UK, USSR/Russia, China, Japan) in founding an IO greatly enhances the likelihood

of weighted voting, but has no effect on majority voting.96

Power asymmetry is operationalized as the ratio of the material capabilities of the

most powerful member state to those of other members. We use the Composite Index of

National Material Capabilities (CINC) version 4.0 which summarizes military expenditure,

military personnel, energy consumption, iron and steel production, urban population, and

total population.97

Weighted voting is a dichotomous measure where an IO receives a value of unity a) if

there is weighted voting in a legislative or executive body, or b) if a subset of member states

have reserved seats in an executive body. Examples of the former are the World Bank, the

International Monetary Fund and the European Union, and examples of the latter are the

International Atomic Energy Agency (where the ten largest nuclear powers have reserved

seats), the United Nations (with reserved seats for the five big powers) and the International

93 Koremenos 2008, 168, 173. 94 Haftel and Thompson 2006, 269. 95 Johnson 2010. 120. 96 Blake and Lockwood Payton 2009, 23-24, 27. 97 Singer et al. 1972; Singer 1987.

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Maritime Organization (with reserved seats for the countries with the largest shipping

interests).

Results

Multivariate estimation suggests that the causal underpinnings of delegation and pooling

are, as we anticipate, quite different. Our first step is to impose the full range of variables

theorized above as predictors in an OLS framework (columns one and two in Table 2). The

greater the range of policies handled in an IO, the greater the delegation of authority to a

general secretariat, and the smaller the extent of pooling of authority among member states

in majoritarian decision making. Delegation covaries with a) the number of IO members; b)

policy scope; c) underlying cultural and economic similarities that are tapped by the latent

variable, community; d) the participation of democratic states as members; and e)

negatively with whether one member state is predominantly powerful. Pooling of authority

covaries with a) the number of member states; b) weighted voting; and c) negatively with

policy scope.

[Table 2 about here]

Preference heterogeneity is not significant in the full models or in subsequent

estimation. This result should be taken lightly because the operationalization that we have

used is distal from the hypothesis. Voting in the United Nations is only dimly related to

patterns of preference divergence over IO policies. This is a topic on which valid hypothesis

testing must await improved measurement.98

98 Voeten forthcoming.

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Figure 1 gives some guidance concerning the substantive effects of policy scope on

delegation and pooling. Holding all other variables at their means, an IO specializing in a

single policy, such as the Universal Postal Union, typically has a permanent secretariat

without executive powers and with agenda setting powers in two (plus or minus one) of the

nine decision areas listed on pages 10-11. The permanent secretariat in a general purpose

IO with competencies stretching over 20 policy areas, such as the Andean Community,

typically has agenda setting powers in four or five areas, or shares executive powers with a

member state body and has agenda setting powers in three or four decision areas (plus or

minus two).

[Figure 1 about here]

The effect of policy scope on pooling is weaker, and the 95 percent confidence band

is wide at the extremes (Figure 2). A specialized IO typically has supermajoritarian decision

making in four of the six domains listed on page 12, or majority voting tempered by partial

ratification. The default decision rule in a general purpose IO, by contrast, is typically

consensus with supermajoritarian voting in one, two, or three domains.

[Figure 2 about here]

The effect of the number of IO members on pooling is considerably larger than policy

scope. All else equal, an IO with three to six member states would typically have consensual

voting across the board, with the possible exception of one area. An IO with a global

membership would typically have binding supermajoritarian decision making with partial

ratification in one, two, or three areas.

IO pooling and delegation are weakly associated (R=0.05), which means that it is

quite possible for an IO to combine extensive pooling with low delegation or vice versa. The

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Centre for Agricultural Bioscience International (CABI) and the Pacific Community (SPC),

both primarily engaged in development, illustrate this.

CABI has extensive pooling and weak delegation. It is a science-based international

organization with 46 member states which seeks to improve agricultural productivity and

solve agro-environmental problems in developing countries. Initially a member of the

Commonwealth grouping of IOs, it became independent in 1986. CABI’s two main decision

bodies, the Review Conference and the Executive Council, vote by simple majority over

programs, the annual budget, and suspending member states that are in financial arrears.

These decisions are binding and do not require ratification. A two-thirds majority is

sufficient to admit a new member state or adopt a constitutional reform. In the latter case,

the member states in favor must represent at least half of all member state contributions

and the amendment enters into force after two-thirds of the member states have ratified.

So CABI exemplifies significant pooling of authority; it ranks in the top quartile of the 72 IOs

in our dataset. By contrast, delegation to the CABI secretariat is minimal, placing it in the

bottom quartile. Aside from co-drafting the budget as a junior partner to the Board of

Governors, CABI’s 400 strong staff frames programs and cannot initiate proceedings against

noncompliant member states, vet aspiring members, or propose institutional reform.

The Pacific Community (SPC) has a contrasting mix of extensive delegation and weak

pooling. Set up in 1947 by six Pacific powers to restore stability in their colonies, the SPC

now tackles environmental, agricultural, socio-economic, and development issues in 22

independent Pacific states with the aid of four former colonial members—Australia, New

Zealand, the United States, and France. The SPC upgraded its general secretariat in 1974 to

become its sole executive with exclusive responsibility for drafting its budget, proposing

annual and three-year policy programs, and implementing and monitoring its programs.

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Programs must be approved by an intergovernmental body, and implementation is

negotiated with member states, but the director-general of the 420-staff secretariat can

independently reallocate up to 20 percent of the budget. However, member states do not

pool much authority in collective decision making. Intergovernmental decisions on policy

are taken by supermajority but are non-binding, while unanimity is the rule elsewhere.

Models 1 and 2 help account for these contrasts. CABI has a narrow policy portfolio

which we expect to enhance pooling and limit delegation, whereas the SPC is general

purpose, with competence in 15 of 25 policy areas, which we expect to do precisely the

opposite. Moreover, CABI has more members than the SPC, and we hypothesize that this

produces a greater incentive to relax unanimity. Finally, the SPC is composed predominantly

of small Pacific island states, and we expect that greater normative coherence facilitates

delegation.

Two IOs are mispredicted by more than two standard deviations in the full model for

delegation: both the Nordic Council and the League of Arab States have less delegation than

predicted, but for contrasting reasons.

The Nordic Council is a rare example of dense international cooperation in the

absence of a powerful permanent secretariat. It is the only IO in our dataset in which an

inter-parliamentary body sets the agenda. The Nordic Council Plenary Assembly is

composed of 87 parliamentary representatives from the five Nordic countries and three

autonomous territories (Åland, Greenland, Farøer). Many initiatives begin in the Plenary

Assembly or its elected executive, the Presidium, including constitutional revisions, annual

budgets, and most policy proposals, though all decisions require consensus in the Nordic

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Council of Ministers, a purely intergovernmental body.99 Agenda setting by a supranational

parliament and elected executive is unique in the field of international organization, and

may have to do with the extraordinarily close cultural and political ties among the member

states and the trust this engenders.100 Our analysis reveals the Nordic Council to be an

exceptional organization both in its normative coherence and in the way this is

institutionally expressed.

The Arab League, created in 1945, “was designed to fail as supranational entity, and

in that sense reflects the triumph of domestic regimes.”101 Key Arab states (Egypt, Saudi

Arabia, Lebanon) wanted a symbolic organization rather than an incipient Arab federation.

This is reflected in a weak permanent secretariat which co-drafts the budget, and tables

policy initiatives in technical policy fields, but it has no executive powers and no role in

monitoring member state compliance.

Two IOs are mispredicted by more than two standard deviations in the full model for

pooling. Both the World Bank and OTIF have much more pooling of authority than predicted

in Model 2.

All but constitutional decisions are taken in the World Bank Group by simple

weighted majority.102 Decisions are binding, and ratification is not required. The World Bank

is exceptional in how it accommodates great power concerns about pooling. No other IO in

our dataset builds in more institutional safeguards for great power influence: weighted

voting in the assembly, weighted voting in the executive, and reserved seats for the five

99 A majority of decisions in the Council of Ministers are based on the recommendations of the inter-parliamentary body (Qvortrup and Hazell 1998). 100 The European Union and the Council of Europe have powerful inter-parliamentary bodies, but neither plays a dominant role in agenda setting. 101 Barnett and Solingen 2007, 182; see also Solingen 2008. 102 Constitutional amendments require supermajority in the board of governors and ratification by three-fifths of member states representing 85 percent of the votes. We code this as giving the U.S. a de facto veto.

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largest contributors as well as China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. The formula for voting on the

Board of Governors and among the Boards of Directors gives El Salvador 391 votes, Belgium

29,223 votes, and the United States 281,433.103

The Intergovernmental Organization for International Carriage by Rail, known by its

French acronym OTIF, takes decisions by simple majority or, in the case of constitutional

amendments and member state suspension, by qualified majority. Decisions are partially

binding.104 OTIF is unusually majoritarian given its nonweighted voting and membership (47

in 2012). OTIF is primarily a technical organization where the typical problem is one of

coordinating standards for passenger and freight carriage on international rail traffic.

The full models in the first two columns of Table 2 account for 35 and 66 percent of

the variance in delegation and pooling, respectively. However, these models suffer from

multicollinearity between number of member states and the latent variable, community.

These two variables are, as one would expect, strongly negatively associated (r = –0.89). The

larger the number of member states, the less they tend to have in common. Including these

variables in an OLS model increases standard errors and produces unstable coefficients.

Models 3 and 4 correct for multicollinearity by dropping the theoretically least

interesting variable responsible.105 For delegation this is number of members; for pooling

this is community. The pattern of significance for both dependent variables is largely

reproduced: policy scope, community, and power asymmetry, though not democracy, are

significant predictors of delegation; policy scope, number of members, and weighted voting

103 http://www.worldbank.org/ (accessed, May 28, 2012). 104 There are complicated rules for bindingness of standards (so-called CIM and CIV rules), which is the main policy output of the organization, but the bottom line is that member states can opt out, a rule that is picked up in our coding. 105 No VIF In the resulting models exceeds 3.

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continue to predict pooling.106 These results are robust under bootstrapping (Models 5 and

6) and jack-knifing (Models 7 and 8).107

If one assumes that IOs are sticky institutions, then it makes sense to estimate

membership as the number of member states at the time the organization was established

or last reformed. Model 9 reveals that the substantive results hold under this assumption.

No doubt there are differences in the structure of IO authority across types of policy,

but we detect this only weakly. Models 10 and 11 introduce two dichotomous variables, one

for IOs chiefly concerned with trade and one for security IOs, with all other IOs coded

zero.108 Models 12 and 13 apply a policy classification developed by Boehmer and

Nordstrom consisting of security, economic, multi-issue, or other, plus two combinations of

these categories, namely, economic and multi-issue, and security, economic, and multi-

issue.109 The reference category in Models 12 and 13 is “other.”

Member states do not pool much authority in security IOs (Models 11 and 13). This is

a strong and significant finding in tune with realist expectations, but this is the only policy

effect we pick up. Notably, we do not confirm the expectation that IOs concerned with trade

and economic regulation will have higher than average delegation to reduce uncertainty and

monitor compliance.110 The trade measure in Model 10 is positive but not significant, and

coefficients for the three economic categories in Model 12 are negatively signed. The

reasons for this are far from obvious, and require analysis that would take us beyond this

106 Coefficient estimates indicate causal power because independent variables are standardized. 107 Using subsets of available data (jackknifing) or drawing randomly with replacement from a set of data points (bootstrapping) produces estimates of the precision of coefficients. The results reported here are also robust when any IO (including the European Union) is excluded from the analysis. 108 For each IO we evaluate which of the 25 policy areas it is chiefly concerned with. None of the remaining 23 policies produces significant results. 109 The dataset was kindly provided by Charles Boehmer and Timothy Nordstrom. 110 Snidal 1985; Martin 1992; Ingram et al. 1995.

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article. The answer may be that in order to pick up the effect of policy variation we need

more finely grained operationalizations than those available here.111

A Structural Equations Model

An OLS approach can be useful for sifting priors, but it assumes independence among

predictors. This is clearly not the case here. First, there is a trade off between the number of

member states in an IO and the extent to which they share religion or have a similar type of

regime or have similar levels of economic development.112 Hence, the greater the number

of states in an IO, the greater their diversity, and the less one can expect them to form a

normative community. Second, an IO that has many, diverse members is less likely to have a

broad policy portfolio than an IO composed of a few, normatively similar, members. General

purpose government is rare at the international level and is biased towards regional subsets

of states that have some normative commonality. As the number of member states

increases, community thins and general-purpose governance is more difficult to realize.113

We implement these expectations in a confirmatory structural equations model. A

structural equations model is more general than regression in that a variable can be

modeled both as an independent variable and as a dependent variable. Figure 3 refines the

OLS analyses we have conducted by relaxing one key assumption and making one

simplification. We relax the assumption of independence among the regressors by modeling

the connections among IO membership, community, and policy scope. We simplify by

111 Most IOs concerned with trade or economic matters, notwithstanding the WTO, have broad policy scope. The association between trade IOs and policy scope is 0.5 and between economic IOs and policy scope it is 0.46. Trade or economic IOs do not reach significance when policy scope is dropped. The results reported here are robust when we introduce a dummy variable where regional IOs are coded one and all other IOs are coded zero. 112 We have already noted that OLS models that include both number of member states and community suffer from multicollinearity. 113 Hooghe and Marks 2003, 2009b.

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including only the most influential explanatory variables, and omitting democracy and

preference heterogeneity.

[Figure 3 about here]

The model conveys our intuition that choices underlying the design of international

organizations are not independent of each other. The estimates reported in Table 3 indicate

just how strong the constraints are. The association between IO membership and

community (β8) is –0.875. An IO with five members will on average be at the 93rd percentile

on our measure of community; one with 60 members will on average be at the 41st

percentile. Political decision makers do not have to calculate this to understand what it

means. Community and scale are widely sought goals,114 but you cannot have both in the

same organization. However, the trade-off is not linear. As the number of members

increases, the marginal sacrifice in community decreases.115

[Table 3 about here]

The association between IO membership and policy scope (β9) is –0.541 and that

between community and policy scope (β10) is 0.519. An IO with five members will on average

handle thirteen policies, plus or minus one, whereas an IO with 60 members will, on

average, handle roughly half that number, and an IO with 100 members will, on average,

handle four to seven policies, plus or minus one.

Table 3 lists direct causal effects in the model. Our prior is that states design

international institutions to solve problems, and we model delegation and pooling as

constrained by the scope of an IO’s membership, its policy portfolio, and its corresponding

114 Marks 2012. 115 This may explain why the distribution of IOs is bimodal. Half of the IOs in our sample have more than three and less than 30 members, and one quarter have more than 150 members.

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normative cohesiveness.116 Delegation depends chiefly on community (β1) and the number

of members in the IO (β2); pooling is largely a function of the number of members (β5).

Policy scope cuts two ways. IOs that handle a broad policy portfolio tend to have more

delegation (β4), but less extensive pooling of authority (β7). Finally, power politics

discourages delegation and pooling, but in different ways. Delegation is more modest in IOs

where one country packs a disproportionate amount of capabilities (β3), and pooling is

somewhat less extensive in IOs that do not accommodate powerful members through

weighted voting or reserved seats (β6). The model depicted in Figure 3 accounts for 30.7

percent of the variance in delegation (1–ε1), and 64.8 percent of the variance in pooling (1–

ε2).117

Conclusion

This article introduces a cross-sectional dataset for 72 intergovernmental organizations and

evaluates hypotheses that seek to explain variation in the delegation and pooling of IO

authority in decision making before presenting a model that summarizes our findings.

Estimating delegation and pooling involves a series of conceptual, operational, and coding

decisions. We set these out at some length on the presumption that reasonably valid

measurement lies at the heart of inference.

Our point of departure is to recognize that supranational authority is not uni-

dimensional. There are two ways in which national states can shift authority, and each has a

distinctive logic. First, there is the strategy of delegation, empowering an agent to solve

116 This assumption should be relaxed in diachronic analysis. Extensive delegation or pooling may, for example, deter a state from joining an IO or may have dynamic implications for an IO’s policy portfolio. 117 The model exceeds conventional standards of goodness of fit (see note in Table 3). The coefficient of determination estimates that the exogenous variables in the model account for 78 percent of the variation in the endogenous variables.

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problems of incomplete contracting and issue cycling. Second, there is the strategy of

pooling, using (super)majoritarian decision making to finesse the individual veto. Our

analyses highlight the causal implications of this distinction. Whereas delegation co-varies

strongly and robustly with the diversity of an IO’s policy portfolio, pooling is statistically

significant in the opposite direction. The reason for this is that uncertainty—which is greater

in IOs handling a diverse range of policies—feeds delegation, but starves pooling. When it is

too costly for member states to write a complete contract covering every possible state of

the world with respect to the IO’s policy competencies, they may seek to short-circuit issue

cycling by empowering an independent agent to frame the agenda. However, uncertainty

about future decisions and preferences render states less, not more, willing to forego the

individual veto.

Our second major finding is that pooling of authority is strongly associated with the

number of member states in an IO. The design of international organizations is highly

responsive to the perception that the national veto results in decisional blockage if the

number of member states in an IO is large. The principle of equal national sovereignty

impedes the creation of public goods among large numbers of veto players, and IO design

reflects this very clearly. Institutional features that accommodate big players—weighted

voting and reserved executive seats—facilitate pooling.

We also find evidence that non-functional factors are important determinants of IO

design. IOs in which the member states have little in common or where one member state is

overwhelmingly powerful tend to have less delegation. However, our analysis neither

confirms nor disconfirms the effect of preference diversity for IO design.

The explanatory variables in this analysis cannot plausibly be regarded as

independent. The membership size of an IO is closely related to the degree to which its

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members share underlying norms, and the extent to which the IO will be general purpose or

task specific. The implication is that the design of international organizations is framed by

stark and interconnected choices.

These core findings are robust across alternative estimators and methods, but they

raise several questions. They suggest that IOs are designed comprehensively rather than in

parts. The constraints on IO design are connected in ways that we have only begun to

investigate, and which calls for dialogue between large-N comparative analysis and

historically informed case studies. It also invites scholars to conduct more comprehensive

measurement and quantitative analysis. The finding that delegation is more complex and

apparently less structured than pooling asks researchers to probe more deeply. It is too

early to conclude that delegation is less functionally constrained than pooling of authority,

but this is worth pursuing with a greater range of theoretically informed factors.

Beyond the substantive findings reported here, the chief contribution of this article

is to place a carefully constructed dataset before scholars of international organization in

the belief that this is a step to more valid inference. The estimation here throws into sharp

relief the need to develop better indicators for the diverse factors that are hypothesized to

influence IO design, as well as extend measures of the dependent variables over time.

Clearly, we need to investigate, not assume, that cross-sectional and diachronic causality is

homogenous, and while the data demands for producing reasonably valid information over

large numbers of IOs over time are time intensive, this article suggests that it is a

worthwhile enterprise.

Page | 38

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Page | 45

Table 1: Measures of international authority

UNITS # TIME DECISION MAKING POLICY SCOPE

Boehmer, Gartzke, & Nordstrom (2004)

IOs 212 early 2000s

One dimension with three scores (1) minimal: plenary meetings, secretariat (2) structured: bodies to implement (3) interventionist: mechanisms to enforce

IOs are coded as exclusive members: economic; security; multi-purpose

Blake & Lockwood Payton (2009)

IOs 135 founding year

(1930-98)

One dimension with three scores (1) majoritarian voting rule in chief policy making body (2) unanimity voting rule in chief policy making body (3) weighted voting rule in chief policy making body

IOs are coded as exclusive members: security; commodity; bank/fund; economic

Haftel & Thompson (2006)

Regional Integration

Arrangements (RIA)

30 1996 Four dimensions with two scores each: (1) Decision-making - voting: Majority rule; Unanimity (2) Decision-making - council: A council of ministers with decision making power; A council of ministers without decision making power (3) Supranational bureaucracy: permanent secretariat exists; no permanent secretariat Supranational bureaucracy – initiation: secretariat can make recommendations or initiate; secretariat cannot make recommendations or initiate

None, but disaggregation of economic tasks in later work by Haftel

Goertz and Powers (2012)

Regional Economic

Institutions (REI)

37 1980-2005 Six dimensions with dichotomous scores: (1) rule & policy making system of the Council of Minister type (2) dispute settlement mechanism (3) international legal personality (4) secretariat-headquarters (5) at least one organizational emanation (6) parliamentary organization

Coding in process

Page | 46

Table 2: Delegation and Pooling

Delegation

Full Model Pooling

Full Model VIF Delegation

Restricted Model Pooling

Restricted Model Delegation Bootstrap

Pooling Bootstrap

1 2 3 4 5 6 Policy scope .353***

(.129) –.171* (.093)

1.66 .324** (.136)

–.170* (.092)

.324* (.167)

–.170** (.082)

# Members .770*** (.267)

.530*** (.192)

7.03 .515*** (.122)

.515*** (.122)

Preference heterogeneity .110 (.136)

.034 (.098)

1.82 .124 (.143)

.031 (.093)

.124 (.238)

.031 (.097)

Community 1.01*** (.264)

.019 (.190)

6.89 .422** (.178)

.422** (.212)

Democracy .268** (.124)

.079 (.090)

1.52 .144 (.123)

.074 (.075)

.144 (.138)

.074 (.065)

Power asymmetry –.282* (.150)

–.168 (.108)

2.22 –.452*** (.146)

–.168 (.107)

–.452** (.159)

–.168 (.108)

Weighted voting .132 (.110)

.151* (.079)

1.20 .157 (.116)

.150* (.078)

.157 (.113)

.150* (.088)

R2

(Adjusted R2) .353

(.282) .664

(.627) .268

(.201) .663

(.632) .268

(.201) .663

(.632) Note: N=72. Two-tailed significance: *** sign <.01 ** sign <.05 *sign <.10 Standardized coefficients with standard errors in brackets.

Page | 47

Table 2: Delegation and Pooling—Robustness Checks Delegation

Jackknife Pooling

Jackknife Pooling

(postwar members) Delegation

Trade, security Pooling

Trade, security Delegation Issue area

Pooling Issue area

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Policy scope .324*

(.182) –.170** (.080)

–.132 (.099)

.329** (.146)

–.157 (.095)

.452*** (.137)

–.197* (.106)

# Members .515*** (.108)

.443** (.119)

.513*** (.124)

.517*** (.126)

Preference heterogeneity .124 (.269)

.031 (.057)

.087 (.091)

.132 (.145)

.019 (.092)

.140 (.146)

.004 (.093)

Community .422* (.235)

.431** (.181)

.484*** (.183)

Democracy .144 (.148)

.074 (.066)

–.077 (.077)

.154 (.126)

.061 (.075)

.178 (.126)

.042 (.074)

Power asymmetry –.452*** (.169)

–.168 (.105)

–.252** (.101)

–.462*** (.151)

–.140 (.107)

–.410*** (.150)

–.126 (.106)

Weighted voting .157 (.127)

.150 (.093)

.164** (.080)

.154 (.119)

.148* (.078)

.200* (.118)

.134* (.077)

Trade .013 (.277)

–.173 (.187)

Security .317 (.550)

–.645* (.363)

–.098 (.685)

–.1.258*** (.450)

Economic –.447 (.286)

–.188 (.192)

Multi-issue .240 (.919)

–.688 (.603)

Economic & Multi-issue –.702* (.410)

–.119 (.272)

Security & Economic & Multi-issue

–.653 (.393)

–.056 (.257)

R2

(Adjusted R2) .268

(.201) .663

(.632) .647

(.614) .272

(.180) .682

(.642) .322

(.198) .708

(.654)

Page | 48

Table 3: Estimates of the Structural Equations Model

Direct effects on Delegation Community β1 .692 (.216)*** Members β2 .613 (.240)** Power Asymmetry β3 –.271 (.130)** Policy Scope β4 .409 (.119)*** Direct effects on Pooling Members β5 .641 (.090)*** Weighted Voting β6 .144 (.076)* Policy Scope β7 –.162 (.085)* Direct effects among independent variables Community with Members β8 –.875 (.155)*** Policy Scope with Members β9 –.541 (.132)*** Policy Scope with Community β10 .519 (.131)*** Members on Power Asymmetry β11 –.644 (.090)*** Members on Weighted Voting β12 .357 (.110)*** Unexplained variance (error) Delegation ε1 .693 (.115) Pooling ε2 .352 (.059) Power Asymmetry ε3 .577 (.096) Weighted Voting ε4 .861 (.143) Community ε5 .986 (.164) Membership ε6 .986 (.164) Policy scope ε7 .986 (.164)

*p < .1, ** p < .05, *** p <.01

Note: N=72. Fit statistics for the model: χ2 model vs. saturated (10) = 15.09, p = .129; χ2 baseline vs. saturated (18) =156.87, p = .000; TLI = 0.934; CFI=0.963; RMSEA(C.I.) = 0.084 (0.00 to 0.17). Log likelihood = -568.57854 (one iteration). The standardized root mean squared residual (SMSR) = 0.053, which is well below the 0.08 criterion considered the maximum value for a model with good fit. The coefficient of determination (CD) = 0.78.

Page | 49

Figure 1: Substantive Effects of Policy Scope on Delegation and Pooling

Delegation

Pooling

-1-.5

0.5

11.5

Deleg

ation

0 5 10 15 20 25Policy scope

-1-.7

5-.5

-.25

0.25

.5Po

oling

0 5 10 15 20 25Policy scope

Page | 50

Figure 2: Substantive Effects of Membership on Pooling

-1.5

-1-.5

0.5

1Po

oling

3 6 12 24 46 92 184Number of members

Page | 51

Figure 3: Delegation and Pooling in IO Decision Making

–β9

–β8

Community

Policy Scope

Weighted Voting

# Members

β6

Delegation

Power Asymmetry

Pooling

–β7

β4

–β3

β1

β5

ε2

ε1

ε3

ε4

–β11

β12

ε7

ε6

ε5

β2

β10

Notes: Bold lines indicate that the association is significant at 0.01 level, intermediate lines indicate significance at 0.05 level, and thin lines at 0.10 level. β’s and ε’s represent direct effect path coefficients and unexplained variance coefficients respectively (reported in Table 3).