Handbook on Governance in International Organizations 1800884923, 9781800884922

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Handbook on Governance in International Organizations

Edited by Alistair D. Edgar

HANDBOOK ON GOVERNANCE IN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

Handbook on Governance in International Organizations Edited by

Alistair D. Edgar Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Alistair D. Edgar 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Edward Elgar Publishing Limited The Lypiatts 15 Lansdown Road Cheltenham Glos GL50 2JA UK Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc. William Pratt House 9 Dewey Court Northampton Massachusetts 01060 USA A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Control Number: 2023945402 This book is available electronically in the Political Science and Public Policy subject collection http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781800884939

ISBN 978 1 80088 492 2 (cased) ISBN 978 1 80088 493 9 (eBook)

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Contents

List of figuresviii List of tablesix List of contributorsx 1 Introduction to the Handbook on Governance in International Organizations1 Alistair D. Edgar PART I

WHAT IS IT? APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING GOVERNANCE IN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

2 Formal and informal, legal and behavioural approaches Alexandra R. Harrington

7

3 Power and intergovernmental organizations Kendall W. Stiles

25

4 Administrative models and modes of governance Roger A. Coate

42

5 Ideas, experts, and the global economy: feminist contributions to the study of governance in international organizations Andrea M. Collins PART II

60

WHO GOVERNS INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, AND HOW?

STATES AND THE GOVERNANCE OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS 6 Mexico’s advocacy to consider the human implications of the international monetary and financial systems at the Bretton Woods conference Cynthia Leal

78

7 Brazil gives up its role in global governance – far right movements and multilateral organizations: the case of Brazil Monica Herz

93

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE, LEADERSHIP AND GENDER 8 Expert bodies and organizational culture(s) in international organizations Nina Reiners

107

9 Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies Kent J. Kille

122

v

vi  Handbook on governance in international organizations 10 Where are the women leaders in international organizations and what difference do they make? Kirsten Haack and Margaret P. Karns

140

CIVIL SOCIETY AND IO GOVERNANCE 11 “Nothing about us without us”: governance at the United Nations through affected persons federations of LGBTIQ+ activists and sex workers Robyn Linde 12 Opening up to civil society: access, participation, and impact Christer Jönsson and Jonas Tallberg

161 177

PART III GOVERNANCE DONE WELL; GOVERNANCE GONE BAD DOING GOOD BY DOING WELL? SUCCESS STORIES OF EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE 13 Development, human rights, and the rights-based approach: evolving global governance Joel E. Oestreich 14 President of the United Nations General Assembly: least-known leader Alistair D. Edgar

199 215

FACING CRISES FROM WITHIN AND OUTSIDE: CAN IOs HOLD THEMSELVES TO ACCOUNT? 15 Holding individuals serving the United Nations to account for wrongdoing Ai Kihara-Hunt

232

16 Accountability and the digital transformation of international organizations Niamh Kinchin

249

17 Tweeting through the pandemic: self-legitimation and depoliticization in the WHO Twittersphere Matthias Hofferberth

269

CALLS FOR A CHANGING OF THE GUARD 18 Small state, big table: the relevance of St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ election to the United Nations Security Council for small states in the multilateral system Kai-Ann D. Skeete 19 Staffing global governance: an effective human resources policy for a spectacular United Nations Cristián Giménez Corte

290

304

Contents  vii PART IV HAVE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS HAD THEIR DAY? 20 International organizations are more than states make of them Roberto Dominguez and José Antonio Sanahuja 21 A reflection on the future of international organizations: have they had their day or can we make them fit for purpose? Lorraine Elliott

326

343

Index359

Figures

4.1

Social process model framework

45

4.2

Interactions of the UN system with the subsystems of the international system

46

8.1

Professional backgrounds across expert bodies

116

8.2

Educational backgrounds across expert bodies

116

8.3

Gender balance across expert bodies

116

10.1

Women in the UN System 1991 to 2019

148

10.2

Female professional staff in select entities across the UN System

149

10.3

Female staff by professional grades

150

17.1

Tweet vignettes from the UN General Assembly Special Session on COVID-19 272

17.2

COVID ‘positivity rate’ in sample tweets

279

17.3

COVID framing in the sample tweets

279

17.4

Purpose in the sample tweets

281

17.5

Sentiment in the sample tweets

282

17.6

Spirit in the sample tweets

282

17.7

WHO images in the sample tweets

283

viii

Tables

3.1

National and regional origins of selected UN Under-Secretaries-General, 2010–20

29

3.2

National and regional origins of UN specialized agency heads, 2010–20

30

8.1

Cultures in selected expert bodies

113

9.1

Specialized agency creation and date joined the United Nations

123

9.2

Specialized agency name and office title changes

126

9.3

Current office holder (as of August 2021)

126

9.4

Gender and specialized agency executive head leadership

127

9.5

Average age when starting in office

128

9.6

Average time in office

129

9.7

Specialized agency executive head entries in IO BIO130

10A.1 Women in UN leadership positions 1987–2020

156

17.1

The WHO Twittersphere

274

17.2

Crisis timeline, tweets collected and tweets analysed

275

17.3

Coding scheme

276

20.1

Contesting statements against IOs and international institutions

333

20.2

Contesting policy actions against IOs

334

ix

Contributors

Roger A. Coate, Paul D. Coverdell Professor of Public Policy (2009–19) and Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Georgia College & State University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former Director of the Richard L. Walker Institute of International Studies at the University of South Carolina, USA. He served as Chair of the Academic Council on the United Nations System from 2018 to 2020 and taught at South Carolina, 1981–2008, and before that at Arizona State University for four years. He received his PhD from Ohio State University and holds an MA from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Andrea M. Collins, Associate Professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Canada. She researches gender and global environmental governance, with a focus on agriculture, land, and food politics. Her research work has been published in Journal of Peasant Studies, Global Governance, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Journal of Agrarian Change and Globalizations. Roberto Dominguez, Professor of Political Science at Suffolk University (Boston, USA). Doctoral degree in International Relations (University of Miami). After his post-doctoral fellowship at the European University Institute, he has participated in research and consultant projects for the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Library of the US Congress and Transparency International. Professor Dominguez’s research has focused on security governance, EU–Latin American governance space, transatlantic relations, and US–China–Latin American relations. His recent publications include “EU Mexican Relations: Adaptation of Global Trade Relations” in Latin America-European Relations in the XXI Century (Manchester University Press, 2022). Professor Dominguez is one of the Associate Editors of the Encyclopedia of European Union Politics (Oxford University Press, 2021). Alistair D. Edgar, Associate Professor of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University, cross-appointed to the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Canada. Co-editor for the ACUNS Series on the United Nations (Edward Elgar Publishers), and co-editor of Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations (Brill/Nijhoff). He served as Executive Director of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) in 2003–08 and 2010–18. Outside of his scholarly activities, he is President of the Canadian Landmine Foundation. Lorraine Elliott, Professor Emerita in International Relations in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University. Her research and publications range across global governance, global and Southeast Asian environmental politics, non-traditional and critical human security, and transnational environmental crime. She is a former Chair of the Academic Council on the UN System. Cristián Giménez Corte, international lawyer and professor of Private International Law at the Facultad de Ciencias Juridicas y Sociales, Universidad Nacional del Litoral, Santa Fe, x

Contributors  xi Argentina. Researcher in Private International Law, conflict of laws, international commercial law, public international law, law of international organizations, United Nations law, community law, and regional integration law. Kirsten Haack, Associate Professor and Deputy Head of Department in international politics at Northumbria University, UK. She is the author of Women’s Access, Representation and Leadership in the United Nations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and The United Nations Democracy Agenda (Manchester University Press, 2011) and has published numerous articles on the UN Secretary-General and women’s access to leadership in the UN and other international organizations. She was the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of International Organisation Studies. Alexandra R. Harrington, Lecturer in Law (Environment) at Lancaster University Law School, UK. She has held two Fulbright terms in Canada at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, focusing on global governance issues, including the 2018–19 Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Global Governance. She is the Chair of the IUCN Task Force on Plastic Pollution, Director of Studies for the International Law Association of Colombia, International Legal Advisor, University of Silesia Just Transitions Committee, and sits on the editorial boards of multiple academic publications. Dr Harrington is the author and co-editor of several books, including International Organizations and the Law, International Law and Global Governance: Treaty Regimes and Sustainable Development Goals Interpretation, Just Transitions and the Future of Law and Regulation, and the forthcoming The Future of Peace: Incorporation of Intergenerational Equity and Justice in Peace Treaties and Reconciliation Agreements. She routinely advises international organizations and governments on legal issues relating to climate change, governance issues, environmental law, sustainable development and international human rights law. She holds a Doctorate of Civil Law (McGill University Faculty of Law), in addition to a JD, LL.M. and BA degrees in Politics and History. Monica Herz, Full Professor at the Institute of International Relations, Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has a PhD degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science and has written three books: Organizações Internacionais: histórias e práticas (co-authors Andréa Ribeiro Hoffman, Jana Tabak) (Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier, 2004), Ecuador vs. Peru: Peacemaking Amid Rivalry (co-author João Pontes Nogueira) (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), and Global Governance Away From the Media (Routledge, 2010), as well as several articles and chapters on Latin American security, global governance and Brazilian foreign policy. Matthias Hofferberth, Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science & Geography at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA. His research and teaching focuses on global governance and the emergence of agency beyond the nation state, specifically that of multinational enterprises. His most recent edited volume, Corporate Actors in Global Governance, was published by Lynne Rienner in 2020. Christer Jönsson, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Lund University and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Chair of the Board of Directors of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) 2009–12. Publications include International Aviation and the Politics of Regime Change (1987), Communication in International Bargaining (1990), Essence of Diplomacy (co-author 2005) and The Opening

xii  Handbook on governance in international organizations Up of International Organizations (co-author 2013) and several articles in leading academic journals. He has contributed to The Routledge Handbook of Diplomacy and Statecraft (2022), The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations (2018), and The Palgrave Handbook of Inter-Organizational Relations in World Politics (2017). Margaret P. Karns, senior fellow in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of Dayton, USA. Co-author with Karen Mingst and Alynna Lyon of The United Nations in the 21st Century, 6th edition (Routledge, 2022) and with Tana Johnston and Karen Mingst of International Organizations: The Politics and Processes of Global Governance, 4th edition (Lynne Rienner, 2023) as well as journal articles on the United Nations, peacekeeping, and women in the UN. Ai Kihara-Hunt, Professor, Director of International Law Training and Research Hub and Director of the Global Research Center for Sustainable Peace at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Secretary at the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS). Her main area of research is UN Peace Operations, in particular the UN Police, accountability and human rights. In 2016, she served on the UN Police Doctrinal Development Group as the representative of Japan. Between 1998 and 2016, she worked for the UN Office of the High-Commissioner for Human Rights (UN-OHCHR), UN High-Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UN Peace Operations (UNTAET, UNAMET), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and in academia, in Nepal, East Timor/Timor-Leste, Sri Lanka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Japan. Her position included trainer and security sector focal point, as well as project manager and mapping officer for the first transitional justice project at the UN-OHCHR in Nepal. Her publications include Holding UNPOL to Account: Individual Criminal Accountability of United Nations Police Personnel (Brill, 2017). Kent J. Kille, Professor of Political Science at The College of Wooster, USA. Dr Kille is an expert on international organization leadership, including authoring From Manager to Visionary: The Secretary-General of the United Nations, editing and contributing to The UN Secretary-General and Moral Authority: Ethics and Religion in International Leadership, and serving as editor (with Bob Reinalda and Jaci Eisenberg) of IO BIO, Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-General of International Organizations. He is also co-author (with Alynna Lyon) of The United Nations: 75 Years of Promoting Peace, Human Rights, and Development and has published on the connections between the United Nations and regional organizations. Niamh Kinchin, Associate Professor at the School of Law, University of Wollongong, NSW, Australia. Niamh teaches Refugee Law, Administrative Law and Constitutional Law. Niamh was admitted as a legal practitioner to the Supreme Court of NSW in 2002. Niamh’s primary research interests are in Refugee Law, the impact of technology on forced displacement and migration, global accountability, administrative justice and public law within the international and Australian contexts. Cynthia Leal, legal and policy adviser at the government of the Nuevo León state, Mexico. PhD in Global Governance at the University of Waterloo and the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Canada. She has also earned two MAs (in Public Administration and

Contributors  xiii Policy and in International Law, respectively) and two BAs (in Political Science and in Law, respectively) that received the Canadian Education Equivalency. Robyn Linde, Professor of Political Science and Director of the International Nongovernmental Organizations Studies program at Rhode Island College in Providence, R.I. She has been published by Oxford University Press and in the Journal of Human Rights, the European Journal of International Relations, Case Research Journal, Radical Teacher, the International Journal of Minority and Group Rights and the International Journal of Children’s Rights. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA. Joel E. Oestreich, Professor of Politics and Global Studies at Drexel University, USA. He is the author or editor of three books, including Development and Human Rights: Rhetoric and Reality in India from Oxford University Press. He has written extensively on the rights-based approach to development, United Nations agencies, and international bureaucracies. He has also been a visiting scholar at universities in India and Benin and is the past Chair of the International Organization Section of the International Studies Association. His current research is on the role of the UN Secretariat in managing shifting world power structures. Nina Reiners, Associate Professor for Human Rights and Social Sciences at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo, and research associate at the Global Governance Centre at the Graduate Institute Geneva. Nina is a Political Scientist specializing in International Relations and International Law. Her book Transnational Lawmaking Coalitions for Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2022) was awarded the Best Book Award by the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS). José Antonio Sanahuja, Professor of International Relations at the Complutense University of Madrid and at the Spanish Foreign Service Academy. Director of the Carolina Foundation and Special Advisor for Latin America and the Caribbean to the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borrell (ad honorem). He has been Robert Schuman Fellow of the European University Institute in Florence. Professor Sanahuja has worked as researcher and consultant for the European Commission and the European Parliament, the UNDP, SEGIB, and the EU-LAC Foundation, and has been appointed a member of the Development Cooperation Council (Advisory Body of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain, and of the Board of Oxfam Intermón. He holds a PhD in Political Sciences (Complutense University, Madrid, Spain) and an MA in International Relations from the United Nations University for Peace (Costa Rica). Kai-Ann D. Skeete, Trade Research Fellow of the Shridath Ramphal Centre for International Trade Law, Policy and Services based at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados. Dr Skeete lectures Research Methods for Trade as well as Regional Integration and Development within the Masters in International Trade Policy as well as a compulsory postgraduate course, CARICOM and the CSME. Her research interests include CARICOM’s Forward Trade Agenda, Caribbean Regional Integration, Contingent Rights, Latin American Foreign Policy, Security Studies and Regional governance systems. Dr Skeete is the co-author of a Commonwealth Secretariat Small States Digest (2015) on Regionalism among Small States – Challenges & Prospects: The Case of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). Kendall W. Stiles, Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University, USA, spe-

xiv  Handbook on governance in international organizations cializes in international organization and law and world history. His forthcoming book, The Domestic Sources of International Institutions (Routledge), shows how the great powers at various points in the history have shaped global institutions by projecting from their domestic experience. He is co-Senior Editor of Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations. Jonas Tallberg, Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University, Sweden. His primary research interests are global governance and European Union politics. His book publications include Citizens, Elites, and the Legitimacy of Global Governance (Oxford University Press, 2022),  Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources, Processes, and Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2018), The Opening Up of International Organizations: Transnational Access in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Leadership and Negotiation in the European Union (Cambridge University Press, 2006). His articles have appeared in journals such as American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, International Organization and International Studies Quarterly.

1. Introduction to the Handbook on Governance in International Organizations Alistair D. Edgar

INTRODUCTION The project that became this Handbook began in earnest following conversations at the July 2018 Annual Meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS, held at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome. This was the same time period when – for transparency’s sake – the current editor agreed to be a series co-editor with Professor Lorraine Elliott (and later also, Professor Charlotte Ku) for Edward Elgar Publishers’ newly established ‘The ACUNS Series on the UN System’. The genesis of this book, however, might be traced to the editor’s very positive experiences as the executive director of ACUNS over the previous fifteen years. Those experiences included supporting and participating in the ACUNS Annual Meetings and Summer Meetings which brought together so many knowledgeable scholars and practitioners from, and in, different locations and institutions and with such diverse backgrounds, expertise and interests. They also included numerous opportunities to interact with many representatives of UN Member States, UN staff, and non-government organizations in New York, Geneva, Vienna, Tokyo, Delhi and elsewhere around the world. Presentations at these events most often were focused on pressing global issues facing the United Nations – conventionally divided into political-security, development, and human rights according to the three main pillars of the UN’s activities, and reflecting the international priorities of the day such as peacekeeping and peacebuilding, the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals, or the promotion of women’s and girls’ rights and specific threats such as femicide, forced marriages, and mutilation. When the focus of discussion turned to topics addressing governance ‘in’ rather than ‘by’ the international organization, the subject most frequently heard was the perennial one of competing proposals for Security Council reform, or – a little less often since they normally arose only when a new Secretary-General had been elected – proposals and initiatives for internal re-organization of the Secretariat or for a re-ordering of relations between UN agencies to improve ‘efficiency’ in terms of service delivery or new budgetary restraints. Nonetheless, having had the privilege and the benefit of a ‘bird’s eye’ view of the research being undertaken by the members of ACUNS, it also was apparent that there was a wealth of expertise in various and diverse facets of governance in international organizations, a small but hopefully representative sample of which might usefully be brought together in one volume. That is the goal here. With that primary substantive and scholarly notion as the central consideration, for transparency’s sake a secondary and more selfish component of those early conversations also should be noted here. As the proposed editor, I wanted the volume and its contributors to speak to a few plain, direct, and (at least in my view) ‘fun’ but also fundamental themes and questions about ‘governance in IOs’ that especially interested me, and that I believe also would interest the students who I have been teaching for a little more than three decades. Those themes and 1

2  Handbook on governance in international organizations questions are what became the framework for the book, and they are outlined in the following section.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK The volume is arranged to address four broad themes, and several sub-themes. About the overall topic of the volume, Part I addresses and explores the core theme, ‘What is it? Approaches to Understanding Governance in IOs’. Part II then considers ‘Who Governs International Organizations, and How?’, doing so with three sub-themes exploring the role(s) of states; organizational culture, leadership and gender, and the influence of civil society. In Part III, the contributors were asked to think about ‘Governance Done Well; Governance Gone Bad’, also with three sub-themes: effective governance, institutional and individual accountability, and the need for reform. Finally, the volume concludes in Part IV with two pieces that reflect on the recently, and increasingly frequently, asked question, ‘Have International Organizations Had Their Day?’ The four contributions to Part I offer critical analyses of different theoretical approaches – and related practical implications – to understanding international organizations. In Chapter 2, Alexandra Harrington examines and compares formal and legal, and informal and behavioral, approaches, and the expectation or demand from member states for these international organizations to deliver effective and responsive governance. Harrington argues that, from a legal perspective, the power and limitations of IOs stems from their status as legal persons, while as a matter (and a venue) of diplomacy and practice the evolution of these multilateral bodies as tools of governance, politics and law can be understood best by examining the informal aspects of their identities. Next, in Chapter 3, Kendall Stiles employs theories of power transition and organizational behavior to examine China’s efforts to remodel and remake the United Nations system in its image, and to directly influence policy and practice at the organization to suit its own purposes. These efforts, Stiles argues, include altering the development model at the UN and redirecting attention with respect to human rights issues. With this challenge, and the threats posed by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, Stiles argues that power politics best explains behavior and outcomes. Roger Coate then follows in Chapter 4 with a systematic discussion and application of a social process model perspective. This perspective includes as key conceptual elements, social process framing; the roles of values, human needs and resources; diversity of participants and institutional arenas; organizational goal framing; open systems thinking; and examples of operational modes, necessary for policymaking and problem-solving purposes under conditions of interdependent and cascading challenges. Andrea Collins concludes Part I with Chapter 5 exploring the influence of feminist scholarship and activism on governance within international organizations, especially in the issues of food, land, and agricultural governance. Collins first looks at gender mainstreaming in IOs, differentiating between technocratic and gender-responsive or -transformative policy development; then highlights the work and experiences of gender experts in those organizations; and finally situates the analysis in the context of the growing influence of non-state actors and the implications for gendered power relations. Part II begins with two pieces offering interesting contrasts – in time frame as well as approaches – on the theme of states’ engagement with, and commitments to (or in), international organizations. First, Cynthia Leal in Chapter 6 provides an historical study of Mexico’s

Introduction  3 participation in the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference of July 1944 – more commonly known as the Bretton Woods Conference. Drawing on archival sources as well as more recent literature, Leal provides an analysis that highlights Mexico’s diligent efforts – resisted by the Great Powers of the time, and subsequently overlooked in most Western literature on the subject – to establish a fairer, more inclusive, and sustainable international economic system. By contrast, in Chapter 7 Monica Herz investigates the impact of Jair Bolsonaro’s government on Brazil’s role and participation in global and regional institutions. Herz contrasts the core ideas and the policies pursued by the democratic governments that followed the end of the dictatorship in Brazil in 1985, and contrasts these with the policies under Bolsonaro between 2019 and 2022. She notes that on issues including health, climate, gender and human rights, such conservative and authoritarian governments and movements have direct, negative impacts on the workings of multilateral institutions. The next section and sub-theme of Part II offers three chapters that turn their attention to questions of organizational culture, leadership, and gender. Nina Reiners, in Chapter 8, first discusses the literature on organizational culture in IOs, particularly dealing with professional culture(s), and then – noting that governance in IOs is not exercised only through and by bureaucrats and diplomats – focuses on examples of expert committees and bodies operating in the field of international human rights. These committees, she argues, increasingly are established and tasked to take on governance functions such as treaty monitoring, policy formulation, or staff recruitment, and in turn can have significant influence on the policies adopted by other IO bodies and even national policymakers. Chapter 9 sees Kent Kille drawing on the database of the IO BIO Project to look at the leadership provided by the executive heads of UN specialized agencies such as the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization. Kille argues that the leadership of these executive heads – who operate separately from the UN Secretariat and who are chosen by the organizations – has important effects on shaping those agencies and the institutions’ roles in global governance. Continuing to explore ‘who governs, and how’, in Chapter 10 Kirsten Haack and Margaret Karns examine the presence (and too often, the absence) of women in IOs, and especially in leadership roles as executive heads, permanent representatives of states, international civil servants, celebrities, and NGO activists. The authors discuss who ‘counts’ as leaders, and where they are; the barriers to women’s access and advancement, including the gendered nature of institutional processes and practices; the role of advocacy for change; what the data looks like, specifically in the UN system; and underlying these, the key question of what difference women leaders make for IO governance. The third section and sub-theme in Part II looks at the topic of civil society and IO governance. In Chapter 11, Robyn Lynde observes the ‘democracy deficit’ that still exists in the UN system regarding NGO’s access to that system and its levers of power. Using as case studies the efforts of two Affected Persons Organizations (APOs) of LGBTIQ+ activists and sex workers, Lynde argues that NGO federations can be effective and efficient at empowering local-level actors and raising local, regional and national concerns at the United Nations. As such, APO federations embody an increasingly institutionalized model of self-representation to IOs, and one that departs from the typical gatekeeper model. Next, Christer Jönsson and Jonas Tallberg in Chapter 12 draw on large-N studies of three dimensions of civil society actors and IO governance: access, participation, and impact. After setting out existing research on patterns of civil society actors’ access to the inner deliberations of IOs, they review studies of participation or non-participation; and finally, they examine the question of what impact is

4  Handbook on governance in international organizations achieved by that participation when it does take place – does such involvement by civil society contribute to the democratization, effectiveness, and/or legitimacy of IOs? Part III of the volume again consists of three sub-themes, beginning with two chapters on the first topic of ‘doing good by doing well?’. In Chapter 13, Joel Oestreich considers how the UN for much of its history had struggled to bring together the two governance streams of human rights promotion and development. He then critically evaluates the extent to which the rights-based approach to development has allowed development agencies to integrate political priorities into their mandates in order to advance rights issues, while the human rights agencies have made progress in recognizing that development is a rights issue. This process, Oestreich argues, has been a necessary step towards making both rights and development agencies potentially more effective. Chapter 14 then looks at the under-studied Office of the President of the UN General Assembly, and offers brief case studies of the role and influence of three individual presidents. Alistair Edgar examines the presidencies of Peul-Henri Spaak, Vijay Lakshmi Pandit, and Mogens Lykketoft, and the ‘revitalization’ efforts of the General Assembly, to explore whether and how the Office of the President of the General Assembly (OPGA) as an institution, and presidents as individuals, have exercised agency and made a substantive – independent, effective, and constructive – difference in the operations and outputs of the UNGA. The next three chapters address the second sub-theme, namely of IOs’ accountability, responsibility, and legitimacy. Ai Kihara-Hunt in Chapter 15 analyzes UN mechanisms of holding individual UN personnel to account for criminal, disciplinary, administrative, or civil misconduct in its Peace Operations and in the context of humanitarian assistance. Kihara-Hunt assesses each mechanism, and evaluates recent shifts made by the United Nations under Secretary-General Guterres – towards a victims’ rights approach, leadership accountability, community involvement mechanisms, and improved transparency. Niamh Kinchin raises the new challenges to accountability resulting from IOs’ digital transformation, in Chapter 16. The diffusion of innovation, Kinchin notes, can have both positive and unforeseen dysfunctional effects on the accountability obligations of organizations. She argues that an IO’s inter-institutional and participatory accountability relationships must be identified in order to allow planning for the potential impact of new technologies. Finally for this sub-theme, Chapter 17 by Matthias Hofferberth tackles a recent ‘public-facing’ use of new technology by IOs, as he examines the World Health Organization’s use of Twitter to respond to criticisms it faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hofferberth situates the analysis within research on IO legitimation in global governance and the use of social media; then identifies institutional and individual accounts representing the organization, and provides a content analysis of the framing, purpose, and sentiment of tweets along with the WHO’s organizational self-image projected through social media. The third sub-theme of Part III is that of reform, or as described here, ‘calls for a changing of the guard’. The two chapters in this section could be described respectively as tackling ‘high politics’ and ‘low politics’, or external and internal subjects of IO governance – and more specifically, of United Nations governance. Kai-Ann Skeete in Chapter 18 addresses a perennial bugbear topic of UN reform, the Security Council. In this case, Skeete focuses on the Council through the lens of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), the smallest state ever to sit as an elected member (one of the ‘E-10’). SVG’s decade-long election campaign is recounted, and its subsequent contributions during 2019–21 to the work of the Council related to climate change and the challenges facing Caribbean Small Island Developing States. The

Introduction  5 author considers the expanding presence of small states in the UN, and how this may be laying a foundation to reimagine their role in multilateralism. While the politics of Security Council reform remains a high-profile topic, it also is true that ‘people matter’, and it is in this light that Cristián Giménez Corte in Chapter 19 looks at the political nature and consequences of human resources policies developed and implemented within the UN system. Arguing that human resources policies should be seen as a necessary and critical means towards achieving broader UN goals, Giménez Corte points out that these policies also must be understood and addressed in conjunction with UN management policies and UN accountability policies. The author proposes what he suggests would be a politically feasible course of action for reforming UN human resources policies, both to improve human resources governance and to assist in achieving the organization’s wider goals. In Part IV as the conclusion of the volume, the contributors were asked (or perhaps more correctly, tasked) to reflect on ‘the big picture’ – to consider whether international organizations have had their day in the sun and are now fading in relevance, or indeed into irrelevance. For Chapter 20, Roberto Dominguez and José Antonio Sanahuja suggest that IOs ‘are more than states make of them’, and that the corrosive impact on IOs of receding or eroded democracies needs to be considered in a larger context. In particular, they set out and frame their analysis of the correlation of forces between the Liberal Internationalism Order with the United States and European Union at its center, and the Authoritarian-Capitalist International Order with China and Russia at its core. Lorraine Elliott then completes the volume with Chapter 21, in which the author situates her analysis in the context of contemporary claims that IOs either are unfit for purpose or, to the contrary, that they have accrued supranational power and authority that increasingly overrides state sovereignty. Elliott explores three challenges that she expects will shape the future of international organization(s) and the global governance landscape: ‘wicked problems’ and changing knowledge demands, institutional fragmentation and complexity, and demands for greater legitimacy and accountability. To avoid providing any spoilers regarding the conclusions of either piece, this Introduction will close simply by encouraging readers to work their way through the full volume and then to judge both conclusions for themselves.

PART I WHAT IS IT? APPROACHES TO UNDERSTANDING GOVERNANCE IN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

2. Formal and informal, legal and behavioural approaches Alexandra R. Harrington

INTRODUCTION After first coming to prominence in the ambitious yet ultimately doomed concept of the League of Nations,1 international organizations have taken on a legal and political life of their own. Where once the League of Nations, along with the International Labour Organization and the Permanent Court of International Justice to which it gave rise, stood as novel efforts to create international cohesion, the United Nations (UN) and a host of other post-World War II-generated organizations now are entrenched actors considered by many to be necessary for the functioning of the international community of States.2 Indeed, in times of peril from conflict to Covid-19, the international community of States and the citizens within them have evinced an expectation of effective global governance and responsiveness from international organizations in a way that can be seen as second only to the expectations of sovereigns.3 From a purely legal perspective, the power and limitation of international organizations stems from their status as legal persons akin to corporations under many domestic legal systems. Regardless the power or complexity of any international organization, it requires an international agreement for its creation, operationalization and framing of the permissible activities it is empowered to engage in and the parameters of these activities. As a matter of diplomacy and practice, however, the powers of international organizations are not limited to the formalistic elements found in foundational texts or treaty regimes. To fully understand the contexts within which international organizations have grown and evolved as tools of governance, politics, and law, it is necessary to examine the informal aspects of their identities as well as the formal aspects. These informal approaches can also be argued to be behavioural in nature because they relate to how international organizations behave within the confines of their legally established boundaries as well as outside these strictures through engagement with other organizations and with civil society members. This chapter is structured with the dichotomies between the formal and legal approaches to international organizations governance, and the informal and behavioural approaches. The first of the chapter begins with an explanation of the forms of governance bodies created for international organizations in their foundational texts or, in more limited instances, in the treaty regimes upon which they are founded. It opens with a discussion of the foundational organs of international organizations, tending to cluster around the larger, plenary bodies that are empowered with more soft-law oriented powers and smaller, elite bodies that are most often designated as having the capacity to generate hard and binding law. Following this, the second section addresses the bureaucratic bodies within international organizations’ governance structures, highlighting the roles which these entities play in ensuring the continued functioning of organizations. Committees, sub-committees, and other organs within the international organizations’ governance systems are also discussed in this section, 7

8  Handbook on governance in international organizations with emphasis on their many and varied functions as tools of governance that are responsive to the needs of the organization and its Member States as well as the needs of the international community that these organizations serve. Oversight and compliance mechanisms also normally exist within the international organizations’ governance structure and are included as formal approaches due to their roles as reviewers of State compliance with international laws and rules adopted through the organizational structure. Conferences of the Parties and Meetings of the Parties also are included in the formal approaches to governance section of the chapter since they serve as, at the very least, the locus of discussions regarding the effectiveness of organizations, and, at their most prominent, as the designated plenary body for treaty regimes such as those in the environmental law context. Finally, the section closes with a discussion of the powers of amending the organizational structure and ambit as a tool of law and formalistic approaches to governance in the instances where such was undertaken as part of the foundational text or treaty regimes. In the third section, the chapter shifts focus to the informal and behavioural approaches to international organizations’ governance. The section begins with a discussion of the use of reporting mechanisms as both a formal and an informal approach to the governance of international organizations and their Member States, asserting that reporting serves a necessary bridging function between formalized requirements and informal review processes. Following this, the section addresses the role that soft law instruments such as guidelines, policies and mandates issued by international organizations play in the generation and entrenchment of informal governance approaches. This part of the section asserts that the ability to adopt soft law norms supplements the role of international organizations as responsive entities to the needs of Member States and allows them to work with private sector actors that are often charged with implementing international law norms, yet which have little place in the formal structure of the State-based international law system. Further, the section reviews the ways in which international organizations’ practice has resulted in the creation of joint working entities for the governance of policy areas over which more than one organization has jurisdiction. While formalistic in the sense that these relationships are typically conducted through committees or similar structures, they are placed in the informal and behavioural approaches classification because these relationships often have evolved over time and in the face of changes in organizational behaviour. The section discusses the ways in which international organizations have carved out spaces for civil society and non-State actors to contribute to their information gathering and decision-making systems. These roles have taken on increasing complexity and importance, particularly in areas such as environment and human rights, yet are necessarily flexible to the point that they require an informal approach. Finally, the fourth section offers a brief conclusion.

FORMAL AND LEGAL APPROACHES As a matter of legal perspective, the fundamental approaches to the law and operation of international organizations come from the formal instruments through which the organization is created.4 Thus, the strengths and weaknesses of any international organization are written into the foundational text and, from a governance perspective, the ways in which organs and oversight bodies are established or enabled in the future.5

Formal and informal, legal and behavioural approaches  9 Foundational Organs Initially, the foundational texts of nearly all international organizations establish the governance systems to be used for the organization along a spectrum of what can best be analogized to legislative, quasi-executive or bureaucratic and oversight mechanisms as used in the majority of national constitutional systems.6 In this context, the model most often followed is that of the United Nations, in which there is a plenary body – in this example the United Nations General Assembly (General Assembly)7 – with seats and voting open to all Member States,8 and a more elite body – in this instance the United Nations Security Council (Security Council)9 – with restricted membership, differentiated voting structures and the ability to make decisions of greater import to the organization.10 Plenary bodies At the plenary body level, the model adopted by the General Assembly has become very much the norm in international organizations structuring. As plenary bodies, the entities are comprised of all organization Member States, making them the site of collaboration and consensus building between the globalized membership of the organization per se.11 This capacity informs their status as decision-making bodies for various policy issues as well as quite often holders of the budget approval power and final decisions on admission of States for membership.12 Given the open nature of their membership, plenary organs also serve as a location for information exchange and the establishment of a factual and positional record which can be used by other organs or States in the future, including for the generation of new organizational or international law instruments.13 This is particularly important in the context of generating new soft law or customary international law norms as well as authorizing the conduct of negotiations leading to future, binding international law.14 For instance, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was adopted as a soft law statement of understood customary law by the General Assembly in 2007.15 Since that time, the UNDRIP has been widely adopted by UN Member States as persuasive law at the international level and has been codified by a number of Member States as part of their binding domestic laws.16 Further, international and regional courts have recognized the importance of the UNDRIP as a statement of international law norms and have endorsed its terms although they are not binding as a matter of international law.17 As discussed below, plenary organs can also typically receive reports and other forms of information from sub-organs and committees within the formalized organization structure. In the UN context, the General Assembly can request and receive reports from any of the organizations existing under the rubric of the United Nations system, including the Special Rapporteurs.18 This information-receiving function works in conjunction with the ability of many plenary bodies to oversee and, in some cases, create a system of specialized committees.19 For example, the General Conference, which serves as the plenary body for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, was specifically vested with oversight of four committees under the terms of the foundational text.20 These committees can be expanded and supplemented at the will of the General Conference, provided this is done in accordance with the established voting requirements.21 In some instances, as will be discussed further in the third section of this chapter, there are express designations of the plenary body

10  Handbook on governance in international organizations as having the authority for an international or regional organization’s conduct of interaction with another organization.22 Serving as a decision-making entity, the plenary body in an international organization is typically one in which every Member State has the right to vote.23 The power and quantity of the franchise will, however, depend on the organization since there is no international law requirement regarding the weighting of plenary body votes.24 Thus, in the vast majority of what might be considered general purpose or political organizations, social or human rights organizations, and many industry-focused organizations, the practice is that each Member State has one vote in the plenary body regardless of identity, political power, economic power, or any other characteristics.25 A significant divergence in this pattern exists in relation to banking and financial organizations.26 In these contexts, although each Member State will have a seat in the plenary body, the number of votes allotted to the Member States will differ depending on the number of shares to which each State has subscribed in the organizational setting.27 This can be seen as relatively analogous to the voting practices used in many share-based corporations, which is arguably logical given the functions of these types of institutions. However, the formalized enshrinement of differences in voting power between developed States – typically the holders of a greater number of organizational shares and votes – and developing States and least developed States – typically the holders of fewer shares and votes – has resulted in arguments that these structures are inherently inequitable.28 This does not, of course, mean that these structures are legally questionable, reflecting the formalistic ways in which international law functions in the international organizations setting to facilitate a broad range of concerns and systems, provided Member States agree to them.29 Additionally, these organs can serve as a site of coalition building for Member States with a shared interest or, as has happened throughout the history of the General Assembly, for politically weaker Member States to assert a stronger voice by creating voting blocs.30 In the General Assembly context, perhaps the most visible examples of the former include the alliance of Small Island Developing States which has arisen in the face of climate change and associated issues, and of the latter include the non-aligned States movement during the Cold War.31 In these examples, a formalized mechanism of governance within an international organization was used as the site of informal coalition building to support a specific, though often shifting, political alliance over a series of years.32 In this way, it is possible to understand that even the most formalized structural elements of an international organization are flexible enough to accommodate the needs of Member States surrounding various topics and contexts, even those not foreseen by those creating the organization itself. Elite bodies Unlike the plenary body of an international organization, the elite bodies are, overwhelmingly, representative of only a handful of Member States in any international organization.33 The use of this system is generally regarded as necessary to operationalize a formalized legal structure which gives primacy to efficient decision-making, often involving those with the greatest power or expertise, at the expense of incorporating democratic representation.34 While the Security Council serves as a model for many of the international organizations which have been established since the 1945 adoption of the United Nations Charter, there are some critical ways in which it is very much an outlier.35 The Security Council serves as a model for the ways in which binding international law is generated through the elite bodies

Formal and informal, legal and behavioural approaches  11 of an international organization. In the context of the UN, this includes decisions such as the authorization of the use of force, official condemnation for violation of international law obligations, the use of sanctions, the authorization of peacekeeping forces, and approval of transmitting State applications for membership to the General Assembly, to name only a few.36 An area of shared competence between nearly all elite bodies is the ability to act as a dispute settlement mechanism or tool of facilitation in the context of disputes arising between Member States of an international organization.37 Despite the overwhelming similarities between the UNSC and elite bodies of subsequent international organizations, there is one very significant difference in the established law regarding membership. As set forth in the United Nation Charter, there now are 15 seats on the Security Council.38 Of these seats, 10 are rotating, non-permanent (elected) seats, which in practice have been required to represent a diversity of geography and development status between the Member States.39 The other five seats on the Security Council are permanent seats, which do not rotate, and are allotted to the United States, United Kingdom, France, the People’s Republic of China, and the Russian Federation.40 While on the Security Council, each Member State has one vote.41 However, each permanent Member of the Security Council holds the veto power, meaning that a veto by any of these five States will automatically result in a measure failing regardless how many other Members voted for it.42 The concept and identity of the permanent Members was rooted in the immediate outcome of World War II and the alliance of States which were victorious.43 This idea of permanent Members and the ability to hold a veto power was not replicated in subsequent international organizations’ structures and continues to cause debates regarding the need for reform as part of the Security Council.44 At present, however, this remains one of the core formalities defining the legal structures of the United Nations. As in plenary bodies, elite bodies often have the ability to create or supplement existing committees, rapporteurships, or other forms of information gathering and policy suggestion as deemed appropriate.45 Based on a determination of the severity of an issue, some elite bodies, such as the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Council, have the authority to approve a derogation from the international law promulgated through the organization.46 In these instances, the decision is typically memorialized in a legal instrument, for instance an official waiver from the Ministerial Council, establishing the parameters of the derogation and limitations on it.47 There are more variations in practice regarding elite bodies in international organizations than in plenary bodies. In some, there are several high-level bodies that have operational and functional capacities depending on the issues involved.48 In others, the plenary body functions as the elite body as well, and all decision-making authority is vested in the one body.49 Further, the financial and banking organizations have adopted a structure in which the elite bodies are primarily responsible for the implementation of governance decisions for the organization.50 Bureaucratic bodies Given the complexities and diplomatic sensitivities of international organizations as functioning entities, their foundational texts typically make it clear that there is a sharp divide between the legislative functions discussed above and the need for a bureaucratic body.51 The framework established for this body under the United Nations Charter uses a defined Secretariat system that is placed under the leadership of a Secretary General.52 The Secretary General is elected by the General Assembly and, over the course of emerging practice, is expected to

12  Handbook on governance in international organizations be from a rotating continental area in order to promote inclusiveness.53 Below the Secretary General is a series of under-secretaries and other diplomatic or bureaucratic functionaries who are tasked with ensuring that a variety of portfolios are thoroughly implemented and overseen.54 International organizations have adopted a variety of monikers for this system and those in it; however, at the core they remain very much similar to those adopted as part of the United Nations Charter.55 There are some instances, such as the Technical Secretariat under the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in which the secretariat body has a highly tailored function that is dependent upon the use of technical skills and knowledge in a specific subject area.56 In other instances, such as the Secretariat for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty text contains a secretariat in order to ensure that conferences of the parties and similar policy generating meetings are facilitated on a set basis.57 Committees, subcommittees and other organs As noted above, the oversight of committee structures in the international organizations system tends to fall within the ambit of either the plenary or elite bodies within the organization’s structures. These committees or sub-organs are typically focused on certain topic areas or policy issues falling under the rubric of the organization’s functions and purposes. For instance, the United Nations Charter establishes the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as separate organs within the United Nations system and vests them with discrete competences.58 While the ICJ is a juridically separate entity that has a relationship with, yet is distinct from, the core bodies of the United Nations system, the ECOSOC is more concretely connected through reporting requirements to the General Assembly.59 Throughout the course of international organization history and practice, certain committees and organs have assumed greater or lesser importance according to their jurisdiction and the changing needs of the international community of States. For example, the International Maritime Organization’s Maritime Environment Protection Committee was incorporated into the structure of the organization several decades ago, yet has become more prominent and involved in essential legal and policy practice at the organizational level since the shift in focus to environmental concerns and climate change across all sectors of the international community and international law more broadly.60 At the same time, the United Nations Trusteeship Council, another organ created in the United Nations Charter, has diminished in scope and function since the 1990s, when the last territorial entities under its supervision formally became recognized States by the United Nations and as a matter of international law.61 Thus, while the Trusteeship Council has not been terminated as part of the UN system, it has ceased operations and States are no longer elected to fill its membership roster.62 In addition to the committees, organs and sub-organs established in the foundational texts of international organizations, it has become common practice for these texts to vest the plenary and/or elite bodies with the ability to create additional entities in the future.63 Typically, the requirement is that any such subsequently authorized entities are related to the purposes and functions of the organization.64 In the context of the United Nations, examples include the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Development Programme.65 Membership in committees and other forms of organs, whether found in the foundational text or arising from it in the future, is to be decided by election in the majority of international

Formal and informal, legal and behavioural approaches  13 organization systems.66 As a standard practice, the plenary or elite body having the ability to oversee and/or create the entity in question has the right to elect its membership.67 In some treaty regimes, especially those relating to international human rights law, committees exist as the core governing body overall.68 These systems rely on a committee, comprised of members elected by State Parties to the particular treaty regime, to serve as the oversight and implementation body for the ways in which the treaty is fully implemented.69 These committees serve multiple functions, including recipients of information, oversight and review of mandatory State Party reporting, suggesting legal and policy measures and, where empowered to do so, acting as complaint mechanisms for individual or State Party claims regarding the failure of a State Party to comply with its treaty-based obligations.70 Oversight and Compliance Mechanisms Since international organizations are legally generated entities operating within the parameters of their foundational texts and, to the extent applicable, international law per se, they are subject to the oversight and compliance review mechanisms that have been designated by the States creating them rather than to any particular national jurisdiction.71 Indeed, a number of cases involving various international organizations and efforts to bring them under the umbrella of national legal jurisdiction for the purposes of largely civil suits have proven unsuccessful from a legal perspective and undesirable from a political and diplomatic perspective.72 These limitations have come to be present in the headquarters or host State agreements between international organizations and the States in which they operate. Without the availability of national legal systems to hear disputes between Member States of an international organization, or between the organization and a Member State or another organization, accepted practice has become to include a clause within the foundational text allowing the ICJ jurisdiction should all other efforts at settlement prove futile. Prior to reaching the ICJ, where available under the terms of an organization’s foundational text, there is a standard requirement that the organization, its organs and members make efforts to provide an avenue for peaceful settlement of disputes in the majority of instances.73 Outside the context of disputes involving international organizations there also exists the question of whether and how an organization should provide for oversight of its own functions and organs, as well as compliance with international law, organizational laws and rules, and accepted concepts of accountability. To accomplish these goals, some international organizations have crafted specific entities which have a quasi-independent oversight function, often in the form of ombudspersons or inspectors general. These are entities which have an executive command system most often spearheaded by a leader elected by a legislative body from the organization.74 Underneath these leaders is a bureaucratic entity charged with receiving and investigating claims regarding the conduct of the organization and those working for it, although generally not those in the Member State delegations, who are as a matter of course subject to certain forms of immunity for official acts.75 The decisions of international and regional organizations, especially those working in the financial sphere, have become subject to increasing outside scrutiny over the years since they were founded. Much of this scrutiny has come from non-governmental organizations and civil society members seeking to challenge the ways in which funding decisions having environmental or social impacts are made at the organizational level.76 These concerns reflect the growing trend of international and regional laws requiring public access to information and

14  Handbook on governance in international organizations participation in decision-making processes for projects and other undertakings likely to impact them. Although this indicates a shift from the highly formalized concept of international law and organizations as the construct of States alone, to a system that facilitates the inclusion of non-State actors, it has become a formal element of financial organizations to the point where they have adopted codes of conduct that include these capacities. Such codes often have become requirements of funding decisions such that allegations regarding their violation can be heard by internal mechanisms within financial organizations. If the result of these reviews is a finding of an organization’s non-compliance, the oversight mechanism has the ability to require that the funding decision be overturned.77 Where the potential issues involved relate to employees of the organization, the emerging practice of many international organizations, including the UN, has been to authorize a designated quasi-judicial body to adjudicate claims as an internal mechanism within the organization rather than seeking to use existing national or international courts.78 Relatedly, the ICJ has established that international organizations have obligations for protecting those working for them and acting on their behalf, with the result that the organization has some capacity to seek restitution for those working under its aegis when they are injured or killed in the course of their assignments.79 Conferences of the Parties, Meetings of the Parties and Governance Systems The creation of a dedicated international organization as part of a foundational treaty includes the governance bodies and organs required to ensure that it carries out the articulated purposes and functions. However, in instances where a treaty creates a Secretariat along with a less formalized structure than that used in the United Nations and other systems modelled on it, there still must be a formal venue through which legal and policy decisions can be made.80 These situations have most frequently occurred in the context of human rights and environmental treaty regimes.81 Within this type of structure, the primary vehicle used for governance and decision-making is the Conference of the Parties (CoP) or Meeting of the Parties (MoP), at which all Member States have a seat and a vote regarding a pre-set agenda of proposals as well as the ability to add further items to the agenda during the conference or meeting itself.82 As a matter of course, the CoP or MoP system requires the designated Secretariat to convene Member States in plenary sessions at set intervals, usually on an annual or biennial basis, with the retained ability to convene an emergency session should it be deemed necessary.83 The CoP and MoP system will most often include the convening of committees, sub-committees and other organs within the treaty regime system and the decisions of these entities become part of the outcomes of the CoP or MoP.84 The outcomes of each CoP or MoP become binding on the State Parties to the treaty regime at issue or, where applicable, become soft law entities to be implemented by the State Parties and the Secretariat.85 Dispute settlement efforts in the context of a treaty regime relying on a CoP or MoP system to serve as the formal governance apparatus are largely focused on the use of mediation or good offices of non-involved State Parties or the Secretariat.86 Where these efforts fail to produce results, accepted practice in treaty regime texts is to allow for the use of arbitration as acceptable to the State Parties involved and in many instances to the jurisdiction of the ICJ as a final resort. Further, some treaty regimes, such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, have established their own tribunal system for hearing and adjudicating complaints brought in relation to the terms of the treaty rather than resorting to the use of the ICJ. In this

Formal and informal, legal and behavioural approaches  15 way, it is possible to view the formalized systems of dispute settlement in the context of treaty regime governance as providing more latitude to the State Parties in deciding on the means of addressing disputes than within a concretized international organizations system.87 Amendment Provisions Whether in the terms of a foundational text explicitly creating it or in the terms of a treaty regime, international organizations are brought into being with the idea that they will serve certain functions and constituencies.88 Generally, these functions are written in a broad manner so as to allow the organization longevity without the need to constantly debate whether its operations are in accordance with the allowed parameters of its authorizing texts. At the same time, it would be highly unusual for an international organization to be crafted by the international community yet only be given until a certain point in time to exist.89 Reflecting these realities, many international organizations can be subject to amendments in their foundational texts or treaty regimes so as to facilitate responsiveness to new or emerging issues and challenges within the organization’s ambit. The use of amendments is, in practice, relatively rare for international organizations and their Member States, and more often these States undertake protocols to the foundational text or treaty regime that are narrowly targeted to the issue in question rather than allowing for the potential of reopening all terms of the instrument in an amendment process.90 When protocols are used, they will often vest the existing governance bodies with additional responsibilities for enforcement of their terms and, where applicable, expansion of their functions. Examples of this can be found in the context of several human rights treaty regimes that have expanded their implementational committees’ powers to include hearing various forms of complaints through the use of protocols. It must be recalled that States opting not to ratify a protocol will still be bound to the underlying foundational text or treaty regime although they are not legally required to follow the terms of the protocol.91

INFORMAL AND BEHAVIOURAL APPROACHES Reporting Mechanisms – Both Formal and Informal Approaches In the international organizations’ context, the issue of reporting as a tool to address Member State compliance with an international legal regime stands at the crossroads of formal and informal approaches to governance. On the one hand, many international law instruments and treaty regimes establish requirements for State Parties to file reports on a variety of related topics across set intervals.92 The recipients of these reports are generally the international organizations created through such texts, and the applicable governance bodies then are charged with reviewing and critiquing the reports.93 In so far as these reports and the systems through which they are mandated and reviewed are binding terms under treaty law, for example in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change or the Convention on the Rights of the Child, they can be viewed as formal approaches to governance in the international organizations context.94 However, since the international organizations’ abilities to require action based on their evaluations of these mandatory reports is extremely limited and their findings, while made public in most instances, tend to require little in terms

16  Handbook on governance in international organizations of direct legal or policy responses from States, the reporting requirements can also be seen as informal approaches to governance.95 Indeed, supporters and critics alike have suggested that some of the greatest value offered by the reporting systems is in the ability they can provide to engage in ‘naming and shaming’ States which fail to meet their obligations as highlighted through the reporting process.96 Regardless of the positive or negative aspects of the use of reporting as a tool of enforcement and entrenchment of treaty obligations in international and national law, these mechanisms serve a significant information gathering function which can be used as an informal tool to assess the viability and utility of an international organization or treaty body as a whole.97 Some treaty bodies, such as those convened under the auspices of the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change system, have formalized requirements for the CoPs to engage in a global stocktake to address the implementation gaps and achievements as highlighted through the reporting system.98 This is an important structural obligation although the full extent of how the information gathered is then to be used may be less than clear, and will very much be dependent on the will of the State Parties to adopt changes or new protocols as a result.99 In less formalized systems, such as those used for the UNGA, there may be an obligation for each sub-organ to submit a report on its activities at a set interval and to make these reports available to the public; however, further review or action is not required. From this perspective, the reporting requirement is more akin to an annual report of any organization or institution and is not necessarily used for policy generation or proposals to change the terms of a foundational text or associated treaty. Thus, a dichotomy can be seen between the more formalized international organization structures per se, which have less stringent reporting requirements and receive information from sub-organs, and the less formalized organizational systems stemming from treaty bodies, which have adopted more stringent reporting requirements directly from State Parties. Guidelines, Policies, Mandates and Soft Law International organizations have the ability to facilitate the generation of new international law instruments, including binding instruments such as treaties and conventions.100 When this happens, the new legal instrument must still be ratified through the domestic legal procedures of each State Party and when, as detailed above in the context of protocols, a Member State of an organization fails to ratify a newly promulgated international law instrument under the organization’s auspices it will not be bound by that instrument.101 Outside of the binding legal context, international organizations and their governance bodies have the ability to draft and adopt soft law instruments.102 These instruments, although not binding, can serve significant roles as sources of guidance and support for States seeking to generate laws and rules on new and emerging issues or on highly controversial issues which are less likely to see a successful campaign for a binding legal instrument.103 Theoretically, the work of soft law can be undertaken by nearly all forms of governance entities within an international organization system. In practice, however, soft law instruments and tools are most often drafted, debated, and adopted by the plenary bodies within that system.104 Often, this is the maximum extent of the plenary body’s instrument promulgation role yet it should not be overlooked as the source of significant understandings about the state of customary international law, evolving international law, and the general will of the Member States of an organization to act in an area around which it might be difficult for the elite bodies

Formal and informal, legal and behavioural approaches  17 to generate consensus.105 A critical example of this can be found in the UNDRIP, adopted by the General Assembly with the endorsement of nearly all Member States.106 As a declaration, this instrument has generated significant international dialogue and has been used to advance the strengthening of Indigenous governance mechanisms at the United Nations as well as throughout subsidiary bodies in the UN system.107 At the same time, at the national level the declaration has been used by its supporters as a source of legal and political capital needed to ensure that many of the core elements it enshrines, including the concept of free, prior and informed consent, are adopted or strengthened in domestic law systems.108 Similarly, the use of soft law instruments by international organizations has been applied to, and used by, the private sector as well as State actors, demonstrating another powerful tool of soft law as part of organizational governance practice.109 The use of hard or binding law is, as a matter of necessity, limited to State actors that can negotiate, sign, and ratify these instruments in their capacities as sovereign entities. Soft law, as a non-binding form of law, can reach beyond the State and involve non-governmental actors including civil society as well as corporate actors and others in the generation of terms for an instrument.110 These private sector representatives also can hold a stronger voice in the application of these instruments within their constituencies in a way that formalized legal structures are unable to achieve in reality. For example, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development has generated a significant body of soft law instruments intended to assist non-State actors with issues including corporate governance, compliance standards and due diligence in the public and private spheres.111 Through the generation of soft law instruments that can have a broader audience than States, international organizations have the ability and opportunity to use informal governance mechanisms to generate durable legal and policy shifts that are responsive to the needs of multiple constituencies. International law has been and continues to be State-centric in legal and political dynamics, yet through this capacity international organizations can build strong, if informal, ties with the constituencies most directly impacted by their decision-making. Expansion through Liaisons with Other Organizations/Entities International organizations have been built within the parameters of their foundational texts or treaty regimes. With the exception of the legislative bodies and Secretariat of the UN, most international organizations are bounded by parameters that limit the scope of their work and the areas in which they are empowered to adopt law and policy. Much of this is by necessity and design, although as the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated, this type of siloing can lead to dangerous and counterproductive efforts to tackle cross-cutting issues in theory and in practice.112 At the same time, there are many areas in which international organizations have related portfolios and thus there can be duplicative or counter-productive efforts to address issues in a way that results in a lack of continuity or different standards and expectations.113 To address the increasing incidences of policy and activity overlaps, international organizations have begun to authorize the use of liaisons, joint committees, and other forms of outreach and coordination with other organizations working in the same fields.114 A key example of this comes from the World Trade Organization’s Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, created through the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.115 The Committee has several functions including a formalized liaison with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to address the areas in which their policy portfolios overlap.116 Similar

18  Handbook on governance in international organizations consultative entities and procedures have been established between the FAO and the World Health Organization in order to facilitate the Codex Alimentarius.117 This has been achieved through the use of the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme and the Codex Alimentarius Commission.118 In other instances, such as the World Health Organization, the main international organization exists alongside a series of affiliated regional organizations and these have an established consultation and coordination system.119 Given the overarching importance and impact of the competences vested in the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, it is perhaps unsurprising that it has established a number of informal cooperation patterns with other international organizations.120 Inclusion of Civil Society Actors Beyond inclusion in the soft law generating process, international organizations have increasingly established relationships with civil society actors through which the voices and expertise of these actors can be included in the work of organizations.121 These are informal governance approaches in the sense that they are often on the margins of the articulated powers established in foundational texts and treaty regimes.122 However, to respond to the overwhelming interest of civil society actors in participating across a broad range of international organizations and specialty areas, many have established formalized review processes for access and participation in events and dialogue.123 Perhaps the largest such entity is ECOSOC, tasked with performing the review of applications for formal accreditation within the UN system from all civil society actors.124 This is a significant undertaking that required the creation of an administrative system to process these applications, share them with the Member States of ECOSOC for review and voting approval, and then to facilitate the participation of approved civil society actors in various UN events and processes.125 One of the major recent drivers for the involvement of civil society actors through consultation and expertise sharing processes has been the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals, themselves largely soft law tools promulgated by the General Assembly.126 The Sustainable Development Goals serve as the successor entities to the 2000 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), through which the UNGA identified and sought to guide States in addressing what were seen as the eight most pressing development issues which faced the international community from the old millennium into the new millennium.127 The MDGs were championed by many civil society actors, and yet the lack of a governance or oversight mechanism for the Goals made it difficult for both civil society and individual State actors alike to have a voice or input in their implementation.128 With the MDGs scheduled to expire in 2015 there was a great deal of international debate regarding the parameters of the next set of goals. Consensus was reached that, regardless the topic or contents, the next iteration needed to have a strong oversight mechanism that included a place for civil society input and expertise.129 As a result, in September 2015 the General Assembly adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169 associated targets, and at the same time established the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development as the annual CoP equivalent for review.130 Further, the General Assembly required Member States to submit periodic reports in the form of Voluntary National Reviews, and opened them to comments from both the public and private sectors.131 During the conduct of the High Level Political Forum – both in-person and remotely during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic

Formal and informal, legal and behavioural approaches  19 – dedicated spaces have been provided for civil society actors to engage with each other and with policymakers through official side events and similar events.132 In this way, the General Assembly crafted a system for informal involvement of civil society and non-State actors in the ways in which soft law instruments are reviewed and evaluated, putting this informal consultation function on par with the systems used by binding legal treaty regimes and international organizations.133 The CoP systems, especially those relating to environmental issues, have seen significant growth in the inclusion and primacy of place given to civil society actors. In these contexts, civil society actors have the capacity to bring expertise on issues to those national representatives who might not have a full background in them depending on the ministries they represent.134 Civil society also plays an important role in facilitating knowledge and information sharing at formal events held during many CoPs, and can assist in providing fact- and truth-checking functions regarding critical issues.135 A critical example of this is the annual UNFCCC CoP, featuring thousands of delegates from civil society organizations as well as those from national delegations and international organizations.136 This CoP system has allowed for the exchange of information and strengthening of civil society actors through providing them with a dedicated voice and platform to engage with policymakers and other members of civil society. It has enabled the use of an informal system for the exchange of knowledge and for the generation of momentum in advocacy and non-State constituencies, thereby also advancing future knowledge and capacity.

CONCLUSION International organizations have seen a dramatic increase in number and importance since the first efforts to entrench them at the end of World War I, and the global commitment to them that occurred in the wake of World War II. As both creations and creators of international law, international organizations operate in a highly formalized and legal ambit that gives primacy to State actors in the governance context. At the same time, practice has demonstrated over time the necessity to have a flexible approach for international organization governance that includes informal actions and actors to fully allow the organizations to accomplish the results expected of them. This duality has resulted in opportunities as well as tensions, which manifest themselves across the formal and informal governance approaches used regardless of the particular international organization at issue.

NOTES 1. See Alexandra R. Harrington, International Organizations and the Law (Routledge, 2018) pp. 12–16 [hereinafter Harrington 2018]. 2. Harrington (2018) pp. 12–18. 3. Julinda Beqiraj and Francesca Ippolito, ‘COVID-19 and International Organizations: Challenges and Opportunities from the Perspective of Good Governance and the Rule of Law’, International Organizations Law Review 18, 3 (2021): 293–306; Alexandra R. Harrington, Just Transitions and the Future of Law and Regulation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) [hereinafter Harrington 2022]. 4. See Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 1; Maurizio Arcari, ‘Limits to Security Council Powers Under the UN Charter and Issues of Charter Interpretation’, Polish Yearbook of International Law 32 (2012): 239.

20  Handbook on governance in international organizations 5. Harrington 2018, supra note 1. 6. See, generally, ibid. 7. Ibid. at ch. 12. 8. Ibid. at ch. 5 9. Ibid. at ch. 12. 10. Ibid. at ch. 5. 11. Ibid. at pp. 44–6. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. See United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, A/RES/61/295 (2007). 16. See United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, https://​www​.un​.org/​development/​desa/​indigenouspeoples/​ declaration​-on​-the​-rights​-of​-indigenous​-peoples​.html (accessed 17 March 2022). 17. See United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: 14 years later, https://​www​.un​.org/​development/​ desa/​indigenouspeoples/​news/​2021/​09/​adoption​-of​-the​-united​-nations​-declaration​-on​-the​-rights​-of​ -indigenous​-peoples​-14​-years​-later/​(accessed 17 March 2022). 18. See Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch 12. 19. Ibid. 20. United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization Constitution (1945) art. IX. 21. Ibid. 22. See Charter of the Organization of American States (1948) art. 54. 23. Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch 5. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. at ch. 15. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. at ch. 12. 31. See Samuel Brazys and Diana Panke, ‘Why Do States Change Positions in the United Nations General Assembly?’, International Political Science Review/Revue Internationale de Science Politique 38(1) (2017): 70–84. 32. Ibid. 33. See Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 5. 34. Ibid. 35. See ibid. at ch. 12. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. United Nations Charter (1945) ch. V. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. See Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 2. 44. Ibid.; see also United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Releases, ‘Security Council Must Reflect Twenty-First Century Realities, Delegates Tell General Assembly, with Many Calling for Urgent Expansion of Permanent Seats’ GA12888 (16 November 2020), https://​www​.un​.org/​press/​ en/​2020/​ga12288​.doc​.htm (accessed 17 March 2022); Amber Fitzgerald, ‘Security Council Reform: Creating a More Representative Body of the Entire UN Membership’, Pace International Law Review 12 (2000): 319. 45. Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 5. 46. See General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1994) art. IX. 47. Ibid.

Formal and informal, legal and behavioural approaches  21 48. This is the case with the OAS. 49. An example for this is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 50. See International Monetary Fund Articles of Agreement (1944); International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Articles of Agreement (2012); International Development Association Articles of Agreement (1960); International Finance Corporation, Articles of Agreement (2012); Convention Establishing the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (1985). 51. See Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 5. 52. Ibid. at ch. 12. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. See ibid. at chs 5, 12. 56. Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling, and Use of Chemical Weapons and On Their Destruction (1996) arts 30–36. 57. See United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) art. 8. 58. See Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 12. 59. See United Nations Charter, supra note 38. 60. Convention on the International Maritime Organization (1958) pt IX. 61. United Nations Charter, supra note 38 at ch. XIII. 62. See ibid. 63. See Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 5. 64. Ibid. 65. See ibid. at pp. 268–70. 66. Ibid. at ch. 5. 67. Ibid. 68. See ibid. at ch. 18. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. See ibid. at ch. 10. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. Ibid. 78. See ibid. at ch. 10. 79. See Applicability of Article VI, Section 22 of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports 1989. 80. Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 5. 81. See UNFCCC, supra note 57; Convention on Biological Diversity (1992); Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (1975). 82. See UNFCCC, supra note 57 at art. 7; CBD, supra note 89 at art. 23. 83. See ibid. 84. See ibid. 85. See ibid. 86. See Alexandra R. Harrington, International Law and Global Governance: Treaty Regimes and Sustainable Development Goals Implementation (Routledge, 2021) [hereinafter Harrington 2021], ch. 2. 87. Ibid. 88. Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 9. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid. 92. See, generally, Harrington 2021, supra note 94. 93. Ibid. 94. See Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at chs 18, 19.

22  Handbook on governance in international organizations 95. See, generally, ibid.; Harrington 2021, supra note 94. 96. See Harrington 2021, supra note 94. 97. Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 19. 98. Ibid. 99. Ibid. 100. Ibid. at ch. 9. 101. Ibid. 102. See, generally, Harrington 2021, supra note 94 at chs 2–5. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid. 106. UNDRIP, supra note 15. 107. See ibid. 108. See ibid. 109. See Harrington 2021, supra note 94 at chs 2–5. 110. Ibid. 111. See Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, ‘Corporate Governance’, https://​ www​.oecd​.org/​corporate/​(accessed 17 March 2022). 112. See supra note 2. 113. Ibid. 114. See, generally, Harrington 2018, supra note 1. 115. WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (1995) art. 12(3). 116. Ibid. 117. Statutes of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (2016). 118. Ibid.; Rules of Procedure of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (2016); Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme, Codex Alimentarius Commission Procedural Manual, 25th edn (2016). 119. See Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at pp. 202–4. 120. See Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Decision: Relationship Agreement between the United Nations and OPCW, EC-MXI/DEC.1 (2000). 121. See, generally, Harrington 2021, supra note 94. 122. Ibid. 123. Ibid. 124. See Harrington 2018, supra note 1 at ch. 12. 125. Ibid. 126. See United Nations General Assembly, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, A/RES/70/1 (21 October 2015); see also Harrington 2021, supra note 94. 127. Harrington 2021, supra note 94 at 6–7. 128. Ibid. at 3–10. 129. See United Nations System Task Force on the post-2015 UN Development Agenda, Review of the contributions of the MDG Agenda to foster development: Lessons for the post-2015 development agenda (2012); United Nations, Millennium Development Goals Report: 2015 (2015). 130. See Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, supra note 133. 131. See ibid. 132. See Harrington 2021, supra note 94. 133. Ibid. 134. Ibid. 135. Ibid. 136. Ibid.

REFERENCES Arcari, M. (2012), ‘Limits to Security Council Powers Under the UN Charter and Issues of Charter Interpretation,’ Polish Yearbook of International Law, vol. 32, pp. 239–57.

Formal and informal, legal and behavioural approaches  23 Beqiraj, J. and Ippolito, F. (2021), ‘COVID-19 and International Organizations: Challenges and Opportunities from the Perspective of Good Governance and the Rule of Law,’ International Organizations Law Review, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 293–306. Brazys, S and Panke, D. (2017), ‘Why Do States Change Positions in the United Nations General Assembly?,’ International Political Science Review/Revue Internationale de Science Politique, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 70–84. CITES (1975), Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, https://​cites​.org/​eng/​disc/​text​.php. Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), Convention on Biological Diversity, New York: United Nations. Food and Agricultural Organization (2016), Codex Alimentarius Commission Procedural Manual, 25th edition, Rome: FAO/WHO. Fitzgerald, A. (2000), ‘Security Council Reform: Creating a More Representative Body of the Entire UN Membership,’ Pace International Law Review, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 319–65. Harrington, A. R. (2018), International Organizations and the Law, New York: Routledge. Harrington, A. R. (2021), International Law and Global Governance: Treaty Regimes and Sustainable Development Goals Implementation, New York: Routledge. Harrington, A. R. (2022), Just Transitions and the Future of Law and Regulation, London: Palgrave Macmillan. International Court of Justice (1989), Applicability of Article VI, Section 22 of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, Advisory Opinion, ICJ Reports, https://​www​.icj​-cij​ .org/​en/​case/​81. International Maritime Organization (1958), Convention on the International Maritime Organization, https://​www​.imo​.org/​en/​About/​Conventions/​Pages/​Convention​-on​-the​-International​-Maritime​ -Organization​.aspx. International Monetary Fund (1944), Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund, https://​ www​.imf​.org/​external/​pubs/​ft/​aa/​index​.htm. Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (n.d.), ‘Corporate Governance,’ https://​ www​.oecd​.org/​corporate/​ (accessed 17 March 2022). Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (1996), Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, https://​www​.opcw​.org/​chemical​-weapons​-convention​#:​~:​text​=​The​%20Convention​%20on​%20the​ %20Prohibition​,Annex​%2C​%20and​%20the​%20Confidentiality​%20Annex. Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (2000), Decision: Relationship Agreement between the United Nations and the OPCW, EC-MXI/DEC.1, https://​www​.opcw​.org/​resources/​opcw​ -agreements. Organization of American States (1948), Charter of the Organization of American States, https://​www​ .cidh​.oas​.org/​basicos/​english/​basic22​.charter​%20oas​.htm. UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda (2012), Review of the Contributions of the MDG Agenda to Foster Development: Lessons for the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda, New York: United Nations. United Nations (1945), Constitution of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, https://​unesdoc​.unesco​.org/​ark:/​48223/​pf0000382500. United Nations (1945), United Nations Charter, New York: United Nations. United Nations (2007), United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, A/RES/61/295, https://​www​.un​.org/​development/​desa/​indigenouspeoples/​wp​-content/​uploads/​sites/​19/​2018/​11/​ UNDRIP​_E​_web​.pdf. United Nations (2015), The Millennium Development Goals Report, New York: United Nations. United Nations Climate Change (1992), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, https://​unfccc​.int/​resource/​docs/​convkp/​conveng​.pdf. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2021), ‘Adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: 14 years later,’ https://​www​.un​.org/​development/​ desa/​indigenouspeoples/​news/​2021/​09/​adoption​-of​-the​-united​-nations​-declaration​-on​-the​-rights​-of​ -indigenous​-peoples​-14​-years​-later/​ (accessed 17 March 2022).

24  Handbook on governance in international organizations United Nations General Assembly (2015), Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, A/RES/70/1, https://​sdgs​.un​.org/​2030agenda. United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Releases (2020), ‘Security Council Must Reflect Twenty-First Century Realities, Delegates Tell General Assembly, with Many Calling for Urgent Expansion of Permanent Seats’, GA/12888, 16 November 2020, https://​www​.un​.org/​press/​en/​2020/​ ga12288​.doc​.htm (accessed 17 March 2022). World Bank Group (1960), International Development Association Articles of Agreement, https://​www​ .worldbank​.org/​en/​about/​articles​-of​-agreement. World Bank Group (1985), Convention Establishing the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, https://​www​.jstor​.org/​stable/​20692907. World Bank Group (2012), International Bank for Reconstruction and Development Articles of Agreement, https://​www​.worldbank​.org/​en/​about/​articles​-of​-agreement/​ibrd​-articles​-of​-agreement. World Bank Group (2012), International Finance Corporation, Articles of Agreement, https://​thedocs​ .worldbank​.org/​en/​doc/​428671541184259980​-0330022018/​original/​IFCArticl​esofAgreem​entEnglish​ .pdf. World Trade Organization (1995), The WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement), https://​www​.wto​.org/​english/​res​_e/​publications​_e/​sps​_agreement​ _series​_e​.htm​#:​~:​text​=​The​%20Agreement​%20on​%20the​%20Application​,animal​%20and​%20plant​ %20health​%20regulations. World Trade Organization (1994), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, https://​www​.wto​.org/​ english/​docs​_e/​legal​_e/​06​-gatt​_e​.htm.

3. Power and intergovernmental organizations Kendall W. Stiles

INTRODUCTION What is the place of power in international organizations? One version of the role of power in international organizations starts with the obvious point that they are the creations of states, and states have interests. It is therefore to be expected that those national interests will be reflected in the structures, aims, and activities of international organizations (Bryant 2015). Furthermore, the more powerful the states involved in the creation and maintenance of the organization, the greater their influence is likely to be (Ruggie 1996). It is commonplace to speak of the predominant influence of the United States in NATO, Germany in the European Central Bank, the United Kingdom in the Commonwealth, and China in the New Development Bank. It explains voting arrangements in many intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and the funding and staffing rules in almost all of them. It also explains the mandates and the mandate voids of many IGOs – such as the failure of the UNSC Military Staff Committee that died as a result of the lack of support from the P-5 in the 1940s (Novosseloff 2018). An alternative view holds that not only can the staffs and secretariats of IGOs achieve some degree of autonomy within the constraints of power politics, but that they can reshape the interests and capacities of the states themselves. This may take place at the micro- and macro-levels and through institutional, social, and operational mechanisms. While some of this work is self-serving – written by IGO officials hoping to inflate their importance – much of it offers an intriguing counter-narrative to the standard power politics story. In particular, many argue that where IGOs have an important role in a key issue and are staffed by subject-matter experts who know how to influence agendas and programs, IGOs may be able to push against the influence of states. One problem with all of this work is that it uses a unique period in history as its source of data – namely the post-World War II American-dominated world order. Because the cast of characters has remained largely the same across the last 80 years, particularly with respect to the dominance of the USA, it is difficult to test independently the relative importance of power politics or IGO autonomy. Perhaps IGOs are growing independent simply because the USA allows it? Or perhaps they are increasingly autonomous because they have pressured the USA to retreat? The good news – from a theoretical and methodological perspective at least – is that there is growing evidence that US power in IGOs is being effectively challenged as never before. The result is a natural experiment that will over time allow us to begin testing once and for all the relative place of state power and staff autonomy in explaining IGOs. We now have a revisionist great power – China – intent on controlling IGOs and reinterpreting and rewriting fundamental principles of multilateralism. Regardless of one’s emotional or ideological response to this development, an objective look at trends in the last ten years will allow us to better understand the nature of IGO autonomy – particularly as it pertains to the staff of the United Nations. 25

26  Handbook on governance in international organizations This chapter begins with an overview of the debate over state power versus IGO autonomy, followed by a brief description of the situation at the UN circa 2010, when the USA was still clearly dominant. Following that, I will review some of the ways China’s rise has expressed itself at the UN since then. Finally, I will briefly assess which of the various theories best explains the patterns.

THEORIES OF POWER AND IGO AUTONOMY To begin, we use the term “power” mostly in terms of “power over” (Pansardi & Bindi 2021). We focus on state influence, which in turn relies heavily on threats and inducements – although state actors also make reference to norms and principles from time to time. But even within international organizations, the ability to obstruct rules, to shape budgets, to install senior staff, and so forth cannot be discounted, and likely matter more to policy outcomes than the invocation of norms. That said, as we will see there is a place for “power to” and “power with”, both of which relate more specifically to questions of authority and legitimacy tied to collective voluntary action (Lake 2009, 21). IGO staff, non-governmental organizations, epistemic communities, and other non-state actors can sometimes shape outcomes through their institutional capacity – particularly their ability to shape the agenda of world politics and provide the basic information needed to grasp problems and identify policies. The story of this chapter is how these various forces play out and which will prevail. To the degree that IGOs can assert themselves in an environment dominated by “power over”, they can be said to have achieved a degree of autonomy (Oestreich 2012). International relations scholars have applied their own models and borrowed heavily from institutional analysis in other fields to develop a series of conjectures about how autonomy is achieved in international institutions. Realists are generally skeptical – and perhaps a bit nervous – about IGOs achieving autonomy since they argue that it is in states that all power does and should lie (Mearsheimer 1994/95). They are joined by some international legal analysts who argue that state sovereignty carries with it ultimate authority to administer policy at the global level (Amstutz 2018, 15; Collins & White 2011). Authority is meant as “rightful rule. That is, an authoritative ruler has the right to command subordinates to perform certain actions and, because the commands are rightful, the ruled have a duty to comply” (Lake 2009, 8). This is particularly true where mature democracies are concerned since they enjoy legitimacy and authority by virtue of popular sovereignty (Rawls 1995). For these writers, IGOs generally are submissive and responsive to state actors at all times. This can even mean that IGOs will go along with changes in state preferences with respect to the founding purposes of the institutions absent a formal renegotiation of the founding documents – something Bryant refers to as “principal slippage” (Bryant 2015, 14). Recent work on shifts in priorities on the part of the most powerful states makes clear this possibility (Fehl & Thimm 2019). They would accept the possibility that certain states might manipulate funding and staffing at the micro-level to produce a sort of transnational clientelism (Patz & Goetz 2017; Sridar & Woods 2013). For the most part, however, liberal and constructivist thinkers not only accept the reality of some degree of IGO autonomy, but embrace it as a bulwark against raw power politics (Oestreich 2012). Even some realists accept that states may choose to delegate some of their sovereignty to institutions that will then enjoy a certain degree of freedom of action. This, after

Power and intergovernmental organizations  27 all, works to their advantage for a variety of reasons. In those situations, the IGO has derivative authority, operating as an agent of those actors with ultimate power and authority. In some cases, international problems where actions must be taken on a day-to-day basis are simply too complex and fluid to be easily remedied by even a group of states. Creating agencies with some degree of autonomy and authority frees up states to address other issues (Koremenos 2017; Oestreich 2012, 7). For that matter, some issues require actions that will invariably generate costs to domestic actors, and delegating the tough decisions to autonomous actors insulates governments from political blow-back (Collins & White 2011, 15; Oestreich 2012, 7). Finally, some states are willing to sacrifice some power to set domestic policy if the trade-off is to constrain the actions of other, more worrisome, states. We see this in the case of international tribunals (Alter 2006). Many have found that international organizations can (and perhaps should) develop their own identity and agenda through more informal mechanisms. Going back to functionalism in the 1950s through the principal–agent literature of this century, we find a variety of theories about how this occurs (Mitrany 1966; Hawkins et al. 2003). As indicated, sometimes problems are complex and in flux, and states would prefer to empower agencies with authority to set policy independently. This typically requires establishing a permanent secretariat filled with subject-matter experts who come to the job with their own academic, professional, and personal preferences for how to address the problem. The greater the expertise, the greater the autonomy and authority, in general (Barnett & Finnemore 1999). In some cases, international organization staffs create alliances with epistemic communities that manifest themselves in academic and professional circles, in NGOs, and even in state bureaucracies and other IGOs (Oestreich 2012, 18; Stiles 2012). In still other cases, IGO staff even become their own interest groups, pressuring state governments through these alliances, resulting in not just greater autonomy and control over policy, but also in the creation of new, sister institutions (Haas 1964). And neoliberals understand that IGOs and their staff may sometimes play various actors against each other, exploiting conflicts between principals in the hope of organizing a coalition of states, NGOs, and individuals that permits them greater freedom of operation (Stiles 2012; McCubbins, Noll & Weingast 1989). In this way, IGOs develop informal power to shape debates, steer policy, and then oversee its implementation. Institutionalists give considerable weight to the details of how organizational rules and practices affect the power relations between states and international organizations. Voting procedures, governing structures, information-generation and information-sharing all have considerable effects on IGO autonomy, according to them. For example, some international organizations are designed to protect the power of states – as in the case of the United Nations Security Council which authorizes five particular states to block actions approved by all the members (Lowenthal-Isaacs 1999). Likewise, Bretton Woods institutions have codified the power of the world’s largest economies by weighting votes with reference to such indicators of wealth as GDP and international usage of a state’s currency (Stiles 1991). On the other hand, European Union decision-making yields considerable agenda-setting power to the professionals in the Commission and politicians in the Parliament, thereby creating a variety of counter-weights to traditional state power (Moravscik 1998). Likewise, some international organizations are granted power to enforce measures by imposing economic and even military sanctions at the most extreme level, or by “naming and shaming” at the other end of the spectrum (Friman 2015), and some international organizations are allowed to gather confidential information and keep it from the general membership, as in the case of the IMF’s reports on national finances (Bryant 2015, 15; Arrow, 1985). Finally, funding arrangements are very

28  Handbook on governance in international organizations important. In general, IGOs gain greater autonomy when funding is permanent and predictable, comes from a variety of sources, and is not targeted at specific activities. Conversely, where funding comes from only a few sources, is short-term, and supports particular projects, it is more likely that agencies will have to be more submissive. Further, they will be less able to hire staff on a permanent basis, meaning they will hire more contract workers who will likely have less experience and fewer credentials. This, in turn, will weaken the informal power of the staff over time (see below) (Graham 2016; Ege & Bauer 2017; Stiles 1996). And, of course, principals may formally alter the contract – perhaps by instituting additional oversight mechanisms (Buntaine 2014; Nielson & Tierney 2003). Tied to this is the notion that all of this independent thinking and policy advocacy results in international organization staff creating their own narrative of international politics. Constructivists argue that they can influence the conceptualization of problems and generate a vocabulary that shapes how issues are debated and which policy options are to be discussed (Jolly et al. 2009; Koh 2018; Alvarez 2016). This is most likely to occur where states are either ambivalent or of several minds about how to deal with novel situations – such as whether to engage in humanitarian military intervention after the end of the Cold War or how to cope with changes to the global climate. If nothing else, international institutions and their founding documents can freeze a particular international order or a set of policy preferences, leaving the staff to act as a sort of moral and intellectual caretaker.

THE UN AND POWER POLITICS SINCE 2010 We will now provide an overview of changes in UN politics over the past decade. Some of this is informed by a series of semi-structured interviews with senior UN staff. Between the hostility of the Trump administration and the ambivalence of the United Kingdom, the UN power dynamic has shifted dramatically in the last few years. Neither country is advancing important new initiatives but rather come to meetings distracted and unprepared (Piccone 2018, 16; Interview 2019c). On the other hand, Russia and China – along with India and South Africa – are showing a clear and focused approach to shaping UN policy (Interview 2019g; Interview 2019b). While none is able to directly control policymaking, given the challenges of forging a coalition, when the BRICS work in concert they are generally effective (Paul 2020, p. 90). China in particular has moved out of Russia’s shadow and is acting both to advance policies that will further its interests and block those that won’t. One of its strategies is to link aid and lending with voting in the General Assembly. It is also focused on increasing the number of Chinese nationals with ties to the Party in key positions in the UN bureaucracy. As put by one interviewee, the Secretariat is divided into “fiefdoms” over which certain members hold sway through a variety of mechanisms – not least the appointment of the executive head (Interview 2019f). Tables 3.1 and 3.2 illustrate some of the recent trends in this effort. There have been few shifts with respect to the corps of Under-Secretaries-General, except that China now has a lock on the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) and more Africans are being promoted. A Russian runs the newly formed division on counterterrorism, but Americans and Europeans continue to have a solid presence across various UN agencies. The situation with respect to specialized agencies’ heads is quite different. French nationals control only one of the specialized agencies in 2020 compared to three in 2010 while China now controls four

Power and intergovernmental organizations  29 Table 3.1

National and regional origins of selected UN Under-Secretaries-General, 2010–20 2010

2015

2020

Economic and social

China

China

China

UN Women

Latin America

Africa

Africa

Sexual violence in conflict

Europe USA

Africa USA

Safety and security

Africa

Political affairs

USA

USA

North America USA

Field support

Latin America

USA

India

Operational support

South Asia

India

Disarmament affairs

Latin America France

Germany France

East Asia France

Europe UK

UK

USA

Humanitarian emergency

UK

UK

Chef de Cabinet

Latin America

Latin America

Latin America

GA and conferences

Africa

Latin America

Europe

Peacekeeping Global communications

Legal counsel

Europe

Europe

Europe

Management

 

Oceania

Africa

Genocide

Africa

Africa

Africa

Note: P-5 countries of origin are bold-faced. Source: Compiled by the author.

after leading none in 2010. Some might point out that having influence in UNIDO is not as important as running the IMF – some of the agencies targeted by China are largely ignored by other powerful states (Okano-Heijmans & van der Putten 2018, 3, 11); however, the net effect is difficult to ignore particularly since the new leaders openly acknowledge Beijing’s influence on their actions. For example, DESA head Wu Hongbo was filmed saying that he prioritizes China’s needs in his UN post (McCaul 2019). Furthermore, these changes not only provide evidence of China’s growing influence with member states and with the Secretary-General (it is widely thought that some of these appointments were a condition of China’s support for the elections of Ban Ki-moon and António Guterres – Interview 2019f), but they also increase China’s leverage with them on a day-to-day basis. Overall, the UN regular budget has remained essentially flat over the last ten years, inching up from $5.5 billion to $5.8 billion after mid-biennium adjustments. This represents a 5.5 percent increase – or an average .054 percent annual increase. This, despite a 17 percent increase in American prices during the same period (Schaefer 2019a). Revenues have increasingly shifted to voluntary contributions, with the result that budgets are more unpredictable (Flanders 2019). With respect to contributors, there has been a substantial shift. While the American and British assessed shares of the UN’s regular budget have remained relatively flat over the last 20 years, China’s share has risen dramatically – largely substituting for drops by Japan and Germany. That said, the USA, China and India are actually well behind where they might be expected to be relative to their share of world product. The USA pays 22 percent of the UN budget despite controlling 24.5 percent of the global product. For China and India, those figures are 12 percent and 16.2 percent and .8 percent and 3.3 percent, respectively. On the other hand, Japan pays 8.6 percent of the UN budget against 6 percent of the world product and Germany pays 6.1 percent against 4.5 percent (The Economist 2020). The UN continues to be

30  Handbook on governance in international organizations Table 3.2

National and regional origins of UN specialized agency heads, 2010–20 2010

2015

2020

Latin America

China

ICAO

Africa France

China

China

IFAD

Europe

Africa

ILO

Europe

Latin America

Africa UK

IMO IMF

Europe France

Japan France

Europe

ITU

Africa

China

UNESCO

Europe

Europe

FAO

East Asia China France

UNIDO

Africa

China

China

UPU

Africa USA

Africa USA

Africa USA

World Bank WHO

Europe

East Asia

Africa

WIPO WMO

Oceania France

Oceania France

Europe

UNWTO

Middle East

Middle East

Europe

Oceania

Note: P-5 countries of origin are bold-faced. Source: Compiled by the author.

a focal point for a wide variety of conferences, meetings, and networking as in the past (allowing for COVID-19 restrictions) and, as mentioned, a great deal is taking place outside of New York. In particular, UN staff are creating new ties with regional bodies and sister organizations in the hope of finding practical solutions to a wide range of urgent problems (Interview 2019d; Interview 2019e; Karlsrud 2013). The system is becoming more “federated” in the process. For example, a range of new initiatives have been undertaken to link urban planning programs with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Interview 2019d; Betsill & Bulkeley 2006). Many of these efforts are difficult to track from New York for senior officials and outside researchers alike. What is more obvious is the efforts undertaken by powerful states to undercut linkages between UN staff and civil society organizations. As we will see, China has intervened directly and repeatedly to prevent civil society groups from interacting with UN staff. Additionally, it is proving adept at creating its own networks of allies – particularly through informal vote buying in the General Assembly. Recent work by the AidData project reported in The Economist illustrates the effects of China’s tying of aid with sympathetic GA voting. This pattern is supported by the anecdotal information previously presented (The Economist 2016). Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has clearly disrupted UN Security Council dynamics, with most members condemning the action while a few have equivocated – usually by trying to soften the language of resolutions or, failing that, voting against them. Unsurprisingly, Russia has vetoed several such measures (UN 2022). How all of this will affect UN budgeting and other policy issues is as yet uncertain, although assessments for 2023 and 2024 for both the regular and peacekeeping budgets were reaffirmed where the five Permanent Members are concerned (UN 2021). What follows is a closer look at how these power shifts are reflected in policies on human rights and development.

Power and intergovernmental organizations  31

POWER IN THE AREAS OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT Human Rights Human rights are a central concern to BRICS and Western states, although for opposite reasons, making this an area of intense contestation. France and the UK, along with most European states and British Commonwealth members, continue to press for increased respect for individual rights, democracy, and rule of law, while Russia and China are more concerned about defending the sovereign rights of states. The USA, India, and South Africa have been somewhat ambivalent in recent years. Of note is the emergence of a “like-minded group” (no doubt a conscious imitation of the liberally minded group of the same name consisting of Canada, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland) made up of illiberal democracies and autocracies.1 They generally vote with China in the Human Rights Council (Schaefer 2019b), such that China has increasingly been able to not only block draft resolutions but to begin advancing its own language. Support derives not just from ideological agreement, but also from China’s willingness to block any country-specific resolutions (it insists on reciprocity in this respect). China understands that Charter language is non-negotiable and that it must at least pay lip-service to it and the procedures it spells out (Interview 2019f. Note that the interviewee is not Chinese). At the same time, it has learned that the language is malleable and often contradictory. Thus, it presses for a pro-China interpretation of existing language (Roth 2019). It has inserted defence of sovereignty at every opportunity, and has also attempted to bring language and phrases generated by the Party into UN documents. Chinese official phrases like “win-win cooperation” and “a community with a shared future for mankind” are making their way into UN resolutions. The Human Rights Council, for example, endorsed “promoting mutually beneficial cooperation” – a phrase that has specific meaning in Xi’s domestic discourse (The Economist 2019). A resolution introduced in 2017 implied that economic development – another UN priority – should take precedence over human rights, but only as a means to an end (Piccone 2018, 4). This passed by a vote of 30–3–13 (in favor–against–abstention) despite vigorous US opposition. That said, some of its bolder resolutions aimed at limiting the role of civil society have failed. Most UN staff still are committed personally to progressive views of human rights and will offer language to support this at Council meetings (Interview 2019a), but they understand they may be ignored. Even senior staff have been attacked publicly and privately for taking a stand against human rights violations. After Guterres publicly criticized Pakistani human rights violations, the Pakistani Permanent Representative called him later that day, with the result that subsequent comments have been more muted (Interview 2019e). His criticism of Syria has also been toned down to appease Russia and China (Interview 2019c). UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet visited China in May 2022, which in the end pleased neither human rights advocates nor the Chinese government. (Dou 2022). Mid-level and senior staff below the USG level have taken note and learned to self-censor (Interview 2019g). Similar conclusions have been drawn by Western governments that have felt China’s wrath. Norway agreed not to meet with the Dalai Lama during a 2010 visit after China cut salmon imports by two-thirds. Hungary and Greece, which have both accepted large loans from Beijing, use what influence they have to persuade their fellow European Union members to

32  Handbook on governance in international organizations soft-pedal criticism of China (Piccone 2018, 18, 19). Austria and Albania were both punished for their support of an Uighur human rights activist’s participation in a Geneva event (The Economist 2019). For its part, the Trump administration in the United States responded to the UN High Commissioner for Human Right’s criticism of its immigrant detention and family separation policies in 2018 by leaving the Council (Piccone 2018, 16), although the official reason given was the mistreatment of Israel. Ironically, using the “nuclear option” negated American influence at the very moment when illiberal and autocratic states were increasingly assertive. In a sign that membership on the Council may become a political football in the USA, the Biden administration offered to serve again and was re-elected in 2021 for a three-year term in calendar years 2022–25. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has not united UN members as one might have expected in light of its flagrant violation of core UN principles, with 140 voting in favor of a General Assembly resolution to condemn the invasion, but leaving 53 either voting against, abstaining, or not voting (Nichols 2022). China and India has not fully joined in the NATO-led sanctions against Moscow and many developing countries are still interested in maintaining strong ties. Iran is providing Russia with drones, for example, and Belarus has been fighting side-by-side from the outset (Hambling 2022). That said, the West has been galvanized by the action and has increased its solidarity – as evidenced by moves toward NATO membership by Sweden and Finland. (NATO 2022). Staff have been somewhat tentative in their approach thus far, taking care not to condemn Russia in public statements. The staff are a key resource for member states at the UN, and they have at their disposal a variety of ways to channel discussions in the directions they like best. A particularly important mechanism is the background report on a specific topic. By including or excluding elements in these reports, and by shading the facts toward preferred conclusions, UN staff are able to begin the agenda-setting process (Jolly et al. 2009). Some have even provided drafts of documents to sympathetic government representatives in the hope they would advocate their positions in their diplomatic capacity (Interview 2019g). As it happens, some skeptical governments have learned also to take note of these reports while they are still in the drafting stage. Several senior officials interviewed for this project commented on the ways by which this takes place. While direct contact between diplomats and mid-level UN staff is strongly discouraged, it is not unusual for state representatives to get draft copies of reports. China, in particular, has been eager to scrutinize these drafts in light of its national interests, and will routinely ask for substantive and stylistic edits (Interview 2019g). This helps to explain the gradual dropping of references to the term “gender” in official UN documents, for example, because Beijing would prefer to focus on development over women’s rights. Naturally, where a member state’s nationals play key roles in a department – and these staff are willing to quietly collaborate with their home country – there is no need for such direct intervention. The results arise organically. China, for instance, has had less success in steering the language of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights because there are only four Chinese staffers working there (Okano-Heijmans & van der Putten 2018, 10). UN staff are also active in the area of monitoring and enforcement through a variety of mechanisms, including the special rapporteur. These are typically senior people with independent reputations called upon for a short-term assignment to visit a country and make an assessment with respect to compliance. Various treaty arrangements and UN regulations mandate their freedom and independence from the host state. As it happens, though, some

Power and intergovernmental organizations  33 powerful member states have been able to hamper or even block their activities. The Trump administration, for example, blocked new visits from UN special rapporteurs (16 were permitted under the Obama administration) and stopped responding to inquiries in March 2018 (Pilkington 2019). China, whose human rights violations are numerous, has rejected the Periodic Review mechanism of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and has been selective in its acceptance of special rapporteurs – blocking 12 such visits – and has attempted to set strict parameters for their activities upon arrival. Human Rights Watch reports that China has tried to pre-select individual rapporteurs, limit the size of their delegations, and shadow them with official minders while in country. After the visit, “China often challenges the legitimacy of the findings of special procedures who express concern or draw attention to human rights abuses in China” (HRW 2017, 74). UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston was on a short leash during his trip to Beijing: “The unfortunate trend that I have seen is that there are now a number of initiatives that have been taken which are coming together in what I term a pincer movement” (Ide 2016). More overtly, some governments have cut funding or support to specific human rights programs and positions. As was mentioned, the USA under Trump’s directive walked away from the Human Rights Council. China and Russia cut funding to 170 human rights positions linked to peacekeeping operations (Piccone 2018, 10). The area where UN staff seem to have the most autonomy involves internal governance. David Beasley became the Executive Director of the World Food Programme in 2017 and immediately set about enhancing the status and rights of female staff. He strengthened the inspector-general’s office and facilitated the filing of sexual harassment and discrimination complaints (Austen 2020). Likewise, Guterres elevated an increasing number of Africans – as well as many women – to the senior leadership ranks of the UN. Networking with outside actors is a natural practice for UN staff by virtue of their need to gather information from multiple, reliable sources, their membership in professional associations such as the Academic Council on the UN System, and their personal ties to sympathetic activists and experts across the world. This practice reached is apogee in the 1990s when dozens of global conferences were held in New York and around the world (Schechter 2005, chapter 5). Those conferences were stymied, however, as autocratic member states began to see regime opponents empowered (GPF 1999). In the human rights arena, UN staff have increasingly encountered resistance from states to their efforts to consult with and otherwise engage representatives of dissident movements or more prosaic rights advocates. China, in particular, has mounted a systematic attack on these practices (Wintour 2018). China is known to actively repress its internal dissidents – including especially those in Tibet, Hong Kong, and among the Uighurs in Xinjiang. Beijing punishes state and non-state actors alike that undermine these efforts. We already mentioned the pressure placed on Norway when the Dalai Lama visited the country in 2010. Sweden was similarly threatened when an independent Swedish group attempted to honor Hong Kong-based journalists (Roth 2019). And private firms that appeared sympathetic to human rights issues have been punished, including the National Basketball Association over Houston Rockets’ General Manager Daryl Morey’s tweet expressing support for Hong Kong civil rights in 2019 (Roth 2019). Marriott Corporation fired a social media employee for “liking” a pro-Tibet post and the makers of a sequel to Top Gun agreed to airbrush a Taiwanese flag on Tom Cruise’s bomber jacket under Chinese pressure. It even edited an op-ed drafted by EU diplomats that appeared in the China Daily to excise references to COVID-19 (Walsh & Cullen 2020).

34  Handbook on governance in international organizations This carries over to UN settings as well. Beijing pressured the USA and Canada to withdraw an invitation to the Dalai Lama to speak to the Human Rights Council in 2016 as part of an event honoring Nobel Peace Prize laureates – the event was held elsewhere (HRW 2017). When Xi spoke at an event in Geneva, he had the UN staff sent home early and blocked access for NGOs. Beijing tracks and interferes with visits by Chinese human rights and minority activists even when these are sponsored by foreign governments and the UN. It uses its position on ECOSOC’s NGO Committee to deny credentials to Chinese NGOs and even pressures non-Chinese NGOs that have not explicitly stated that Taiwan is part of China (HRW 2017). It attempted to block participation in the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues by an Uighur representative in 2017, although this was reversed thanks to a campaign spearheaded by Great Britain (Piccone 2018; McCaul 2019). In 2021, it was reported that Chinese officials harassed the Uighur representative at a Human Rights Council meeting, repeatedly interrupting and defending China’s policy (Quinn 2021). More generally, China deploys security officials to openly observe, photograph, and film Chinese NGO personnel at UN offices in Geneva and elsewhere in a brazen effort to intimidate them, sometimes also harassing their families living in China (HRW 2017). UN security officials have typically allowed this to happen. As put by Human Rights Watch, In several instances, civil society activists felt that the UN did not have adequate resources or procedures in place to protect them from intimidation tactics or at least keep records of these incidents. One activist described the UN Security Unit’s response as indifferent: ‘Where is this person? They’re not here anymore? Yes, you’re right that it’s not allowed, but can’t do anything.’ (HRW 2017, 19)

China has communicated directly with UN staff to discourage them from interacting with Chinese NGOs (except for those with ties to the CCP that have been officially endorsed). This includes frequent and repeated contacts ranging from offers of dinners and trips to China, to what amounts to efforts at intimidation and harassment (HRW 2017). These have all been turned down, of course, since it would violate their employment contracts. And the UN has pushed back on other fronts as well, refusing to deny credentials to Chinese NGOs that had no ties to terrorism, for example. Development Development has become a leading issue for China – somewhat less so for most other major powers. It is clearly eager to use its economic resources to pull more states into its orbit and has been using the UN’s agencies to advance this purpose. China has pressured Secretary-General Guterres to endorse the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – despite concerns about dependency and political pressure – praising China’s “central role as a pillar of international cooperation and multilateralism.” Jorge Chediek, director of the Organization for South–South Cooperation (UNOSSC) called it a “new vision for the world” (Shaw & Evansky 2019). Guterres promotes BRI as a means for achieving the UN’s SDGs (Okano-Heijmans & van der Putten 2018, 15). The Under-Secretary-General of UN-DESA is in a position to promote UN–China partnerships related to BRI as a policy adviser to the Secretary-General. In addition, several Chinese nationals have been appointed to subordinate roles in the department, enhancing their ability to link BRI to specific UN SDG projects (Okano-Heijmans & van der Putten 2018, 13). While facts are still emerging, it also appears that China moved forcefully to influence not only the policies of the World Health Organization but also its messaging as it pertains to the

Power and intergovernmental organizations  35 COVID-19 pandemic. China has succeeded in taking Taiwan’s WHO membership application off the agenda, and has pressured the agency to lavish Beijing with praise, holding it up as a model of public health policy (Austen 2020). This led to a backlash against the agency. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called for an investigation into whether the WHO was engaged in a cover-up of the source of the virus (Payne 2020). This prompted a firm response from Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said “[u]sing the COVID-19 pandemic to score political points is dangerous and will only result in ‘many more body bags’” (Chappell 2020). Recent investigative reporting has revealed more about these efforts and the WHO’s involvement, including the complex ties between some Western virologists and the Wuhan lab that may have contributed to a lack of transparency (Eban 2021). China is not alone in attempting to use UN agencies to advance the national interest. We will say more about US trade policy and the WTO later. For now, it is worth noting an incident involving the attempt by the UN to train Liberian officials to negotiate more favorable terms with foreign oil companies seeking concessions. As it happened, since British Petroleum had interests in Liberia (Palast 2012), the UK intervened to bring the program to a halt (Flanders 2019). This type of event has taught the UN staff to be very cautious. UN staff can take credit for innovative programmes in education, health care and development (Interview 2019d). Particularly in the field – far from New York – local UN authorities can experiment and allow their technical experts more control (Interview 2019d; Donini 2019). But operations in New York are grinding to a halt. China is seeking to heavily influence UN development policy through hiring and voting practices. Its spending is also shifting toward programmes that support its national interests. It increased spending at UNIDO from one million dollars to five million dollars between 2012 and 2016 after Li Yong took the helm – in addition to the normal $7 million in assessed contributions. China is also urging the hiring of more Chinese nationals at UN environmental agencies, with mixed success (Okano-Heijmans & van der Putten 2018, 15, 20). Increases in this type of case-by-case voluntary funding undercuts UN staff discretion. At UNICEF and the UNDP, ten states each contribute roughly 80 percent of the budget. They routinely earmark their funds for particular countries and projects, with the result that the staff are reduced to being brokers and managers of funds linking donors to recipients (Interview 2019f). Meanwhile, understanding the importance of national interest, Guterres approached food aid donors such as Germany and the Netherlands to increase contributions for Syria on the grounds that doing so will help stem the flood of refugees (Austen 2020). We saw earlier the efforts of BRICS nations to establish alternative economic institutions in light of their relative lack of sway in the Bretton Woods bodies. China seeks to become a global financial center, despite structural weaknesses in its banking and securities sectors. It persuaded the IMF to accept the renminbi as a hard currency, and established the New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the BRI to push its $4 trillion in reserves into the world economy in hopes of getting more than the 2 percent return it was receiving on US Treasury notes. All of this was premised on a promise of shared multilateral governance (Ren 2020). But in 2015 its stock market crashed, requiring government intervention and greater state control over the financial sector (Burki 2015, 49). China was eager to replace the United States in the World Health Organization in 2020, sensing an opportunity to exercise even greater influence in the agency. As of 2019, US contributions amounted to $236 million in assessed contributions and another $893 million in voluntary contributions, while the figures for China were merely $75.8 million and $10.2

36  Handbook on governance in international organizations million. In April China announced that it would contribute an additional $30 million in the wake of the Trump administration’s plans to suspend funding (Perper 2020; Yeung 2020). Much of US policy, including towards the WHO, was reversed after Joe Biden’s inauguration as president in January 2020. The USA has adopted a confrontational approach to the World Trade Organization, castigating it for rulings against US claims in the Dispute Settlement Body. Under Trump, it managed to shutter the Appellate Body by refusing to appoint new members. This came in the context of increasingly unlawful trade tactics by the Trump administration, including the imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods mentioned earlier, as well as substantial tariffs on steel and aluminum, washing machines and solar panels, covering roughly 4 percent of US imports. The actions were justified by Washington on national security grounds and on the grounds that the US market was being overwhelmed with imports – rationales intended to take advantage of loopholes in the WTO treaty language. Nonetheless, some targets of these tariffs filed complaints against the United States, including China that sued over the solar panel tariffs. The Biden administration has maintained most of these tariffs, although it has adopted a more conciliatory approach to the WTO and multilateralism generally (Williams 2021). Others negotiated bilaterally with Washington while Canada and Mexico renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement. In the area of development, broadly defined, UN staff routinely have worked with NGOs and epistemic community members – paving the way for the widespread inclusion of non-state stakeholders in development projects (Coate 2009; Stiles 2002). Much of this cooperative relationship continues despite shifts in global power distribution. That said, states have been more than willing to inject themselves into the development projects of partner states, and in the process they have subordinated UN staff to the role of partner. China’s BRI and “debt diplomacy” have forced the UN into endorsing a fait accompli, as alluded to earlier. In some cases, this is purely strategic, as when Beijing forgave a loan of roughly $80 million to Cameroon in exchange for its withdrawal of its candidate to lead the FAO (McCaul 2019). BRI loans have been used to secure recipient support for Chinese human rights practices as well – a favor that is routinely reciprocated (Roth 2019). Dependency on continuing loans is also leveraged for political purposes (Piccone 2018). That said, Chinese partners have been pushing back. Malaysia, for example, has raised concerns about the ways China pressures countries into accepting loans they cannot hope to repay, in order to later secure control of valuable and strategic assets, as in the case of its seizure of a Sri Lanka port (Habi-Abib 2018). As put by Hannah Beech, Fears are growing that China is using its overseas spending spree to gain footholds in some of the world’s most strategic places, and perhaps even deliberately luring vulnerable nations into debt traps to increase China’s dominion as the United States’ influence fades in the developing world. “The Chinese must have been thinking, ‘We can pick things up for cheap here,’” said Khor Yu Leng, a Malaysian political economist who has been researching China’s investments in Southeast Asia. “They’ve got enough patient capital to play the long game, wait for the local boys to overextend and then come in and take all that equity for China.” (Beech 2018)

This linkage of diplomats, state-run firms, private firms, and other non-state actors combined with what we saw earlier regarding staffing of UN agencies and pressure on senior UN officials, creates a new sort of networking dynamic that undermines UN staff autonomy.

Power and intergovernmental organizations  37 On the other hand, the UN still has important resources in the NGO community. For example, after Trump announced a suspension of funding to the WHO, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $150 million infusion of cash to the agency – this in addition to the $100 million pledged in February 2020 (Forgey 2020). This made the Gates Foundation the second-largest voluntary contributor to the WHO. Along with other initiatives, such as the Global Compact that brings private firms together with UN agencies to advance SDG aims (Ruggie 2001), one can anticipate that UN staff ties to non-state actors will continue to be strong in the area of development.

CONCLUSIONS This overview of how the UN staff – particularly those working out of the headquarters in New York – have responded to the dramatic shifts in the distribution of power among the P-5 as well as changes in their policies, has demonstrated that some theories of IGO autonomy fail to address adequately the role of state power. One might wonder whether some governments – that of China in particular – have read the pages of IGO scholars in the hope of undermining UN staff autonomy. It seems that they are well aware of the sources of staff strength and influence and have deliberately and systematically attacked these. Of course, these efforts would likely have come to naught but for the lack of resistance from other state actors that have traditionally encouraged UN staff autonomy. The changes that have taken place broadly conform with realist expectations. Across issue-areas, it is clear that where states launch a concerted effort to minimize staff autonomy by controlling senior positions and wielding votes and vetoes in key bodies, there is little that can be done by the staff except to yield. They are constrained by their oaths of office and the procedural provisions of the Charter. This naturally presents an intriguing ethical dilemma – especially where powerful member states have adopted policies that deviate from other Charter principles and well-established UN norms. Does the UN’s “democratic” principle override its commitment to international law? Probably not – but this does not mean that it is the responsibility of the staff to rectify the situation. On the other hand, member states have shown themselves adept at manipulating day-to-day practices in ways that enhance their control and undermine the staff. With respect to budgeting and report-writing, member states have shown that they can weaken staff autonomy at the micro and macro levels, limiting their ability to influence UN policy in the short- and medium-term. It is perhaps too early to say whether changes in hiring practices will significantly alter staff autonomy – but it appears that this is the intent. Finally, while UN staff have maintained a variety of contacts with non-state actors that strengthen their influence over the UN agenda and programs, it is also clear that where sovereign prerogatives are concerned, member states can act to disrupt and even close off these contacts. This does not generally cover those somewhat uncontroversial, technical matters where the UN staff have tended to thrive. The picture painted in this chapter leads to the conclusion that UN staff autonomy – and perhaps IGO staff autonomy generally (can one imagine the EU staff hasn’t felt increasingly constrained in recent years?) – is not as secure as once thought. Whether this means that IGO research should be redirected or amended is an open question since the experience of the last few years underscores many of the literature’s predictions – albeit in the negative.

38  Handbook on governance in international organizations

NOTE 1. The group consists of Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burundi, Cuba, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kyrgystan, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Venezuela, and Vietnam. They average the 112th rank out of 167 on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index.

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Power and intergovernmental organizations  41 Ruggie, J. G. (1996), Winning the Peace: America and World Order in the New Era, New York: Columbia University Press. Ruggie, J. G. (2001), “global_governance.net: The Global Compact as Learning Network,” Global Governance, vol. 7, no. 4 (October–December): 371–8. Schaefer, B. (2019a), “Budget Discipline at the U.N.? Not So Fast,” National Review, February 6, https://​ www​.nationalreview​.com/​2019/​02/​united​-nations​-budget​-process​-reform​-needed/​. Schaefer, B. (2019b), “U.S. Needs to Respond to Rising Chinese Influence in the United Nations,” August 28, Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, https://​www​.heritage​.org/​asia/​commentary/​us​ -needs​-respond​-rising​-chinese​-influence​-the​-united​-nations. Schechter, M. G. (2005), United Nations Global Conferences, London: Routledge. Shaw, A. and Evansky, B. (2019), “Chinese Influence on Display at UN as U Decries Human Rights Abuses,” September 28, Fox News, https://​www​.foxnews​.com/​politics/​china​-influence​-un​-human​ -rights​-abuses. Sridhar, D. and Woods, N. (2013), “Trojan Multilateralism: Global Cooperation in Health,” Global Policy, vol. 4, no. 4 (November): 325–35. Stiles, K. (1991), Negotiating Debt: The IMF Lending Process, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Stiles, K. (1996), “International Organizations and Civil Society: UNICEF, UNDP and World Bank Collaboration with Local NGOs,” presented at the annual meetings of the International Studies Association, San Diego, March 15. Stiles, K. (2002), Civil Society by Design: Donors, NGOs and Intermestic Development Circles in Bangladesh, Westport, CT: Praeger. Stiles, K. (2012), “Disaggregating Delegation: Multiplying Agents in the International Maritime Safety Regime,” in Oestreich, J. (ed.), International Organizations as Self-Directed Actors: A Framework for Analysis, London: Routledge, pp. 168–94. The Economist (2016), “A Despot’s Guide to Foreign Aid: Want More Cash? Vote with China at the United Nations,” April 16, The Economist, https://​www​.economist​.com/​middle​-east​-and​-africa/​2016/​ 04/​16/​a​-despots​-guide​-to​-foreign​-aid. The Economist (2019), “In the UN, China Uses Threats and Cajolery to Promote its Worldview,” December 7, The Economist, https://​www​.economist​.com/​china/​2019/​12/​07/​in​-the​-un​-china​-uses​ -threats​-and​-cajolery​-to​-promote​-its​-worldview. The Economist (2020), “The UN’s Structures Built in 1945 are Not Fit for 2020, Let Alone Beyond It,” June 18, The Economist, https://​www​.economist​.com/​special​-report/​2020/​06/​18/​the​-uns​-structures​ -built​-in​-1945​-are​-not​-fit​-for​-2020​-let​-alone​-beyond​-it. UN [United Nations] (2021), “76/239. Scale of assessments for the apportionment of the expenses of United Nations peacekeeping operations,” Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on December 24, A/RES/76/239. UN [United Nations] (2022), “Security Council Fails to Adopt Draft Resolution on Ending Ukraine Crisis, as Russian Federation Wields Veto,” February 25, https://​press​.un​.org/​en/​2022/​sc14808​.doc​.htm. Walsh, C. and Cullen, S. (2020), “The EU Has Admitted It Let China Censor an Op-Ed by the Bloc’s Ambassadors,” CNN, May 8, https://​www​.cnn​.com/​2020/​05/​08/​china/​eu​-china​-coronavirus​-oped​ -censored​-intl/​index​.html. Williams, A. (2021), “Persistence of Donald Trump’s China Tariffs Frustrates US Business,” Financial Times, June 2, https://​www​.ft​.com/​content/​fb775a22​-eaa5–44​b4–8643–16​c3f40a5d02. Wintour, P. (2018), “China Starts to Assert its World View at UN as Influence Grows,” September 24, The Guardian, https://​www​.theguardian​.com/​world/​2018/​sep/​24/​china​-starts​-to​-assert​-its​-world​ -view​-at​-un​-as​-influence​-grows. Yeung, J. (2020), “The US is Halting Funding to the WHO. What Does This Actually Mean?,” CNN, April 16, https://​www​.cnn​.com/​2020/​04/​15/​world/​trump​-who​-funding​-explainer​-intl​-hnk/​index​.html.

4. Administrative models and modes of governance Roger A. Coate

INTRODUCTION At the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century, a myriad of interdependent and cascading issues challenges the United Nations system and world order like never before since World War II (WWII). The list is staggering: existential threats, such as climate change and antimicrobial resistance; uneven economic growth and growing extreme inequality; chaotic global power imbalances; new forms of interlocking conflict and conflict-prevention deficits; forced displacement of persons from their homes and communities; and a good governance deficit at all levels undermining the rules-based multilateral world order and respect for human rights and the rule of law, coupled with growing alienation and distrust – what UN Secretary-General Guterres has labeled an international “trust deficit disorder.” The Secretary-General lamented: Trust is at a breaking point – trust in national institutions, trust among States and trust in the rules-based global order. Within countries, people are losing faith in political establishments, polarization is on the rise and populism is on the march. Among countries, cooperation is less certain and more difficult, and the divisions in the Security Council are stark. Trust in global governance is also fragile, as twenty-first-century challenges outpace twentieth-century institutions and mindsets. (United Nations, 2018, p. 1)

This is the world of “cascading interdependence” described so aptly by James Rosenau (1984, 1990) three decades ago. It is a turbulent world order in which multiple systems of action encompassing an endlessly wide diversity of actors, occupying various roles both within and across these systems, coexist in tension and disharmony. Rosenau dubbed this form of interdependence “fragmegration” – simultaneous dynamic forces and processes of fragmentation and integration. As participants go about carrying out their various role scenarios and associated action scripts for pursuing needs and values, the “cascading” of differing interaction scripts can fuel disintegrating forces and lead to crises of authority (Coate et al., 2017). In Rosenau’s words, The more crises of authority cascade subgroupism across the global landscape, the more extensive is the disaggregation of wholes into parts that, in turn, either get aggregated or incorporated into new wholes. That is, cascading interdependence can readily be viewed as continuous processes of systemic formation and reformation. (Rosenau, 1984, p. 281)

He saw the turbulence that results as creating a world order bifurcated between state-centric and multicentric systems, leading to profound challenges for global governance and multilateralism. Such turbulence requires establishing effective mechanisms to facilitate robust dialogue among key stakeholders and affected communities; harnessing new technologies and 42

Administrative models and modes of governance  43 pursuing innovative approaches to resolving multilateral challenges threatening livelihoods; and devising and applying forward-leaning solutions that harmonize state and non-state efforts to attain the multilateral goals of development and dignity. As the United Nations celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2020, the UN system and the world’s peoples were plagued by yet another critical challenge, a catastrophic global pandemic, which fueled a crippling global economic recession. The COVID-19 pandemic has been propelled and complicated by the social and political forces of populist nationalism and anti-multilateralism in the United States and other important UN member states. As a result, these factors have not only imperiled the global health governance regime and undermined the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) process but more fundamentally have also posed an existential threat to the UN system and multilateral institutions. The nature and dynamics of this “perfect storm” and its impacts on the UN system serve as the immediate context within which to provide a framework for understanding political and administrative governance in multilateral institutions and global governance more generally. Multilateral institutions (MIs) and international administrators are confronted with difficult questions and challenges. How should these challenges be tackled? In the face of growing populist nationalist social and political forces, how can we repair the economic, technological, and geostrategic fault line and the growing bifurcated conflictual world order? In what ways can beneficiary communities be integrated meaningfully into the strategic and field-level pursuit of development and dignity? What role(s) can or should private actors, as well as the global knowledge and information economy, play in these transformations? These are just a few of the questions confronting actors in multilateral institutions as they attempt to fulfill the mandates assigned to them. In this chapter we explore the ever-expanding tool chest of international administration and how best to conceptualize the task environment within which those tools are to be most effectively employed.

THE ONGOING CHALLENGE OF RELEVANCE This most recent challenge of relevance for the UN system and multilateralism is simply that ­– the most recent challenge. Reflecting back some 35 years ago, Puchala and Coate in their two commissioned reports for the Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS), The State of the United Nations (Puchala and Coate, 1988) and The Challenge of Relevance: The United Nations in a Changing World Environment (Puchala and Coate, 1989), noted that the UN system appeared to be suffering from increasing challenge of relevance and relative marginalization, especially in the context of the ever expanding and globalizing world political economy in which it must operate. But, of course, this observation was not new. Writing two decades earlier as the UN turned 25, Elmandjra (1973, pp. 28–30) had highlighted the “marginality” of the UN system – its relatively marginal place in the international system. This was an empirical, not normative, assessment, he explained. This increasing relative “marginalization” in capacity coincided with increased expectations, at the same time that member states’ demands dramatically increased for new projects, programs, and actions on an ever-broadening global agenda. Viewing such marginalization in context, it is important to reflect on the duality of multilateral institutions that are simultaneously creatures of and very much embedded in the Westphalian interstate diplomatic–legal order and, at the same time, agents/actors and institu-

44  Handbook on governance in international organizations tional arenas embedded in other primary global systems – political economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological, geophysical, and other interrelated interdependent systems. Thus, from a policy perspective, the norms, rules, processes, and structures of the Westphalian system serve as serious constraints and parameters for action and at the same time must be moved beyond policymaking and implementation processes in order to deal effectively with the complex issues on the international agenda. As argued by Weiss and Daws (2018, p. 3), political and administrative governance in MIs need to be viewed in the much larger structural and holistic setting in which MIs and associated programs and policies must operate. As Puchala et al. (2007, p. 21) pointed out, the post-WWII UN system-based “new world order” has been “plagued from the beginning by the tensions inherent in two often contentious, if not contradictory, globalizing paradigms”: the Westphalian interstate order and American-style ideological liberalism that greatly diminishes the central role of governments of states in the authoritative allocation of values – in other words, “politics” (Easton, 1953). “The history of the UN system might be looked upon as a … faltering attempt to paper over the contradictions between the particularistic principles of sovereignty and the cosmopolitan norms of liberalism” (Puchala et al., 2007, p. 22). The COVID-19 pandemic has made the challenges of living in a highly globalized world and the need for international cooperation more apparent than ever. It has underscored one of the early twenty­first century’s most challenging intellectual and practical puzzles, a conundrum that challenges the core of the interstate legal order’s foundations in state sovereignty. Initiating and sustaining effective international responses to COVID-19 and other threats to human security requires new forms of governance that integrate and fully engage nonstate entities with state entities at and across all levels of governance. Individuals and groups acting in the name of states and intergovernmental organizations have generally found the policy mechanisms under their control to be insufficient for responding effectively to such threats. For their part, nongovernmental actors seldom possess sufficient resources, authority, or the requisite capacity for launching successful large-scale policy initiatives and therefore exert only meager influence on global developments. Building and sustaining cooperation between governmental entities and civil society and the private sector, however, has proved to be an elusive objective. The foundation of the UN system and international law, for example, in the principle of the inviolability of state sovereignty greatly constrains and inhibits UN agencies and other international organizations from engaging civic, private sector, and subnational state entities constructively. In this context emerges an overriding challenge for global governance: how to generate and sustain effective cooperation both horizontally across differing autonomous organizational domains, legal jurisdictions, and sectors of society, and vertically across time as well as across different levels of social aggregation from the micro level of individuals in their roles in groups, organizations, and communities to the macro level of representative governance in international forums.

MODELS OF ADMINISTRATIVE GOVERNANCE FOR “PROBLEM SOLVING” In the context of this intellectual and practical puzzle, it is important to return to basics. Models depend on the purposes for which they are to serve – for example, description, explanation, prediction, problem solving, planning, and so forth. They are underpinned with purpose –

Administrative models and modes of governance  45 normative as well as instrumental purpose. The primary focus here falls more into the realm of problem solving, rather than pure explanation and/or prediction of international organization and global governance processes – primarily on policymaking for problem solving and program design, planning, and implementation. Framing Political and Administrative Governance as Social Process The general theoretical framing employed is interdependence. As Harold Jacobson (1979) so aptly highlighted in the title of his text Networks of Interdependence: International Organizations and the Global Political System, interdependence provides a particularly well-suited framing mechanism for thinking about and understanding process and structure in global governance. In our highly globalized and interconnected world, interdependence, succinctly stated, is the name of the game, and Keohane and Nye (1977) in Power and Interdependence, brought the concept to the forefront of international organization theorizing. The concept of interdependence has a rich history that has been basic in a wide variety of approaches to the study of international organization and global governance (Coate et al., 2017). To decipher interdependence for policymaking and problem-solving purposes, it is instructive to employ a policy sciences framework (Lasswell, 1971). A policy sciences approach focuses attention on the role of knowledge, as a critical resource, in policymaking and implementation processes. It is underpinned by three principal attributes: contextuality, problem orientation, and diversity (Lasswell, 1971, p. 4). Again, a main focus is on the role of knowledge, especially related to the historical, structural, holistic contexts in which the policy processes are located, relate, and must operate. Also, there is a need to incorporate a diversity of participants/“actors”/agents and institutions as well as an interdisciplinary and multi-method perspective. The focus is on policymaking as a dynamic social process. Building on this, a social process framework views global social and political relations as resulting from the activities of participants seeking to satisfy fundamental needs and attain valued outcomes (“goals”) by utilizing institutions and employing resources, producing outcomes (Figure 4.1) (Lasswell, 1971, p. 18). Such activities result in outcomes that can serve as bases for appraising achievement toward desired states of affairs and which affect goal attainment activities of other participants. Figure 4.2 illustrates the basic components of a simple social process model framework.

Figure 4.1

Social process model framework

46  Handbook on governance in international organizations

Source: Extracted from Elmandjra (1973, p. 32).

Figure 4.2

Interactions of the UN system with the subsystems of the international system

Each of the elements is systematically explored below in the context of scholarship on political and administrative governance in global governance processes.

Administrative models and modes of governance  47 Institutional Contexts Over 50 years ago, Mahdi Elmandjra (1973), in The United Nations System: An Analysis, presented an insightful framework for understanding political and administrative governance in world order that is as relevant, if not more so, today as then. Writing from his unique perspective as scholar-practitioner, he approached the topic from a true “systems” perspective and methodology. Elmandjra had spent his formative years in Morocco, received his graduate education in Britain, and then later served as Director of the Executive Office of the Director-General and Assistant Director-General for the Social Sciences, Human Sciences, and Culture of UNESCO. While writing the book, he had returned for a year’s leave to London School of Economics, where he had received his graduate education. His perspective was underpinned by a unique intellectual and practical diversity that enabled him to see a world order beyond that of most of his contemporaries. His self-proclaimed objective in writing the book was “to situate the functions of the United Nations within the International System” (Elmandjra, 1973, p. 15). What was remarkably insightful is how he conceptualized the international system. From his perspective, the Westphalian interstate legal–diplomatic system was but one international system in which the UN system was embedded and operated. Always a futurist, Elmandjra situated his “model” of the then 25-year-old UN system in dynamic and transformative perspective of the world’s “international system” comprised of subsystems: the “international political system”; the “international economic system”; and the “international socio-cultural system”; as well as the “inter-governmental organization system”; the “international non-governmental system”; the “nation state system”; and the “intra-national system.” None of these subsystems was reified and treated as being dominant, and a primary emphasis was placed on the dynamic interplay among the UN system and these various other systems and subsystems. Elmandjra distinguished between two approaches to the study of MIs: MIs as institutional arenas in which governments of member states play out their foreign policies; and MIs as actors in the international system (broadly defined, as above). He portrayed both in the context of systems thinking: “In the first instance the United Nations System can be seen as a mere regulator of some of the sub-systems of the international system which maintains the latter’s patterns and structures in the classical context of power politics. … In the second perspective it is viewed as a vehicle for a gradual integration of international society” (Elmandjra, 1973, p. 30). He conceptualized MIs as being comprised of sets of structured and organized units in interaction with each other: secretariats; governing structures/delegate bodies; and member states. “These units are themselves ‘clusters of systems and parts of systems … controlled and integrated in some degree by politically created administrative systems” (Elmandjra, 1973, p. 33). Instead of reifying the notion of member state – “nation state” – and treating it as some form of unitary actor, he distinguished between “nation state system” and “intranational system” and conceived of each as being further differentiated into subsystems corresponding to national political, national economic, and national socio-cultural systems, corresponding to subdivisions within the general international system. He perceived the world in which MIs are situated from an open systems perspective and understood well the nature and importance of using an “intermestic” approach.

48  Handbook on governance in international organizations Systems Thinking and Interdependence Elmandjra’s use of the term “international system” was envisioned to be all-encompassing of various important international systems, including the interstate diplomatic–legal order. He did not reify any particular system construct as “the international system” nor treat it as being the fundamental system. This is crucial for moving forward our thinking and understanding of models and modes of political and administrative governance. In keeping with Elmandjra’s perspective, systems thinking is fundamental to understanding political and governance processes. However, it is important to be wary of perspectives that tend to rigidly reify system constructs and freeze conceptual understanding within them. Systems are analytical constructs – nothing more or less than analytical constructs. They can be useful for some purposes and yet not so much for other purposes for which they can be even diminutive or distracting. For purposes here, reifying the notion of the Westphalian interstate diplomatic–legal order as being the international political system creates conceptual blinders that limit and inhibit understanding the roles of MIs as agents for change and transformation in global governance in a much broader systemic context. Parsons (1951) and Kaplan (1957) were pioneers in bringing systems thinking into international relations theorizing, and Kaplan (1957, p. 4) provided a good working definition of a system: a system of action in which a set of variables are so interrelated to each other in “contradistinction” from the environment that describable patterns of interaction among the set of variables can be discerned that distinguish the set from the environment for understanding some specific analytical purpose or set of conditions. Parsons (1951) provided critical insight by positing that, at any given time, an actor is a member of multiple interrelated and nested systems of action. Since these systems are interrelated and interact regularly, a change in any one affects the others. Interdependence is a key structural feature of systems. All systems have an order about them that makes them systems of action, and this ordering is underpinned by interdependence among the system parts. It is relational and is a situation involving interlocking relationships between parties (Deutsch, 1966). Milner (2006, pp. 14–16) discussed two related meanings of interdependence: strategic and structural. Strategic interdependence occurs where two or more actors are linked together in a relationship[s] in which attainment of each actor’s valued outcomes is dependent to some important degree on choices and actions made by the other participants. Each actor bears some costs as well as benefits from participating or not (Axelrod and Keohane, 1985). Structural interdependence reflects the nature of the relationship itself more in the form of some hierarchy in which costs and benefits may be quite asymmetrical and quite unequally distributed. This distinction serves as an important consideration for administrative policymaking and problem solving. In keeping with Elmandjra’s open-systems conceptualization, MIs need to be viewed simultaneously as discrete organizations and as parts of larger systems of action in which they are embedded. The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, while being an autonomous treaty­based institution, is also very much part of the UN system with sets of norms, rules, common operating procedures, and structural components. UN system agencies, in turn, need to be viewed in relation to and in contradistinction to other global and regional international governmental organization systems, which may have much more loosely connected sets of norms, rules, and varying operating procedures and structural components bound loosely together and with “governed” order. At the same time, this Westphalian interstate subsystem

Administrative models and modes of governance  49 is embedded in the context of the larger international system, comprised of other systems of action governed by assumptions, logic, norms, rules, operating procedures, and structural features that pose constraints and set parameters on behavior and action in multilateral institutions. The UN system’s chief architects understood this “reality” as they incrementally created the UN system during and after WWII. The underpinnings of this system of intergovernmental organizations were based squarely in American-style liberal ideology, which argued that the “state” and therefore intergovernmental institutions – UN agencies – should help facilitate the authoritative allocation of values – “politics” – through market-oriented means, not by governmental or intergovernmental directive. In other words, the capitalist-world system, tamed and tempered by laissez-faire liberal economic principles, not the United Nations, was to govern political behavior at the global level and determine therein who gets what, when, where, how, and why (Puchala et al., 2007). But again, in order to transform the capitalist world economy into a liberal capitalist world economy, some steering via governmental involvement or “management,” if you will, would be required. It is important to recall that the world in the 1940s was still largely divided into empires, in which imperial states – such as primary UN founders Britain and France – dominated and determined division of labor and authoritative allocation. But, again, the UN system was to usher in a new aspirational world order, wherein governments of states left international politics to the vulgarities of the capitalist world system. While world order has changed significantly since, the nature of the resulting interdependencies has not been transformed into a more just and equitable set of systems. In the third decade of the twenty-first century, tremendous asymmetries – dependencies, not simple interdependence – persist. In some ways it seems that the golden age of the nineteenth-century robber barons has returned with national and global political and economic interests and practices serving as constraints/parameters against change and transformation and global problem solving. In the context of the extreme economic inequalities inherent in the current world order, it is of primary importance that such grossly asymmetrical interdependent relationships be taken clearly into account by MI decision-makers and policy/program/project planners as they go about their work. Participants For Elmandjra (1973, p. 31), the governments of member states and the secretariats of multilateral institutions served as the “nucleus” for his analysis – not MIs as institutional arenas. Elmandjra’s perspective in this regard appears to have been evolving simultaneously with Claude’s (1956) notions of “two UNs” – the first UN referring to Secretariats and the second UN referencing the governments of member states and the UN’s delegate bodies. As suggested by Weiss et al. (2009), at minimum, making sense of the nature and role of participants in the UN system in the context of the current world order requires bringing in the notion of a “Third UN,” including nongovernmental organizations, independent commissions, academics, think tanks, consultants, experts, and other individuals. The notion of the Third UN grows logically out of the evolution of analysis on the roles of nonstate actors in world politics (Carayannis and Weiss, 2021). At its creation, provision was made in the UN Charter – Article 71 – for consultation with nongovernmental organizations on matters within the competence of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) or “consultative status.” During the 1970s there was an enlightening

50  Handbook on governance in international organizations period of scholarship that seemingly attempted to think beyond state-centered blinders. Among others, Kaiser (1971), Keohane and Nye (1972, 1974), Mansbach et al. (1976), and Mansbach and Vasquez (1981) led the way in drawing attention to the importance of transnational relations in world politics. They built on a small but rich literature on nonstate actors in world politics, including White (1952); Haas (1958); Wolfers (1959, 1962); Alger (1963); Lador-Lederer (1963); Angell (1969); Skjelsbaek (1971); Feld (1972); and Kriesberg (1972). The diversity of participants emerging from these numerous approaches represents the tip of the iceberg around which the international administrator must maneuver. As Truman (1951) posited 70 years ago, understanding political processes from a policymaking perspective requires envisioning potential as well as actual groups. Such potential groups are often the ultimate clients to be served. They represent aggregations of persons and groups who, due to shared values, needs, interests, or structural linkages, may form or join into groups that may influence policy outcomes. Lasswell (1971) similarly argued that decision-makers need to differentiate between organized and unorganized participants. He posited that in any particular issue arena there will be persons and groups – passive participants – who are not formally organized or engaged but because of the very nature of the issue are inherently linked to the disposition of the issue in terms of disposition of outcomes of the value allocation process. Interestingly, at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992, framers of the Agenda 21 outcome document followed precisely such a prescription. They demarcated nine sectors – “major groups” – of society to be brought into participation and through which sustainable development policy and programs should be administered. These included women, children and youth, indigenous peoples, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), local authorities, workers and trade unions, business and industry, scientific and technological communities, and farmers. This has been subsequently broadened by the inclusion of the concept of other “stakeholders,” including volunteer groups, foundations, migrants, families, and older persons. Each area will, of course, be composed of its own particular potential/passive participants, determined by the logic of issue dynamics and the “problem” to be solved. Goals, Needs, Values, and Beyond It is easy to fall into the habit of thinking about goals as the normative ends being sought – for example, the SDGs. This statement is not to downplay the importance of basic values that must be considered in policy decision-making. In the twenty-first-century world where security has taken on so many diverse meanings, basic values underpinning political participation and action have no a priori fixed prioritization or hierarchy. Considering Lasswell’s (1971, p. 18) eight value categories – power, enlightenment, wealth, well-being, skill, affect, respect, and rectitude – continued traditional preoccupations with power and wealth seem strangely out of place. Rectitude (moral, religious, ethical beliefs), respect, enlightenment, affect, and well-being in a new “security” share center space. Values are socially determined and represent only one, albeit important, aspect of the normative side of goals attainment. Another, at least equally important, aspect is grounded in basic needs – a feature that has been woefully undervalued. In The Power of Human Needs in World Society, Coate and Rosati (1988, p. 5) explored the dynamic and essential role of human needs in understanding global governance. They argued that “international politics can be defined as those social processes, based on individual interaction in pursuit of needs

Administrative models and modes of governance  51 satisfaction, through which resources and values are allocated in an authoritative manner-that is, in such a way as to exercise controlling or determining influence over the distribution of valued outcomes.” Building on social control theory, Burton (1984a) pioneered integrating needs theory into the study of international relations and global governance, suggesting that human needs should serve as navigation points guiding our research and practice in problem solving at all levels. This is where Burton’s human needs theory becomes directly relevant and essential to the work of multilateral institutions, especially in the local contexts within which they must operate. He articulated it this way: The human individual has particular capabilities, certain limitations in response, and, therefore, certain needs to be secured within the environment if he/she is to survive. Obvious needs are food and water. However, an important part of survival is growth and development. The survival-growth mechanism requires an environment that is consistent: without consistent response there can be no learning. A sense of identity of self is required so that the individual can experience separation of self from the environment. It requires a measure of physical security for there to be consistency of response. It must have, therefore, some capability to control the environment for these purposes. Thus, we can deduce that the human organism and human societies have certain needs which must be fulfilled that are social in character, and, in terms of survival are at least as important as the so-called “basic” needs of food and water. (Burton, 1984b, pp. 10–11)

Burton argued that problem-solving policies and practices that are based loosely on general notions of societal needs and values yet are ignorant of or dismissive of their micro foundations are doomed to reinforce and maintain the status quo, leading to societal instability and conflict. Individuals and groups who share common identities in regard to needs deprivation will strive to attain them. “The power of human needs is such that individuals [and groups] will strive to satisfy needs, even at the cost of personal disorientation and/or social disruption” (Coate and Rosati, 1988, p. 7). As argued by Burton (1984b, p. 53), “the attempt to impose integration in a given territory, either by coercion or by socialization processes that are designed to promote shared values [but ignores meeting basic human needs], is likely to be counterproductive.” A needs-based framework enables analysts and practitioners to envision social processes in a uniquely insightful way. It provides the requisite direction and flexibility to enable us to integrate a wide diversity of participants into our policy models despite whether they are formally organized as actors or more simply exist as passive participants. As Davies (2002) reminded, however, effective policy, program, and project design for problem solving in MIs requires moving far beyond the normative confines of values and needs: Decisions often involve compromises between opinions held by blocks of countries. The need to balance all views or to be seen to be neutral leads to problems, which impact on the administrative disciplines. Thus, there can be tensions in the administrative environment springing from attempts to balance different national approaches, systems and reactions. (Davies, 2002, pp. xvii–xviii, 3)

Implicitly, Davies was making an argument for conceiving of goals in the framework of “organizational goals.” Without wishing to oversimplify this analytical construction, organizations can be conceived of as goal-directed, boundary maintaining, activity systems (Aldrich, 1979). In regard to goal direction, the concept of “organizational goal” provides a helpful

52  Handbook on governance in international organizations framework. The term relates both to the value premise underlying any particular action as well as to the set of requirements and constraints that must be satisfied for any given course of action to be deemed acceptable (Cyert and March, 1963; Simon, 1964, 1965). Goal direction is based more on organizational functions than on the value perspectives of organizational officials. Both of these dimensions relate to boundary-spanning and boundary-maintaining performance requirements and constraints as a crucial set of constraints arises from uncertainty regarding the acquisition of needed supports/resources from the interrelated larger internal environment as well as the external environment (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). Organizations are dependent on their environments for support on both the input or supply side and the output or demand side. Davies (2002, p. 3) noted three important factors that must be considered: legal environment (organizational-specific legal agreements binding on the organization and member states); accountability and the paradox that MIs “belong to everybody yet nobody”; and diversity of cultures running through the organization. Administrative officials are confronted with and must be attentive to at least four types of administrative governance: standing committees; permanent boards; independent trustees; and parliamentary oversight, each of which, when linked to the continual presence at organizational headquarters of government representatives in permanent missions of member states, represents important elements of organizational goal requirements that must be satisfied (Davies, 2002, pp. 47–70). Resources, Resource Dependence, and Interdependence As explicated by Lasswell (1971, pp. 15–16), “The simplest representation of a social process emphasizes the participants (the actors), the flow of interaction (the interacts), and the resource environment”: Actor – Actor and Actor – Resource Environment. The term “resources” captures a wide variety of organizational support and thus needs to be understood accordingly. Resources include but are not limited to information, financial capital, personnel, authority, legitimacy, technology, materials, clients, public opinion, and shared ideology. Of course, the acquisition of certain of these “resources” will be viewed as being more or less important depending on organizational decision-makers’ perspectives and the situation at hand. Likewise, under differing conditions the acquisition of different resources may be more or less troublesome. There is substantial literature on the nature of interdependence among sets of organizations attempting to deal with strategic vulnerabilities with regard to access to needed resources (Aldrich and Pfeffer, 1976; Benson, 1975; Cook, 1977; Cook and Emerson, 1978; Cook et al., 1983; Emerson, 1972; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). In organization theory language, the term “resource dependence” is used to refer to such a relationship (Aldrich, 1979; Benson, 1975; Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978). Concentration of the control of discretion over resources and the importance of the resources to the organization together determine the focal organization’s dependence on any given other group or organization. Dependence can then be defined as the product of the importance of a given input or output to the organization and the extent to which it is controlled by a relatively few organizations (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978, p. 51). In this regard, two important dimensions of resource dependence need to be distinguished: essentiality and substitutability. Essentiality refers to the degree to which a resource is crucial for the performance of vital organizational functions or programmatic actions/activities.

Administrative models and modes of governance  53 Substitutability refers to the extent that the resource can be obtained elsewhere in the environment or can be substituted for by other resources (Jacobs, 1974). There has been a tendency in common parlance to concentrate on resource dependency in rather narrow terms of access to financial resources, materials, technology, and personnel. However, in the context of the current “good governance” deficit and growing alienation and distrust at all levels of governance – that is, the “trust deficit disorder” referred to above – the focus on “access” to authority, legitimacy, public opinion, and shared ideology has taken center stage in terms of resource dependence. Underlying this trend has been an enhanced recognition of the role of “identity” and associated identity politics. Loyalties are at the same time enduring yet relative and malleable (Coate and Thiel, 2010). Individuals and groups are involved in a wide variety of social relations, each associated with differing identities. Identity with culture, national heritage, religion, social class, clan, and race all vie for recognition and promotion, as do negative identities, such as the “other,” the “foreigner,” the job stealer. Differing events and conditions may activate and bring to the fore different identities. Social context makes a difference and needs to be incorporated clearly and effectively into our models and modes of operation. Individuals and collectives of individuals need to be viewed in relative context in terms of the role scenarios they occupy in social time and space. Any individual or collectivity of like-minded individuals may identify simultaneously with a wide variety of social “identity” groupings. Such identities may be localized or, to the contrary, globalized – organized on a regional or global scale. Again, at any particular point in time, tensions are likely to exist between and among these diverse identities as individual or shared perceptions arise from differences in human perspectives, group dynamics, culture, and relative location in social time and space (Coate and Rosati, 1988, p. 10). This is a point that gives perhaps greatest rise to the need to refocus our models and modes of governance. The overlapping crises in authority, legitimacy, and trust represent an important form of resource dependence – a form that has been particularly noticeable in relation to international cooperation and problem solving with regard to dealing with COVID-19. Despite the pronounced global asymmetrical dependencies concerning to access to COVID vaccines, treatments, and testing, for example, alienation and distrust in countries such as the United States have made fighting the pandemic an uphill battle. The baseline for effective administrative governance is about creating, restoring, and maintaining foundations of legitimacy for UN problem-solving policies and programs. As Burton envisioned, it is important to distinguish between what is legal and what is legitimized. But even more important is to focus on what is legitimized by the various peoples in societies around the world, rather than what is legitimized by their respective national government elites in the multilateral context. As Burton (1984b, pp. 64–5) argued, the true test of legitimacy is “performance in satisfying needs rather than the processes by which authorities are selected” or social processes that keep national elites or international institutions in positions of power and control. Until policy planners and makers in international institutions recognize, acknowledge, and step up to accept this realization in planning and promoting policies and programs, it is highly likely that the current highly unequal, unjust, and status quo-dominated world of global (national and local) policies and governance processes and structures will persist.

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MODES OF POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE GOVERNANCE Reflecting on Mitrany’s (1946) functionalist approach, Mathiason (2007, pp. 1–8) suggested that it is important to distinguish among five main functions on MIs because they entail slightly different management approaches. These functions include regime creation, mobilization of information, norm enforcement, direct provision of services, and internal management. In his attempt to explain why international bureaucracies are “invisible,” Mathiason used this conceptualization of functions to explore exactly what it is that Secretariats do. Here the focus is on three of these functions – regime creation, mobilization of information, and provision of services – to explore modes of political and administrative governance. The conceptual device of “international regimes” took on the form of a small cottage industry beginning in the mid-1970s and 1980s. A focus on interdependent international relational arrangements among actors and based on systems of mutual expectations about institutionalized norms, rules, and behaviors took root. Keohane (1975, 1985, 2002), Keohane and Nye (1977, 1987), Krasner (1982, 1983), Ruggie (1975, 1983), Young (1980, 1982a, 1982b, 1986), and numerous others joined the production force. However, there was a significant difference among these various approaches. While Krasner, Keohane, and many other regime scholars pursued a positivist bent and treated international regimes as actual empirical phenomena manifest in international relations, others, such as Young (1980, 1982a, 1982b, 1986), Puchala and Hopkins (1983), and Coate (1982) conceptualized international regimes as complex socially constructed phenomena. This latter approach seems much more appropriate and helpful from an administrative problem-solving perspective. Young (1982a), for example, viewed international regimes as “responses to problems of coordination among groups of human beings and products of regularities of human behavior.” He saw them more simply as social structures, cautioned that they should not be confused with functions, and argued that they may be only more or less formally constituted. Young (1982a, p. 95) stressed that international regimes are merely “human artifacts, having no existence or meaning apart from the behavior of individuals or groups of human beings.” Puchala and Hopkins took a similar analytical approach, viewing international regimes as subjective constructs – attitudinal phenomena. “They exist primarily as participants’ understandings, expectations or convictions about legitimate, appropriate or moral behavior” (Puchala and Hopkins, 1983, p. 62). International regimes are elite-driven processes and are characterized by norms of appropriate procedures for decision-making and have embedded within them major principles with hierarchies among those principles. Individuals and bureaucratic roles are linked in international networks of activities and communication, and regimes exist in every substantive issue area in international relations in which there is “discernable patterned behavior” (Puchala and Hopkins, 1983, p. 63). In regard to modes of political and administrative governance, it is, as argued by Strange (1983), important to conceive of international regimes conceptually and probe below the surface of intergovernmental relations and identify the dynamic forces and tensions that must be considered in order to design effective policies and programs to achieve valued outcomes. As discussed above, these dynamics involve a tremendous diversity of actors, needs, values, and interests. So, with respect to regime creation and promotion functions, it seems wise to operate from the more analytical approach.

Administrative models and modes of governance  55 With regard to internal management, mobilization of information, and enhancing delivery of services, we return to the central role of knowledge in a policy science approach and the willingness to embrace diversity. After assuming the role of UN Secretary-General in 1997, Kofi Annan went about creating what he termed a “quiet revolution,” embracing substantial internal management reforms and enhancing organizational outreach to new and diverse partners. Annan (1998) laid out various important dimensions of this “quiet revolution” in an article in the academic journal Global Governance. For purposes of the focus here on modes of political and administrative governance, the discussion will highlight not the internal management reform elements, but instead those elements that relate to initiatives to mobilize knowledge and enhance the UN’s capacity to deliver services in regard to dealing with serious resource dependencies. Annan stressed the importance of the UN’s special partnership with academia: bringing knowledge inside. Secretary-General Kofi Annan knew well both the internal dynamics and external parameters and constraints inherent in policy and program design related to organizational goals, having come up through the UN ranks and having served as Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management, Assistant Secretary-General for Program Planning, Budget and Financial Controller, as well as Assistant Secretary-General and then Under Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. In these various roles he had experienced firsthand the effects of the continuously evolving marginalization of the world body and support for multilateral institutions more generally in both financial and human resource terms. On the financial side, he had been forced to cope with the cumulative mini-crises related to the United States’ perpetual nonpayment of dues and the resulting ever accruing financial arrears in both the regular and the peacekeeping budgets. This, in combination with the significant decline in official development assistance throughout the 1990s, led Annan to think outside the box in terms of coping with resource dependencies. He was joined and supported in this effort in 1997 by a gift of USD$1 billion from Ted Turner, and in 1998 the UN Foundation was formed to oversee the gift and the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP) was established in the Secretary-General’s office to disperse the funds. Innovation was the name of the game. Then, in 2000, Annan initiated the Global Compact with business in partnership with NGOs and international agencies. The Global Compact represented a unique partnering with the private sector. As conceptualized by its creators, the Global Compact was designed to facilitate organizational goal attainment, especially in promoting and protecting international norms and standards – human rights, labor standards, environmental protection – by bringing the corporate sector “inside.” Members of this Global Compact must commit themselves to embrace and support nine international principles and embrace related good practices. By the end of 2021 over 15,000 businesses worldwide had come on board. The Global Compact was just the tip of the iceberg with regard to a relatively new evolving MI mode operation, public–private partnerships (PPPs). Such partnerships are about far more than creative financing arrangements. PPPs also provide an opportunity to mobilize information and knowledge and cope with personnel shortages, expanding the scale of operations and outreach. They provide a mechanism by which to reduce uncertainty about resource acquisition and coping with critical resources dependencies by providing options for substitutability. From an MI operative mode perspective, when designing PPPs, it is important to expand the conceptualization of “civil society” far beyond traditional Western-style notions. Almond’s (1960) observation more than 50 years ago still rings true today. In most of the world, Western-style NGOs do not provide the main foundations of social organization in the

56  Handbook on governance in international organizations non-state world. In regard to social processes of aggregating and articulating interest, four types of identity groupings need to be distinguished: institutional groups, non-associational groups, anomic groups and associational groups (Almond, 1960, pp. 33–4). Institutional groups are based on identities related to professional association, for example, militaries, bureaucracies, and churches. Non-associational groups are based on identities to more traditional cultural and social collectivities, for example, clan or kinship affiliation, ethnicity, region, religion, status, and social class. Anomic groupings are more or less spontaneous aggregations of individuals arising from specific situations or events, as was the case with “Arab Spring” movements.

CONCLUSION: “MULTILATERALCRAFT” AS ART AND CRAFT The discussion above has endeavored to present and explore a number of key conceptual elements of model building for global problem solving: social process framing; the associated roles of values, human needs, and resources; diversity of “participants” and institutional arenas; “organizational goal” framing; the importance of contextuality, open systems thinking, and interdependence/dependence; and some example operational administrative modes. In this context, however, Alger’s observation 25 years ago seems to continue to ring true today, “we have learned much more about building peace … through research and practice than we normally tend to apply” (Alger, 1996, p. 21). The tool chest for the international administrator seems well equipped. What remains elusive is creating the requisite task environment within which to apply these tools effectively. In this regard, political and administrative governance in MIs is collectively both an art and a craft; both are required for effective problem solving. Art is about ideas and envisioning both what is and what can be. Effective problem solving requires envisioning the task environment within which global policies and programs must be implemented in ways that enable possibilities for change. In this regard, Elmandjra’s framing of MIs and the world in which they exist illustrates excellently “multilateralcraft” as art. Increasing marginalization has meant that international administrators must wiggle around the constraints of sovereignty, “do more with less,” and innovate, innovate, and innovate more. Art without craft rings hollow. Kofi Annan‘s leadership captured the essence of both art and craft. His vision of system transformation was calculated, steady, and well designed. He had a knack for surrounding himself with intellectual prowess, such as that provided by John Ruggie, in designing the Global Compact. Annan had learned from observing the fate of his predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the need to maneuver effectively around the constraints of working with the power dynamics of the Permanent-5, most especially the United States: tread softly and don’t brandish a big stick. He realized that his position provided him with a bully pulpit. For him, a quiet evolution was the prudent way to use that bully pulpit and go forward advocating his agenda for change. As seen surrounding the design and carrying out of the UN’s platform and action agenda and program for commemorating the “UN@75,” the current Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, seems also to understand well these dual elements of the craft of “multilateralcraft.” Both Annan and Guterres, for example, have demonstrated a keen awareness of the role of knowledge in global problem-solving processes and the need for a steady hand on the administrative tiller during these turbulent times. But a baseline for effective leadership is engendering followership. Administrative heads of MIs cannot succeed without the strong support of the governments of key member states and

Administrative models and modes of governance  57 other essential players. To succeed, global public policy requires three basic elements: consensus, capability/capacity, and commitment. It remains unclear whether other key essential actors in the multilateral organizational world are willing or able to provide such leadership– followership or even minimal requisite support, or whether, to the contrary, as was the case during the Trump regime in the United States, they will further fuel the “trust deficit disorder.”

REFERENCES Aldrich, H. (1979), Organizations and Environments, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall. Aldrich, H. and J. Pfeffer (1976), “Environments of Organizations,” Annual Review of Sociology, 2: 79–105. Alger, C. (1963), “Comparison of Transnational and International Politics,” American Political Science Review, 57(2): 406–19. Alger, C. F. (1996), “The Emerging Tool Chest for Peacebuilders,” International Journal of Peace Studies, 1(2): 21–45. Almond, G. (1960), “Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics,” in G. Almond and J. Coleman (Eds.), The Politics of Developing Areas (pp. 3–64), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Angell, R. (1969), Peace on the March: Transnational Participation, volume 19 of New Perspectives in Political Science, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Annan, K. (1998), “The Quiet Revolution,” Global Governance, 4(2): 123–38. Axelrod, R. and Keohane, R. O. (1985), “Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions,” World Politics, 38(1): 226–54. Benson, J. (1975), “The International Network as a Political Economy,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 20(2): 229–49. Burton J. (1984a), Deviance, Terrorism, and War and Global Conflict: The Domestic Sources of International Crisis, Brighton: Wheatsheaf. Burton, J. (1984b), “World Society and Human Needs: The Problem of Conflict Resolution,” (University of Maryland, mimeo). Carayannis, T. and T. Weiss (2021), The “Third United Nations”: How a Knowledge Ecology Helps the UN Think, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Claude, I. Jr. (1956), Swords into Plowshares: The Problems and Prospects of International Organization, New York: Random House. Coate, R. (1982), Global Issue Regimes, New York: Praeger. Coate, R. and J. Rosati (Eds.) (1988), The Power of Human Needs in World Society, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Coate, R. and M. Thiel (Eds.) (2010), Identity Politics in an Age of Globalization, Boulder, CO: First Forum Press/Lynne Rienner. Coate, R., J. Griffin and S. Elliott-Gower (2017), “Interdependence in International Organization and Global Governance” (Oxford: Oxford Research Encyclopedia, International Studies), https://​doi​.org/​ 10​.1093/​acxefore/​9780190846626​.013​.110. Cook, K. (1977), “Exchange and Power in Networks of Interorganizational Relations,” Sociological Quarterly, 18(1): 62–82. Cook, K. and R. Emerson (1978), “Power, Equity, and Commitment in Exchange Networks,” American Sociological Review, 43(5): 721–39. Cook, K., R. Emerson, M. Gillmore and T. Yamagishi (1983), “The Distribution of Power in Exchange Networks: Theory and Experimental Results,” American Journal of Sociology, 89(2): 275–305. Cyert, R. and J. March (1963), A Behavioral Theory of the Firm, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Davies, M. (2002), The Administration of International Organizations: Top Down and Bottom Up, Aldershot: Ashgate. Deutsch, K. (1966), The Nerves of Government, New York: Free Press. Easton, D. (1953), The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science, New York: Alfred Knopf.

58  Handbook on governance in international organizations Elmandjra, M. (1973), The United Nations System: An Analysis, London: Faber and Faber. Emerson, R. (1972). “Exchange Theory, Part II: Exchange Relations and Networks,” Sociological Theories in Progress, 2: 58–87. Feld, W. (1972), Nongovernmental Forces in World Politics, New York: Praeger. Galaskiewicz, J. (1979), Exchange Networks and Community Politics, Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE. Haas, E. (1958), The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces, 1950–1957, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Jacobs, D. (1974), “Dependency and Vulnerability: An Exchange Approach to the Control of Organizations,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 19(1): 45–59. Jacobson, H. (1979), Networks of Interdependence: International Organizations and the Global Political System, New York: Alfred Knopf. Kaiser, K. (1971), “Transnational Politics: Toward a Theory of Multinational Politics,” International Organization, 25: 790–818. Kaplan, M. (1957), System and Process in International Politics, New York: John Wiley & Sons. Keohane, R. (1975), “International Organization and the Crisis of Interdependence,” International Organization, 29(2): 357–65. Keohane, R. (1985), After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Keohane, R. (2002), Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World, London: Routledge. Keohane, R. and J. Nye (Eds.) (1972), Transnational Relations and World Politics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keohane, R. and J. Nye (1974), “Transgovernmental Relations and International Organizations,” World Politics, 27(1): 39–62. Keohane, R. and J. Nye (1977), Power and Interdependence, New York: Longman. Keohane, R. and J. Nye (1987), “Power and Interdependence Revisited,” International Organization, 41(4): 725–53. Krasner, S. (1982), “Regimes and the Limits of Realism: Regimes as Autonomous Variables,” International Organization, 36(2): 497–510. Krasner, S. (Ed.) (1983), International Regimes, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kriesberg, L. (1972), “International Nongovernmental Organizations and Transnational Integration,” International Interactions, 11: 520–25. Lador-Lederer, J. (1963), International Non-governmental Organizations and Economic Entities, Leiden: A. W. Sythoff. Lasswell, H. (1971), A Preview of the Policy Sciences, New York: American Elsevier. Mansbach, R. and J. Vasquez (1981), In Search of Theory: A New Paradigm for Global Politics, New York: Columbia University Press. Mansbach, R., Y. Ferguson and D. Lampert (l 976), The Web of World Politics: Non-state Actors in the Global System, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Mathiason, J. (2007), Invisible Governance: International Secretariats in Global Politics, Bloomfield, CT: Kummarian Press. Milner, H. (2006), “The Assumption of Anarchy in International Relations Theory: A Critique,” in F. Kratochwil and E. Mansfield (Eds.), International Organization and Global Governance: A Reader, 2nd edn. (pp. 4–19), New York: Pearson-Longman. Mitrany, D. (1946), A Working Peace System: An Argument for the Functional Development of International Organizations, London: National Peace Council. Parsons, T. (1951), Toward a General Theory of Action, New York: Harper & Row. Pfeffer, J. and G. Salancik (1978), The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective, New York: Harper & Row. Puchala, D. and R. Coate (1988), The State of the United Nations, Reports and Papers, No. 2, Academic Council on the United Nations System. Puchala, D. and R. Coate (1989), The Challenge of Relevance: The United Nations in a Changing World Environment, Reports and Papers, Academic Council on the United Nations System. Puchala, D., R. Coate and K. Laatikainen (2007), United Nations Politics: International Organization in a Divided World, New York: Prentice-Hall.

Administrative models and modes of governance  59 Puchala, D. and R. Hopkins (1983), “International Regimes: Lessons from Inductive Analysis,” in S. Krasner (Ed.), International Regimes (pp. 61–91), Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Rosenau, J. (1984), “A Pre-theory Revisited: World Politics in an Era of Cascading lnterdependence,” International Studies Quarterly, 28(3): 245–306. Rosenau, J. (1990), Turbulence in World Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ruggie, J. (1975), “International Responses to Technology: Concepts and Trends,” International Organization, 29(3): 557–83. Ruggie, J. (Ed.) (1983), The Antinomies of Interdependence: National Welfare and the International Division of Labor, New York: Columbia University Press. Simon, H. (1964), “On the Concept of Organizational Goals,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 9(1): 1–22. Simon, H. (1965), Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Process in Administrative Organization, New York: Free Press. Skjelsbaek, K. (1971), “The Growth of International Non-governmental Organization in the Twentieth Century,” International Organization, 25(3): 520–52. Strange, S. (1983), “Cave! Hie Dragones: A Critique of Regimes Analysis,” in S. Krasner (Ed.), International Regimes (pp. 337–354), Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Thompson, J. (1967), Organizations in Action, New York: McGraw-Hill. Truman, D. (1951), The Governmental Process, New York: Knopf. United Nations (2018), The Secretary-General Antonio Guterres Speech before the Opening Plenary of the United Nations General Assembly, Doc. N73/PV.6. Weiss, T. and S. Daws (2018), The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weiss, T., T. Carayannis and R. Joly (2009), “The Third United Nations,” Global Governance, 15(1): 123–42. White, L. (1952), International Non-governmental Organizations, New York: Greenwood Press. Wolfers, A. (1959), “The Actors in World Politics,” in W. Fox (Ed.), Theoretical Aspects on International Relations, South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Wolfers, A. (l962), Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Young, O. (1980), “International Regimes: Problems of Concept Formation,” World Politics, 32(2): 331–56. Young, O. (1982a), “Regime Dynamics: The Rise and Fall of international Regimes,” International Organization, 36(2): 277–97. Young, O. (1982b), Resource Regimes: Natural Resources and Social Institutions, Berkeley: University of California Press. Young, O. (1986), “International Regimes: Towards a New Theory of Institutions,” World Politics, 39(1): 104–22.

5. Ideas, experts, and the global economy: feminist contributions to the study of governance in international organizations Andrea M. Collins

INTRODUCTION The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action marked an important milestone in the development of gender-based policies in international organizations (IOs) and in countries around the world. Following the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, representatives from 189 countries affirmed their commitment to the equal rights of women and girls and women’s empowerment. The declaration encouraged states and other actors to mainstream gender across policy spheres, including health, violence against women, armed conflict, and promoting women’s participation in decision-making and institutions (UN 1995). The Platform for Action called on IOs, including but not limited to the UN and its specialized agencies, to take on the work of integrating a gender perspective into policy development across several issue areas. Nearly 30 years have passed. Over those decades, there has been a significant increase in both gender-focused policy in IOs and the incorporation of gender into a range of issue areas, such as international development, environmental governance, trade, and security. Indeed, a significant change has been the adoption of gender considerations in areas that might have been previously considered gender-neutral (Friedman 2003). Gender mainstreaming in policy development has become a standard practice, and gender experts are now frequently employed by international organizations. There has also been greater awareness and understanding of the nature of gender inequality as a cross-cutting issue at the global level. For example, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight gender equality not just as a single goal (SDG #5), but also as a consideration across many of the 16 other SDGs. While there are still many critiques of the SDGs, this more systematic approach to gender equality is a departure from the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which viewed gender equality in more limited terms. For instance, the MDGs did not recognize the human rights dimensions of gender inequality or the indivisibility of human rights from each other (Sen 2019). Some organizations and institutions have continued to develop their understanding of gender inequality and have challenged the idea that women all experience inequality in the same way. International human rights institutions like the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) have made progress recognizing the diversity of women’s experiences, such as the rights of rural women, and promoting women’s social and economic rights in addition to their political rights, which helps to support women’s rights movements around the world (Campbell 2016; Nussbaum 2016). However, there are still gaps in the international recognition of the rights of Indigenous women, gender-non-conforming people, and other intersecting identities. 60

Ideas, experts, and the global economy  61 Despite the increase in the number of organizations that have adopted gender mainstreaming into policy development or hired gender experts, feminist scholars continue to ask critical questions about the ways in which IOs, as well as other global and transnational institutions such as non-governmental organizations and transnational corporations, address questions of gender inequality in practice. In seeking to understand the ways in which gendered power operates within and across institutions, feminist international relations scholars examine the language of gender equality within international organizations, the ways in which gender expertise is regarded within and outside of organizations, and consider what the new dynamics among IOs and other institutions mean for gender and global governance. The operationalization – or not – of these ideas is not merely a matter of semantics. How institutions understand gender inequality can have material impacts on people, communities, and environments. Policies that fail to appreciate the systemic nature of gender inequality and discrimination may ultimately increase women’s work burdens, place undue emphasis on heterosexual couples or certain kinds of family structures, and/or broadly focus on individuals at the expense of solutions that address structural power imbalances (Arora-Jonsson 2011; Bedford 2007; Cornwall, Harrison and Whitehead 2007; Jackson 1993). Given the power wielded by international organizations, we need to consider how organizations institutionalize gender equity norms and put them to work, or not. Although international organizations have heeded the call to incorporate gender into policy development, understanding the experiences of gender experts and how gender expertise is regarded within institutions reveals the challenges of doing so. Feminist scholarship shows us it is important to investigate the meaning of gender-focused ideas as well as to understand the bureaucratic politics that shape outcomes. This field of inquiry also prompts us to consider how policy changes that happen only on paper or only through technocratic practice are not enough to bring about real change in practices on the ground. And when paired with understandings of power in the global economy, feminist scholarship also shows us the importance of asking these questions of private actors and authorities too. How do global private actors engage with gender expertise (if at all)? In this chapter, I briefly review the kinds of inquiry undertaken by feminist scholars in international relations broadly, and specifically with reference to international organizations and non-governmental institutions. I then review several key contributions of feminist scholarship regarding IOs and global governance. First, assessing whether gender mainstreaming has been effective and the differences between technocratic and gender-responsive or gender-transformative policy development. Second, understanding the role of gender expertise and the experiences of gender experts in IOs and policy development. And finally, highlighting the growing influence of non-state actors in policy development and global governance and its implications for gendered power relations. I situate these trends specifically with reference to contemporary issues within global food, land, and agricultural governance; however, these themes are relevant across a range of transnational issues. Feminist scholarship shows us that it is important to investigate the meaning of gender-focused ideas, understand the bureaucratic politics that shape outcomes, and appreciate the micropolitics experienced by gender experts themselves.

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FEMINIST SCHOLARSHIP ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS Feminist International Relations (IR) scholars study the ways in which interstate and transnational politics shape and are shaped by gendered power relations. Feminist scholars argue that the ways in which societies reproduce gendered hierarchies – for example, through the implicit or explicit valuing of masculinity over femininity – has implications for the design and functioning of institutions and the ways in which people are affected by these institutions. Studying these phenomena in IR can involve a range of possibilities: examining the individual or community-based impacts of global organizational politics and policies, connecting local and global politics, considering the ways in which gendered social norms shape key political forums and their functioning, and so on. When studying IOs and their governance, feminist IR scholars often conduct institutional and/or discursive analyses, approaches that are complementary to each other and may be difficult to clearly delineate in practice (True 2010). Institutional analyses might examine the adoption and implementation of policies (e.g. Bedford 2007), the interactions between global bureaucratic institutions and social movements (Friedman 2003), and the adoption and dissemination of human rights in international law (Zwingel 2012; Nussbaum 2016). Discursive analyses often focus on the ways in which feminist and gender-focused language is adopted by international organizations, both in terms of the policies that they create and promote, and in their own internal processes, governance, and expertise (e.g. Griffin 2009; Roberts and Soederberg 2012; Prügl 2017). What language is used to develop gender-focused policies? What is the meaning of these concepts? In what way do these policies produce, reproduce or challenge gendered social norms or assumptions? Poststructural feminist scholarship that focuses on the discourses used by institutions allows us to understand the ways in which these concepts are deployed by institutions and to understand their potential or actual effects in practice. As shown by scholars like Griffin (2009), the gendered language of institutional policies has real world effects: it can affect the design and delivery of institutional programs and policies and perpetuate gendered power relations and disadvantageous social norms. Much feminist research has thus considered the ways in which feminist ideas are coopted by IOs. But, as we will see below, this characterization of how organizations engage with the idea of gender equality obscures the reality of gender experts’ experiences in IOs. Indeed, while the content of ideas matters for the design and implementation of policy, feminist scholarship has gone further to describe the functioning of gender experts and expertise within and across IOs. Feminist scholars examine IOs in part to understand their power and assess the ways in which they do or may address gender inequality. At the same time, feminist scholars are also aware of the ways in which IOs can perpetuate gender inequality or even increase it, or the ways in which they may uphold hierarchies and processes that disadvantage women and/or other marginalized communities (Rai and Waylen 2008; Razavi 2013; Arora-Jonsson 2014). Given the diversity of feminist thought, there are a wide range of feminist analyses that might be undertaken, including understanding where and how patriarchal logics interact and combine with the legacies of colonialism and racial hierarchies. What often underpins the diversity of feminist IR analysis is an appreciation of the gendered dimensions of power that operate in and through international politics.

Ideas, experts, and the global economy  63

GENDER MAINSTREAMING AND WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT One of the most significant changes within international organizations following the 1995 Beijing Declaration was the adoption of gender mainstreaming as part of the policymaking process. Rather than adding women or gender into policies after they were designed or treating gender as a separate and siloed policy issue, the gender mainstreaming approach called on policymakers to consider gender and the differences that men and women might experience all throughout the policy process. In some ways, the shift to gender mainstreaming and away from the paradigms of women and development, which tended to have a limited focus only on women in the global South, expanded the scope of analysis towards a broader awareness of gendered power relations and an understanding of gender inequality as a global problem (True 2010). Often associated with liberal feminist ideas of equality – that is, focusing on individual equality and improving women’s access to and enjoyment of rights and representation – many gender mainstreaming policies focused on women and girls’ access to education and political decision-making. However, feminist scholars highlight the limits and opportunities of gender-focused policy development within international organizations and the development field broadly (Mukhopadhyay 2014). Despite the adoption of gender mainstreaming within UN agencies such as the International Labour Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other organizations, feminist scholars have taken issue with institutional processes that were technocratic in their approach. Institutional approaches that focused primarily on establishing quantitative indicators and assessment – such as focusing on increasing the number of women or gender experts working within an institution or the number of women elected to office – rather than engaging with and addressing the ideas and structures that perpetuate gender inequality – like patriarchal cultural norms and institutions – have often been found wanting. Where institutional policies assume that adding women to existing structures results in meaningful change, they fail to appreciate the systemic problems that perpetuate inequality. Mukhopadhyay (2004: 99) notes that many “gender mainstreaming checklists mention [increasing the number of women in organizations] as an item that has to be ticked off” to assess progress, rather than the incorporation of gender analysis into the actual work of these organizations. Parpart (2009) similarly argues that bringing a select number of women or otherwise marginalized people into decision-making positions doesn’t change the power dynamics that exist. Bringing a few people into these inner circles of power “… leaves proponents of gender equality and women’s empowerment operating in the dark, with little appreciation of the often deeply held, but subtle and persistent resistances to their efforts” (Parpart 2009: 60). Such systemic challenges are not ones that are easily solved by only focusing on models that assume women just need to be included and counted in decision-making processes. The challenges of recognizing feminist goals of systemic change are difficult to capture as quantitative indicators alone, as suggested by policy practitioners in the UN, and need to be considered alongside qualitative assessments. As argued by Razavi (2019: 151), “a feminine presence is not necessarily a feminist one,” and observers should not presume that the addition of feminine bodies to institutions will necessarily translate into systemic change in either the day-to-day practices of organizations or the content of the policies that they create and enact. The widespread adoption of feminist ideas and language in international organizations has prompted concerns about the co-option of feminist language and the token or instrumentalist inclusion of gender expertise. Feminist scholars have found that many institutional policies

64  Handbook on governance in international organizations promoting women’s empowerment rely on neoliberal notions of equality, focusing on women as individuals instead of the broader systemic challenges to women’s empowerment (Parpart 2009). International bureaucracies have embraced the idea of gender equality as “efficient” or “smart economics” – emphasizing women’s participation as good for the economy, rather than as the recognition of intrinsic human rights. For decades, feminist scholars have noted the limits of these “efficiency” arguments for gender equality being made by organizations like the World Bank (Chant and Sweetman 2012). Where feminist researchers emphasized the need to understand the relational dimensions of inequality, these organizations often argue that women’s economic inclusion in existing systems would both empower them and improve economies. Instead, these organizations often use the concept of women’s empowerment to promote the incorporation of women into existing political and economic systems (Chant and Sweetman 2012; Roberts and Soederberg 2012). The issue here, however, is that these policies fail to consider the broader cultural and social obstacles to gender equality in these contexts. Although promoting women’s employment or independent income generation seem like progressive ideas, if organizations do not recommend and communities do not address cultural barriers to women’s control of resources or independent mobility, such changes are unlikely to be truly effective in promoting lasting change. Similarly, policies to promote representational quotas for women in political decision-making can also overlook cultural expectations of women. If there is not concomitant recognition of how women are socialized (e.g. to not speak up in public meetings), gender norms and expectations and behavior (e.g. that women who violate norms of behavior are regarded as deviant), or how violence is used to discipline women that violate social expectations, then adding women to existing decision-making structures might not result in the substantive representation of women in politics. Efforts to add gender quotas to existing land governance structures, as in Tanzania, might not result in substantive changes to decision-making. Women may simply go along with the demands of influential men given the gendered power relations and social ties that are part of land governance (Dancer 2017; Yngstrom 2002). Despite the inclusion of gender-based language in policy in international organizations, the content has often not reflected the realities of gender inequality in practice. Sets of principles for responsible agricultural investment established by the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development that were responding to the increase in land grabbing during and after the 2008 food crisis pointed to empowerment as a key part of agricultural investment. However, these principles often called for more inclusion of women in land and labour markets and connected women’s empowerment to efficiency and productivity (Collins 2016). Closer understanding of agricultural land and labor markets in places targeted for land grabbing – like regions in East Africa – show how women tend to be excluded from land markets. Policies that promote women’s individual land ownership or joint ownership with spouses may overlook the specific local practices – like communal customary land ownership or patrilineal inheritance practices – that contradict the assumptions of individualized statutory land ownership policies and/or result in the concentration of land in the hands of men (Collins 2014, 2016). Moreover, these policies might undermine women’s land access and security during times of economic stress. And where efficiency is prioritized in the roll-out of land schemes, projects led by institutions like the World Bank risk overlooking women (Pedersen and Haule 2013).

Ideas, experts, and the global economy  65 Despite the identified shortcomings in some of these organizational policies, many states and organizations still hold fast to the language of empowerment in land, food and agriculture. In the UN Committee on World Food Security, recent debates about women’s economic empowerment versus rights-based language have emerged. Civil society groups point to the limits of women’s economic empowerment in practice and argue in favor of endorsement of rights-based language and for states to fulfill their existing human rights commitments under institutions like CEDAW (Collins 2022). But empowerment remains the preferred term for many public and private actors: it is flexible in its meaning, and, as we will see below, that can be advantageous for engaging with actors that are not interested in women’s rights and provide opportunities for compromise on the matter of gender equality.

THE ROLE OF GENDER EXPERTS AND EXPERTISE WITHIN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS With the rising interest in gender mainstreaming in international organizations, state governments and even some corporate environments post-1995 (Grosser and Moon 2005), there has also been a rise in the number of gender experts and greater demand for gender expertise within these organizations. This increase in gender experts and expertise poses new questions for feminist scholars of international relations. As noted above, there have been long-term concerns about adding a few gender experts to existing institutions without sufficient or permanent staffing, training, changing broader organizational dynamics, or policy implementation (Mukhopadhyay 2004; Moser and Moser 2005). But more recently, feminist IR scholars also raise nuanced questions about these experts and expertise: What constitutes gender expertise? How is it used within institutions? Who claims to have gender expertise? What are the experiences of these gender experts? Feminist scholarship in these areas highlights the need to examine the dynamics around gender expertise within organizations in addition to studying the content of gender-focused global policy. Moreover, considering the experiences of gender experts themselves illustrates the strategic deployment of feminist concepts, as well as the challenges in doing feminist work across IOs. A focus on gender expertise also offers a new way to conceptualize the dynamics between the inside and outside of organizations: that a focus on expertise offers both a chance to focus on the content of expertise and the tensions between feminist ideas and other institutional pressures in a neoliberal context, as well as a chance to analyze spaces and opportunities for feminist engagement (Kunz and Prügl 2019). Gender Expertise To begin, the debates about the content of gender expertise echo some of the concerns noted above about the tendency for gender mainstreaming to become a technocratic, depoliticized practice. The gender expertise that has emerged in IOs since the 1990s often has been technical, with scholars noting that these technical fixes fell short of the transformational change needed to shift gender inequality in a meaningful way (Parpart 2009; Kunz and Prügl 2019). For instance, gender mainstreaming efforts that relied more strictly on measurement and quotas – counting numbers of women within institutions, measuring girls’ school enrolment and completion rates, etc. – fit within the existing institutional environment (Resurrección and Elmhirst 2020). These approaches tend not to consider structural inequalities – for

66  Handbook on governance in international organizations example, the socio-cultural or economic obstacles that lead to lower school completion rates for girls and women – and can overlook the social and political obstacles to gender inequality. These obstacles might include gender norms and roles, gaps in income and material wealth, gender-based violence and so on, which can be deeply contentious to challenge and difficult to measure. However, feminist scholars note that this dichotomization of feminisms – between institutional coopted feminism versus a “good” or “correct” feminism – is artificial and downplays the experiences of feminist policymakers and the engagement many gender experts have both as activists and as policymakers (Resurrección and Elmhirst 2020). And while there are still many critiques of the ways in which gender and inequality are conceptualized in policy, scholars note the significant changes associated even as more technocratic fields recognize the importance of gender expertise. For example, Kunz et al. (2019: 13) observe that knowledge from gender experts in more technical fields like science, technology, and environmental research, are providing the kinds of evidence required to show that women’s inclusion has positive impacts, including “better climate adaptation and mitigation, water and sanitation management, disaster recovery and reconstruction and to some extent, better ‘green investments.’” Moreover, although the critiques about technocratic and depoliticized feminist language raise important issues, scholars likewise point out that depoliticized language is not without its advantage. Indeed, less political feminist language may open new spaces for the discussion of gender issues. Arora-Jonsson and Sijapati (2017: 309) illustrate how some discussion of gender issues – even if depoliticized or failing to engage more broadly with feminist critiques – can still “interrupt” global discourses on sustainability to create new dialogue. Moreover, the pressures to mainstream gender in more technical fields like environmental and forestry management means that more than one person becomes responsible for gender analysis. This depoliticized language does not come without a cost, however. As Arora-Jonsson and Sijapati (2017) also found, discussions of gender in the global policy context tend to become abstracted from the experiences of people, meaning that specific attention to power relations can be lost. They also found that gender tends to be used in instrumental ways, and that there were issues with the uptake of intersectional analysis, qualitative data collection, and participatory approaches. In addition, they found that gender experts who want to secure their position in these organizations might end up choosing to support ideas that they otherwise would challenge from outside of the organization. For example, in the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), “the new emphasis on gender in CIFOR has been focused on ‘gender’ out there rather than to question gender or power within the organization” (Arora-Jonsson and Sijapati 2017: 322). This opens new questions about how institutions and their experts engage – or not – with key ideas around gender inequality. Gender Experts These questions about how gender expertise is used and regarded within organizations open new lines of investigation about how gender experts themselves operate within international organizations. Early scholarship about feminist social movements in international relations, and specifically their engagement with international institutions, once fashioned a divide between so-called “insider” and “outsider” engagement. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, this characterization of those working inside and outside of state and intergovernmental bureaucracies was sometimes a useful frame of reference for understanding different

Ideas, experts, and the global economy  67 aspects of feminist advocacy in global governance. Using an insider/outsider dichotomy could describe the various kinds of feminist activism in global environmental governance (Bretherton 2003). The “femocrats” or “insiders” could do feminist work within these institutions, translating feminist ideas into institutional action, perhaps using gender mainstreaming as their guide. Such actors might work as the “Trojan horses” that could sneak feminist ideals past reluctant gatekeepers of international relations to fashion change at the global level (Kunz and Prügl 2019: 5). At the same time, “outsiders” – those advocates that work outside the intergovernmental system, and more closely engaged with social movements – would agitate for structural and political reforms to gender inequalities. However, scholars like True (2003) warned that there were likely to be constraints under such a model of feminist engagement. Absent a sustained close connection with global civil society and social movements, feminists that enter institutional bureaucracies – “femocrats” – would likely face constraints in their pushes for social change (True 2003: 383). In her view, insiders and outsiders would need to maintain a connection to advance meaningful change. And indeed, more contemporary research suggests that not only are there connections between insiders and outsiders, but that often such labels misrepresent the fluidity of professional roles and the ways in which gender experts move between institutions. While the insider/outsider dichotomy has been useful for understanding the various modes of feminist engagement in international relations, increasingly scholars are noting the blurring of the line between insider and outsider in actual practice. And to understand these processes, scholars are studying the experiences of gender experts themselves and the ways in which they navigate institutional settings. The emerging research on gender experts in IOs focuses on their experiences within international organizations and on the realities of their career paths that often take them in and out of these organizations. While some have argued that the incorporation of gender expertise and the hiring of gender experts can be a cynical exercise to tick off the gender mainstreaming checklist (Mukhopadhyay 2004), more recent feminist scholarship prompts a closer examination of the experiences of gender experts themselves (Ferguson 2015). Greater attention to the nuances of individual gender experts’ experiences unsettles the insider/outsider dichotomy and deepens our understanding of gender-focused policy work within these organizations. For example, Altan-Olcay’s (2020: 1271) interviews with gender experts reveal that many of them are strategic in their deployment of certain concepts, whether by simplifying concepts or using instrumentalist arguments. “Some saw their institutional roles as an opportunity to open up spaces so that others on the outside could more easily demand rights. For others … using institutionally recognizable frames was a strategy to carve out a space for gender expertise, even if the space had to be constantly renegotiated and reasserted” (Altan-Olcay 2020: 1284). And in dealing with diplomats from countries that oppose gender equality, instrumental or ambiguous phrasing could lead to the acceptance of at least some language, like the concept of empowerment. This echoes other research detailing gender experts’ experiences working in organizations like the World Bank (Bedford 2007). Understanding these negotiations also sheds light on why gender experts may not see themselves as the “insiders” that scholarly analysis might assume, and their own motivations to move between international organizations and advocacy. Despite the concern from scholars that gender experts might represent a superficial effort on the part of institutions to incorporate gender into their work and those experts themselves might be coopted into these environments, the reality is more complex. Rather than becoming institutional “insiders” disconnected from

68  Handbook on governance in international organizations broader movements, gender experts reveal the ways in which they remain “outsiders” when confronted with colleagues or diplomats who remain opposed to gender equality or the language of women’s rights. There is a clear need for gender expertise in food, land, and agricultural governance. As I have argued, a depoliticized or technical approach to gender in the context of food, land, and agriculture can overlook the complex gendered relations of food systems. Gender-based analysis that can account for everyday experiences, including economic, socio-cultural, and political dimensions, are better placed to solve complex issues related to food production, land ownership and so on (Collins 2018). But incorporating such qualitative assessments within the technical fields of food and agriculture can be difficult. Elmhirst, Resurrección and Park (2020) delve into these challenges in conversation with Clara Mi Young Park, a feminist political ecologist working within the FAO. They note the ways in which she must compromise within policy development, and the broader tendency for technical expertise in agriculture to be more highly valued. Moreover, the research reveals how persuasive the business case for gender remains within the FAO while the culture around gender and policy development has not changed much. Understanding how organizations engage with gender expertise and gender experts themselves thus remains an important area for future analysis. As international organizations and other transnational institutions attempt to address global issues such as food insecurity and climate change, there is a need not only for technical expertise, but a wide-ranging engagement with the gendered dimensions of these issues and their potential solutions. As we will see below, this means considering the work of existing or potential private partners in the global governance of these issues.

PRIVATE ACTORS AND GENDER POLITICS While the shifts prompted by gender mainstreaming have changed how international organizations engage with gendered ideas and expertise, we also need to be more aware of the changing landscape of global governance. International relations scholars have increasingly advocated for the consideration of the roles that corporate actors play in governance, especially agribusiness conglomerates (Bexell 2012; Bull and McNeill 2007; Clapp and Fuchs 2009; Ruggie 2004). Since 2000, the UN has endorsed partnerships with the private sector, driving increases in the number of public–private partnerships (PPPs) at multiple scales of activity. These partnerships prompt scholars to reconsider the power relations between these various actors, and how PPPs coexist with other global governance arrangements. This raises new questions about the extent to which private actors and arrangements like PPPs take on the challenges of gender equality and how these ideas are put into practice. New lines of inquiry need to examine the various configurations of state and non-state actors, how they interact with each other, and the extent to which they adopt and implement gender-equitable policies. And as mentioned, several fields – like climate change and food security – may continue to be largely technocratic in practice, presenting new obstacles for feminist concepts that draw attention to power relations and structures of inequality. As a result, the efforts to bring gender politics into domains that are not typically considered to be related to gender issues may be resisted or, as in the experiences of gender experts, compromised or amended to fit the existing agenda.

Ideas, experts, and the global economy  69 Feminist scholars in global governance and political economy have been skeptical about the role of the private sector and PPPs in advancing gender equality on a global scale. Like the “smart economics” approach to gender equality noted above, the “business case” for gender equality is also often made by private companies (Roberts 2014). The core of this idea is the instrumentalist argument that gender equality will have positive effects on profitability or competitiveness, as well as economic benefits for women and their families. And like other approaches to the operationalization of feminist ideas in institutions, the “business case” for feminism – or as Roberts (2014) calls it “transnational business feminism” – also fails to engage with the political and social structures that are at work. In failing to appreciate the broader structures of inequality, these ideas can reproduce the existing macroeconomic system and its existing distribution of labour and not result in meaningful changes in practice. Within this broader context of how private business actors regard gender equality, some research has already started to consider how PPPs involving international organizations embrace the challenge of gender equality. Prügl and True (2014) examined several transnational PPPs that partnered powerful and high-profile corporations with public sector partners like the UN, the EU, and others with gender equality as a specific goal. They find that the logic of gender equality being good for economic growth often underpins these initiatives and that there is a lack of reflexivity, such as a consideration of one’s own power position or considering women outside of leadership ranks. They connect this lack of reflection to bigger questions about gender, power, and political economy, such as unpaid care work, social benefits, or whether women’s descriptive representation leads to more substantive representation of women’s issues in the work of these organizations. For example, Prügl and True review the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) created by the UN Global Compact – a UN partnership with thousands of corporate partners – and the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM, now merged into UN Women). Developing the WEPs involved multistakeholder engagement with corporate leaders and resulted in commitments from hundreds of chief executive officers supporting these principles (UN Global Compact, n.d.). But as Prügl and True (2014: 1152) note, the underlying assumption is that “employment by corporations … is inherently empowering, leaving aside the question of decent work and the devaluing of work traditionally carried out by women in feminized sectors of the economy.” These business partnerships create goals and initiatives that reflect the values of participants and may shape understandings of gendered power relations by those who subscribe to such partnerships or guidelines. Moreover, they may overlook the realities of work within and adjacent to corporate environments. As a result, such partnerships require broader evaluation and assessment to consider the values that are articulated and reflected and the ways in which they shape the conduct of individuals (Prügl and True 2014). Research like this that examines explicitly the gender-focused content of PPPs reveals important considerations about the priorities of these organizations and the uptake of feminist ideas into neoliberal spaces. These projects further highlight the importance of private corporate organizational governance and commitments to gender equality. Where international organizations work with national or multinational corporate actors and recommend more action through PPPs, it is worth considering governance and policy within corporate organizations too. There also needs to be more examination of the collaborations between private actors, states, and IOs, and the implications for the communities affected. This is especially important on issues like agriculture, climate change, and environment, where the potentially

70  Handbook on governance in international organizations gendered effects are not widely understood, but the technical expertise of corporate actors is routinely sought out. For these reasons, it is important to apply such analyses to partnerships that are not centrally about gender inequality as well. If we understand gender inequality as a structural issue that is influenced by various social, political, and economic factors, we can see how many aspects of economies are gendered. For example, when considering a global issue like food insecurity, we can highlight the gender relations of food provisioning, divisions of labor in farming and/or food preparation, access to agricultural land and resources, access to markets, and so on. These factors will further be affected by national and global economic dynamics the availability of social benefits, levels of education, and so on. Transnational PPPs in areas such as food and agriculture provide a good example of the need to extend gender-based analysis into more technical issues of governance. As one example, the G8 (now G7) New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN) launched in 2012 was designed as a global partnership between the club of G8 countries, 10 African countries and dozens of global and locally based private partners. The partnership entailed donor commitments from the G8, policy commitments from the African countries to facilitate trade in food and agriculture, and letters of intent from private partners to expand operations, invest in new infrastructure, and build local partnerships. The goal orientation of the NAFSN Cooperation Frameworks focused on market-led development through expanded agricultural production of crops for export, new agricultural technologies, and the relaxation of trade and investment barriers (Collins 2017). While the G8 is not itself an international organization with an established bureaucracy, this initiative nonetheless entailed coordination across 18 countries in close partnership with dozens of private actors. The project was controversial: scholars and activists noted that the G8 NAFSN continued the neoliberalization of food and agriculture without recognition of the broader causes of hunger and food insecurity. Private actors in food and agriculture, like in other policy areas, exert a great degree of power in the food system via their structural power and control of agricultural value chains. Scholars expressed concern about threats to local livelihoods, and the further facilitation of “land grabbing” (Sulle and Hall 2013). Shifts to large-scale farming with a focus on increasing agricultural production for export like that proposed in the NAFSN agreements have been criticized on two major fronts: first, for its threat to local biodiversity where the focus becomes the mass production of cash crops; and second, for its tendency to focus on production for export rather than a closer focus on the dynamics of local production and the material and nutritional needs of domestic populations (Kimura 2013; Patel et al. 2014). We can also examine these political and economic realities of food and agriculture through a gendered lens. Research on the development of corporate agribusiness and the privatization of agricultural investment suggests that women frequently bear the brunt of dramatic economic transformation (Daley 2011; Elson 1994). Moreover, the encouragement of large-scale corporate involvement, including the introduction of new agricultural technologies, can be expensive and require additional skills development for local labourers and farmers. These costs and other social barriers may prove to be hurdles for smallholders, subsistence farmers, and marginalized groups in rural communities, especially poorer rural women. Though the NAFSN pledged to “act upon the critical role” played by smallholders and women in its initial roll out (The White House 2012), a closer look at the goals of the G8 NAFSN Partnership Frameworks and the general orientation of these projects suggests oth-

Ideas, experts, and the global economy  71 erwise. In my own examination of the G8 NAFSN Partnership Frameworks, I found that the goals of the G8 NAFSN overlooked key issues related to gender inequality in the agricultural sector: land ownership, gender roles and agricultural labor, and gender gaps in income and political representation (Collins 2017). Only when civil society groups agitated for more engagement on gender issues did such issues become part of the agenda. The result was a PPP framework that nominally claimed to benefit women and girls, but ultimately did not address those needs. Given the present and growing influence of private actors in global governance, PPPs need to be considered within the context of gender inequality. Although fields like food and agriculture may seem predominantly technical, the advocacy of feminist, peasant, and Indigenous rights organizations emphasize the deeply political nature of the right to food and food sovereignty (Conway 2018). Although many private actors embrace the language of gender equality within their own organizations and in partnership with public actors, we must examine what this means in practice. How various actors define gender equality matters. How gender expertise is regarded and how gender experts are treated within institutions also matters. Meaningful engagement with the diverse experiences of people based on their gender identity requires more than adding “women” or “empowerment” to business as usual.

CONCLUSION Feminist scholarship raises important questions about the ways in which gender shapes contemporary global politics. Over the past several decades, feminist advocacy has had a tremendous impact on how organizations engage with the concept of gender equality. Yet as we have seen, the uptake of these ideas can be uneven or superficial. And organizational failure to take seriously the project of gender equality could further perpetuate inequalities, even when well-intentioned. Feminist scholarship shows us that it is important to investigate the meaning of gender-focused ideas, understand the bureaucratic politics that shape outcomes, and even appreciate the micropolitics experienced by gender experts themselves. Understanding how organizations approach the question of gender is multifaceted. It entails attention not just how gender equality is defined, but also how it is regarded in organizations. The key is to be able to recognize that matters of gender inequity cannot simply be addressed with technocratic approaches or inclusion in existing processes without a broader appreciation of systemic power relations. This is evident both in the various organizational policy areas, but also within organizations themselves. Gender experts must navigate between worlds, and report needing to strategize when working within IOs. Gender experts – through the research done about and with them – reveal that they are often strategic in their choices. Gender experts and advocates continue to press for change and alternatives to current practices. Many of these alternatives are rooted in feminist research and knowledge as well as the practices of peoples around the world. For instance, feminist economic alternatives are being promoted by advocacy groups to highlight the need to support communities through more social supports (Noble et al. 2020). Social movements continue to call for more attention to women’s rights and international rights commitments in the context of food sovereignty (Conway 2018). While there have been many critiques of gender mainstreaming and more technocratic approaches to policy work in international organizations, this work has none-

72  Handbook on governance in international organizations theless made important inroads and created new opportunities for institutional and ideational change. But we also must be attentive to the role of private actors. Their influence is rising in the governance and management of global challenges, and we need to consider how they grapple with notions of gender equality. How is gender expertise engaged (if at all)? The expanding role of private actors necessitates new analyses to understand the nature of corporate power in global governance. As policymakers respond to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are many organizations that are looking for new solutions, including the reorganization of global policy spaces. At the time of writing, there is a new push for “multi-stakeholderism” across several areas, but particularly in global food governance. This approach calls for more participants in decision-making processes. While this seems like a positive development, experts and activists caution that a focus on stakeholders broadly without considering those who are most impacted might sideline vulnerable people and favor more powerful actors. Indeed, where there are calls to sideline multilateralism in food governance in favor of multi-stakeholderism, there is the risk of further excluding people that have fought for inclusion in existing multilateral forums. I would extend this caution further to include the ways in which multi-stakeholderism in policy processes might continue to entrench gender inequalities in food governance. Scholars need to pay attention to the creep of private actors into the realms historically governed by international organizations and what this means for the policy spaces that have been created for gender equality. But beyond these issue areas, scholars and practitioners also need to consider what is needed for the effective promotion of gender equality. This includes more direct engagement both with gender experts, but also the lived experience of women, trans-, non-binary, and gender-non-conforming people. This work moves away from technocratic approaches that might rely on quantitative data to in-depth qualitative data on personal experience and working with both kinds of data. This should also entail broader recognition of the intersection of gender discrimination with other modes of systemic discrimination and oppression, such as racism, homophobia, transphobia, colonialism, and ableism. These dynamics matter both for the content of gender expertise as well as the experiences of gender experts themselves. It also matters as international organizations and private actors engage with social movements and advocates. Scholars and practitioners need to consider the connections between these intersecting inequalities and the contemporary issues of our time: pandemics and global health, food security, climate change, and more. The challenges of our time are multifaceted and require serious attention to the gendered experiences therein. It is imperative that the gendered dimensions of these challenges be central to intergovernmental responses, rather than minimized or marginalized.

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PART II WHO GOVERNS INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, AND HOW?

States and the governance of international organizations

6. Mexico’s advocacy to consider the human implications of the international monetary and financial systems at the Bretton Woods conference Cynthia Leal

DID BRETTON WOODS, AS A GLOBAL GOVERNANCE INSTITUTION, WORK FOR THE COMMON GOOD? IS THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY DECOLONIZED? This chapter details the ways in which the Mexican Delegation advocated for making the international monetary system of the postwar world more flexible and inclusive. This advocacy can be seen in Mexico’s proposals on silver, earmarked gold, and on voting changes in the rates of member currencies, as well as on changing the gold parities of currencies. Additionally, Mexico advocated for economic development through its proposals for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), both for including the goal of development alongside that of reconstruction in the purpose of the bank, as well as questioning the veto power of the lending countries. All these proposals demonstrated Mexico’s advocacy to consider the human implications of international political economy at the Bretton Woods Conference. In the Proceedings and Documents of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, from July 1st to the 22nd of 1944, issued by the US Department of State in 1948 (p. vi), it is possible to see the aims of multilateral cooperation to achieve international peace and prosperity: Every country realized that the effectiveness of its own economic policies depended to a considerable extent upon removing the monetary disorders and obstructions that stifled world trade in the 1930s. At the same time, every country represented at Bretton Woods was concerned with protecting its own interests. In this atmosphere of enlightened self-interest the United Nations found the basis for their mutual advantage.

This excerpt relates how the Bretton Woods Agreements were born as part of the new United Nations system, and how in turn this system was a balanced power architecture. In this new international structure, countries and regions agreed to a power-sharing system to achieve peace and prosperity for their own interests. In this way, the Bretton Woods system was created within a multilateral international order. Mexico’s proposals at the Bretton Woods Conference regarding both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the IBRD presented a vision for a more inclusive and fairer world that would consider the human implications of the international economic system. They went to the core of the international monetary and financial, and thus multilateral, postwar order. They were directly related to the inefficiencies and unfairness that the global South would 78

Mexico’s advocacy at the Bretton Woods conference  79 endure due to the costs of the gold standard and the lack of representativeness in the quotas for voting on the exchange rates. These quotas reflected a majoritarian system as opposed to a multilateral one. The three largest countries, the United States (with 31.3 percent of the quotas), the United Kingdom with the British Commonwealth (27.2 percent of the quotas), and the Soviet Union (13.6 percent of the quotas), had together 72.1 percent of the quotas. The “Western” block led by the United States and the United Kingdom had 58.5 percent of the quotas. In contrast, Latin America, with 19 of the 44 countries attending the Conference, had only 5.6 percent of the quotas. European countries (seven, without Denmark which had not confirmed its membership to the IMF) had 11.9 percent of the quotas. Two Asian countries had 6.5 percent of the quotas, considering China alone 6.25 percent. Three East European countries had 3.5 percent of the quotas, and two Middle Eastern countries had 0.375 percent of the quotas. The inefficiencies that Mexico foresaw before the adoption of this international monetary system were undervalued or ignored by the most powerful countries represented at the Conference, and by the status quo academic research on this topic. The mechanism of relying on gold lay in wrong assumptions, as George Halm argued at that time: The gold standard game presupposes that the “member countries” are “on gold.” Their monetary authorities are willing to buy and to sell gold at a fixed price in unlimited amounts. The national monetary units are defined in terms of weight units of gold, and through the medium of gold the exchange rates are fixed. Under these conditions, gold is the world’s common unit of value, an international means of payment, and a monetary reserve of international liquidity. (Halm 1945, p. 11)

Halm recognized the problematic assumptions of the international use of the gold standard. The first assumption was that all member countries had the same access to gold. The second was that the national monetary authorities of all countries were able and interested to buy and sell gold, and moreover, at a fixed price in unlimited amounts. The third assumption was that the exchange rates could be “fixed.” Under all these conjectures, gold was being considered as a unit of value, means of payment, and monetary reserve of international liquidity for the world. These expectations from the most powerful countries would prove untenable.

CURRENT STATE OF THE LITERATURE VERSUS ARCHIVAL AND HISTORICAL EVIDENCE Mexico’s Proposals at Bretton Woods Sidelined Despite history having shown the Mexican Delegation’s proposals at the Bretton Woods Conference to be prescient, the literature acknowledges only some parts of Mexico’s proposals regarding the use of silver in the monetary system and the promotion of economic development, rather than acknowledging these contributions for an international economic system that would consider in concrete ways the human implications of economic decisions. For instance, “Mexico’s advocacy to include silver in the gold standard system” is understated as Mexico would have tried to increase the value of this metal, instead of looking at how the gold-prize was going to increase with the gold standard worldwide and its annihilation of other metals not only for currency but even for collateral for loans. In Eduardo Suárez’s words:

80  Handbook on governance in international organizations As for Mexico, her position is clear and definite. During the past few years of tribulations, Mexico has, of her own accord, accepted, in unlimited amounts, an ounce of gold for every thirty-five dollars due her. She has done so in spite of the hardships of inflation, and even realizing to the fullest extent the risk involved in these transactions, inasmuch as no nation has ever committed itself to buy that gold from Mexico at the same price she has paid for it. Mexico has done all this mainly because of her full unselfish devotion to a higher cause: helping her Allies to win this war. Mexico and other silver-using countries are entitled to expect in return for their cooperation to maintain the present price of gold the assistance of other countries to stabilize the price of silver at a just and fair level.1

Mexico was accepting $35 dollars per ounce of gold in support of the Allied countries, but Mexico claimed that it could not continue doing so forever. It is important also to acknowledge that this price was the same established by the United States since 1934 after the devaluation. In Alfred E. Eckes words: Effectively, the American dollar emerged from World War II as the only currency freely convertible, for Washington indicated it would continue the prewar Treasury policy of buying and selling gold at $35 per ounce, the price established after devaluation in 1934. In unilaterally promising to redeem its currency for gold, the United States accepted an obligation not specifically required under the fund’s articles of agreement … Washington elected to support the dollar in this way so that gold would continue to serve as an international standard of account and as an instrument for settling balances. But the value of gold depended on the dollar, not the reverse. The United States accepted no permanent obligation to buy and sell gold, and at any time the Treasury might have elected to buy and sell sterling or some other reserve currency. (Eckes 1975, pp. 226–7)

Mexico’s proposals regarding silver were basic common sense and international justice. However, the authors who studied Mexico’s participation at the Bretton Woods Conference summarized it as follows: ● For “a statement by the conference requiring the Fund to determine the feasibility of using silver collaterally with gold for the settlement of international balances” (Blum 1967, pp. 265–6). ● “The Mexicans were desperate that silver would play a part in the world’s new economic system (no prizes for guessing their biggest precious-metal export)” (Conway 2014, p. xi). ● To be advocating for “silver to be recognized as a monetary reserve alongside gold” (Helleiner 2006, p. 961). ● “Existing histories often mention how some Latin American governments led by Mexico secured a vague statement that further study should be undertaken of silver’s role within the international monetary system” (Helleiner 2014, p. 160). ● “Mexico, putting itself forward as the spokesperson for lesser nations, occupied a key position in US–Latin American dialogues (with the Mexican Minister of Finance Eduardo Suárez leading Commission III on ‘Other Means of International Financial Cooperation’)” (Scott-Smith and Rofe 2017, p. 8). ● For “silver to be considered, next to gold, as a monetary metal: Mr. Suárez stated that ‘a large part of humanity will continue to believe in silver’ and said that the problem was ‘small in economic dimensions, but large in human implications’” (Van Dormael 1978, pp. 166, 178). Mexico’s proposals have been partially misunderstood by these authors. First, they consider just one of its four main proposals. Second, Mexico presented that specific proposal so that the

Mexico’s advocacy at the Bretton Woods conference  81 International Monetary Fund (IMF) would accept silver as a monetary reserve alongside gold, and that this reserve would serve as collateral in international loans. Third, Mexico explained that the silver-producing countries were absorbing nationally the costs for the international community’s use of the gold standard, and thus they were paying the opportunity costs of their own development goals because they could use that money for their domestic infrastructure projects. The Mexican Delegation explained that to stabilize the price of gold internationally, the silver-producing countries were absorbing the costs of bearing the gold standard: by minting and melting silver, as well as by buying and selling this metal in the international markets, whenever there were economic improvements and recessions. In doing so, as the producer of 40 percent of silver in the world,2 Mexico was absorbing the costs of maintaining the gold standard because silver became more expensive as a metal than as a currency. This fact had a very important implication: Mexico was respecting the exchange rate of gold and silver established by the United States, in order to support its allies during World War II, but Mexico also was stating that it could not continue absorbing the costs of maintaining this monetary system forever. Thus, if in addition to all these costs, Mexico had to convert its monetary reserves from silver to gold in order to comply with the initial draft of the Bretton Woods Agreements, this burden would be inefficient, unfair, and practically unfeasible. Thus, the main contribution of this research is that it acknowledges Mexico’s contributions to the international economic system, whereas most of the literature about Bretton Woods has neglected them. Challenges of the Most Inclusive and Progressive Literature Not only are the claims of the Mexican Delegation not discussed in depth in the literature about Bretton Woods, but the current literature at times also misrepresents both the advocacy happening at the time, and the history, principles, and values that were guiding Mexico’s proposals. Thus, the Conference and its place in establishing some of the mechanisms and organizations of global governance is not represented accurately because the literature overlooks what Mexico’s proposals would have meant for a more inclusive international economic system. There are two important exceptions that aim to break these barriers: Eric Helleiner’s (2014) Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods and Christy Thornton’s (2021) Revolution in Development. Helleiner’s analysis will be considered in a later section; here, a number of challenges raised by Thornton’s valuable contribution are mentioned to help us frame our understanding of Mexico’s role and position. The first such challenge is seen in the introduction (p. 1) and conclusion (p. 196) of Thornton’s (2021) study: Who governs the global economy? Who establishes the agenda, makes the decisions, and structures the institutions that set the rules of the game? According to the conventional wisdom, such governance has been largely the purview of the most powerful nations and empires in the world. Rich countries set the rules, and the poorer and weaker ones are compelled to follow them. In this story,

82  Handbook on governance in international organizations the idea that a country like Mexico could influence the governance of the global economy seems a dubious proposition. … [this book] demonstrates that in fact the US officials who designed the postwar multilateral system had been engaging for decades with demands from the poorer, weaker, debtor countries of the world.

This introduction presents a Mexican scholar with the question, what is “a country like Mexico”? For example, Mexican citizens have earned three Nobel Prizes, including the Peace Prize awarded to Alfonso García Robles in 1982 for his “work for disarmament and nuclear weapon-free zones” and ongoing advocacy against the nuclear arms race during the Cold War.3 However, Thornton’s study mentions only that he was Mexico’s ambassador to the United Nations and was part of a group of people who wrote a speech in a specific moment of time. By contrast, she highlights the role of other characters of less historical importance such as Porfirio Muñoz Ledo – a Mexican politician, not a diplomat – in several pages,4 guided by her archival findings on books written by Muñoz Ledo himself in which he depicts himself “as a sort of Mexican Henry Kissinger” (Thornton 2021, p. 169). Regarding devaluations and debt crises, it is worth noting that many countries faced economic crises after 1929. That was one of the causes of World War II in Europe. Mexico was part of the global system that was affected by the stock market crash of 1929, which contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. In addition, Mexico indeed fell into default during the Mexican Revolution, just as the United States and France did during their own civil wars. That said, Mexico remained important geopolitically and could be seen instead as a notable exception to the label of “the poorer, weaker, debtor countries.”5 The second challenge relates to Mexico’s international role in the twentieth century, and what the Mexican elites said in the archives three decades after Bretton Woods. Thornton links the policies of President Luis Echeverría Álvarez (1970–76) to those of the Mexican public servants in the 1930s and 1940s: They argued for new multilateral agreements, outlined innovative new international institutions, and fought during crucial global negotiations for both the rights of the poorer states and the duties of the richer ones. This fight, waged over more than five decades, was Mexico’s revolution in development.6 If the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States represented the culmination of Mexico’s long “revolution in development,” however, perhaps it also marked its last gasp. A new international economic order was, indeed, on the horizon, but not the one that Echeverría or Muñoz Ledo had envisioned.7

These observations seem to suggest that Mexico’s advocacy for the right causes in the international field began with the implementation of the reforms that took place after the Mexican Revolution and ended with the Echeverría government. However, the government narrative became more misaligned from Mexican reality as the twentieth century passed. Mexican historians would not argue that Echeverría tried to “export” the Mexican Revolution to the world or that he shared the values of the presidential administrations of the 1930s and 1940s. Rather, Echeverría tried to legitimize his government given its disapproval by the Mexican people, as explained by Rafael Velázquez and Salvador González Cruz. This lack of legitimacy was given by the authoritarian political system, but especially because Echeverría was the Secretary of the Interior in 1968 and ordered the “Tlatelolco Killing” of students on October 2nd. He also ordered another killing of students in 1971, when he was already president. No president in the 1930s would have ordered the killing of students. On the contrary,

Mexico’s advocacy at the Bretton Woods conference  83 Cárdenas’ most fruitful policies consisted in massive public education programs, even in the most rural places. Octavio Paz, Nobel Laureate in Literature, resigned as Ambassador of Mexico in India as a means of expressing his opposition to the Mexican government at the time of the Tlatelolco killing. Thus, it is hard to sustain the idea that there is a coherent string between these two historic points in Mexican history. Furthermore, there is no point of comparison between the Echeverría (1970–76) and the José Lopez Portillo (1976–82) presidential administrations, and the social reforms put in place in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. The latter was the epoch of creation of institutions at the Mexican people’s service, by officials with strong convictions of social justice such as Plutarco Elías Calles, Lázaro Cárdenas, Manuel Gómez Morín, José Vasconcelos, Jaime Torres Bodet, and Octavio Paz, among many others. By contrast, Echeverría and López Portillo had the most serious economic crises that the country had seen since the end of the Mexican Revolution, with high levels of inflation. Enrique Cárdenas, commenting on the chapter written by Carlos Bazdresch and Santiago Levy, explains that these two periods of Mexican history are completely different: The authors also consider that in contemporary Mexico there were two episodes of populist polices: Cárdenas and Echeverría-Lopez Portillo. I have no doubt that they are right, but I would only mention that Cárdenas was careful not to ignore the macro constraints that his successors did. During the most expansionist years of the Cárdenas period, the fiscal deficit was about 1% or 2% of GDP. During the Echeverría period the deficit reached 10% of GDP, whereas during the López Portillo administration, the fiscal deficit reached a peak of almost 17% of GDP. Naturally, Echeverría and López Portillo would love to be placed in the same package as Cárdenas, but I do not think that should be the case. (Cárdenas 1991, p. 260)

Thus, the current chapter shares the perspective of Bardesch, Levy, and Cárdenas: the Mexican archives – written as they were by the official party – might give the impression that Echeverría and López Portillo belong to the same historical period as Lázaro Cárdenas, Manuel Ávila Camacho, and the Bretton Woods Conference, which is not the case. Another author who makes evident the disassociation of Echeverría’s policies with those of the 1940s is Daniel Cosío Villegas, who was part of Mexico’s Delegation at Bretton Woods since he was Director of the Department of Economic Studies of the Bank of Mexico at the time. Enrique Krauze synthesizes Cosío Villegas’ writings in the 1970s about Echeverría: I frequently visited Mr. Daniel Cosío Villegas since 1971 … One day he told me: “I have decided to go into exile,” showing me the filthy libel that the Echeverría government had circulated against him. But he was not intimidated. He wrote The Personal Style of Governing, which sold over a hundred thousand copies. He portrayed the president as the king of the fable: naked in his irresponsible and erratic decisions, his ideological closure, his monomania, his megalomania, his dreams of world leadership, his physiological need to preach and his intolerance: “Echeverría is convinced that, perhaps like no other revolutionary president, he literally goes out of his way to do good for Mexico and for Mexicans. From there he jumps to believe that whoever criticizes his procedures actually doubts or denies the goodness and cleanliness of his intentions.” The book Crítica del Poder [Criticism of Power] collects the texts of Mr. Daniel in that final part of his life. It is needed to reissue it. In the last issue of “Plural” (July 1976) a posthumous essay by Cosío Villegas on the Echeverría succession appeared. It contains this phrase: “Because of his insatiable thirst for power and his personal temperament, Echeverría has ended up believing himself to be a Messiah, that is, the one chosen by God to reveal the Truth to the world.”8

84  Handbook on governance in international organizations To be completely clear, this chapter shares Cosío Villegas’ and Enrique Krauze’s perspective as well. Mexican policies and statesmen at the time of the Bretton Woods Conference were radically different from those of the Echeverría period, and it was strongly stated during the Echeverría administration by one of the Mexican Delegates to Bretton Woods. Thus, the Mexican archives are historically inaccurate, and Echeverría was not trying to promote and/or export the Mexican Revolution, unfortunately. The third challenge is one of historical timing. Whilst arguing for acknowledging Mexico’s important role in international relations, it is not always recognized that Mexico began advocating for defending the sovereignty of countries (political, juridical, and economic) since the proclamation of its independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century. The guiding principle of Mexican foreign policy for defending its sovereignty at the Bretton Woods Conference can be found in Mexico’s history. In the document Feelings of the Nation, José María Morelos y Pavón, leader of the insurgency against Spanish colonial rule, presented on September 14, 1813, to the National Constituent Congress in Chilpancingo the proclamation of independence which began with: “America is free and independent of Spain and all other nations, governments, or monarchies.”9 This ideal was carried out through the nineteenth century by Mexico, and was also defended at Bretton Woods, where the Mexican Delegation stated: It is because Mexico believes sincerely in not doing unto others what she would not wish to have done unto her, that we insist that this Commission approves a formula whereby due respect be paid to the sovereign rights of small and large nations alike.10

The principle of respecting other countries’ rights as Mexico would expect to be respected is established in the Mexican Constitution, Article 89, section X. This principle was defended by President Benito Juárez in 1867. When the Mexican Republic was reinstalled after the French intervention, he proclaimed: “between individuals as between nations, respect for the rights of others means peace.” This phrase represents the values of self-determination, non-intervention, and legal equality of states, as fundamental Mexican diplomatic principles – and they were not born in the historical period of the twentieth century. The fourth challenge is that analysis often focuses on the United States: what the United States instrumentalized from its relationship with Mexico to build and legitimize the multilateral international system – thereby sidelining the validity of Mexico’s message. In her conclusion, Thornton mentions: In Revolution in Development then, we get a new angle of vision on the US rise to power: one in which Mexico’s demands, and sustained campaigns to organize like-minded Third World actors to press their cause, structured the contours of legitimacy within which the United States sought to govern the global economy. (Thornton 2021, p. 197)

The focus is not Mexico and its ideals, but the part of Mexico’s proposals that the United States instrumentalized for its own purposes. The fifth challenge relates to the use of Mexico’s archival sources dating to a few decades of the twentieth century but does not fully represent the history of the Mexican political system. For example:

Mexico’s advocacy at the Bretton Woods conference  85 Methodologically, this requires returning to the archive and reading Mexican sources – state records from the office of the presidency; the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores (SRE), Mexico’s foreign ministry; and the Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, Mexico’s finance ministry; as well as the personal papers of Mexican economists, diplomats, and political figures, and the Mexican press – along with and against the grain of US and European archival sources. Bringing these sources together often reveals contention that has been hidden by the exclusive reliance on Northern records, uncovering multidirectional influences disavowed by powerful actors seeking to legitimate that power … … While this book tells a story of elites, it is one in which they operate in uneven, hierarchical systems of international power.11

While it is important to have primary sources of the public officials and institutions that participated in the historical events, this material should be accompanied by an integral study of Mexican history. This may be illustrated in the chapter about Bretton Woods, in which Thornton (2021, p. 65) mentions the “ideologically laissez-faire Monterrey Group.” However, that term is a bias of one of the archives at the time, immersed as they were in the Liberal vs. Communist fight of the Cold War. The Monterrey Group was far from being a “laissez-faire” group. It provided health services for its workers since 1918 (better than those that are currently known as “public health services” and that in Mexico were created in 1943). The members of this group were precursors of the welfare state, providing many labour benefits, and founded one of the best Universities in Latin America, Tecnológico de Monterrey. A more accurate label, if needed, might be “corporate social responsibility group.” A second example is the following: The revolutionary process itself provided an important ideological justification for Mexican advocacy. Mexican economic ideas were rooted in the juridical force and ideological weight of Mexico’s 1917 constitution, which redefined property and subsoil rights as vested not in the individual but in the nation. Of course, putting the constitution’s lofty provisions into practice domestically was a long and contested process, subject to the same social struggles that had marked the constitutional convention itself, as workers and campesinos on the one hand and industrialists and landholders on the other pressed their claims upon the state. (Thornton 2021, p. 9)

This passage shows a problem in understanding Mexico’s position at Bretton Woods: how could a developing country’s proposals be taken into consideration if Mexico was only considered a land of workers and peasants against industrialists and landholders? The major success of the PRI party – the party that “institutionalized” the Mexican Revolution and remained in power for 71 years – was to encompass the different sectors of the population in its corporatist apparatus. The population was more complex than only the division of workers and peasants versus industrialists and landholders. In the 1940s Mexico began a process of urbanization, and agrarian structures started to be dismantled. The groups that had existed during the twentieth century and that the PRI succeeded to manage in sectors or corporations were the militia, the bureaucrats, the peasants, the workers, the middle/popular classes, the businessmen, industrialists, and employers, as well as strong labor unions formed by teachers, and the people working in the oil and electricity sectors. Thus, this is how the PRI system was consolidated (i.e., institutionalized) in the period between 1940 and 1945: as the bureaucratic apparatus at the president’s service, and as conciliator of the national interests. Mexico’s corporate system was successful during this period both politically and socially.

86  Handbook on governance in international organizations Mexican officials at Bretton Woods fought for the legal equality of all states, and this was not a fight that Mexico began overnight. Rather, it was an ideological fight that had been taking place over a century before the Bretton Woods Conference. Mexico’s advocacy at that Conference was not only the advocacy of the Mexican Revolution’s (1910–21) ideals. That longer and deeper history was excised in (and by) the archival documents written by the hegemonic presidential political system that institutionalized the Revolution (i.e., the PRI system).

A BRIEF COMPENDIUM OF MEXICO’S PARTICIPATION AT BRETTON WOODS This section responds to the question: how did Mexico’s participation contribute to inform and shape the creation of the current multilateral order and its human implications in the international political economy? Mexico had three roles at that Conference. First, institutionally, it chaired one of the three Commissions of the Conference and it was active as a member of the Summit’s “Coordinating Committee” and “Steering Committee.” Second, as a moral voice, it strongly advocated for a more inclusive and fairer world. And third, as a leading Latin American country politically and economically, it actively advocated for economic development. In this way, Mexico called for the new institutions of the Bretton Woods system to consider the human implications of the decisions being taken. First, Mexico’s appointment as Chair of one of the three Commissions12 of the Conference indicated recognition of five points: the importance of its economy, the international alliances at that time, its willingness to contribute to solve the postwar world’s financial problems, the diplomatic abilities of the Mexican representatives, and the esteem in which Mexico’s leading delegate was held. Mexico’s participation was also relevant since it was part of the Coordinating Committee alongside the USA (as Chair), Brazil, China, the French Delegation,13 the USSR, and Britain; as well as the Steering Committee composed of the USA (as Chair), Britain, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, the French Delegation, Iran, Mexico, and the USSR. Second, as a moral voice, Mexico strongly advocated for a more inclusive and fairer system of governance. For example, Mexico argued that the currencies and metals of more countries should be included in the new financial system, not only the gold standard led by the richest countries. Furthermore, Mexico advocated that the rights of all peoples, as citizens of sovereign countries, should be considered when making the financial decisions regarding the price of currency exchanges. Third, Mexico as a leading Latin American country advocated for economic development. Out of the 44 countries attending the Conference, 19 were Latin American and acted as a political bloc represented by Mexico. In this position, the Mexican Delegation argued that the economic system of the postwar world should be one that would allow peace and prosperity for all the peoples of the Earth. Mexico was committed to an international system that would be cooperative through the United Nations, to promote both reconstruction of the countries affected by the war as well as development of the countries that needed to foster internal growth. Through these three positions, Mexico clearly advocated for a world in which economic governance at the global level would focus attention on its human implications. Mexico argued

Mexico’s advocacy at the Bretton Woods conference  87 for a flexible and inclusive international postwar monetary system through its proposals on silver, earmarked gold, and on voting changes in the rates of member currencies, as well as in its statement on changing the gold parities of currencies. The international economic system that the Mexican Delegation foresaw had the goal to increase the real income of the peoples of the world, by leveling the playing field for all.

MEXICO’S PROPOSALS AND THEIR IMPACTS There were moderate and greater impacts of both the Bretton Woods Conference as well as Mexico’s proposals. The four historical phases in which the Bretton Woods system took place, according to Helleiner (2010, pp. 619–36), were: a legitimacy crisis of the old order (1929 crisis), an interregnum (rest of 1930s with the US–Latin American negotiations), a constitutive phase (Bretton Woods Agreements), and an implementation phase (from 1944 to 1971). This latter phase was never really achieved. Helleiner (2010, p. 625) specifies that “the detailed provisions of the Bretton Woods system itself were in effect in a kind of ‘virtual cold storage’ during this time.” Moreover, for Helleiner, the beginning of neoliberal globalization began in 1971 when the USA ended the gold standard, and in 1973, when the generalized movement toward floating exchange rates was established. The significance of the Bretton Woods Agreements in the current multilateral order lies chiefly in the importance that the IMF and the World Bank have had in the international economy. That is, the legacy of the Bretton Woods Conference does not lie in the gold standard and the procedures for fixing the exchange rates in international monetary markets. Interestingly, these last two points were those which the Mexican Delegation at Bretton Woods argued were not fair and would not be sustainable or endurable. In this respect, Suárez (1977, pp. 272–3) mentions in his memoirs that after the economic chaos left by the War, both the Fund and the Bank were expected to: ● ● ● ●

Stabilize currency exchanges. Shorten periods of imbalance in the balance of payments. Create conditions to promote a continuous flow of productive capital between countries. Reduce restrictions in the traffic of currencies, bilateral exchange arrangements, multiple monetary mechanisms, and discriminatory practices in exchanges. ● Through an adequate use of credit, support both the reconstruction of countries devastated by the war and the economic development of the developing countries. Unfortunately, most of these purposes were not achieved, and the world had to cope with this reality. The gold standard adopted at the Bretton Woods Conference brought about a nearly 50 percent decrease in exports globally, contributing to international unemployment and devaluation of currencies (Suárez 1977, p. 277). The gold standard lasted until August 15, 1971, when US President Nixon unilaterally withdrew the United States from it after several financial crises. This shift toward liberalization, in turn, was accompanied by many more international crises. As Mazower explains: … between 1945 and 1971 there were just 38 banking or currency crises globally; between 1973 and 1977 there were 139. There were no banking crises in the developing world in the earlier period and only 16 currency crises; after 1973 there were 17 banking crises, 57 currency crises, and 21 combined.

88  Handbook on governance in international organizations As Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf has noted, “the age of financial liberalization was … an age of crisis. (2012, p. 351)

Furthermore, Mazower explains that poor financial leadership from the United States began in the first half of the twentieth century: With the council torn, the League’s inability to respond as the crisis shook the European banking system and encouraged a new round of protectionism led its members to look to the United States for leadership instead. But at the 1933 World Economic Conference that took place in London to stabilize exchange rates and boost international trade, it was in fact American policy – above all the decision of the new president, Franklin Roosevelt, to take the dollar off gold – that caused the meeting’s failure and effectively ended international economic cooperation for a decade. Internationalism went into reverse and around the world the nation-state became the primary framework for economic policy for the next four decades. (2012, p. 151)

The complications caused by the United States to establish a healthy international monetary system began in the 1930s because of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies – the same US president who the Mexican Delegation quoted at the Bretton Woods Conference as having acknowledged that silver was used by half of the world’s population, and who at Bretton Woods was withdrawing from that position. Interestingly, according to Mazower, this was the same US president who did not achieve successful results on monetary cooperation both in 1933 at the World Economic Conference as well as in the period after the Bretton Woods Conference. This is the reason why Mazower explains that the nation state became the primary framework for economic decisions (what became import substitution industrialization) during the next four decades, until the liberalization of currency exchanges and the promotion of international trade in the 1970s. Mazower also explains that monetary instability in the 1970s due to the floating exchange rates in the developed world was followed by the issue of sovereign debt in the so-called “Third World” during the 1980s and 1990s, the period when the United States controlled the policies of the developing countries through the IMF: The US Treasury hid behind the Federal Reserve and the Fed hid behind the IMF … More than 60% of all emerging market debt trading by 1994 was in paper backed by US Treasury bonds, a sign of their importance in keeping the system liquid. (2012, pp. 351–2)

This illustrates both the importance of the US Treasury for international monetary liquidity, and its influence over the IMF. Suárez wrote in his memoirs that the multilateral system approved at the Bretton Woods Conference was limited, as it contained only the provisions that could be ratified by the participant countries,14 and therefore it should be amended. This idea is the same that Helleiner wrote decades later regarding the fourth stage of the Bretton Woods system (i.e., implementation) which was never achieved. More specifically, regarding Mexico, its Delegation presented four main proposals at Bretton Woods. The first proposal was for the IMF to accept silver as a monetary reserve alongside gold, to contribute to the price stability of this currency. Developing countries were absorbing the costs of the international community’s use of the gold standard because these countries were minting and melting silver as well as buying and selling this metal in the international markets, whenever there were economic improvements and recessions. They had to

Mexico’s advocacy at the Bretton Woods conference  89 do this to stabilize the international price of silver, because silver became more expensive as a metal than as a currency. In this way, developing countries were absorbing the economic costs of the gold standard, and were paying the opportunity costs of their own development goals. The solution for this proposal at Bretton Woods was that silver was accepted as a collateral reserve, among other metals, when asking for loans. Suárez Dávila – who in addition to being Dr. Eduardo Suárez’s son, has also occupied many diplomatic positions including Ambassador to Canada – also explains that when he started working at the Bank of Mexico, “the silver holdings could be computed as part of Mexico’s international reserves and could be used as guarantee for loans” (Suárez Dávila 2014, p. 2). Therefore, the impact of the Mexican proposal on silver was positive to help level the playing field for asking for loans at the World Bank. The second proposal of the Mexican Delegation at Bretton Woods attempted to include the developing countries in the total voting quotas for fixing the exchange rates at the IMF, because if the Agreements were accepted as drafted (which happened), then the juridical, democratic, and monetary sovereignty of the developing countries would be affected negatively. Thus, there was no reason for these countries to accept and implement these Agreements in the longer term. The Mexican Delegation’s third proposal was to include the institutional goal of “development” alongside that of “reconstruction” at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The acceptance of this proposal by John M. Keynes was a great achievement for the Mexican Delegation, and a basic goal for which Mexico had advocated since the 1930s in negotiations with the United States. This proposal – as with the other Mexican proposals – was made after consultation with all the 19 Latin American countries represented at the Conference, out of the 44 attending countries. Therefore, Mexico was here acting both in representation of the Latin American region, as well as a moral voice for making a more inclusive and fairer system of postwar governance. The fourth proposal was regarding the veto power that the lending countries could exercise at the IBRD for projects paid with the loans granted in their currencies. Victor Urquidi (1994, pp. 12–13) explains that this disposition tried to achieve “full employment” in the developed countries. However, it also reduced the capacity of the borrower countries to acquire equipment in the sector that they preferred. Thus, the Mexican Delegation claimed that the Draft needed some clarification on this point. However, this stipulation was not amended. Nevertheless, it was not relevant eventually, as the largest countries did not establish limits to the developing countries’ industries, since the largest countries were more concerned about having the control of their military industries. Eventually, regarding the evolution of the international financial institutions in Latin America, these played different roles than expected. Urquidi, discussing König’s paper, explained that the IMF never concerned itself with the development aspects of monetary problems and behaved rigidly in terms of the orthodox principles it required Latin America to follow. By contrast, the Bank, although limited by its need to obtain capital from the private market, soon learned that its business was development, and it had consequently contributed much to infrastructure growth in Latin America. Even though the total amounts involved had not been decisive, they had increased. The IMF reflected largely on the interests of the “great monetary powers” and was managed by them. The Bank, although largely run by its management, not by its Board, had responded to Latin American aspects of development, even if only on a project basis, for multilateral financing (Urquidi 1973, pp. 164–5).

90  Handbook on governance in international organizations Overall, when analyzing the impacts of the Mexican Delegation’s proposals, some commentators argue that these proposals were “limited” or “secondary.” The real question and the real argument, however, is the extent to which the Bretton Woods Agreements were efficient and inclusive enough to endure over time. That is, in an international governance architecture that foresaw the gold standard as the monetary rule for a postwar world, as well as institutions that would not include the real problems of developing countries (as those countries did not have enough representation in those international institutions), then, as history proved, that multilateral structure was destined to find challenges such as diverse groups and movements against the liberal international order. If counterfactual history is considered, then a free and fair currency exchange system alongside institutions that would have considered the interests and needs of all countries and peoples involved, could have created a more sustainable multilateral system both because of its inclusiveness and because of its concern for the human implications of economic decisions for both the developed and developing countries.

REFLECTIONS Mexico’s leadership role and proposals demonstrate this country’s significance to the proceedings and to the history of international economic multilateralism. As foreseen by the Mexican Delegation, the Bretton Woods Agreements had failures of inclusiveness and representativeness in governance that could not be borne by the international system. Moreover, since the international institutions in charge of coordinating the multilateral system, the IMF and the World Bank, did not design a representative mechanism for making decisions, that multilateral structure was destined to face challenges. These challenges have included diverse groups and movements against the liberal international order, in both developing and developed countries. This chapter also invites reflection on the question whether Bretton Woods was a neo-colonial project. All the structural issues explained above that can be seen both in the academic literature as well as in the archives issued by the US government, show a power dynamic of a neo-colonial attempt at global governance. The main evidence was the quotas foreseen to be established at the IMF so that decisions about currency exchanges were made. This was an abuse of the sovereignty rights of the rest of the world, except for the three major victorious powers of World War II. Thus, it was a new postwar system, but one attempting to establish a majoritarian, or hegemonic, authority in (and through) the institutions of global governance. The question remains: what possible reasons would any sovereign country have for accepting this system for setting the price to their own money (i.e., the exchange rates)? And, moreover, what could be the interests represented in this “multilateral” system of the postwar world? This international structure was meant to represent the interests of the three biggest powers, and furthermore, it was being designed to remain that way over time. This research also shows that the Mexican Delegation was ahead of its time; the call for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) did not take place until three decades later. The NIEO ideas about dependency and interdependency were very similar to the developmentalist proposals presented by Mexico at Bretton Woods. Almost eight decades later, the world has gone through many challenges, but the one that the international liberal order is experiencing today has special significance because of the ongoing risk of the disappearance of the multilateral system. Since the end of World War II, thanks to the institutions created at Bretton Woods, this multilateral system has been led by

Mexico’s advocacy at the Bretton Woods conference  91 the United States and expressed through the United Nations system, and it has represented an historical opportunity for global governance. After the international financial crisis in 2008, nationalist ideologies took hold, and have been expressed in increasingly populist movements around the globe. Would the history of the world have differed, had the big countries heard the developing countries, represented by Mexico, regarding the need for a fairer economic world?

NOTES 1. US Department of State (1948), Document 459, pp. 1187–90. Document 459 is addressed by Mexico’s Eduardo Suárez, stressing the necessity that some action be taken in this field, in US Department of State (1948), Document 496, pp. 1043–4. 2. US Department of State (1948), Document 157, pp. 182–3. 3. The Nobel Prize 1982, alongside Sweden’s Alva Myrdal. See The Nobel Prize 1982, “Alfonso García Robles, Facts”, https://​www​.nobelprize​.org/​prizes/​peace/​1982/​robles/​facts/​. 4. Thornton (2021), pp. 176, 179, 181, 197. 5. Thornton (2021), pp. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 14, 49, 71, 80, 91, 97, 99, 117, 120, 121, 196. 6. Thornton (2021), ch. 8. 7. Thornton (2021), p. 197. 8. Reforma. Krauze, Enrique. “Frente a Echeverría.” Enero 9, 2022, https://​busquedas​.gruporeforma​ .com/​elnorte/​BusquedasComs​.aspx. 9. Orden Jurídico. Sentimientos de la Nación, http://​www​.ordenjuridico​.gob​.mx/​Constitucion/​1813​ .pdf. 10. US Department of State (1948), Document 353, pp. 1178–80. 11. Thornton (2021), p. 13. 12. The other two Commissions were chaired by Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes, respectively. 13. France was just a delegation at the time because it was under the Nazi occupation, but it counted with the support of the British government. 14. The issue of whether the Congress of the United States would approve the projects was also addressed in an editorial in Chicago Daily Tribune (1923–63): Furlong, Thomas, “Delegates ask if money plan will be used; unreal atmosphere hangs over parley,” July 5, 1944: ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune, p. 22.

REFERENCES Blum, J. M. (1967), From the Morgenthau Diaries, Years of War 1941–1945, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Cárdenas, E. (1991), commenting on Bardesch and Levy, ‘Populism and economic policy in Mexico,’ in Dornbusch, R. and Edwards, S. (eds), The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Chicago Daily Tribune (1923–63), Furlong, Thomas, ‘Delegates ask if money plan will be used; unreal atmosphere hangs over parley,’ July 5, 1944; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune, p. 22. Conway, E. (2014), The Summit: Bretton Woods, 1944, New York: Pegasus Books. Eckes Jr., A. E. (1975), A Search for Solvency, Austin: University of Texas Press. Halm, G. N. (1945), International Monetary Cooperation, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Helleiner, E. (2006), ‘Reinterpreting Bretton Woods: international development and the neglected origins of embedded liberalism,’ Development and Change, 37(5): 943–67. Helleiner, E. (2010), ‘A Bretton Woods moment? The 2007–2008 crisis and the future of global governance,’ International Affairs, 83(3): 619–36.

92  Handbook on governance in international organizations Helleiner, E. (2014), Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods: International Development and the Making of the Postwar Order, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mazower, M. (2012), Governing the World: The History of an Idea. 1815 to the Present, New York: Penguin. Orden Jurídico (n.d.), Sentimientos de la Nación: http://​www​.ordenjuridico​.gob​.mx/​Constitucion/​1813​ .pdf. Reforma, K. E. (n.d.), ‘Frente a Echeverría’, Enero 9, 2022, https://​busquedas​.gruporeforma​.com/​ elnorte/​BusquedasComs​.aspx. Scott-Smith, G. and Rofe, J. S. (2017), ‘Bretton Woods: a global perspective,’ in Scott-Smith, G. and Rofe, J. S. (eds), The World of the Roosevelts: Global Perspectives on the Bretton Woods Conference and the Post-War World Order, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Suárez, E. (1977), Comentarios y Recuerdos (1926–1946), México: Senado de la República, Segunda Edición (2003). Suárez Dávila, F. (2014), ‘Mexico’s role at Bretton Woods: an assessment 70 years later,’ at the event ‘1944–2014–2084 Bretton Woods: the founders and the future,’ organized by the Center for Financial Stability, New York, September 4, 2014. The Nobel Prize (1982), ‘Alfonso García Robles, facts’, https://​www​.nobelprize​.org/​prizes/​peace/​1982/​ robles/​facts/​. Thornton, C. (2021), Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy, Berkeley: University of California Press. Urquidi, V. (1973), commenting on König, W., ‘International financial institutions and Latin American development,’ in Urquidi, V. and Thorp, R. (eds), Latin America in the International Economy: Proceedings of a Conference held by the International Economic Association in Mexico City, Mexico, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Urquidi, V. (1994), ‘Bretton Woods: Un Recorrido por el Primer Cincuentenario,’ Comercio Exterior, 44(10), http://​revistas​.bancomext​.gob​.mx/​rce/​magazines/​364/​1/​RCE1​.pdf. US Department of State (1948), ‘Proceedings and documents of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference,’ Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, July 1–22, 1944, Washington, D.C., as follows: – Document 157, ‘Address Delivered Before Committee 2 of Commission I, by Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros, Mexican Delegate, in Support of Mexico’s Proposal on Silver,’ presented on July 5, pp. 182–3. – Document 353, ‘Press Release: Statement by Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros, Mexican Delegate, before Commission I, July 14, on Changing the Gold Parities of Currencies,’ July 14, 1944, pp. 1178–80. – Document 459, ‘Press Release: Address by the Honorable Eduardo Suárez, Mexican Minister of Finance, Before Commission III,’ presented at the meeting of Commission III, July 19, 1944, pp. 1187–90. – Document 496, ‘Minutes of Meeting of Commission III, Other Measures for International Monetary and Financial Cooperation,’ July 20, 1944, pp. 1043–4. Van Dormael, A. (1978), Bretton Woods: Birth of a Monetary System, New York: Holmes & Meier.

7. Brazil gives up its role in global governance – far right movements and multilateral organizations: the case of Brazil Monica Herz

INTRODUCTION This chapter investigates the impact of the conservative and authoritarian government that won power in Brazil in 2019 on this country’s role and participation in global governance. The chapter presents the policies pursued by the democratic governments that followed the end of the dictatorship installed in 1964 on global governance, and the core ideas on which they were based, and contrasts this reality with the policies chosen between 2019 and 2022 by Jair Bolsonaro. Authoritarianism, conservativism, and the crisis of representative democracy are today at the center of debates on politics and society. The balance of power and checks and balances, the rights of individuals and groups, political participation, and the working of representative institutions are all being challenged.1 Social movements, political parties and leaders often establish a dichotomy between “the people” and the elites and attempt to subvert a system controlled by these elites using authoritarian methods. Thus, this debate is often framed in terms of the resurgence of right-wing populism (Norris and Inglehart, 2019). The emergence of the far-right movement within democratic countries has become a field of study and concern. Order, tradition, and loyalty are the core pillars of the conservative and authoritarian discourse. Fear against outsiders who threaten the “community” is highlighted, as is the role of protector for the authoritarian leader. Moreover, democratic institutions may be portrayed as impediments to face these threats emerging from the “outside” or the “enemy”. There are of course many aspects that can be emphasized when describing and analyzing these current political trends. Nevertheless, here I choose to focus on the drive to demolish institutions and the claim to protect freedom and tradition. Institutions and rights produced following the logic of agency for progressive change are opposed, particularly collective rights. The state bureaucracies created largely to implement social and economic policies that generated inclusion are despised and treated as a threat to individual liberty. Family, God, the nation, and tradition are opposed to globalism and state control over the individual and the family. The relation between neoliberalism and current authoritarian drives has been pointed out by several authors, but I highlight Wendy Brown’s work as particularly enlightening for an understanding of the drive to demolish institutions. She investigates the interaction between neo liberal formulations of freedom and the resentment gearing the far right, and argues that the association of conservative nationalism and a version of liberalism, of the defense of sovereignty and anti-statism, allows us to refer to authoritarian freedom (Brown 2015, 2019). Often authoritarian conservative governments establish this association and pursue extreme 93

94  Handbook on governance in international organizations liberal policies while they focus on the traditional family, religion, and nation. Institutions that produce mechanisms to limit the role of the market are deemed as part of an establishment that should be destroyed. This same establishment, or the elites, is seen to be “morally wrong in their core values” (Norris and Inglehart, 2019, p. 4). These tendencies have a direct impact on the workings of multilateral institutions. Conservative and authoritarian governments and movements are today engaged in a fight against multilateral institutions on several levels and dimensions as they attempt to put forward an idealized (and mythical) past where family and nation prevailed. The post-World War II multilateral system was based on the premises that social justice projects can be debated, negotiated, and decided upon in the international sphere; that power can be institutionalized and limited internationally; that cooperation and the development of international norms are built and rebuilt; and that these norms can compensate, correct, or overcome the results of open market competition. But from the point of view of authoritarian freedom the multilateral activity engaged in negotiating political life on a global or regional dimension is seen as unacceptable. Multilateralism can thus be depicted as a threat to personal liberty. Within this logic, the norms developed regarding gender equality, LGBTQ rights, racial equality, and access to reproductive knowledge are the preferred targets of authoritarian and conservative actors. Moreover, the strong connections between the multilateral projects of the post-World War II world and liberal democracy, particularly the attachment to human rights and the liberal concept of progress, establish a tendency for conflict between these multilateral organizations and authoritarian political formations. Finally, the universalist and humanist values embedded in the multilateral system stand in contrast with an essentialist concept of nationalism and a concept of sovereignty based on the sacred defense of a homogenous nation. The Bolsonaro government was elected on an anti-rights platform, marked by hate speech against Indigenous peoples, LGBTQs, blacks, and women. Cleansing the nation from the “corrupting influences” of social movements was put forward as a mission. Family, religion, and patriotism were purported as the core conservative values upon which Bolsonaro won the 2018 elections and subsequently governed. His attitude towards the period of the Brazilian dictatorship, towards democratic institutions, and even the use of torture, put him firmly in the field of current authoritarian tendencies. His government’s policies and discourse stood on a long tradition of far-right movements that focus on anti-cosmopolitanism, extreme nationalism, illiberalism, an obsession with anti-communism, and a claim for authoritarian forms of governance embodied in a charismatic leader. In fact, he is referred to as “the myth” by his supporters. Opposition to the social democratic achievements of the working class can also be detected and are associated with a social Darwinist perspective. The conservative concept of liberty based on a Darwinist concept of social relations rejects the agency for progressive change within the perspective Brown calls authoritarian freedom. Bolsonaro stands in line with the conservative and authoritarian trends present in several countries today. These projects thrive as demolishers of institutions, claiming to be protecting freedom against politics and guaranteeing order through tradition. His government’s role in destroying institutions that monitor, punish, and regulate behavior in the environmental sphere, protection of Indigenous populations, slavery crimes, and rules on land propriety is well documented. In opposition to these cherished values, a broad range of progressive policies and values are treated as part of so-called “cultural Marxism” including LGTBQIA+

Brazil gives up its role in global governance  95 rights, environmentalism, feminism, and gun control. The definition of the enemy is, of course, crucial in this framing. As in other countries, the challenges to democratic institutions and practices have been at the core of public debate, in particular after the 2018 election (Bignotto, 2020; Miguel, 2019). Since 2014, Brazilian democracy has been under challenge as part of the broader crisis of representative democracy, but also as part of the specific history of the Brazilian democratic experience inaugurated in 1988. The year 2014 was a difficult one, in which the economy reached a state of collapse with high inflation and stagnation, corruption scandals fed conservative rallies against the newly re-elected President Dilma Roussef, and for the first time demands for the return of the military dictatorship could be heard widely and clearly. This was a turning point in the stability of the democratic regime, the rule of law, and the movement towards a more inclusive society. Finally, in 2016 the president was impeached because of the crisis of the political arrangement that had sustained the Workers Party governments since 2002 (Santos, 2017; Singer, 2018; Avritzer, 2019, Domingues, 2021). During the protests of 2014–16 conservative social movements acquired a prominence not seen in Brazil after the democratization of the country. Pentecostal churches demanding a return of the traditional family, and right-wing movements putting forward a radical neoliberal ideology and militaristic discourses filled the streets of the country. The insurrectionist riots of January 8, 2023 – clearly echoing the attempted insurrection by Trump supporters in Washington two years earlier – represent the most recent such challenge to democratic institutions and processes. The Bolsonaro government was consistently conservative and authoritarian after it came to power in 2018. The presence of a large number of reserve military officers, ministers strongly connected to the Pentecostal churches, and a team of radically liberal economists in the government, apart from the role of the president’s family with important transnational links to far-right organizations, guaranteed the consistency of the trend. The connections between the Bolsonaro group and project and the far-right transnational movement were very intense. Bolsonaro’s congressman son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, was named the South American representative of Steve Bannon’s far right network, The Movement. Santiago Abascal, from Vox in Spain, Victor Orbán, from Hungary, and the German representatives from Alternative for Germany are some of the leaders with whom the Bolsonaro family is constantly in contact. In the Brazilian case another important source of the conservative perspective stems from traditional geopolitical thinking. One must remember that over 6,000 active and reserve military officers were part of the Bolsonaro government, and the military was one of his most loyal constituencies. The military leadership made a very clear decision to support him in the 2018 election and a general was chosen as his vice-president. According to this line of thought, a regional leadership role should be the Brazilian contribution to a systemic anticommunist fight. This logic fits well with the broader tendency of conservative authoritarianism of focusing on enemies or those that need to be destroyed. The way the military and the far right more generally can maintain this anti-communist agenda in the current international environment is difficult to understand, but is sustainable in terms espousing and advancing an anti-left-wing agenda. Left wing is understood as a worldview and project that includes the defense of rights of minorities, diversity of sexual orientation, and greater inclusion and equity, and is contrasted with nationalism and patriotism and the Christian notion of the traditional family.

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THE BRAZILIAN PATTERN REGARDING GLOBAL GOVERNANCE The Brazilian ruling elite perspective on any specific foreign policy issue or concept is embedded in a wider international culture2 that positions the country within the international system and establishes a hierarchy of values related to how this system should function. In 1907, when the country took part in the Second Peace Conference in the Hague, the dominant theme in the discourse of the Brazilian representatives stressed the relevance of the norms of international law and the negotiated resolution of conflicts. In that context, the “Hague paradigms” were generated and a tradition of searching for international recognition through the defense of the principles of a lawful international society based on universal principles and support for the role of reason and mediation in solving international conflicts began its road to a hegemonic position in foreign policy circles (Correa, 1995, p. 17). Subsequently, based on this approach, the country aspired to be a member of the Council of the League of Nations and later of the UN Security Council. Despite the failure of these efforts, they did play an important role in embedding the image of the country as a potentially significant player in international affairs, and the view that multilateral forums should be a target of a policy of international insertion. These ideas have been recreated and re-enacted by the ruling elite through public discourse, socialization processes involving diplomats and academics, and their inscription in legal documents such as the country’s 1988 Constitution. Moreover, in Latin America, a region of mostly small powers that has been affected since the independence wars of the 1820s by disputes between great powers – such as those between Great Britain and France, the United States and the Soviet Union, and today between the United States, the EU, Russia, and China – over influence and resources, the role of international institutions and in particular the rule of law is cherished. In this context, national elites saw engagement in multilateralism as a form of protection from the asymmetry of power that marks the international interventions in the region. A rules-based system grounded on the legalist tradition of jurisdicismo3 and the lawful and peaceful resolution of controversies are considered essential to preserve the sovereignty of countries lacking significant power resources, and to institutionalize the principle of non-intervention (Herz, 2011). Since the end of dictatorship in 1985, the Brazilian elite have sought to generate conditions for attaining major power status thought three different paths: the acceptance of the international governance mechanisms often referred to as the “liberal order”, building connections in the global South, and the affirmation of the specificities of the Brazilian position and role. But in fact, since the country became a republic in 1889, it has systematically and actively participated in international forums (Soares de Lima, 2005). The internationalization of power and authority, crystallized in the growing web of international norms was understood as the necessary consequence of globalization, and an expanding participation in multilateral forums was considered a core objective of foreign policy. Thus, Brazilian governments sought to actively participate in the debates on the regulation of international commerce and of environmental issues, on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, and human rights regimes, and more broadly on the reform of the United Nations system. Moreover, alternative forms of policy coordination such as the G7, BRICS, and the G20 were pursued. Elected governments pursued a strategy that included the acceptance of international regimes, a growing contribution to UN peace operations, a wider participation in commercial

Brazil gives up its role in global governance  97 multilateral negotiations, and the affirmation of the country’s peculiar capabilities in terms of its capacity to negotiate and mediate. This posture has been termed the search for “autonomy through participation” (Vigevani and Cepaluni, 2007) as some degree of influence is sought through participation in governance mechanisms. On the regional front, implementation occurs through emphasis on regional stability and the increasing potential for cooperation and coordination. Brazil now abides by virtually all formal and informal norms, treaties, rules, and regulations that govern, however imperfectly, international affairs. At the same time, it has been seeking greater participation in world forums, in particular a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. Oliver Stuenkel referred to two important attempts of Brazil to become a global norm entrepreneur and to set the global human rights agenda. He discussed Brazil’s efforts to adjust the R2P-doctrine with a “Responsibility while Protecting” (RwP) and Brazil’s leadership in the international debate on Internet governance. Stuenkel suggested that both debates demonstrated Brazil’s potential “to play an important role as a mediator, consensus seeker and bridge builder” (Stuenkel, 2014). Gaining major power status became a central and explicit goal of Brazilian foreign policy during the second presidential term of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2007–10). During his tenure, Brazil was regularly included as a prominent player among emerging powers. His achievements and discourse in the social sphere, not to mention the strength of the economy, provided leverage.4 The exclusion of war to settle disputes is particularly relevant for the Brazilian ruling elite where most territorial borders were settled peacefully in the nineteenth century and war has been a very rare experience. The use of force is firmly rejected as a mechanism for dispute resolution, and the history of peaceful settlement of disputes with the country’s neighbors is repeatedly affirmed. At the same time, investment in military capability is extremely low (1.7 percent of GDP). In line with an emphasis on the peaceful settlement of disputes, Kai Kenkel mentions the tendency to opt for a via media, not accepting the framing of conflicts in terms of mutually exclusive options (Kenkel, 2012). Thus, in several forums, Brazil put itself in the position of mediator between Western or developed countries and countries of the global South. After the end of the authoritarian phase of the country’s history, it was possible for the government to seek to re-establish a role in the international debate on human rights. A few landmarks in this process can be mentioned.5 In 1985, the government of José Sarney decided to adhere to three treaties for the protection of human rights – the American Convention and the two UN covenants on human rights; in 1997 with Fernando Henrique Cardoso as president, the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights was recognized and a secretary for human rights was created; and in 2002, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was ratified. Furthermore, the creation within the UN system of a program for technical, material, and financial assistance to country projects and institutions directly related to human rights and the strengthening of the rule of law was systematically defended. Brazilian contributions to United Nations peace operations were an expression of this engagement with the multilateral system. The Brazilian military has taken part in UN peace and observation operations since the genesis of the process that transformed the original collective security project in the 1950s (Diniz, 2006). After the end of the Cold War, as peace operations became more diversified and numerous, Brazilian diplomats took part in the debate over a new peacekeeping format, with efforts at home towards readiness to take part in the process. During the Lula government (2003–10) in particular, contributions to UN peacekeep-

98  Handbook on governance in international organizations ing missions were increased and, in 2004, the mission leadership and provision of the military component of MINUSTAH in Haiti was given to Brazil. The operation in Haiti is a significant departure from previous policy, where Brazil headed a mission under a UN Charter Chapter VII mandate, making it the country’s biggest foreign military deployment since World War II. The country also became chair of the UN Peacebuilding Commission’s Country-Specific Configuration for Guinea-Bissau in 2007 and in 2012, under President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil led the Maritime Task Force of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). On the regional front, we see this perspective implemented through an emphasis on regional stability and the increasing potential for cooperation and coordination. An investment in multilateral institutions in South America specifically can be noted since the 1990s. The promotion of democracy and human rights regionally was supported by different Brazilian governments, and the promotion of the norm of democratic government was the country’s policy for three decades.6

BOLSONARO’S FOREIGN POLICY The discourse on foreign policy more generally played a significant part in the framework built by the Bolsonaro government, unlike other experiences in Brazilian history where foreign policy was a marginal part of political debate. Bolsonaro’s foreign policy practice and discourse played into the overall conservative and authoritarian agenda, supporting the production of social antagonism and the building up of a conservative identity. In this regard the civilizational discourse he espoused focused on the threat to and defense of a western Jewish– Christian civilization. Family, God, the nation, and tradition were opposed to globalism and state control over the individual and the family. The return to an idealized past is a common theme to far-right platforms, and it is not surprising that it was to be found here. Movements representing minorities, secular logics and relativism were seen to be infiltrating public discourse on the transnational level, and conservative nationalism should resist this trend in order to restore the homogeneous community. Thus, the well-known search for an idealized past within conservative frameworks engulfs foreign policy. Bolsonaro’s first foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo (between 2019 and 2021) was part of the most conservative group within the government, and we can detect his position in defense of a return to a homogenous Christian nation as far back as 2016 (Saraiva and Silva, 2019). The defense of a Western Judeo-Christian civilization that encompasses core traditional values is opposed to globalism, and the country therefore was to return to its “spiritual essence”. The engagement in this cultural warfare even led to changes in the curriculum of the Rio Branco Institute, the graduate school and diplomatic academy run by the Ministry of External Relations where Brazilian diplomats studied. This vision of Brazil as part of the Western civilization fitted well with a following of American foreign policy during the Trump years, seen – at least by his followers – as the leader of the defense of Western Christian tradition in the face of the challenges posed by ‘globalism’, and the associated understanding of the dispute between the USA and China framed in civilizational terms. In fact, this became a thorn in Bolsonaro’s foreign policy since China is one of the most important international partners of the country, and has been its largest trading partner since 2009. In a 2017 essay titled “Trump and the West” for Itamaraty’s official

Brazil gives up its role in global governance  99 journal, the then-future Chancellor Araújo wrote about a “true nationalism” in sharp contrast with (and against) globalism, and about the West as a community rooted in a common past in contrast with the defense of values such as democracy and human rights (Araújo, 2017). He was clearly aiming to become an intellectual voice for right-wing nationalism (Burns, 2019). After being named foreign minister, Araújo wrote another essay for the New Criterion on the resurgent Brazilian Christianity (Araújo, 2019). His connections with the far-right intellectual Olavo de Carvalho, very influential during the first years of the Bolsonaro administration, allowed him to be heard more widely within the transnational far-right movement. Felipe Martins, an academic who became a special advisor to the government and Eduardo Bolsonaro, the president’s son and a member of Congress, were leaders and designers of this perspective. The discourse on liberty was central to the Bolsonaro government’s worldview and is associated with a Darwinist concept of social relations. There was thus, in line with conservative liberalism, a rejection of agency for progressive change, in particular agency of the state and most certainly the agency of multilateral institutions. The UN system in this view is dismissed as one of the pillars of the decadence of Western civilization given the practices, policies, and ideas on inclusion and norms on universal human rights. We also note a clear attempt, as in other spheres, to establish lines of discontinuity regarding previous governments, particularly the 13 years (2003–16) when Brazil was ruled by the Workers Party. Thus, south–south cooperation, a drive for regional integration in Latin America, and attempts to put forward proposals for environmental norms that are acceptable to the global South were all disregarded. The basic premises with which previous governments had worked were abandoned, such as adopting a balanced perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the recognition of the principle of one China, and even noninterventionism in Latin America. Since early in the electoral campaign, Bolsonaro made it clear that he was not only abandoning the policies of the Workers Party, but also the previous foreign policies of the democratic period (Spector, 2019). Under the leadership of Ernesto Araújo, Brazil attained a level of isolation never previously experienced by the country; and as the tide changed in Washington with the election of President Joe Biden, the Bolsonaro government finally decided to change guard and a new foreign minister was appointed to lead Brazilian foreign policy. Carlos França, a diplomat who has a more discrete role, thus was named as the foreign minister in March 2021. The commercial agreement between Mercosul and the EU, reached in principle in 2019 and which had been in the process of negotiation for 20 years, was problematic to many European legislatures given Bolsonaro’s record in the sphere of human rights and the environment. The Ways and Means Committee of the US Congress in Washington opposed the negotiation of any additional commercial accords with Brazil, given the latter’s disrespect for human rights and the environment. Within the OECD the country’s evaluation also was quite negative, particularly in the sphere of the fight against corruption. Although Brazil formally expressed interest in becoming a member of the OECD in 2017, it had not been able to attain its goal and a potentially long process of negotiations began in January 2022 as the country was listed among those entitled to begin formal negotiations. Within the UN, for the first time since the transition to democracy in 1985/88, Brazil was named in a report by the High Commissioner for Human Rights to the Human Rights Council, expressing concerns over systemic racism, police abuse, and Bolsonaro’s threats towards the Supreme Court.

100  Handbook on governance in international organizations Multilateral international and regional institutions were seen, and treated, as either irrelevant or constituting a threat. The Brazilian government under Bolsonaro did not honor its commitments to most international organizations, funds and multilateral banks. In 2019 the lack of payment to the regular budget of the UN created a public embarrassment and the government rushed to pay its dues so as not to lose its voting rights at the United Nations General Assembly. The traditional Brazilian stance of searching for greater autonomy through a norm abiding participation in the multilateral system was abandoned. The tendency towards activism in some areas and at specific moments was also left aside. In 2020, for example, the government decided not to advance a Brazilian candidate for the directorship of the Inter-American Development Bank, and instead to support President Trump’s candidate Mauricio Claver-Carone, a White House political appointee. Consequently, for the first time since the foundation of the Bank in 1959, it was not headed by a Latin American as Claver-Carone served as president between October 2020 and September 2022. In any discussion on a government’s policies towards global governance or multilateral institutions, the concept of sovereignty held by the national leadership in question is crucial. The slogan “Brazil beyond anything”, adopted by President Bolsonaro when still a candidate, in line with Trump’s “Make America Great Again” terminology, expressed a traditional concept of sovereignty in which the focus was on the relationship between the state and the nation, and in which constructive engagement in global governance is left aside. The complexity of global interdependence on multiple levels, and the need to govern this evolving reality, is neither ignored or rejected as the notion of “global”, and of global public goods, cannot find room in the conservative authoritarian worldview. Relations with Hungary have never been very relevant for Brazilian foreign policy. Nevertheless, during Bolsonaro’s government the ideological identity generated a new form of proximity. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán attended the inauguration of President Bolsonaro in January 2019. Their far-right transnational alliance played a role as nationalism and disdain for universal rights and multilateralism were stressed. The October 8, 2020, joint communiqué when Foreign Minister Péter Szijjartó visited Brasilia is quite significant: “The Ministers agreed that global or transnational issues should not serve as a pretext for imposing policies to the detriment of national institutions or for violating national identity while ignoring the will of the people.”7 In Latin America the investment in regional coalitions and multilateral institutions that had characterized Brazilian foreign policy at least since 1994 was shelved. Between 1985 and 2018 relations between Brazil and Argentina were based on cooperation and coordination, including in the nuclear sphere, and this relationship has been crucial for the advancement of a wider regional process of institution-building. Since the first civilian government of the democratic transition under President Jose Sarney (1985–89), Argentina had been Brazil’s main partner in South America. In contrast to previous presidents, Bolsonaro’s first international visit was to Santiago, not Buenos Aires. Moreover, as Argentina moved from a right-leaning to a left-leaning government in 2019, the relationship between Brazil and Argentina reached a low ebb and Bolsonaro even made a point of stating his position against the center-left-leaning party led by Alberto Fernández that won the elections in October 2019. This was a significant move coherent with the view that left-leaning governments are to be treated as enemies. Venezuela and Cuba had been treated by the Bolsonaro government as enemy countries, impeding any opportunity for constructive Brazilian participation in the negotiation of a way out from the crisis in Venezuela. In line with a clear bifurcation between

Brazil gives up its role in global governance  101 bilateral relations between right-leaning and left-leaning governments in Latin America, the Brazilian government also lent its support to Jeanine Áñez in Bolivia when she and her ministers took part in a coup against the then-president Evo Morales in 2019. Engagement with Mercosul (Common Market of the South) was abandoned by the Bolsonaro government as a strategic objective, and instead the government favored the downgrading of the bloc from an incomplete common market to a free trade area, allowing members to unilaterally change their import tariffs (Vadell and Giaccaglia, 2020). It is true that after 2016 the fact that Argentina was governed by Mauricio Macri, and that in Brazil President Dilma Rousseff was impeached, solidified a negative view of regional integration and institutions, and interdependence could not sustain a movement towards greater integration or even international coordination; but this tendency became overwhelming after Jair Bolsonaro arrived in Brasilia (Passini, Ramanzini and Vigevani, 2021). The expansion of regional multilateralism towards social issues during the 2000s, particularly clear in the projects pursued within UNASUL (Union of South American Nations) was understood in terms of a loss of liberty and sovereignty. Regarding PROSUL (Forum for Progress and Development in South America), the government showed mostly indifference and the decision was made in 2020 to withdraw from CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) arguing that Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua are member states. In fact, the almost-automatic alignment during the Bolsonaro years with the Trump administration’s policy towards the region made any possibility of independent agency in terms of regional multilateralism very difficult. In the sphere of environmental policies, the Bolsonaro government will be remembered for climate change denial, avoiding demarcation of Indigenous lands, allowing the burning of lands in the Amazon, and the loosening of legislation on the use of toxic substances. In fact, the debate on climate change was called a “Marxist conspiracy” by Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo. Most significantly, soon after the election, Bolsonaro’s designated Minister of the Environment announced that Brazil would leave the Paris Agreement, a move that ultimately did not take place. The president did not attend COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in October–November 2021 as there was nothing to be announced in terms of Brazilian contributions. In his second week in office, the Bolsonaro government did announce its withdrawal from the voluntary United Nations Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which had already been signed by the previous Brazilian government under Michel Temer. The president was fulfilling a pledge he made before taking office, during his election campaign. According to the new Foreign Minister Araújo, “Immigration must not be dealt with as a global issue, but rather in accord with each country’s reality and sovereignty” (Paris, 2019). This was a misrepresentation of the nature of the Global Compact since it does not constrain signatory states’ national policies on migration – but the conservative concept of sovereignty prevailed. In this, Bolsonaro again followed the position adopted in Washington by the Trump administration. Health multilateralism was under intense scrutiny during 2019–22 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a long-standing history of cooperation and mutual influence between the Brazilian universal health system and the World Health Organization (WHO). During Bolsonaro’s government the policies developed expressed the extreme form of liberalism and social Darwinism mentioned earlier. The COVID-19 pandemic approach taken by President Bolsonaro and his administration was to allow the virus to spread and – arguably, in his view – to generate “herd immunity”, a policy that stood in in stark contrast to the recommended

102  Handbook on governance in international organizations public health policies put forward by the WHO (Ventura and Bueno, 2021). In 2020, in line with President Trump’s perspective on the subject in Washington, the Bolsonaro government even considered leaving the world organization. Brazil was absent from the first attempt for the development of a vaccine (Chade, 2020a) and positioned itself against recommendations of the WHO to suspend intellectual propriety rights regarding vaccines. In addition, in 2019 the South American Health Institute was extinguished, in line with the broader policy of destruction of regional institutions, undermining regional cooperation in this increasingly critical field. Also in line with this conservative trend, and because of the immense relevance of the evangelical constituency for the government and the position of the Evangelical Parliamentary Front, which was able to secure strategic positions in the government, an Evangelical pastor, Damares Alves, was appointed Minister of Human Rights, Family and Women. She had immense influence regarding the Brazilian position vis-à-vis the multilateral institutions dealing with human rights, a sphere in which the country’s policies changed dramatically (Neves and Wachholz, 2021), being channeled to revamp the government’s basic concept of human rights and focusing on a pro-Christian family agenda. Brazil joined the International Religious Freedom Alliance – launched by the Trump administration in February 2020 – and the Geneva Consensus on the Promotion of Women’s Health and Strengthening of the Family, also launched in 2020 by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and focused on promoting anti-abortion policies. Brazil thus became one of the main countries to articulate a conservative transformation of the international human rights regime (Lima and Albuquerque, 2019; Correa, 2018). Damares Alves consistently defended an anti-feminist perspective and the “right of the unborn”, aided by Angela Gandra, Secretary for Family at the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights, responsible for building the conservative network. In this context, the most basic principles of global governance of gender issues were challenged. A notable example was the decision to try to ban the use of the word gender from UN resolutions (Chade, 2019) since according to this view sexual and reproductive health should be withdrawn from multilateral debates. The Brazilian position according to the Bolsonaro government was that gender equality should be rewritten in terms of equality between men and women, implying (and on the assumption) that there is a biological essence that cannot be reinterpreted. Themes related to reproductive and sexual rights were opposed by the government, often in alliance with other very conservative governments such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Pakistan. In addition, Brazil and Hungary led the project of creating a fund to support Christian communities living in the Middle East, and in March 2019 Brazil together with seven other countries was able to approve a resolution at the UN creating the International Day in Memory of Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief. For the first time after ending of the military dictatorship in 1985, Brazil became an important target of international institutions. Since the Bolsonaro government took office, the UN Human Rights Council had been looking into the human rights situation in the country. Brazil became the target of letters and communications of independent UN special rapporteurs which detailed, and denounced, the violations of human rights being conducted by the government.8 Police violence, restrictions of the freedom of the press, violence against women, the environmental tragedy, threats against human rights activists, racism and public policies towards the pandemic were among the themes put forward. The International Criminal Court in The Hague also received denunciations against the government. In November 2019, CADHu (Collective of Human Rights Advocacy) and the Arns Commission filed a report outlining evidence of

Brazil gives up its role in global governance  103 systematic generalized attacks and incitement to genocide of Indigenous people committed by the head of state. In April 2020, the Brazilian Association of Lawyers for Democracy (ABJD) filed the first report regarding President Jair Bolsonaro’s behavior in managing the COVID-19 crisis. In July that same year, an umbrella group of Brazilian unions and social organizations filed a criminal complaint with the ICC. In the complaint, the group that represents more than one million Brazilian medical professionals urged the Office of the Prosecutor to start investigations into the policies of the president of Brazil. They alleged that his (non‑)handling of the coronavirus pandemic constituted a “crime against humanity”. In August 2021, Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB), a coalition of Indigenous associations across the country, also filed a statement before the ICC, accusing Bolsonaro’s government of genocide and crimes against humanity due to its role in alleged crimes perpetrated against their community during the pandemic. In October 2021, Austrian environmental justice campaigners filed an official complaint against Bolsonaro for his alleged role in the destruction of the Amazon, the first case seeking to explicitly link deforestation to loss of life. The military leadership, in particular General Hamilton Mourão, the vice-president, sought to counterbalance the foreign policies that they saw as most outrageous, such as the anti-Chinese stance, the proposal of moving the Brazilian Embassy to Jerusalem (again following the example of the Trump administration), or the intensification of opposition to the Maduro regime in Venezuela. But as regards the government’s highly negative stance regarding multilateral institutions, they remained silent.

CONCLUSION As we have seen, one of the core characteristics of the Bolsonaro government’s foreign policy was a constant attack on multilateral institutions. The United Nations system and its agencies were criticized, and frequently dismissed, as mechanisms that undermined national sovereignty, individual liberty, and the return to an idealized past. For a government that thrived in the face of creating or inventing antagonisms, multilateral institutions and norms – in particular, regarding human rights and the environment – are an obvious target. As foreign policy is treated as part of a broader conservative and authoritarian project, the tensions between multilateral institutions based on universalism, humanism and the perspective of social progress, on the one hand, and the conservative and authoritarian worldview discussed here, becomes very clear in the Brazilian case. This stands in clear contrast with an international culture and pattern of behavior geared towards support and participation in multilateral institutions. Thus, the impact of a conservative and authoritarian project on the country’s contribution to global governance is extremely grave. The Brazilian ruling elite under Bolsonaro gave up a role that permitted the country to shape global norms, a role in broadening the participation of countries in the global South within multilateral institutions, and a constructive seat in the conversation on global governance.

NOTES 1. See, for example, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, The Global State of Democracy, Stockholm, 2021, https://​www​.idea​.int/​gsod​-2021/​.

104  Handbook on governance in international organizations 2. I understand international culture as the discourse produced by the governing elite regarding the place of the country in the international system, its role in international relations and its relations with international institutions. A country’s international culture is constantly in flux and is formed by ideas that are embedded in the wider culture of the ruling elite. 3. Understood as a traditional foreign policy image conceived regionally and related to the respect for international normative frameworks. Jurisdicismo also refers to a political argument commonly used as a reference for the definition and evaluation of foreign policy discourses and practices in the region. 4. On Brazilian foreign policy during the period, see Almeida (2006, 2009), Cervo (2003), and Soares de Lima (2010). 5. The 1948 Genocide Convention and Human Rights Declaration and the 1949 Geneva Conventions were already part of the legal stock of international obligations of the country. 6. On the country’s voting records on human rights, see Burges and Daudelin (2007). 7. See https://​www​.gov​.br/​mre/​en/​contact​-us/​press​-area/​press​-releases/​comunicado​-conjunto​-brasil​ -hungria​-visita​-oficial​-do​-ministro​-dos​-negocios​-estrangeiros​-e​-comercio​-exterior​-da​-hungria​ -peter​-szijjarto​-brasilia​-8​-de​-outubro​-de​-2020. 8. The Brazilian journalist Jamil Chade, based in Geneva, has written extensively on the subject in his articles (e.g. 2020a, 2020b, 2020c).

REFERENCES Almeida, P. (2006), ‘Uma nova arquitetura diplomática? Interpretações divergentes sobre a política externa do governo Lula (2003–2006),’ Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, 49, no. 1: 95–116. Almeida, P. (2009), ‘Lula’s foreign policy,’ in J. Love and W. Baer (eds.), Brazil Under Lula: Economy, Politics, and Society Under the Worker-President, pp. 167–83, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Araújo, E. (2017), Trump e o Ocidente, Cadernos de Política Exterior 324 ano III n.6. Araújo, E. (2019), Interview to The New Criterion, January. Avritzer, L. (2019), O pêndulo da democracia, São Paulo: Todavia. Bignotto, N. (2020), O Brasil à procura da democracia da proclamação da república ao século XXI (1889–2018), Rio de Janeiro: Bazar do Tempo. Brown, W. (2015), Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution, New York: Zone Books. Brown, W. (2019), In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, New York: Columbia University Press. Burges, S. and Daudelin, J. (2007), ‘Brazil: how realists defend democracy,’ in Thomas Legler, Sharon F. Lean and Dexter S. Boniface (eds), Promoting Democracy in the Americas, pp. 1–7, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Burns, N. (2019), ‘Brazil’s foreign minister wants to save the west from postmodernism the curious case of Ernesto Araujo,’ Foreign Affairs, Jan. 24, https://​www​.foreignaffairs​.com/​articles/​brazil/​2019​-01​ -24/​brazils​-foreign​-minister​-wants​-save​-west​-postmodernism. Cervo, A. (2003), ‘A política exterior de Cardoso a Lula,’ Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, 46, no.1: 5–11. Chade, J. (2019), ‘Brasil veta termo “gênero” em resoluções da ONU e cria mal-estar,’ June 27, https://​ jamilchade​.blogosfera​.uol​.com​.br/​2019/​06/​27/​brasil​-veta​-termo​-genero​-em​-resolucoes​-da​-onu​-e​-cria​ -mal​-estar/​. Chade, J. (2020a), ‘Trump bombardeou resolução proposta por Brasil por acesso à vacina,’ UOL, May 5, https://​noticias​.uol​.com​.br/​colunas/​jamil​-chade/​2020/​05/​19/​oms​-aprova​-resolucao​-que​-estabelece​ -acesso​-a​-vacina​.htm. Chade, J. (2020b), ‘Mundo se reúne para reconstruir seu futuro. E Brasil não aparece,’ UOL, May 28, https://​noticias​.uol​.com​.br/​colunas/​jamil​-chade/​2020/​05/​28/​brasil​-fica​-fora​-de​-coalizao​-mundial​ -para​-planejar​-reconstrucao​-da​-economia​.htm. Chade, J. (2020c), ‘OMS aprova resolução que estabelece acesso à vacina,’ UOL, May 19, https://​twitter​ .com/​UOL/​status/​1262714949215887361.

Brazil gives up its role in global governance  105 Corrêa, L. F. de S. (1995), ‘Introdução,’ in Fundação Alexandre Gusmão (ed.), A Palavra do Brasil nas Nações Unidas – 1946–1995, Brasília: FUNAG. Correa, S. (2018). A política do gênero: Um comentário genealógico. Cadernos Pagu. Diniz, Eugênio (2006). 'O Brasil e as Operações de Paz,' in H. A. de Oliveira and A. C. Lessa. (eds), Relações Internacionais do Brasil: Temas e Agendas, pp. 303-337, São Paulo: Saraiva. Domingues, J. M. (2021), Uma Esquerda para o Século XXI, Rio de Janeiro: Mauad. Herz, M. (2011), ‘Brazil major power in the making?’ in T. J. Volgy, R. Corbetta, K. A. Grant and R. G. Baird (eds), Major Powers and the Quest for Status in International Politics: Global and Regional Perspectives, pp. 159–79, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kenkel, K. (2012), ‘Brazil and R2P: does taking responsibility mean using force?’ Global Responsibility to Protect, 4, no.1: 5–32. Lima, M. R. S. and Albuquerque, M. R. A. (2019), ‘O Estilo Bolsonaro de governar e a política externa’, Boletim Opsa, 4: 15–21. Miguel, L. F. (2019), O Colapso da Democracia no Brasil, São Paulo: Expressão Popular. Neves, J. de M. and Wachholz, R. O. (2021), ‘A influência da religião na atuação de Damares Alves na Organização das Nações Unidas,’ Plural, 28, no.1: 161–83. Norris, P. and Inglehart, R. (2019), The Cultural Backlash, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paris, F. (2019), ‘President Bolsonaro withdraws from U.N. Compact on Migration,’ NPR, Jan. 9, https://​ www​.npr​.org/​2019/​01/​09/​683634412/​brazilian​-president​-bolsonaro​-withdraws​-from​-u​-n​-compact​ -on​-migration. Passini, M., Ramanzini M. H. júnior and Vigevani, T. (2021), ‘Dossiê – 30 anos de Mercosul,’ Lua Nova, 112, Jan.–Apr. Santos, W. G. dos. (2017), A democracia impedida: o Brasil no século XXI, Rio de Janeiro: FGV. Saraiva, M. G. and Silva, A. V. C. (2019), ‘Ideologia e pragmatismo na política externa de Jair Bolsonaro,’ Relações Internacionais, 64: 117–37. Singer, A. (2018), Lulismo em crise: um quebra-cabeça do período Dilma (2011–2016), São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Soares de Lima, M. R. (2005), ‘Aspiração internacional e política externa,’ Revista Brasileira de Comércio Exterior, 82: 4–19. Soares de Lima, M. R. (2010), ‘Tradición e innovación en la política exterior brasileña,’ Plataforma Diplomática – Working Paper 3, pp.  1–31, http://​www​.p​lataformad​emocratica​.org/​Arquivos/​ Tradicion​%20e​%20Innovacion​%20en. Spector, M. (2019), ‘Diplomacia da Ruptura’ in Democracia em Risco, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Stuenkel, O. (2014), ‘Brazil as a new global agenda setter?’ in van Lindert, T. and van Troost, L. (eds), Brazilian Foreign Policy and International Human Rights Promotion: Existing Tensions and Future Prospects, pp. 25–32, Amnesty International Netherlands. Vadell, J. A. and Giaccaglia, C. (2020), ‘El rol de Brasil en el regionalismo latinoamericano: la apuesta por una inserción internacional solitaria y unilateral,’ Foro Internacional, 60, no. 3: 1041–80. Ventura, D. and Bueno, F. (2021), ‘De líder a paria de la salud global: Brasil como laboratorio del neoliberalismo epidemiológico ante la Covid-19,’ Foro Internacional, March, https://​www​.scielo​.org​.mx/​ scielo​.php​?script​=​sci​_arttext​&​pid​=​S0185​-013X2021000200427. Vigevani, T. and Cepaluni, G. (2007), ‘A política externa de Lula da Silva: a estratégia da autonomia pela diversificação,’ Contexto Internacional, 29, no. 2: 273–335.

Organizational culture, leadership and gender

8. Expert bodies and organizational culture(s) in international organizations Nina Reiners

INTRODUCTION This chapter applies the perspective that international organizations (IOs) have their distinct organizational cultures (Weaver and Nelson 2016; Sarfaty 2009). Analyzing such cultures is challenging due to the generally broad and contested meaning of the term “culture.” IO culture is commonly defined as “the shared ideologies, norms, and routines that shape staff members’ expectations” (Nielson, Tierney, and Weaver 2006: 109) about an IOs behavior. The concept helps to explain why IOs behave in the ways they do and, from an International Relations (IR) perspective, “reflects the recognition that IOs are, after all, organizations” (Weaver and Nelson 2016: 920–21). This turn of IR towards organizational sociology and management studies allowed for the import of concepts which are now central to our analyses of IOs like mission creep (Littoz-Monnet 2017; Piiparinen 2016; Engelbrekt 2015) or understanding IO behavior as organized hypocrisy (Weaver 2008). Governance in IOs is not only exercised through diplomats or international bureaucrats. In this chapter, I want to focus on organizational culture(s) in expert bodies in IOs. Expert committees are increasingly established to take over governance functions in IOs like treaty monitoring, policy formulation or staff recruitment. While exercising such functions, their outputs have considerable influence on policies adopted by other IO bodies or national policymakers. For example, expert bodies give advice on which sanctions the Security Council should adopt vis-à-vis one state (Dörfler 2019, 2021) or which public health recommendations prevent the spread of a virus.1 In short, expert committees are an important part of the answer as to “who governs IOs.” In this chapter, we are interested in the generalizability of IO culture to such subunits that are often explicitly mandated to act independently of national interests but are also not part of the IO bureaucracy. This chapter explores expert bodies in IOs as subjects for the study of IO governance and organizational culture(s). After giving a brief overview of the IR scholarship on organizational culture in IOs, the specifics of expert committees as IO bodies are discussed. I will focus this discussion on IO culture literature dealing with professional cultures, and on the literature on experts and expertise in IOs. After empirically illustrating expert committees and their professional cultures in the field of human rights, the chapter concludes with a summary of the role of organizational culture for governance in IO expert bodies and provides incentives for future research.

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ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN IOs Defining organizational culture is not an easy task. This chapter follows Barnett and Finnemore who define organizational culture “as the rules, rituals, and beliefs that are embedded in the organization (and its subunits)” (Barnett and Finnemore 1999: 719). These factors vary across IOs and the extent to which the culture shapes the staff is shaped by even more factors. For example, IOs have different mandates which enable them to work on different issues and to fulfill different tasks. They do so in different countries and across governance levels, they have different requirements for membership, and they vary significantly regarding organizational characteristics such as the size of the budget or number of staff (Fleischer and Reiners 2021). IOs also have different histories (Fioretos 2011; Hanrieder 2015) and are perceived differently by the public and by national policymakers (Liese et al. 2021; Herold et al. 2021). As such, every IO has its distinct organizational culture (Weaver 2008). Some IOs even have unique organizational personalities (Vetterlein 2015). IO culture is not only seen from the outside, but it also shapes how an IO and those working in it see their environment. As argued by Broome and Seabrooke (2012), how international organizations “see” their social environment is crucial to understand how they identify policy problems and develop policy solutions. This perspective on IOs builds on the view that the social world emerges through processes of interpretation and is intersubjectively constructed rather than being exogenously given (Adler 2013). To make studying IO culture even harder, these interpretations and understandings of the social world can be contested and are subject to change. The dominant IR definition for organizational culture in IOs understands the concept as mainly referring to the organization’s and its subunits’ staff members, the bureaucracy, and as such distinct from but interacting with the culture of diplomats and government officials acting out of state interests. To put it broadly, it encompasses the ways in which an IO sees the world, how it understands and makes sense of changes in its environment, and how it sees its own role as well as the roles of other actors within it. Because IOs are embedded within an organizational environment, which is “filled with opportunities, resources, threats and constraints, both material and nonmaterial and at various scales” (Brechin and Ness 2013: 22), IO cultures are decisive for how they behave. Whether a situation emanating from the environment is understood as an opportunity or as a threat depends to a degree on the understandings and interpretations within the international organization. Perceptions are formed within and throughout the international organization in a continuous process of interaction and engagement with the external environment and based on previously existing beliefs and interpretations of the world (Heucher 2018). The perspective that organizational culture matters for the study of IOs is not new. It was, however, new to the dominant economistic and rational analyses of IOs. While they do not “deny the existence of organizational cultures per se (…) they do not treat culture as a concept worthy of inclusion in the analysis, either” (Weaver and Nelson 2016). This has left much space for research to analyze “why organizations might develop particular cultures and how cultures explain patterns of IO behavior” (Weaver and Nelson 2016). The study of organizational culture in IOs developed based on an interest in why IOs act in the way they do. Scholars in this tradition all share that they do not treat IOs as a mere blueprint for powerful states. They hold that IOs have a life on their own, mainly resulting from the composition and activities of their bureaucracy (Barnett and Finnemore 1999, 2004; Johnson 2014). To further explain what shapes the purpose, processes, and outcomes of an organization, IO culture scholars highlight

Expert bodies and organizational culture(s) in IOs  109 the strategic use of cultural resources (Weaver 2008). Yet to what extent and whether this culture is fixed or can be shaped by actors are questions which different strands of IO culture research address from different disciplinary predispositions. Research on organizational culture in IOs has different emphases, depending on the disciplinary traditions with which it is connected. Especially sociological approaches to IO culture(s) have come to address these questions in IR (Barnett and Finnemore 2004). Broadly speaking, sociological approaches analyze the “social content of organizations,” which includes “its culture, its legitimacy concerns, dominant norms that govern behavior and shape interests, and the relationship of these to a larger normative and cultural environment” (Barnett and Finnemore 1999: 706). These scholars convincingly made the case that culture matters for an IOs operations, but culture is something that is rather stable and shared among an IOs members. More recent research applying a more ethnographic lens to the study of IOs points us to the construction, contestation, and practice of culture in IOs (Sarfaty 2012; Nair 2020). Most approaches to IO culture have in common that they view organizational culture in both its role for internal processes and purposes but also for their behavior towards actors and organizations outside of their ecology. While it is widely established that IOs are open systems, which further challenges analyses of IO culture(s), the activities of IO members to build coalitions with external participants are crucial for understanding an IOs culture (Hanrieder 2014). These boundary-spanning interactions impact IO culture(s) as well, exposing the member to different values or beliefs. Others draw links between transnational professional cultures, such as the field of economics, and the cultures and behavior of numerous international economic institutions and epistemic communities (Seabrooke and Henriksen 2017; Ban, Seabrooke, and Freitas 2016; Seabrooke 2014; Seabrooke and Tsingou 2014). The professional backgrounds of IO staff determine the organizational culture and the organizational “personality” of an IO, which is a crucial factor for policy change (Vetterlein and Moschella 2014; Vetterlein 2015). Studies that focused on professions within one IO found that it is precisely through power dynamics and contestation within the organization’s professional strands that an IOs culture is shaped (Sarfaty 2009, 2012). Culture is thus not already there, brought to the IO through its founding agreement or top-down implementation. It is constructed through dynamics of the members of its wider ecology. Whether these members share the same professional background or not contributes to these dynamics. When new norms are introduced to the IO or existing norms require interpretation, different professional groups “have distinct interpretative frames that they use to define the norm” (Safarty 2009: 649). This scholarship contributed to opening the black box of IOs to understand who governs IOs and how. So far, most of the scholarship on IO organizational culture tends to focus on single IOs or compares cultures across the entire IO. Yet, members of IO expert bodies, especially when elected as independent experts and for a fixed term, simultaneously are members of at least two cultures: their professional background culture which allowed them to become an expert in the first place and the IO expert body of which they are a member. Experts have a different culture of communication (Kennedy 2005). These cultures further may be informed by the broader IO culture and other ecologies at the boundaries of the core two cultures. Within this complex, subcultures and countercultures (Weaver and Nelson 2016; Sarfaty 2009, 2012) emerge, manifest, and contest the dominant IO culture. Through mechanisms such as layering, incremental policy change in IOs can then lead to transformative outcomes (Chwieroth 2014). As has been argued before, this “necessitates empirical research which delves deep enough into the bureaucratic life of any organization to discern where such subcultures exist and how

110  Handbook on governance in international organizations they interact to affect observable patterns of behavior and change” (Weaver and Nelson 2016). I assume that such an effect is even higher in expert committees, where individuals are elected based on their professional career.

EXPERT COMMITTEES AND ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE What can we learn from expert bodies about IO culture(s)? IO culture determines behavior within the IO and how an IO perceives its environment. Analytic institutions in the IO play an important role in this regard because they are “the specialist units, departments, committees, adjudicatory bodies and others housed by or linked to IOs that develop the cognitive framework for understanding and solving problems” (Broome and Seabrooke 2012: 3–4). Unlike policymakers, experts’ outputs do not stand for diplomatic sacrifices or reflect the will of their governments, but instead should represent independent expertise (Niederberger 2020; Carraro 2019). Because members of these bodies are elected as experts, and not as government representatives, they belong to networks and professional communities which partially overlap with those of the other members (Seabrooke and Henriksen 2017; Seabrooke and Tsingou 2014). Through expert bodies, other actors have a much more direct channel through which they can influence the development of international relations (e.g., in transnational lawmaking coalitions) (Reiners 2022). The possibility to draw from different sources of evidence qua the different trainings and professions of their members for such a body’s output is at the heart of what constitutes their expert authority in global governance (Sending 2015). And just as experts in each field read, observe, and discuss to arrive at an opinion on a matter, these bodies’ stances are ascribed the status as expert opinions because they derive from persons who likely read, observed, talked, and discussed with the “right” people (i.e., those most relevantly knowledgeable on matters on which their own perspectives are rather limited). These social practices of expert governance shape organizational culture(s) in the IO bodies. An example for expert bodies and the social practice of rule-making (Raymond 2019) can be found in interpretations by the IMF, which expose a rare case of “power of internal authoritative interpretation” (Gold 1967) among international organizations. The IMF Articles of Agreement in Art. XXIX “doubles the IMF organs’ powers by according them not only the power to manage IMF resources and advise its members in order to pursue global monetary and economic stability, but also to authoritatively interpret the IMF Articles” (Schlemmer-Schulte 2014: para. 23). Equipped with this power to interpret the Articles of Agreement, the Executive Board members of the IMF present their arguments to the Board, which requires the presentation of evidence. As evidence is ideally presented from a variety of sources, the board members will reach out to acquaintances in former workplaces (e.g., colleagues at a bank, bureaucrats in the finance ministry, and professors from their university experiences) who will recommend different objects of expertise (books, research articles, statistics, government documents, etc.) to buttress their individual positions. Within the Executive Board particularly, one finds in the sum of opinions much agreement but also leeway to negotiate, stemming from the different knowledge bases of their members. But irrespective of whose expertise is incorporated the most in the final document casting the summated interpretation, an expert body’s output – be it the IMF or another – follows this same path, deriving expert status through the interactions of its members with other actors to cultivate evidence.

Expert bodies and organizational culture(s) in IOs  111 Individuals elected as independent experts have acquired previously an expert status which allows them to be nominated and elected in their individual capacity, usually by government representatives. Most experts elected to IO bodies are academics because they are expected to represent non-biased, impartial expertise, making them more apt to be regarded as an independent expert than, for example, someone holding public office.2 As mainly states parties’ governments possess the authority to nominate members of expert bodies, it is more likely than not that these nominations include neither the sharpest critics nor those a government does not already hold in high esteem. In the case of human rights expert bodies, election of candidates is often a political process, which some claim to be haphazard and shallow, “tak[ing] limited account of qualifications” (Crawford 2000: 9). Additionally, members of expert bodies often are not permanent staff to the IO and are only paid on a per diem basis. An eligible candidate for nomination therefore must assure both their financial security and the flexibility to interrupt their work for the sessions. Do expert bodies in IOs constitute an epistemic community? When looking at professions, lawyers are the majority professional group of experts on expert bodies, especially monitoring bodies, but not the only ones. Haas has defended epistemic communities against intrusion from lawyers (Haas 2008), mirrored by Koskenniemi who feared the law’s deference to political expertise (Koskenniemi 2007). Expert bodies typically present the co-constitution of legal expertise and other (functional) expertise (Leander and Aalberts 2013). After all, having a law degree still leaves open various professional paths. For example, on the UN human rights treaty bodies, we find public international law professors, human rights NGO advocates, members of the executive branch, and diplomats. Yet, the empirical reality of expert committees shows that individuals trained in the legal profession can take on various roles and forms of collective or individual action. Within a “legal complex” for political liberalism, Karpik and Halliday identified structural configurations of relationships among legal professionals through “which legal occupations act collectively, alone, or in alliance with other legal occupations, in the making, implementing, enforcing, or disseminating of law or in leading publics or allying with civil society groups” (Karpik and Halliday 2011: 233). Their skills and practical knowledge might become even more relevant in drafting processes which lack formal procedural rules (Raymond 2019: 20). In expert committees, often both a lawyer’s expertise and that of other experts are needed.3 Much of the research on professional cultures in IOs and epistemic communities focuses on a single profession, on economics or lawyers, or purposely excludes professions from a certain community, like lawyers from the environmental expert community (Haas 2008). Yet, experts in IOs are informed by various professional culture(s) and interactions with members of other ecologies. As individuals, they can be simultaneously members of transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998), epistemic communities (Haas 1992), professional networks (Seabrooke and Henriksen 2017) and as member of a coalition to advance standards in their capacity as a member of an expert body (Reiners 2022). To name a typical example for the various culture(s) presented by one expert: a member of the UN human rights treaty bodies, who is an international lawyer, is also part of an advocacy network on the prohibition of torture, because of her time as a junior officer for Amnesty International. During her time as a post-doctoral researcher in academia, she, as an active member of a network committed to a legally binding instrument on business and human rights as well, shared information with NGOs, trade unions and international bureaucrats, who all promoted the same cause. Before her election to a human rights treaty body, she worked for a law firm that composed

112  Handbook on governance in international organizations strategic litigation for legal cases on the environment. Not only did this experience, and the personal networks it spawned, contribute to her election as a treaty body member, but it also makes apparent the way in which experts are inextricably linked with transnational advocacy networks and epistemic communities in their work.4

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IN HUMAN RIGHTS EXPERT BODIES Is an IOs culture applicable to its expert bodies? What professional culture(s) shape governance in IO expert bodies? Is the culture in each issue area in one IO comparable to that in other IOs? I start my empirical description from a general perspective on expert bodies in IOs as compared to other IO bodies.5 I limit my comparison to expert committees in IOs with the following features: (1) they monitor an agreement and (2) they do so as independent experts. These criteria therefore exclude other committees composed of experts which have advisory functions and/or are composed of diplomats or government actors. Instead, the committees need to have a mandate to monitor an international agreement and do so in their individual capacity – free from national interests. I also do not include international agreements which do not establish a monitoring body (Koremenos 2016). To keep the organizational purpose stable across the bodies, I only compare those experts monitoring human rights agreements in IOs and limit my analysis to an act of the same norm interpretation to compare which rules, rituals and beliefs can be found in their argumentation to infer IO culture. I selected the following three expert bodies in the field of human rights for my comparison of organizational culture: the African Union Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR), the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and the United Nations Human Rights Committee (CCPR). My comparison is based on the composition of these bodies as of August 2021 and I use mainly descriptive data available on the websites of the institutions (Table 8.1).6 The literature on inter-organizational relations, for example between the African Union and the United Nations, often cites different organizational cultures (Williams and Boutellis 2014) to explain conflicts in partnerships. In the following, I briefly discuss the autonomy of the three human rights expert bodies from the IO and its subunits to highlight factors for developing distinctive organizational cultures, that is, their own ideologies, norms, and routines. In a second step, I will turn to the member-level and compare the three expert bodies on human rights for the factors that I see as particularly shaping their organizational culture, namely professional background, educational background, and gender balance. African Commission on Human and People’s Rights The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) is mandated to monitor and interpret the Charter of the African Union (AU), which entered into force in 1986. The Commission today consists of 11 members elected by secret ballot by the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government. These members are experts who were nominated by the state parties to the Charter. The Assembly shall consider equitable geographical and gender representation in electing the members of the Commission.

Expert bodies and organizational culture(s) in IOs  113 Table 8.1 Expert body

Cultures in selected expert bodies Members

Term

Election procedure

Requirements

Scope

Meetings per year

Six-

Secret ballot election by

Senior civil servants and

year term

AU Assembly of Heads

diplomatic representatives

on Human and

of State and Government

not eligible

People’s Rights

(re-election possible)

African Union

11

Commission

Regional

4

Regional

4

International

3

(ACHPR) Four-year

Candidates proposed by

Persons of high moral

term

member states and elected

character;

Human Rights

in personal capacity by

competence in field of

(IACHR)

OAS General Assembly

human rights

Inter-American

7

Commission on

(re-election once) Proposal of at least one OAS member state national per member state Human Rights

18

Committee (CCPR)

Four-year

Elected by State parties in

Persons of high moral

term

accordance with articles

character; competence in

28 to 39 of the Covenant

field of human rights (legal

(re-election possible)

expertise)

Source: Own compilation.

Members of the commission are elected for a six-year term and are eligible for re-election. The ACHPR elects its own bureau, the Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson, from among the Commissioners for a two-year term. Once elected, the commissioners serve in their personal capacity and not as representatives of their respective countries. Previously, some members of the Commission held high political offices at the national level, which affects the Commission’s independence. The AU in April 2005 issued a note verbale to member states prescribing guidelines for nomination of members to the Commission which excluded senior civil servants and diplomatic representatives.7 The ACHPR precedes the founding of the AU in 1999, its history connected to the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The OAU endorsed the UDHR in its preamble but focused mainly on the decolonization of the continent and the eradication of apartheid. These efforts came “at the expense of individual liberty.”8 In 1979, the OAU Secretary General was asked by member states to form a committee of experts to draft an African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The group of experts began work in 1979 and produced a draft which was unanimously adopted in 1981. The OAU was dissolved in 2002. The advocates and drafters of the Charter already had examples for such an instrument from the UN and Europe and the Americas they could draw from. Yet, they decided to “take a separate course on many issues because they felt their African values, traditions, and culture required such a deviation” (Doebbler 2003: 11). The approach of the drafters also led to an in-built autonomy of the ACHPR: Arts. 30–44 secure that the treaty-based body survives and remains operational even if the AU ceases to exist. Nevertheless, the ACHPR needs to maintain close relations with the secretariat of the AU for administrative support and with the AU Assembly, as this IO unit elects the members and decides which decisions of the ACHPR will be made public (Art. 59). This brief overview of the ACHPR’s history and legal framework highlights the autonomy of the expert body as established through its treaty for its operations

114  Handbook on governance in international organizations and supported by recent initiatives to shield the commission from the influence of diplomats and government officials. The experts’ ideology forms around the protection of individual liberties for all, norms the IO neglected. Inter-American Commission on Human Rights The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) is a permanent body of the OAS, with headquarters in Washington, D.C., USA, and it meets regularly to examine allegations of human rights violations. Together with the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San José, Costa Rica, the Commission makes up the human rights protection system of the OAS. According to the American Convention on Human Rights, the IACHR shall be composed of seven members, who shall be persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights, elected in a personal capacity by the OAS General Assembly from a list of candidates proposed by the governments of the member states. Each of those governments may propose up to three candidates, who may be nationals of the state proposing them or of any other OAS member state. When a slate of three is proposed, at least one of the candidates shall be a national of a state other than the one proposing the slate. The members of the Commission are elected for a four-year term and may be reelected only once. Members are elected in a personal capacity by the OAS General Assembly. The IACHR was founded ten years before the Court, and eleven years after the OAS adopted the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man in 1948. The IACHR and the OAS interacted closely since the very beginning. The relationship can be described as cooperative wherein the Commission turned to the OAS for advice on future directions, thus seeking to harmonize their rules and routines with the IO. For example, the IACHR received the competency to develop its own procedures. Commission members became uncertain regarding their authority, and which powers the IACHR had to adopt recommendations or consider individual complaints. As a result, it requested the OAS council to clarify the competencies. In 1965, the Commission was officially authorized by the OAS to examine specific cases of human rights violations. The OAS also upgraded the IACHR to a principal organ of the IO in 1967. Since that date the IACHR has received thousands of petitions and has processed in excess of 12,000 individual cases (Goldman 2009). Petitions may be filed by NGOs or individuals and are confidential. Overall, the IACHR appears to have a similar organizational culture as the OAS and less incentives to slack and expand their mandate. One reason might be that joint rules, rituals and beliefs are more powerful to react to contestations from member states. In the past, “political organs of the OAS generally showed greater willingness to take initiatives supporting Commission decisions when dictatorships held sway in the region than they have in the last decade under freely elected governments” (Goldman 2009: 884). Human Rights Committee The Human Rights Committee (CCPR) is the United Nations (UN) body of 18 independent experts that monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by its States Parties. It was established by the treaty and started its work in 1977. All members are nominated and elected by states and shall act independently from national or the IOs interests. Among the nine UN human rights treaty bodies, the CCPR stands as somewhat of a unicorn, with its members almost all having a background in law. This compositional

Expert bodies and organizational culture(s) in IOs  115 quirk is often justified on the grounds that the ICCPR itself stipulates for it – indeed, the Covenant simply states that the CCPR’s members must be “persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights,” with “consideration given to the usefulness of the participation of some persons [italics mine] having legal experience” (ICCPR, Art. 28). Members are elected for a term of four years by States Parties in accordance with articles 28 to 39 of the Covenant. Members serve in their personal capacity and may be re-elected if nominated. The “unicorn” status of the CCPR also leads to the impression of outside observers that this treaty body is the most court-like and its outputs of higher legal value than those of other treaty bodies. This impression is supported by many domestic and regional court decisions referring to the committee’s decisions and the legal actions taken to bring individual petitions to the CCPR which might serve as precedents for other human rights courts (Keller and Grover 2012), and by the members of the committee (Halme-Tuomisaari 2020). They see “their” treaty as “the most important component of the organization’s entire human rights framework” (Halme-Tuomisaari 2020: 38). This belief among its members plays a role in the development of a distinct organizational culture of the CCPR – distinct from the other treaty bodies, regarded as less legal or court-like, and distinct from other human rights organs. Several examples of diverging decisions of the CCPR from, for example, the European Court of Human Rights (Cleveland 2021), underline the distinct rules and beliefs in the committee.

COMPARISON OF MEMBERSHIP The brief discussion of the nature and development of each human rights expert body shows that organizational culture varies in relation to the IO. Although all three expert bodies monitoring human rights agreements in IOs share the same purpose, and their procedures and outcomes are similar, some distinct features can be argued to shape different organizational cultures across these bodies. In this comparison, I will turn to the differences in membership to find more factors which might help to explain distinct organizational cultures. First, a comparison of the professional backgrounds9 reveals that academics are the dominant group of profession on the UN body, while the two regional monitoring bodies are more balanced for academics, diplomats, and members of the jurisprudence.10 There are almost no NGO representatives, with only one member on the CCPR. Professional homogeneity facilitates decision-making as members share the same rituals, but it also makes it more difficult to consider other perspectives and knowledge (Figure 8.1). Second, most members on all three human rights expert bodies have a law degree. Each body has at least one member with an IR/Political Science degree, but other educational backgrounds are rare (Figure 8.2). This might explain why the CCPR regards itself as more court-like than other bodies. Third, while there is gender parity across all three expert bodies (17/17), the UN CCPR has significantly more male members and the IACHR significantly more female members (Figure 8.3). Gender equality in international institutions is important for decision-making and helps to shape distinct organizational culture (Waylen 2014).

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Figure 8.1

Professional backgrounds across expert bodies

Figure 8.2

Educational backgrounds across expert bodies

Figure 8.3

Gender balance across expert bodies

 

Expert bodies and organizational culture(s) in IOs  117

CONCLUSION: IO CULTURE(S) AND EXPERT BODIES Expert bodies in IOs have their own organizational culture, often shaped by different ideologies, norms, and routines than the IO. More than other IO bodies, their work is shaped by the individual experts’ experiences, beliefs and values acquired in their previous positions. Their professional background made them eligible as experts for these bodies in the first place, and therefore they particularly invite studies on the role of organizational culture(s) in the study of governance in IOs. The comparison of three expert bodies monitoring human rights agreements in IOs revealed the following insights on organizational culture(s) in IOs and the role of professional backgrounds. The professions and educational backgrounds represented among the three bodies are quite similar. The treaty body members are elected for a fixed term and commensurate only for the time they are present for the meeting, which seems to make academics and (former) government representatives more likely to take on this role. Individuals working for an NGO, by contrast, have higher hurdles to clear, as their election requires their leaving an advocacy role for some weeks of the year, plus many human rights NGOs would not be able to compensate for their leave. While states can indeed exercise considerable influence on the opportunity structure of the expert committees by nominating and electing the experts, unintended consequences may nevertheless arise from tactical nominations and elections. It is very likely that, contrary to the intent behind the election, a more neutral perceived expert, like an academic, drafts and adopts stronger standards when on the committee than an NGO advocate, given that the individual academic expert enjoys autonomy from the government11 for their work and therefore can benefit from their perceived neutrality when pushing new standards, whereas an NGO member would risk having their arguments rejected as too biased against the government. The expert bodies are also heavily represented by members with a law degree. IOs often justify their (in‑)actions with legal arguments (Sarfaty 2009) and lawyers naturally find legal arguments more appealing (Finnemore 2014), yet those also do not develop without organizational contexts. Building on these insights, future research on organizational culture in IO expert bodies could give answers to the following questions: First, the relationship between knowledge and organizational culture needs further conceptualization. While we understand better the how and why of the emergence, contestation and de-construction of organizational cultures shaped by one or two dominant professions, we need more explanations as to whether different knowledge is needed for different expert bodies, which knowledge is more likely to shape IO culture, and how culture changes with elections of new experts and any shifting balance of professions. Second, more research is needed on the relationship of an expert body’s culture and that of the IO in general but also other IO entities. Do their cultures overlap, why do they differ, and would it be desirable to have them more conflictive? Third, future research will be interested in the question of which culture(s) make an expert body more likely to influence global governance. Addressing this question provides room for innovative research designs and an opportunity for comparative IO research. Fourth, the study of expert bodies and organizational culture(s) will benefit from analyses of non-expertise-related features as contributing to a certain culture; gender imbalances, but also the presence or absence of individuals who belong to historically excluded groups, all shape organizational cultures and affect how IOs are governed.

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NOTES 1. World Health Organization, 2021, Coronavirus disease (Covid-19) advice for the public, https://​ www​.who​.int/​emergencies/​diseases/​novel​-coronavirus​-2019/​advice​-for​-public (last access: August 30, 2021). 2. As a long-time treaty body member, Nigel Rodley explains for expert bodies on human rights, this does not mean that individuals with government affiliations are unable to make impartial decisions: “(…) a member holding a national public official function could find it difficult to treat such countries with the same impartiality as he or she would treat other states. That said, it is this author’s experience that some holders of national office have been able to evince more evident and rigorous independence, not to mention genuine expertise, than some of those not formally holding any such office” (Rodley 2013: 624). 3. Or, as Anna Leander and Tanja Aalberts addressed this in reaction to Koskenniemi: “However, what is noteworthy about the latter’s otherwise perceptive presentation of the politics of expertise is the juxtaposition of law and expertise, of lawyers and (other) functional experts, ignoring the expertise of law(yers) itself” (Leander and Aalberts 2013: 784). 4. Antonin Cohen has highlighted this by describing the European professional network of lawyers, building on Bourdieu: “Defying the usual categorizations of the national and the supranational, the institutional and the informal, and also the interests and the ideals, the individual agents constituting these networks precisely define themselves by their social ability to cross the borders between the various segments of the European field of power” (Cohen 2010: 108). 5. I chose the TRANSACCESS Dataset and their classification of IO bodies as the point of departure (Sommerer, Tallberg, and Squatrito 2015). The scholars used a sample of 298 organizational bodies in 50 IOs and distinguished between eight different types of bodies. Among them, they identified 70 expert bodies and 18 court-like bodies. As the latter also include experts elected to serve on these bodies, I included them in this selection. 6. African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Structure, https://​www​.achpr​.org/​structure (last access: August 30, 2021); The African Commission on Human Rights and Peoples’ Rights: At the Forefront of Advancing Human Rights, https://​au​.int/​sites/​default/​files/​documents/​31520​ -doc​ - the_african_commission_on_human_and_peoples_rights_at_the_forefront_of_advancing_ human_rights.pdf (last access: August 18, 2021); the following graphics only include 9/11 ACHPR members due to the passing of Commissioner Ndiamé Gaye (https://​www​.achpr​.org/​pressrelease/​ detail​?id​=​571) and the departure of Commissioner Kayitesi Zainabo Sylvie from the Commission in 2020 (https://​ishr​.ch/​latest​-updates/​achpr​-67​-outcome​-67th​-session​-african​-commission/​); Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Composition, https://​www​.oas​.org/​en/​iachr/​ mandate/​composition​.asp; Rules of Procedure of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, https://​www​.oas​.org/​en/​iachr/​mandate/​Basics/​RulesIACHR2013​.pdf; statute of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, https://​www​.oas​.org/​en/​iachr/​mandate/​Basics/​statuteiachr​.asp (last access: August 30, 2021); Human Rights Committee, Introduction, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​ HRBodies/​CCPR/​Pages/​CCPRIndex​.aspx; Membership https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​HRBodies/​ CCPR/​Pages/​Membership​.aspx (last access: August 30, 2021). 7. For information on the ACHRPR, see https://​au​.int/​sites/​default/​files/​documents/​31520​-doc​ -the​_african​_commission​_on​_human​_and​_peoples​_rights​_at​_the​_forefront​_of​_advancing​_human​ _rights​.pdf. 8. https://​www​.achpr​.org/​history. 9. Coding Rules: “Academia”: scholars, researchers, higher education lecturers, professors, head of department, chair, fellows, research institute employees, faculty members; “Consultancy/ Advisory”: consultants to national ministries, independent consultants, special advisors, consultants to IOs; “Diplomat/Government”: ambassadors, employees of national ministries, national representatives to IOs and their bodies, public sector employees, diplomatic advisors, employees of government agencies, ministers, foreign secretaries, employees of IOs other than United Nations; “Jurisprudence”: judges, lawyers, advocates, employees of legal training facilities, procurators, attorneys, presidents of court divisions, legal advisors, members of courts, magistrates. 10. For background information on ACHPR members, see African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, About ACHPR – Current Commissioners, https://​www​.achpr​.org/​currentcommissioners

Expert bodies and organizational culture(s) in IOs  119 (last access: August 30, 2021). For background information on IAHCR members, see Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Composition, https://​www​.oas​.org/​en/​iachr/​mandate/​composition​ .asp (last access: August 30, 2021). For background information on ICCPR members, see Human Rights Committee, Membership, https://​www​.ohchr​.org/​EN/​HRBodies/​CCPR/​Pages/​Membership​ .aspx (last access: August 30, 2021). 11. For a comparison of academic freedom, see Grimm and Saliba (2017), Aberbach and Christensen (2018).

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9. Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies Kent J. Kille

INTRODUCTION The specialized agencies operate under the umbrella of the United Nations (UN) System to address a wide range of international matters and are a crucial component in understanding the UN’s place in global governance. Unlike programs and funds created specifically by the UN to operate as subsidiary bodies, such as the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), or “related organizations” with more tenuous links with the UN, such as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, specialized agencies hold distinct standing as autonomous organizations that formalized their institutional relationship as part of the UN System. When considering governance provided by specialized agencies in the international system, an important dimension to examine is the leadership provided by an agency’s executive head. As self-governing institutions, the executive heads operate separately from the UN Secretariat and are chosen by the organizations themselves. Insights into the leadership provided, as well as its impact on shaping specialized agencies and the institutions’ roles in global governance, can be drawn by detailing shifts in officeholders across time within an agency along with comparing across these organizations. The chapter opens by situating the analysis in the related literature on specialized agencies and intergovernmental organization (IGO) leadership. This review reinforces the value of studying the specialized agencies and their executive heads, as well as the need to carry out comparative analysis across leaders and agencies to a greater extent than previously provided. Then, reflecting the focus of this section of the volume, the chapter turns to examining who governs specialized agencies and how this leadership is carried out. The information employed is drawn from the IO BIO Project, with all materials available at www​.ru​.nl/​fm/​iobio. This project incorporates an extensive database covering the heads of universal and regional IGOs from across the globe, including all 15 UN specialized agencies, which provides a basis for comparing leadership position patterns. To examine how individual leaders handle their offices, the chapter integrates material and provides comparative analysis from entries on specialized agency leaders drawn from the project’s other dimension, IO BIO, Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-General of International Organizations (Reinalda, Kille, and Eisenberg, n.d.).

SPECIALIZED AGENCIES AND LEADERSHIP IN THE UN SYSTEM In the UN system, the specialized agencies provide governance over a host of global issues. Examples range from the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) focus on aviation regulations (MacKenzie 2010; Milde 2008) to the World Meteorological Organization’s 122

Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies  123 (WMO) coverage of weather (Bogdan and Onsager 2010; Daniel 1973) to the International Fund for Agriculture and Development’s (IFAD) work on agricultural development (Kamau and Colaiacomo 2012). The timing and circumstances of specialized agency creation shapes their activities today. Some pre-date the founding of the UN in 1945 and were brought into the new structure, with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU, founded in 1865 as the International Telegraph Union) as the oldest example (Codding and Rutkowski 1982; Fari 2015). Many were formed around the time of the UN’s founding, like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) set up in 1946 (Lugten 2008; Shaw 2009), while other agencies were linked to the UN System later, such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 1974 (Deere Birkbeck 2016; May 2007) (Table 9.1). Table 9.1

Specialized agency creation and date joined the United Nations

Specialized agency (origin date)

Date joined UN

Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO (1945)

1946

International Labour Organization, ILO (1919)

1946

UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO (1945)

1946

International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO (1944/47)

1947

International Monetary Fund, IMF (1945)

1947

World Bank (1945)

1947

Universal Postal Union, UPU (1875)

1948

World Health Organization, WHO (1948)

1948

International Telecommunication Union, ITU (1865)

1949

World Meteorological Organization, WMO (starting point 1873)

1951

International Maritime Organization, IMO (1947/58)

1959

World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO (starting point 1883)

1974

International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD (1977)

1977

UN Industrial Development Organization, UNIDO (1967)

1985

UN World Tourism Organization, UNWTO (1975)

2003

Since the specialized agencies operate distinctly from other parts of the UN System, their member states can deviate from regular UN membership. For example, the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) struggles with the withdrawal of industrialized countries (Bredel 2003; Browne 2012), while the Universal Postal Union’s (UPU) deep history since 1878 means that certain members active today pre-date the UN member state list (Akzin 1933; Codding 1964). The International Labour Organization (ILO) is noted for its unique tripartite member representation from governments, workers, and employers (Hughes and Haworth 2011; La Hovary 2015). The institutional structure of the agencies also varies; for example, the decentralized authority across the World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional offices (Beigbeder 2018; Chorev 2012) contrasts with operations of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) centralized at the institution’s Paris headquarters (Duedahl 2016; Singh 2011). Agency headquarters are located across the globe, with many far away from the UN’s central headquarters in New York, including the International Maritime Organization (IMO) located in London as the only part of the UN System based in this city due to its historical significance in maritime affairs (Basaran 2016; Karim 2015). The roles and mandates of specialized agencies also change over time in relation to UN System priorities. For instance, considering the UN’s agenda shift to sustainable development, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) altered its tourism emphasis to a more environmentally sustainable model (Castañeda 2012; Miller and Twining-Ward 2005).

124  Handbook on governance in international organizations Since specialized agencies tend to be studied in isolation this makes it difficult to explore and understand the implications of institutional variation. Three areas with such comparison are organizations working on food issues, including the FAO and IFAD (Margulis 2017; Talbot 1990), communications by the ITU and UPU (Lyall 2011), and the international financial institutions, including specialized agencies International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (Lavelle 2011; Park and Vetterlein 2010). There are some studies across agencies based on a particular theme, such as politicization (Ghebali 1985; Imber 1989), development (Staples 2006), peacekeeping (Whitman 1999), place in related regimes (Zacher and Sutton 1996), legal privileges (Reinisch 2016), and human rights engagement (Coomans 2012; Oestreich 2007). Specialized agency activities also can include an important degree of collaboration, especially when faced with related global problems, yet these interactions are not often directly analyzed by scholars. Examples include engagement with patents (Stack 2011), intellectual property (Haugen 2010), codes of conduct (Sikkink 1986), global finances (Kranke 2020), education (Elfert 2021), labor-related issues (Gött 2020), and knowledge exchange (Albert 2000). The independent role of IGOs in the international arena indicates that specialized agencies should be examined as actors in their own right, beyond member states’ control (Oestreich 2012). A key dimension of such analysis is looking inside an organization to understand the function played by its bureaucracy (Barnett and Finnemore 2004). Autonomous IGO secretariats can influence the policymaking process (Knill and Bauer 2017). This leads to closer examination of the individuals within the UN Secretariat and their potential influence (Bode 2015). The executive head sits at the top of an IGO bureaucracy and can play an essential role in developing and guiding UN institutions. This impact is most often studied in relation to the UN Secretary-General, with writing on this office providing a rich literature to draw upon when exploring executive head leadership (Kille 2006; Ravndal 2020). The officeholders’ efforts to maintain international peace and security are given particular attention (Gowan 2011; Newman 1998), including relations with the Security Council (Fröhlich and Williams 2018). Along with a range of studies detailing the efforts of a particular Secretary-General, other areas prominently featured are the selection process (Haack 2018; Terlingen 2017), engagement with administrative and staffing affairs (Reinalda 2020b; Williams 2010), and consideration of officeholders’ moral standing which even extends to comparison with the Pope (Kille 2007; Troy 2017). Despite the coverage of specialized agencies in the general literature on the UN System, the executive head positions of these agencies are understudied compared to research on the UN Secretary-General and Secretariat, even though they are described as “extremely independent, and their powers have often been compared with those of feudal barons” (Williams 1987: 21). There is an initial scholarly basis to draw upon, including studies of leadership connected to the FAO (Abbott 1992; Weitz 1997), ILO (Sinclair 2020), IMF (Blackmon 2021), UNESCO (Bjerregaard and Nielsen 2014; Dutt 1995; Finkelstein 1988), UNWTO (Shackleford 2020), WHO (Farley 2008; Vilaca 2021), and World Bank (Kraske 1996; Rich 2002; Schechter 1988). Additional studies reinforce the need to assess the heads of UN agencies through their examination of leadership in other organizational components of the UN System, including the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (Harman 2011; Nay 2011), UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (Ramcharan 2002), UN High Commissioner for Refugees (Loescher 2001), UN Conference on Trade and Development (Bhattacharya 1976),

Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies  125 UN Children’s Fund (Fifield 2015), UNEP (Ivanova 2021), and World Trade Organization (Blackhurst 2012). As can be seen by this review, most studies of UN executive heads focus on one office. However, there is a call to engage in comparative political leadership analysis across organizations (Schechter 2012). A few studies have demonstrated the importance of such cross-institutional analysis for UN agencies. This includes comparison across the UN Development Programme, UNESCO, and World Bank (Schechter 1987), detailing the selection processes for international financial institutions (Kahler 2001), illustrating varied administrative styles across the FAO, ILO, and IMF (Knill et al. 2019), exploring across a wide range of UN System heads and senior administrators (Davies 2002), and examining women’s leadership across UN agencies (Haack 2022). The initial positive results demonstrate the value and need for further research and a fuller cross-institutional analysis of specialized agency leadership.

WHO LEADS THE SPECIALIZED AGENCIES? Executive head titles vary across the specialized agencies, with the majority (seven of the fifteen) holding the title of Director-General, which is the second most popular IGO head title. The top choice for IGO executive head title is Secretary-General, and there are five specialized agencies led by such an officer. President is the third most prevalent for both IGOs and specialized agencies (IFAD and the World Bank). However, the IMF’s Managing Director is a unique title. Some of the titles changed over the years, most often altered from Director to Director-General when the organizations joined the UN (such as the ILO and UPU). Earlier iterations of agencies also used different titles, such as Chief of the Secretariat at the International Meteorological Organization before shifting to Secretary-General at the WMO (Table 9.2). The list of current specialized agency executive heads demonstrates their geographical variation. China leads the way with three, but otherwise the leaders come from different countries (Table 9.3). However, this snapshot of current leaders is limited and does not reveal patterns that emerge when analyzed across time. As of August 2021, there have been 125 executive heads of specialized agencies. This number, and the analysis in this chapter, does not include acting executive heads or agency heads who were in charge solely before the organization joined the UN System as a specialized agency. There are several – Francisco Frangialli (UNWTO 1996–2009), Alois Muri (UPU, 1945–49), Edward Phelan (ILO, 1941–48), Gustav Swoboda (WMO, 1938–55), and Franz von Ernst (ITU, 1935–49) – executive heads who are included because they were still in office when the organization transitioned into being a specialized agency. The number of Chinese nationals holding specialized agency executive head positions deviates from the historical norm, with only Fang Liu (2015–21) recently departing as Director-General at ICAO and Margaret Chan (2007–17) serving as Director-General at WHO, and is indicative of the recent push by China to place its nationals in such positions. The United States (U.S.) is always represented via the Presidency of the World Bank, while the IMF is constantly led by a European national. The domination of a single institution by one country is not unheard of, for instance Swiss nationals led both the ITU and UPU in the years following their founding in the late 1800s. However, this practice shifted in 1950 for the ITU

126  Handbook on governance in international organizations Table 9.2

Specialized agency name and office title changes

Current name

Past name

Current office title

Past office title

FAO

–

Director-General

–

ICAO

–

Secretary-General

–

IFAD

–

President

–

ILO

–

Director-General

Director

IMF

–

Managing Director

–

IMO

Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative

Secretary-General

–

Organization ITU

International Telegraph Union

Secretary-General

Director

UNESCO

–

Director-General

–

UNIDO

–

Director-General

Executive Director

UNWTO

Added UN to original acronym of

Secretary-General

–

WTO due to creation of World Trade Organization (WTO) UPU

–

Director-General

Director

WHO

–

Director-General

–

WIPO

United International Bureaux for the

Director-General

Director

Protection of Intellectual Property (BIRPI) WMO

International Meteorological Organization

Secretary-General

Chief of the Secretariat

World Bank Group

International Bank for Reconstruction and

President

–

Development (first institution of World Bank Group)

Table 9.3

Current office holder (as of August 2021)

Specialized agency

Title

Office holder (home country, date start in office)

FAO

Director-General

Qu Dongyu (China, Aug. 2019)

ICAO

Secretary-General

Juan Carlos Salazar (Spain, Aug. 2021)

IFAD

President

Gilbert Fossoun Houngbo (Togo, Apr. 2017)

ILO

Director-General

Guy Ryder (U.K., Oct. 2012)

IMF

Managing Director

Kristalina Georgieva (Bulgaria, Oct. 2019)

IMO

Secretary-General

Kitack Lim (South Korea, Jan. 2016)

ITU

Secretary-General

Houlin Zhao (China, Jan. 2015)

UNESCO

Director-General

Audrey Azoulay (France, Nov. 2017)

UNIDO

Director-General

Li Yong (China, June 2013)

UNWTO

Secretary-General

Zurab Pololikashvili (Georgia, Jan. 2018)

UPU

Director-General

Bishar Hussein (Kenya, Jan. 2013)

WHO

Director-General

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (Ethiopia, July 2017)

WIPO

Director-General

Daren Tang (Singapore, Oct. 2020)

WMO

Secretary-General

Petteri Taalas (Finland, Jan. 2016)

World Bank

President

David Malpass (U.S., Apr. 2019)

and in 1967 for the UPU to the selection of leaders from a range of countries and no Swiss heads have been chosen since that time for those organizations. U.S. nationals have served as heads of other specialized agencies as well, overall holding the most posts with 20 out of the 125 executive heads. Two of the other so-called “Permanent Five” (due to their status as Security Council permanent members) are also more represented in specialized agency leadership positions compared to China’s five, with France holding 16 and seven for the United Kingdom (U.K.). However, there are no executive heads from Russia (or the Soviet Union

Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies  127 Table 9.4

Gender and specialized agency executive head leadership

WHO

2/8 = 25%

Gro Harlem Brundtland (1998–2003) Margaret Chan (2007–17) UNESCO

2/10 = 20%

Irina Bokova (2009–17) Audrey Azoulay (2017–) IMF

2/12 = 16.7%

Christine Lagarde (2011–19) Kristalina Georgieva (2019–current) ICAO

1/12 = 8.3%

Fang Liu (2015–21) World Bank

0/13 = 0%

ITU

0/11 = 0%

UPU

0/10 = 0%

FAO

0/9 = 0%

IMO

0/8 = 0%

ILO

0/7 = 0%

IFAD

0/6 = 0%

WMO

0/6 = 0%

UNIDO

0/5 = 0%

WIPO

0/4 = 0%

UNWTO

0/3 = 0%

Total

7/125 = 5.6%

before) at the specialized agencies. Along with Switzerland (six), other notable countries with multiple executive heads include four for India, Japan, and Sweden as well as three for Brazil, Canada, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Fourteen countries (ranging from Algeria to Spain) sent executive heads to specialized agencies twice, while another 19 (ranging from Chile to Tunisia) are represented once. With nationals from 45 countries taking office there is a solid degree of diversity across the history of specialized agency leadership, but also a great number of countries (by comparison the regular UN membership is currently 193 countries) are still waiting for the opportunity. Beyond country of origin, other patterns emerge across time. Despite a push for improved gender representation in the UN System, women are massively underrepresented in leadership positions at the specialized agencies. In total, only 5.6 percent (7 out of 125) of specialized agency executive head positions have been held by women. Decades passed before the first woman was selected, with Gro Harlem Brundtland starting as the WHO’s Director-General in 1998. Brundtland was succeeded by Chan, but the WHO reverted to a man (Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) in 2017. UNESCO started a trend of women leaders with Irina Bokova in 2009 and continued with current office holder Audrey Azoulay in 2017. A similar pattern occurred at the IMF with Christine Lagarde (2011–19) followed by Kristalina Georgieva (2019– current). Liu at ICAO is the only other woman executive head, since succeeded by Juan Carlos Salazar, leaving the other 11 agencies still waiting for their first woman leader (Table 9.4). The average age across all IGO leaders when they enter office is 53 years. At 55 years old on average the specialized agency executive heads are slightly older when starting their first term. A comparison to this average provides a clearer sense of how far-removed leaders are from the norm when taking office. The oldest individuals include Eugene Meyer (World

128  Handbook on governance in international organizations Bank, started in office at age 71), Norris Dodd (FAO, 69), Georgieva (IMF, 66), Muri (UPU, 66), Ove Nielsen (IMO, 66), Philip Cardon (FAO, 65), Efthimios Mitropoulos (IMO, 65), John Boyd Orr (FAO, 65), Lewis Preston (World Bank, 65), and Houlin Zhao (ITU, 65). The number of older FAO executive heads in this list is indicative of the oldest specialized agency average age of 59.8. The IMF (57 years old) and World Bank (59.2) also tend toward older executive heads, as does the UPU (58.8), although the other financial specialized agency, IFAD, averages younger at 52. A more youthful group is represented by Jean Roullier (IMO, started in office at age 32), Carlos Magariños (UNIDO, 35), Yves Lambert (ICAO, 40), David Morse (ILO, 41), Zurab Pololikashvili (UNWTO, 41), Abelmuhsin Al-Sudeary (IFAD, 42), and Marcolino Gomes Candau (WHO, 42). UNIDO’s office holders are the youngest on average overall at 47.8 years of age, with the most recent officeholder Li Yong at 62 an outlier; but, in reverse, the current UNWTO Secretary-General Pololikashvili at 41 is the youngest in the agency’s history and helps to bring the overall average down to 50 – an average age also reflected in WIPO (50.5) and WMO (50.3) (Table 9.5). Table 9.5

Average age when starting in office

FAO

59.8

World Bank

59.2

UPU

58.8

IMF

57.0

IMO

56.3

ITU

55.8

WHO

54.1

ICAO

53.9

ILO

53.6

UNESCO

53.0

IFAD

52.0

WIPO

50.5

WMO

50.3

UNWTO

50.0

UNIDO

47.8

The average time in office can also be tracked and compared to the overall IGO average of just over five years in office. Specialized agency executive heads as a whole serve longer, with an average of just under eight years. As with age entering office, there are major time span differences among officeholders. Not only was Meyer the oldest when starting in office, but he also served for the shortest period – just under six months – before resigning. Other tenures were ended early under more tragic circumstances, such as when Manohar Balaji Sarwate’s time as ITU Secretary-General was cut short at just under 16 months (after serving as ITU Deputy Secretary-General for five years) when he died in office. Anthony Ridge only served for 19 months as UPU Director-General after replacing Michel Rahi (who also passed away while in office). On the other end of the spectrum, executive heads with extended time in office include David Arthur Davies (WMO, 24 years), Árpád Bogsch (WIPO, 23 years and 11 months), Morse (ILO, 21 years and 8 months), Godwin Obasi (WMO, 20 years), and Candau (WHO, 20 years). Variation also exists across the agencies. With Davies and Obasi as two of the longest serving heads, the WMO’s average is unsurprisingly well beyond the norm at almost 14 years. Other agencies with notably higher time in office include the WIPO which, if

Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies  129 the current Director-General is removed from the equation, surpasses the WMO for longevity since the first three heads averaged over 15½ years in office. ILO Directors-General serve well beyond the average at 11½ years compared to the shorter terms at the World Bank (5 years and 9 months), IMF (6 years and 2 months), and ICAO (6 years and 2 months) (Table 9.6). Table 9.6

Average time in office

FAO

8 years, 4 months

ICAO

6 years, 2 months

IFAD

7 years, 3 months

ILO

11 years, 6 months

IMF

6 years, 2 months

IMO

7 years, 8 months

ITU

7 years, 11 months

UNESCO

7 years, 5 months

UNIDO

7 years, 2 months

UNWTO

8 years, 4 months

UPU

7 years, 3 months

WHO

9 years, 1 month

WIPO

11 years, 11 months

WMO

13 years, 11 months

World Bank

5 years, 9 months

HOW DO EXECUTIVE HEADS LEAD THE SPECIALIZED AGENCIES? As indicated earlier, the dates the specialized agencies (or their predecessors) were established and when they joined the UN System vary widely. The agencies represent a useful dimension for understanding UN institutional adaptation because they provide historical precursors that shaped the idea of the UN System (ITU, UPU, ILO, WMO, WIPO), were founded alongside the UN based on similar principles coming out of World War II (FAO, UNESCO, IMF, World Bank, ICAO, WHO, IMO), and joined (UNWTO, IFAD, UNIDO) or were reformed later (across all specialized agencies) as priorities shifted. Thus, the specialized agencies impacted the UN System, but in return being a part of the UN System shaped the agencies. A key component for understanding how this UN-specialized agency dynamic evolved is the agencies’ executive heads, who in return were impacted by the institutional context and time in which they led. Entries available in IO BIO, Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-General of International Organizations provide insights into the leadership provided, both by comparing within an agency and across agencies. Although IO BIO does not have complete coverage of all specialized agencies (as of August 2021 entries are not available for ICAO, IFAD, UNIDO, UNWTO, or UPU) and there are more entries on certain agencies, the 32 entries (28 of whom served as head while the organization was a UN specialized agency) provide a sound basis for initial analysis (Table 9.7). The greatest number of entries cover ILO executive heads. Although three of these individuals served in office before the ILO became a specialized agency, this allows for additional cross-time analysis of the executive heads under different organizational circumstances – including the transition to specialized agency status under Phelan (1941–48). Although the

130  Handbook on governance in international organizations Table 9.7 ILO

Specialized agency executive head entries in IO BIO Aristide Albert Thomas (1919–32), Harold Beresford Butler (1932–38), John Gilbert Winant (1939–41), Edward Joseph Phelan (1941–48), David Abner Morse (1948–70), Clarence Wilfred Jenks (1970–73), Michel Hansenne (1989–99)

WHO

George Brock Chisholm (1948–53), Marcolino Gomes Candau (1953–73), Halfdan Theodor Mahler (1973–88), Hiroshi Nakajima (1988–98), Gro Harlem Brundtland (1998–2003), Margaret Chan (2007–17)

UNESCO

Julian Sorell Huxley (1946–48), Luther Harris Evans (1953–58), René Gabriel Eugène Maheu (1961–74), Amadou Mahtar M’Bow (1974–87), Federico Mayor Zaragoza (1987–99)

World Bank

Eugene Isaac Meyer (1946), Eugene Robert Black (1949–62), George David Woods (1963–68), Robert Strange McNamara (1968–81), Alden Winship Clausen (1981–86)

FAO

John Boyd Orr (1945–48), Addeke Hendrik Boerma (1968–75), Edouard Victor Saouma (1976–93)

IMF

Hendrikus Johannes Witteveen (1973–78), Jacques de Larosière (1978–87)

IMO

Edward Colin Viner Goad (1968–73, as Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organization, IMCO)

ITU

Charles Louis Curchod (1869 and 1873–89, as International Telegraph Union)

WIPO

Kamil Eltayeb Idris (1997–2008)

WMO

David Arthur Davies (1955–79)

Note: Names in italics indicate executive head who served before the organization became a UN specialized agency. Source: www.ru.nl/fm/iobio (accessed August 2021).

ILO was supposed to be politically neutral, Phelan supported the Allies during World War II. However, he was left out of postwar planning, including being unable to garner an invitation to the 1945 conference in San Francisco for the founding of the UN (a small ILO delegation with consultative status did attend, including future ILO head Clarence Wilfred Jenks who later played a role in shifting the ILO to being a UN specialized agency), and then had to cope with divergent views on labor between the Soviet Union and Western powers (even though the Soviets left the ILO in 1940, rejoining in 1954). Phelan served in the ILO from the start as Head of the Diplomatic Division under the first director, Albert Thomas (1919–32), and the two worked closely together at the organization along with then Deputy Director Harold Butler. Thomas, unlike Phelan and Butler, was not involved in the founding of the ILO alongside the League of Nations, but after being elected went on to play an active leadership role promoting the organization that is often contrasted with Eric Drummond, the League’s first Secretary-General. Butler (1932–38), who continued to work with Phelan in his role as an assistant director and at times acting deputy director (and later deputy director and then acting director when Butler’s successor, John Winant, resigned in early 1941), succeeded Thomas when he passed away and took a more pragmatic approach that included restructuring the administration, building better relations with the League of Nations, and successfully encouraging the U.S. to join the ILO. Rounding out the pre-specialized agency ILO leadership is Winant (1939–41), an assistant director in the organization with Butler (who primed Winant as his successor before resigning), who spent his brief two years in office coping with the start of World War II before departing the office to take over as U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. Following Phelan, Morse (1948–70), who represented the U.S. at the ILO in 1947, led for an extended tenure during which he emphasized developing countries and human rights. The ILO then turned back to selecting from inside its ranks, with long-serving Jenks (1970–73, joined the ILO in 1931 as a legal officer and progressed to the special status of Principal Deputy Director-General in 1967) facing global political issues such as the U.S.–Soviet clash, apartheid in South Africa, and the People’s Republic of China taking over representation from Taiwan, before he died in September 1973. The final ILO entry on Michel Hansenne

Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies  131 (1989–99), who represented Belgium at the ILO but did not imagine taking on a leadership role, covers a much different period and executive head background. Though Hansenne admitted possessing limited knowledge about the ILO or global labor standards, he guided the organization through the end of the Cold War and up to the start of the new millennium, building his level of knowledge and engagement in ILO reform as he progressed. IO BIO entries track leadership at the WHO across the life of the organization. Brock Chisholm (1948–53) sought to put his stamp on the organization, starting as Executive Secretary of the Interim Commission for two years until the WHO Constitution was ratified and then serving as the first Director-General. He had success in defending the independent nature of health work at the WHO but was undermined by Soviet bloc countries disengaging from the organization, difficulties implementing the decentralized regional structure, and an inability to champion a social medical approach over a biomedical method. Chisholm declined to stay on for another three years and backed Assistant Director Candau (1953–73) as his successor, who played a more essential role in shaping the WHO’s development and established the agency as highly regarded in the international arena. Candau in turn encouraged Halfdan Mahler (1973–88), who started working at the WHO in 1951, to be his successor and Mahler carried the organization forward into a new era, implementing major reforms and promoting an idealistic view of global health designed to provide “Health for All.” Compared to his predecessors, Mahler was critiqued for not developing a succession plan and the Japanese were able to press for the election of Hiroshi Nakajima (1988–98), who had worked at the WHO since 1974 but got caught up in controversies as Director-General such as how to respond to HIV/AIDS and the Palestinian push for membership. Criticisms of his handling of the office overshadowed efforts to address infectious diseases and he was challenged at the end of his first term, although he was able to win re-election. The next election led to Brundtland (1998–2003), a Norwegian politician who was the first Director-General to come from outside of the organization, being selected; she used her one term in office to address the perceived damage to the organization’s structure, functions, and reputation. Brundtland is noted for progress made in addressing malaria and tobacco. After a four-year gap, Chan (2007–17), director of the Department of Health in Hong Kong before joining the WHO in 2003, was the second woman to lead the organization and initially focused on stabilizing the institution after years of change. She is viewed as a pragmatic leader who most often worked behind the scenes and possessed a mixed record in guiding responses to infectious outbreaks. A similar tracing across time can be employed for UNESCO’s Directors-General, starting with Julian Huxley (1946–48). Huxley played a key role in ensuring that science was in the organization’s name and mandate due to his view that this was connected to social well-being, and then served as the Executive Secretary of the Preparatory Commission (1945–46). He is noted for his eccentric ideas and pressure from the U.S. which led to a short term in office. Luther Evans (1953–58), the third Director-General, came from a library background but was a U.S. representative at UNESCO’s founding and subsequent meetings. Once elected as executive head, Evans focused on running the organization in a more pragmatic manner, leading Huxley to refer to his “practical-minded Texan character” (Huxley 1973: 68). René Maheu (1961–74), a French national who started at UNESCO in 1946, was sent away from the organization’s headquarters in Paris to New York due to a bad working relationship with Evans. However, he persevered and was elected as the sixth Director-General after serving as Assistant Director-General and then Acting Director-General under his predecessor Vittorino

132  Handbook on governance in international organizations Veronese (who left office due to poor health). Maheu did not favor UNESCO’s science dimension, preferring a broader cultural emphasis. UNESCO’s staff challenged Maheu over his perceived authoritarian leadership style, but his successor Amadou Mahtar M’Bow (1974–87) led an even more controversial tenure. After earlier working for UNESCO and later representing Senegal at the organization, M’Bow was brought back into the organization in 1970 by Maheu as an Assistant Director-General. Soon after, M’Bow was elected as Director-General despite Maheu’s opposition (as he wished to remain in office). However, M’Bow later failed at his own re-election attempt for a third term following a range of controversies, including U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO in 1984, which undermined his campaign. He lost to Spaniard Federico Mayor, who earlier served as his Deputy Director-General. Mayor (1987–99) brought a scientific background back to the position. However, Mayor faced budget shortfalls and his efforts to restructure management, which he viewed as necessary to modernize the organization, were resisted by the staff although supported by the member states which readily elected him to a second term. Leadership in the early days of what would go on to become the World Bank Group was first provided by Meyer (1946) as President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. However, as noted earlier, Meyer is the shortest serving executive head, resigning in frustration that same year as he felt he lacked full authority. After a confusing several months, followed by just over two years with John McCloy at the helm before he resigned as well, Eugene Black (1949–62), a banker who McCloy insisted should serve as the U.S. Executive Director when he took over as President, guided the World Bank for an extended period. Black shaped and greatly expanded the impact of the organization as he found, to his surprise, this work more satisfying than focusing on financial success in banking. Following Black’s retirement, George Woods (1963–68) was selected as President, having previously worked as chairman at a bank which managed World Bank bonds during Black’s presidency. Woods used his first two years to innovatively shape the World Bank’s agenda but was frustrated afterwards due to dealing with issues such as funding difficulties and not being able to incorporate the large set of new, less developed members in his desired manner. As closely connected international financial institutions, leadership of the World Bank and IMF in similar time periods can be examined via World Bank Presidents Robert McNamara (1968–81) and A. W. (Tom) Clausen (1981–86) alongside IMF Managing Directors Johannes Witteveen (1973–78) from the Netherlands and Jacques de Larosière (1978–87) from France. Woods successfully campaigned for McNamara, who came to the World Bank with leadership experience at the Ford Motor Company and as U.S. Secretary of Defense, to be his successor and McNamara went on to significantly expand the scope of the organization’s activities and staffing levels. Witteveen, whose previous career included serving as Minister of Finance of the Netherlands, worked with McNamara to address the OPEC oil embargo that started the same year he took office, and took over an IMF with more limited functions and poor relations with the U.S. By the time he left office to return to the Netherlands and made way for De Larosière, the IMF’s international standing had been bolstered due to his dynamic leadership. Entering the IMF with experience working in the French Treasury and at meetings on reforming the global monetary system, De Larosière was a tough but highly engaged leader before swapping places with incoming Managing Director Michel Camdessus to take over as the Governor of the Bank of France. and later as the second President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Camdessus’ capabilities contrast with Clausen, a bank president who U.S. President Jimmy Carter unsuccessfully sought to serve as Secretary

Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies  133 of the Treasury yet was convinced to take the World Bank Presidency upon McNamara’s retirement. Due to his inexperience in the political realm, Camdessus needed to get up to speed on U.S. and World Bank policymaking. Clausen’s managerial ideas from the private sector were better received by some than others and, compared to the IMF, the World Bank under his leadership had a more delayed reaction to the global debt crisis – an area where De Larosière is noted for his direct efforts to negotiate solutions. A. H. Boerma (1968–75), who was involved in the FAO since its creation, was elected as the fifth Director-General while serving as the first Executive Director of the UN’s World Food Programme. As Director-General, Boerma emphasized reforming the FAO’s structure and operations to increase the agency’s efficiency. When Boerma retired he was succeeded by Edouard Saouma (1976–93), who questioned Boerma’s approach from his position as an FAO department Director and left that post in 1975 to actively campaign to be Director-General. Saouma guided the FAO away from what he perceived to be a U.S. policy-dominated approach to bolster the agency’s focus on developing countries and issues such as food security, developing rural areas, and the connection between agriculture and the environment. In turn, Saouma is a highly controversial executive head often criticized for negatively impacting the organization and staff morale through his management style and political manoeuvring. The first Director-General, Orr (1945–48), faced a very different challenge in launching the organization. He resisted calls for a focus on statistical information and technical assistance, instead building upon his long-time involvement with proper food and nutrition as an avenue for establishing peace to press for the FAO as an active agency addressing the needs of the global population. Orr, along with the other early specialized agency executive heads examined, represents a “frontiersperson” first taking the reins of an organization (Reinalda 2020a: 21). The founding of the ITU as the International Telegraph Union long predated the UN, so to compare this body’s frontiersperson it is necessary to go all the way back to Louis Curchod in 1869. After a brief time away as head of the Société du câble transatlantique français, Curchod began a long tenure in 1873 that lasted until his death in 1889. Curchod was a driving force in the early days of the ITU’s founding, taking on the Director post when the permanent Secretariat was established. He shaped the international telegraph approach and used his position to push for independent secretariat capabilities. Although Davies (1955–79) was the second WMO Secretary-General, he was engaged since 1951 as the first president of the WMO’s Regional Association for Africa and then used his long time as Secretary-General to shape the WMO’s role and its administration. Davies also encouraged collaboration with other specialized agencies and played a central role at the UN Administrative Committee on Coordination. This body, now operating as the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination, meets biannually to bring together all 15 specialized agency heads, along with those from other UN bodies, and is chaired by the UN Secretary-General. Thus, the specialized agency heads, along with direct agency-to-agency coordination on common issues, have a forum where leaders can connect and build relationships. This means that analysis of groups of executive heads can extend beyond comparing within a certain organization or across the frontierspersons to also consider those operating in the same time frame. IO BIO entries are designed to provide for such exploration of inter-organizational relations (Reinalda and Kille 2017). Woods assured the other agencies that the World Bank did not intend to take away their responsibilities and established cooperative links with other executive heads such as Maheu.

134  Handbook on governance in international organizations As the earlier examples from the World Bank and IMF leaders also illustrate, although each specialized agency is responsible for certain issue areas, the executive heads operate within the same general international relations context. For example, Kamil Idris (1997–2008) took over WIPO in the immediate post-Cold War time of hope for greater international cooperation in a similar time frame to leaders such as Brundtland at the WHO (1998–2003). Idris’ main struggle was dealing with criticism from developed countries, which contributed to his resigning from office before finishing his second term Other heads came in just as the Cold War was ending and transitioned their organizations past the Cold War era (Zaragoza, UNESCO, 1987–99; Nakajima, WHO, 1988–98; Hansenne, ILO 1989–99) or even across the heart of the Soviet–U.S. divide into the first years after the fall of the Soviet Union (Saouma, FAO, 1976–93). By contrast, an earlier set of executive heads wrestled with the immediate post-World War II context (Phelan, ILO, 1941–48; Meyer, IBRD, 1946; Orr, FAO, 1945–48; Huxley, UNESCO, 1946–48) while another group negotiated through the turbulent times of the 1960s and 1970s (Maheu, UNESCO, 1961–74; Woods, World Bank, 1963–68; McNamara, World Bank, 1968–81; Boerma, FAO, 1968–75; Jenks, ILO, 1970–73; Davies, WMO, 1955–79). Colin Goad (IMCO, 1968–73) sought an apolitical stance that emphasized the technical aspects of the organization to try to keep it above the fray and needed to adapt to the rise of environmental protection in the global agenda. Morse (1948–70), whose long tenure at the ILO spans both groups, initially faced difficulties with both the Soviet Union and U.S. but in later years needed to address the impact of decolonization.

CONCLUSION Through examining the executive heads of UN specialized agencies, a clearer sense of their place for governance in international relations is established. For “who governs,” the database patterns reveal interesting distinctions between specialized agencies and other international organizations as well as across the agencies. The biographical entry analysis provides comparative details on “how” specialized agencies have been governed across time. This initial study reinforces the value of extending such work into deeper analysis of how executive head leadership within each institution shapes its evolution, as well as relations with other organizations. By tracking changes in leadership within and across specialized agencies, including within the same time frame, important insights into political leadership are derived along with providing a deeper comprehension of the development of these offices and institutions. Additional avenues for future research include examining the interactive effect between institutional development and executive head leadership. Institutional dimensions to consider include specialized agencies’ different and shifting membership, the change in role and institutional priorities relative to the rest of the UN System and outside organizations working in the same field, changes in the level of agency prominence relative to other institutions, and the level of staff and resources available. Further consideration of how specialized agency executive heads lead could also connect to themes from previous studies, such as dealing with politicization at the organization. The opening examination of who leads also identifies areas for closer examination of executive heads or sets of leaders based on certain characteristics. With the small number of women leaders, this group of executive heads could be drawn out for analysis and compared to their male counterparts. The five individuals who led during the transition of their organizations to

Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies  135 being specialized agencies is another group that could be examined. There is also a small set of individuals who led other organizations either before, such as Abd-El Rahman Khane (OPEC 1973–74 before UNIDO 1975–85), or after serving as a specialized agency executive head, such as the previously highlighted De Larosière going from the IMF to EBRD, whose leadership experiences could be compared. Whether due to death or other factors, there are several acting executive heads who needed to step in to run the office temporarily. The leadership they provided and the process by which they were put into place and eventually replaced with a full-time office holder could be revealing. Given the variation in age when starting office as well as the length of time in office, the impact of these differences could also be studied. The differences might have implications, for instance, in relation to recruitment and member state support once in office. Finally, the difference in office titles was noted, but a deeper examination of the organization’s description of the role and duties associated with the title would shed additional light on the operational impact of these distinctions.1

NOTE 1.

The author would like to thank Thomas Pitney for his editorial assistance on this chapter.

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136  Handbook on governance in international organizations Browne, S. (2012), United Nations Industrial Development Organization: Industrial Solutions for a Sustainable Future, New York: Routledge. Castañeda, Q. (2012), ‘The Neoliberal Imperative of Tourism: Rights and Legitimization in the UNWTO Global Code of Ethics for Tourism,’ Practicing Anthropology, 34 (3), 47–51. Chorev, N. (2012), The World Health Organization between North and South, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Codding, G. A. (1964), The Universal Postal Union: Coordinator of the International Mails, New York: New York University Press. Codding, G. A. and A. M. Rutkowski (1982), The International Telecommunication Union in a Changing World, Dedham, MA: Artech House. Coomans, F. (2012), ‘On the Right(s) Track? United Nations (Specialized) Agencies and the Use of Human Rights Language,’ Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 45 (3), 274–94. Daniel, H. (1973), One Hundred Years of International Cooperation in Meteorology (1873–1973): A Historical Review, Geneva: World Meteorological Organization. Davies, M. D. V. (2002), The Administration of International Organizations: Top Down and Bottom Up, Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Deere Birkbeck, C. (2016), The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO): A Reference Guide, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Duedahl, P. (ed.) (2016), A History of UNESCO: Global Actions and Impacts, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dutt, S. (1995), ‘The Role of the Director-General in the Politicization Process,’ in The Politicization of the United Nations Specialized Agencies: A Case Study of UNESCO, Lewiston, NY: Mellen University Press, pp. 253–80. Elfert, M. (2021), ‘The Power Struggle Over Education in Developing Countries: The Case of the UNESCO-World Bank Co-operative Program, 1964–1989,’ International Journal of Educational Development, 81, 102336. Fari, S. (2015), Formative Years of the Telegraph Union, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Farley, J. (2008), Brock Chisholm, the World Health Organization, and the Cold War, Vancouver: UBC Press. Fifield, A. (2015), A Mighty Purpose: How Jim Grant Sold the World on Saving Its Children, New York: Other Press. Finkelstein, L. S. (ed.) (1988), ‘The Political Role of the Director-General of UNESCO,’ Politics in the United Nations System, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 385–423. Fröhlich, M. and A. Williams (eds) (2018), The UN Secretary-General and the Security Council: A Dynamic Relationship, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ghebali, V. Y. (1985), ‘The Politicisation of UN Specialised Agencies: A Preliminary Analysis,’ Millennium, 14 (3), 317–34. Gött, H. (2020), ‘Interactions between International Organizations: Approaching a Neglected Governance Dimension,’ International Organizations Law Review, 17 (1), 75–104. Gowan, R. (2011), ‘Floating Down the River of History: Ban Ki-moon and Peacekeeping, 2007–2011,’ Global Governance, 17 (4), 399–416. Haack, K. (2018), ‘The UN Secretary-General, Role Expansion and Narratives of Representation in the 2016 Campaign,’ The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 20 (4), 898–912. Haack, K. (2022), Women’s Access, Representation and Leadership in the United Nations, Cham: Springer. Harman, S. (2011), ‘Searching for an Executive Head? Leadership and UNAIDS,’ Global Governance, 17 (4), 429–46. Haugen, H. M. (2010), ‘Access Versus Incentives: Analysing Intellectual Property Policies in Four UN Specialized Agencies by Emphasizing the Role of the World Intellectual Property Organization and Human Rights,’ The Journal of World Intellectual Property, 13 (6), 697–728. Hughes, S. and N. Haworth (2011), The International Labour Organization (ILO): Coming in from the Cold, New York: Routledge. Huxley, J. S. (1973), Memories Volume 2, New York: Harper & Row. Imber, M. (1989), The USA, ILO, UNESCO, and IAEA: Politicization and Withdrawal in the Specialized Agencies, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies  137 Ivanova, M. (2021), ‘Executive Leadership: The Individual and the Institution,’ in The Untold Story of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP at Fifty, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 141–97. Kahler, M. (2001), Leadership Selection in the Major Multilaterals, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Kamau, F. and M. Colaiacomo (2012), ‘Financing for Development: Examining the Concept of Resource Mobilization for International Organizations, A Case Study of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD),’ International Organizations Law Review, 9 (2), 467–96. Karim, M. S. (2015), Prevention of Pollution of the Marine Environment from Vessels: The Potential and Limits of the International Maritime Organisation, New York: Springer. Kille, K. J. (2006), From Manager to Visionary: The Secretary-General of the United Nations, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kille, K. J. (ed.) (2007), The UN Secretary-General and Moral Authority: Ethics and Religion in International Leadership, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Knill, C. and M. W. Bauer (eds) (2017), Governance by International Public Administrations: Bureaucratic Influence and Global Public Policies, London: Routledge. Knill, C., L. Bayerlein, J. Enkler and S. Grohs (2019), ‘Bureaucratic Influence and Administrative Styles in International Organizations,’ Review of International Organizations, 14 (1), 83–106. Kranke, M. (2020), ‘IMF-World Bank Cooperation Before and After the Global Financial Crisis,’ Global Policy, 11 (1), 15–25. Kraske, J. (ed.) (1996), Bankers with a Mission: The Presidents of the World Bank, 1946–91, Oxford: Oxford University Press. La Hovary, C. (2015), ‘A Challenging Ménage à Trois?: Tripartism in the International Labour Organization,’ International Organizations Law Review, 12 (1), 204–36. Lavelle, K. C. (2011), Legislating International Organization: The US Congress, the IMF, and the World Bank, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Loescher, G. (2001), The UNHCR and World Politics: A Perilous Path, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lugten, G. (2008), ‘Food and Agriculture Organization,’ The International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, 23 (4), 761–7. Lyall, F. (2011), International Communications: The International Telecommunication Union and the Universal Postal Union, Burlington, VT: Ashgate. MacKenzie, D. (2010), ICAO: A History of the International Civil Aviation Organization, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Margulis, M. E. (2017), ‘The Global Governance of Food Security,’ in J. A. Koops and R. Biermann (eds), Palgrave Handbook of Inter-Organizational Relations in World Politics, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 503–26. May, C. (2007), ‘The World Intellectual Property Organization and the Development Agenda,’ Global Governance, 13 (2), 161–70. Milde, M. (2008), International Air Law and ICAO, The Hague: Eleven International Publishing. Miller, G. and L. Twining-Ward (2005), ‘The World Tourism Organization,’ in Monitoring for a Sustainable Tourism Transition: The Challenge of Developing and Using Indicators, Cambridge, MA: CABI Publishing, pp. 177–200. Nay, O. (2011), ‘What Drives Reforms in International Organizations? External Pressure and Bureaucratic Entrepreneurs in the UN Response to AIDS,’ Governance, 24 (4), 689–712. Newman, E. (1998), The UN Secretary-General from the Cold War to the New Era: A Global Peace and Security Mandate? New York: St. Martin’s Press. Oestreich, J. E. (2007), Power and Principle: Human Rights Programming in International Organizations, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Oestreich, J. E. (ed.) (2012), International Organizations as Self-Directed Actors: A Framework for Analysis, London: Routledge. Park, S. and A. Vetterlein (eds) (2010), Owning Development: Creating Policy Norms in the IMF and the World Bank, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ramcharan, B. G. (2002), The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: The Challenges of International Protection, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

138  Handbook on governance in international organizations Ravndal, E. J. (2020), ‘A Guardian of the UN Charter: The UN Secretary-General at Seventy-Five,’ Ethics & International Affairs, 34 (3), 297–304. Reinalda, B. (2020a), ‘Biographical Analysis: Insights and Perspectives from the IO BIO Dictionary Project,’ in K. Gram-Skjoldager, H. A. Ikonomou and T. Kahlert (eds), Organizing the 20th-Century World: International Organizations and the Emergence of International Public Administration, 1920–1960s, London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 15–32. Reinalda, B. (2020b), ‘Institutional Development of the United Nations Secretariat,’ Global Governance, 26 (2), 325–39. Reinalda, B. and K. J. Kille (2017), ‘The Evolvement of International Secretariats, Executive Heads and Leadership in Inter-Organizational Relations,’ in J. A. Koops and R. Biermann (eds), Palgrave Handbook of Inter-Organizational Relations in World Politics, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 217–42. Reinalda, B., K. J. Kille and J. L. Eisenberg (eds) (n.d.), IO BIO, Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-General of International Organizations. https://​www​.ru​.nl/​politicologie/​io​-bio/​io​-bio​ -biographical​-dictionary​-sgs​-ios/​. Reinisch, A. (ed.) (2016), The Conventions on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations and Its Specialized Agencies: A Commentary, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rich, B. (2002), ‘The World Bank under James Wolfensohn,’ in J. Pincus and J. A. Winters (eds), Reinventing the World Bank, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 26–53. Schechter, M. G. (1987), ‘Leadership in International Organizations: Systemic, Organizational and Personality Factors,’ Review of International Studies, 13 (3), 197–220. Schechter, M. G. (1988), ‘The Political Roles of Recent World Bank Presidents,’ in L. S. Finkelstein (ed.), Politics in the United Nations System, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 350–84. Schechter, M. G. (2012), ‘Confronting the Challenges of Political Leadership in International Organizations,’ in L. Helms (ed.), Comparative Political Leadership, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 249–71. Shackleford, P. (2020), A History of the World Tourism Organization, Bingley: Emerald. Shaw, D. J. (2009), Global Food and Agricultural Institutions, New York: Routledge. Sikkink, K. (1986), ‘Codes of Conduct for Transnational Corporations: The Case of the WHO/UNICEF Code,’ International Organization, 40 (4), 815–40. Sinclair, G. F. (2020), ‘C. Wilfred Jenks and the Futures of International Organizations Law,’ European Journal of International Law, 31 (2), 525–42. Singh, J. P. (2011), United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): Creating Norms for a Complex World, New York: Routledge. Stack, A. (2011), International Patent Law: Cooperation, Harmonization, and an Institutional Analysis of WIPO and the WTO, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Staples, A. L. S. (2006), The Birth of Development: How the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization Changed the World, 1945–1965, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. Talbot, R. B. (1990), The Four World Food Agencies in Rome: FAO, WFP, WFC, IFAD, Ames: Iowa State University Press. Terlingen, Y. (2017), ‘A Better Process, a Stronger UN Secretary-General: How Historic Change Was Forged and What Comes Next,’ Ethics & International Affairs, 31 (2), 115–27. Troy, J. (2017), ‘Two “Popes” to Speak for the World: The Pope and the United Nations Secretary General in World Politics,’ The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 15 (4), 67–78. Vilaca, G. V. (2021), ‘Virtue and Leadership in the World Health Organization,’ in M. Varaki and G. V. Vilaca (eds), Ethical Leadership in International Organizations: Concepts, Narratives, Judgment, and Assessment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 249–89. Weitz, C. H. (1997), Who Speaks for the Hungry? How FAO Elects Its Leader, Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation. Whitman, J. (ed.) (1999), Peacekeeping and the UN Agencies, London: Frank Cass. Williams, A. (2010), ‘Strategic Planning in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General,’ Global Governance, 16 (4), 435–49. Williams, D. (1987), The Specialized Agencies and the United Nations: The System in Crisis, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Executive head leadership of United Nations specialized agencies  139 Zacher, M. W. and B. Sutton (1996), Governing Global Networks: International Regimes for Transportation and Communications, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10. Where are the women leaders in international organizations and what difference do they make? Kirsten Haack and Margaret P. Karns

INTRODUCTION Heretofore, few scholars have paid attention to the presence (or absence) of women in International Organizations (IOs) – whether as permanent representatives of member states, international civil servants, or executive heads. Women who played key roles in shaping some of the language of the UN Charter in 1945 went largely unnoticed. Yet, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the “face” of international politics is slowly changing. More women – though still too few – are appearing in the photographs of senior leaders of IOs as well as of governments. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has now had two female managing directors in a row, while the European Union (EU) has had a cluster of women filling its senior positions, including two successive high representatives for foreign affairs and security policy. UN Secretary-General Antόnio Guterres began his tenure in 2017 by declaring his intent to attain gender parity in the UN’s senior management group and achieved that goal well ahead of his target date. In a handbook on IO governance, therefore, it is important to assess the progress that has been made in increasing the representation of women in high-level positions and what difference it has made to have women in IO leadership positions. Data on representation is slowly being gathered, while research on women leaders’ contributions remains limited. This chapter examines the questions of who counts as leaders and where they are; the barriers to women’s access and advancement, including the gendered nature of institutional processes and practices; the role of advocacy for change and of networks; what the data look like especially in the UN system; and the key question of what difference women leaders make.

WHO COUNTS AS LEADERS? The twenty-fifth anniversary in 2020 of the 1995 UN Women’s Conference in Beijing created an opportunity to assess progress in advancing gender equality around the world (Chesler, 2020). Various reports documented progress as well as persistent barriers.1 Strikingly absent was the subject of women in senior positions in IOs and in efforts to address global governance issues ranging from climate change and migration to food insecurity, trade, peace, and justice. One exception was publicity about the relative success of four women heads of government in dealing with the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.2 There are two ways of answering the question of who counts as leaders in IOs. One is to focus on women holding senior posts in the UN and other intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) such as the EU, the Organization of American States (OAS), African Union (AU), 140

Where are the women leaders in international organizations?  141 the IMF, World Bank, and the World Health Organization (WHO). (See Appendix I for a list of women in senior positions within the UN between 1987 and 2020.) The only puzzle then is determining which positions should be included in an analysis of leadership. Beyond the secretaries-general, managing directors, directors-general, presidents, and so on, what positions “count”? Deputy secretaries-general? Assistant secretaries-general? Program directors? If one thinks beyond such formal positions to the individuals that play active roles in taking initiatives whether as professional staff members, permanent representatives of states or activists in non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and key figures in networks that frame and “move” issues, draft resolutions, and other documents, create winning coalitions, articulate new norms and so on, should they not also be considered leaders in IOs? After all, they are important actors in determining what the organization is authorized to do and the tasks it undertakes. JoAnne Yates and Craig Murphy (2019, ch. 9), for example, in their work on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the development of the wide range of what they term “engineering rules,” cite Alice Tepper Marlin who played a central role in developing international social and environmental accreditation and labeling standards. (See Appendix II for other examples of women who have played leadership roles in selected issue areas.) Recent scholarship on what is termed “global International Relations” (IR) has unearthed the important roles played by several women from the global South in the UN’s early history. For example, a group of four Latin American women delegates to the 1945 UN Conference in San Francisco led by the Brazilian delegate Bertha Lutz ensured that the Charter’s Preamble included the specific mention of “equal rights of men and women” as there had been no mention of women at all in the draft of the Charter (nor any women present). These women were responsible for the mention of “sex” in the antidiscrimination phrase in Chapter 1 and for Article 8, which ensures that women can hold the same positions as men in the UN system. These same women were also responsible for the establishment of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in 1946 (Dietrichson and Sator 2021, 17–38). Likewise, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, leader of India’s first delegation to the UN, along with Hansa Mehta, Begum Shareefah Hamid Ali, and Lakshmi Menon played a major role in putting the issue of racial discrimination on the UN’s agenda in the very first session of the UN General Assembly – at a time when India itself had not yet achieved its independence (Singh Rathore, 2021). Hansa Mehta was the only woman besides Eleanor Roosevelt on the UN Commission on Human rights when it developed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was Mehta, however, who was responsible for changing the language of Article 1 from reading that “all men are born …” to “all human beings are born free and equal.” Thus, her leadership ensured that women had equal entitlement to human rights. Mehta also pushed for machinery to monitor the adherence to human rights norms, for subsequent covenants, and for the right of individuals to petition to the UN for protection of basic human rights (Singh Rathore, 2021, 45–6). In 1952, Minerva Bernardino of the Dominican Republic as chair of the CSW oversaw the conclusion of the Convention on the Political Rights of Women – the first such international document – and had honed her skill as a woman leader in an IO as Chair of the Inter-American Commission on Women that was established in 1928 (Adami, Plesch and Acharya, 2021, 165). The following year, Pandit became the first female President of the UN General Assembly (1953–54), thus setting a precedent in this formal position of leadership. In short, some women leaders have been pioneers – the first to achieve success in advocating on an issue such as racism and women’s rights; some pioneers were the first to serve in

142  Handbook on governance in international organizations a major IGO post such as president of the UN General Assembly (Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit), assistant secretary-general (Helvi Sipilä – ASG for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs 1972–82); head of a UN fund (Nafis Sadik, UNFPA 1987–92) or specialized agency (Gro Harlem Brundtland, WHO 1998–2003); and Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF (2011–19) and first female head of a “hard” issue area IGO. Some women leaders have been “pathfinders” or “pathbreakers” – women such as Margaret Anstee (multiple UN roles, including “firsts” in UNDP field posts) and Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (2010–16). These women leaders have expanded the scope of global governance but are not necessarily well known.3 Furthermore, we should note that not all holders of formal senior positions necessarily exercise leadership. Personality and role conceptions play an important part in how individuals behave in office.4 Unlike the field of foreign policy analysis, however, where studies of individuals have focused on those who have the power to make decisions concerning a state’s response to an international problem, there is no ready guide for identifying leaders in IOs beyond looking at formal positions.5 This chapter, however, makes the case that it is important to do so, that is, to look at what some might call “substantive” leadership.

WHAT COUNTS AS LEADERSHIP? What types of actions count as leadership in IOs if we look beyond just holding a formal, senior position? Possibilities include framing an issue in a way that yields positive results; getting agreement on new rules, norms, or standards; chairing and steering a commission to a conclusion that advances cooperation; mediating a dispute; creating a network that is instrumental in achieving a key goal. Key to identifying women IO leaders is not just the specific position(s) they may hold, but their role in breakthroughs and significant progress on issues long thought intractable, but not necessarily achieving full success.6 This requires thinking creatively about who and what counts; what they are doing (or have done) on specific issues; what difference they make; and what, therefore, it means to talk about leadership in IOs. It also requires considering to what extent women’s leadership should encompass actions that advance women’s interests, issues, and perspectives and to what extent leadership in IOs overlaps with women’s roles in foreign policy, including advancing feminist policies – in other words, “substantive” leadership.7 More broadly, it is important to ask what is different about the leadership women provide in global governance.8 Is there a pattern in the issues on which they have provided leadership? As is discussed below, data clearly show patterns of bias in the issue areas where women have achieved formal leadership positions within the UN system. We need to ask, however, what is different about their style of leadership, about the types of actions they have taken, and the consequences of those actions? Where are there surprises by virtue not just of their gender but also their race, nationality, socio-economic status, on unexpected issues, or in unexpected ways? To what extent can we say that having women leaders in IOs helps to make this world a better place, not just one where there is greater parity in the numbers of women holding formal leadership positions? Moreover, what is the symbolic, if not practical significance of increasing the number of women leaders in IOs? A key question concerns the practical and symbolic significance of increasing the number of women leaders in IOs – both women holding formal senior positions and women playing

Where are the women leaders in international organizations?  143 important roles. For most of its 75+ years, then, the UN has been a “men’s world” with a variety of barriers to women’s advancement, especially to senior positions and in posts in the field. In fact, studies have shown how the latter was a gendered symbol as well as a barrier for recruitment and promotion of women (Bode, 2020). As the earlier examples show, even the UN Charter and the UDHR would have looked very different from a human rights standpoint if it had not been for the leadership of women from the global South. Dietrichson and Sator (2021, 25) document the opposition of the few women other than the Latin American women in San Francisco to adding references to “sex” and “women” in the Charter’s Preamble and Chapter 1. Similarly, Khushi Singh Rathore documents the importance of Mehta’s conception of the role of an IO like the UN and “her commitment to serving the people of the member countries and not the governments that were being represented. Mehta understood the pitfalls of blind faith in the State as she cautioned that sometimes it would be the State itself that would have to be fought to safeguard the rights of its people” (Singh Rathore, 2021, 46). In September 2017, when UNSG Guterres launched the UN System Strategy on Gender Parity, he stressed, “This goal is not just about numbers, but about transforming our institutional culture so that we can access and capitalize on our full potential. It is about creating a working environment that embraces equality, eradicates bias and is inclusive of all staff” (UN News Centre, 2017). Well beyond the UN, trends in women’s empowerment and representation in governments and parliaments are evidence of the spread of a pro-gender equality norm in political institutions (Krook and True, 2012). As Guterres stated in a February 2020 address, [t]he 21st century must be the century of women’s equality … . Gender equality is a question of power; power that has been jealously guarded by men for millennia. It is about an abuse of power that is damaging our communities, our economies, our environment, our relationships and our health. We must urgently transform and redistribute power if we are to safeguard our future and our planet. (UN, 2020)

The question of why it matters whether there are more women leaders in IOs, indeed has implications far beyond the institutional walls of international organizations. Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton captured the significance of the subordination of women best when she said, “Women’s equality is not just a moral issue, it’s not just a humanitarian issue, it is not just a fairness issue. It is a security issue, it is a prosperity issue, and it is a peace issue … The subjugation of women is therefore a threat to the common security of our world” (US Department of State, 2010). The so-called “Hillary Doctrine” thus highlighted that small changes in how women are approached and supported in conflict situations can have a broader impact on gender equality overall, the life experience of women, and the success of a military intervention (Hudson and Leidl, 2015). Practically, women’s role in leadership directs attention to the unique contribution that women can make to the processes, institutions, and outcomes of global governance (Dahlerup, 1988). Women are associated with a preference for broader social justice and equality issues, often related to their specific role in and experience of caregiving (Barraza Vargas, 2019; Bashevkin, 2014). In short, women’s specific contribution is defined by scholars as “acting for” women, that is, to present women’s interests in the process of policymaking, while also shaping the space (institutions and policymaking processes) in which they act (Dahlerup, 1988).

144  Handbook on governance in international organizations The question of what constitutes women’s interests is by no means straightforward, however. Researchers on women in parliaments have noted that women inhabit the broad spectrum of political affiliations and disagree on a range of issues (Childs, 2006; Dahlerup, 2006; Grey, 2006). On the one hand, it is argued that despite differences in preferences of how to interpret or give substance to women’s interests, women are joined in broadly defined interests that shape women’s lives. Beckwith (2014) summarizes these as women’s political voice and inclusion, or the ability to access political power to articulate and express women’s interests, women’s reproductive rights in law and policy, and women’s freedom from violence. Beckwith notes that however women articulate these interests in policy preferences, particularly the issue of reproductive rights, there is little disagreement about their fundamental nature as women’s interests. Thus, Beckwith defines women’s interests as emerging out of the specific life experiences of women, which by extension assigns women leaders the ability and, arguably, the obligation to act on behalf of women in order to improve women’s lives. By contrast, others note that women’s contributions to the political discourse are not limited to the socio-biological experience of women’s lives; women bring unique perspectives on all issues of political concern (Lovenduski, 2005). Thus, the assertion by Elvebakken and Tryggestad (2021) that “national interest has no gender” highlights the challenging idea raised by Cynthia Enloe (1989) more than 30 years ago: all politics is influenced and shaped by histories of male domination, and masculine norms and cultures. This means that even the effects of policies that are apparently as “technical” as transport, urban development, or disarmament are fundamentally gendered, as the Hillary Doctrine showed. What does this account of women’s leadership mean for leadership in global governance? How is leadership exercised by women in international organizations?

WHERE DO WE FIND EXAMPLES OF WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP? Examples of women’s leadership in international organizations are ample, as our account of the historic development of the UN’s early days showed. These were women who broke the glass ceiling in the diplomatic representation of their states and used the opportunity of the international platform to advocate for gender equality and women’s representation in international organizations. Whether individually or collectively as a small group of women diplomats or working with women’s organizations, these women were pathbreakers. Some individuals stand out in their leadership and are widely recognized in certain roles or positions. For example, both Gro Harlem Brundtland and Christiana Figueres are generally seen as transformative leaders in relation to sustainable development and climate change, respectively. Despite having led and transformed the WHO successfully toward a greater recognition of social medicine from 1998 to 2003, Brundtland’s name is more commonly associated with her chairmanship of the World Commission on Environment and Development, and its report Our Common Future. The report introduced the concept of sustainable development, transforming both development and environmental thinking at the UN. Having been part of the Costa Rican negotiating team on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Christiana Figueres was appointed as Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2010. She led the UN’s member states successfully to the conclusion of the 2015 Paris Agreement by moving to a new strategy of negotiation, inclusive of non-governmental actors.

Where are the women leaders in international organizations?  145 Recent UNSGs have also relied on celebrity leadership such as by Angelina Jolie who was appointed Special Envoy to UNHCR in 2012 and has engaged in extensive global advocacy on behalf of refugees. Despite her presence and “convening power,” for example in the 2014 Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative, Budabin and Hudson (2020) argue that women celebrities’ activities are carefully staged, often relying on maternal and caring imagery (see also Bergman Rosamond 2016; Richey and Brockington 2020). While accounts of Brundtland’s, Figueres’ and Jolie’s leadership mirror the accounts of heroic leadership (i.e., the “big man” story of publicly visible leadership success”), others have been more silent but nevertheless as impactful. Sadako Ogata, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (1991–2000), refocused the agency’s work on repatriation and introduced a human security framework to refugee assistance. She focused particularly on the social integration of refugees as a conflict prevention measure (Kobayashi, 2020). Analyzing five women executives at the UN, including Catherine Bertini at WFP, Carol Bellamy at UNICEF, Gro Harlem Brundtland at WHO, Irina Bokova at UNESCO, and Helen Clark at UNDP, Haack (2021) found evidence of leadership for women’s interests. Women leaders not only spoke repeatedly for women and their specific needs, but they also ensured that gender parity in UN staffing was pursued. They did so even where institutional changes required the reduction of the overall staff base. By contrast, Blackmon (2021) found very limited to no evidence that Christine Lagarde increased the number of women at the IMF. However, given Lagarde’s public commitment to feminism and women’s advancement, she did find an increase in references to policies to increase women’s labor market participation.

WHAT BARRIERS DO WOMEN FACE IN ACCESSING LEADERSHIP ROLES? Women have faced a range of barriers in accessing formal leadership roles in IOs. These barriers have taken different shapes over time. In the early days of the twentieth century, women’s access was generally restricted by marriage bars which prevented women from continuing work (including in diplomatic services) after becoming married. Limitations on women’s access to higher education in some parts of the world and in scientific and technical fields meant that not enough women could find a path into relevant careers and positions, including in national governments from which international organizations would recruit. Later barriers were found in benign neglect or simply a lack of recognition how apparently free and open processes of recruitment could indeed be highly gendered in both process and outcome. For example, when in 1950 the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) asked UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie to report on the low level of women’s access and retention in higher levels of employment in the UN, he reported that there was no barrier excluding women from seeking employment in the professional and decision-making ranks at the United Nations (Haack, 2021). Yet, at the same time, Lie and his successor, Dag Hammarskjöld, recognized that staff benefits and rules operated in a way that benefitted men more than women. For example, because men were regarded as the head of a household, they were entitled to a range of allowances that women were not entitled to, unless their husbands were incapacitated or unable to provide an income. And, as late as the 1980s, there were no childcare facilities at UN headquarters in New York City, presenting difficulties for mothers to have a career in international diplomacy (Haack, 2021).

146  Handbook on governance in international organizations Other types of barriers women have faced in IOs include what are often referred to as “glass ceilings” and “glass walls.” Glass ceilings describe the limitations in upward mobility, that is, women’s ability to access higher level positions, while glass walls refer to lateral limitations – women’s ability to access leadership roles (and roles below leadership) in organizations that are considered “hard” or masculine. The nature of the material – glass – signifies that women may not necessarily be aware of the barrier until they confront it and are limited by it. As individual women can access senior positions, the glass ceiling may be “cracked,” but it is only considered to be “shattered” when larger numbers of women are able to move consistently upward. Both of these barriers are viewed by feminist scholars as results of the stereotyping of women’s abilities and interests that deems some tasks and portfolios as more suitable for women (Bjarnegärd, 2013; Miller, Kerr, and Reid, 1999; Simpson and Kumra, 2016) According to Haack (2014), organizations and their portfolios tend to be gendered, with women generally associated with so-called soft or “compassion issues” related to children, health, human rights, education, management/administration and the environment, and men more likely to be associated with hard issues of security, foreign affairs, trade, crime, industrial issues and agriculture. She found that the classification of UN agencies by gendered portfolios did correlate with the overall level of gender equality in an agency’s staff, although since 2014 women have become executive heads of two so-called hard agencies (ICAS and UNODC) with two women in succession serving as managing directors of the IMF. The following illustrates how UN agencies can be classified as follows: ● Hard/male: FAO, IFAD, UNIDO, UNCTAD, World Bank, WTO, WMO, IAEA, ICAO, IMO, ITU, UPU, IMF ● Soft/female: UNEP, UN Habitat, UNICEF, UN Women, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNDP, WFP, UNRWA, UNHCR ● Gender-neutral: WHO, WIPO, UNODC, ILO, UNWTO. Thus, barriers to access can be both institutional and attitudinal, rooted in specific expectations of genders and gender roles, as well as recreating patterns of gender distribution and representation that are found in national administrations, educational and work settings. Since the early 1970s when the UN senior leadership (staff categories D1 and above) was 97 percent male, there has been a concerted effort by staff within the Secretariat and the women’s movement outside the organization to remove barriers to women’s advancement and to set goals for enhancing the presence of women in the UN system. Elsewhere, we have described this as a “long march” since it has been a long, slow process of setting targets and pressing for change. Only when UNSG Antόnio Guterres announced his Gender Parity Strategy in 2017 did it truly begin to show success (Haack, Karns, and Murray, 2022). Much of the effort, came with the successive UN Women’s Conferences, but it also involved the UN General Assembly which first set a goal of gender parity in 1972 and a target of 25 percent “within four years” in 1978 (UNGA 33/143), then one of 30 percent in 1990. It required changes in data collection that revealed the nature and extent of women’s absence; calls for a woman to be appointed to the Appointment and Promotion Panel; and a UN staff union resolution calling for review of staff regulations to eliminate disparate conditions of service. Yet repeated goal-setting for higher level positions at the UN did not produce the desired results until Guterres set himself a specific goal. Still, the glass ceiling was not shattered but merely cracked. At the same time, glass walls created a gendered pattern of participation across the UN system as fewer women were able to access employment and especially

Where are the women leaders in international organizations?  147 leadership in organizations whose portfolios were defined as masculine. This pattern of participation has only slowly begun to break down, starting with a call by ECOSOC in 1997 for system-wide coherence on gender equality. In 2006 the Chief Executives Board agreed on a System-wide Policy on Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, followed in 2012 by System-wide Action Plans (UN-SWAP) and, then, Secretary-General Guterres’ leadership beginning in 2017. Since then, more women have gained access to senior and leadership roles in organizations traditionally seen as male. However, it is important to note that UNSGs do not have control over the appointments in UN specialized agencies; at best, they can exhort the members and secretariats to improve the gender balance where it lags. It is also useful to examine is the 2016 selection process for the UN Secretary-General that created new momentum for a drive toward gender equality and was then reinforced by UNSG Guterres through his 2017 System-wide Strategy for Gender Parity. In 2015–16, General Assembly President (PGA) Mogens Lykketoft and Security Council President Samantha Power, the US Permanent Representative, opened the previously opaque selection process to the wider public and explicitly invited the nomination of women candidates in a joint letter to member states. Several groups emerged to propose and interrogate candidates, among them several groups campaigning for a woman secretary-general. These included The Group of Friends in Favor of a Woman Secretary-General of the United Nations; the Campaign to Elect a Woman UN Secretary-General; feminist groups such as the Women’s Major Group; and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). The 2016 process was key in raising aspirations and giving impetus to the pursuit of the “gender equality agenda.” And, once elected, UNSG Guterres declared in his inaugural speech his intention to exercise leadership on gender parity and equality This highlighted the important role of male allies in the process of removing barriers to women’s advancement. These allies can raise the profile of gender equality and thus increase the legitimacy and significance of the cause among reluctant or less informed (male) audiences.

WHAT DO THE DATA SHOW? Two recent studies of the presence of women in IGO secretariats and in formal leadership positions provide some insights into the current situation. They show where improvements have taken place and where gender-specific conceptualizations of different issue areas particularly between “soft” and “hard” issues persist as well as where both “glass walls” and “glass ceilings” have limited women’s appointments to high level positions. Our own study of the patterns across 18 entities in the UN system between 1990 and 2019 (the most recent available data from the Chief Executives Board for Coordination) shows that since the early 1990s, the total percentage of women employed across the UN system has consistently been above 40 percent.9 Closer examination of disaggregated data, however, reveals disparities across the two main categories of General Service and Professional Staff with a high concentration of women in the former, as shown in Figure 10.1. Only in 2010 did the percentage of female Professional staff break the 40 percent barrier – a percentage that increased by just 2 percent between 2010 and 2020 despite the UN General Assembly’s Resolution 54/139 (1999) which called for 50/50 gender distribution in all categories across the UN system.

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Source: Chief Executives Board (CEB) annual human resources statistics reports.

Figure 10.1

Women in the UN System 1991 to 2019

 

The reality is that the status of women varies significantly across UN agencies, funds, and programs when the system-wide data are disaggregated both across and within entities. Across entities, “glass walls” and gendered assumptions about different roles and specific issues areas are still influencing recruitment to the Professional staff. Figure 10.2 shows the significant differences in a subset of eight entities. Out of these eight, just four have achieved parity (UNESCO, UNICEF, UNIDO, and UNFPA). The UN Fund for Population Activities illustrates most clearly the phenomenon of women’s greater success in a “softer,” more feminine issue area – namely global population where a focus on gender is essential. It was also the first UN entity to have a women leader and the only one to attain parity before 2000. The “glass walls” become even more apparent when one notes the three worst performing entities: ICAO, IAEA, and UNIDO, all of which represent more traditionally masculine or male-dominated fields. Although the representation has improved over time, the number of women Professional Staff remains under 30 percent for ICAO and just over 30 percent for UNIDO and IAEA. Arguably this reflects the comparatively low representation of women generally in science, technology, and engineering, the slow rate of change within these fields, and the barriers women often face, including in national agencies from which the staffs of these organizations are drawn. The IAEA, for example, only launched an initiative to increase gender balance in its Secretariat, programs and operations in 2007 (IAEA, 2019). Still, all three entities have improved at a relatively similar pace to the overall UN system, albeit starting out with significantly lower levels of women staff. In comparison to the FAO which started out at a similarly low level and is now more than 10 percentage points ahead of ICAO and IAEA, however, it becomes clear that the problem was not just starting at a lower point. And, at this point, FAO was clearly the best performing entity having moved from under 15 percent of female Professional Staff in 1991 to almost 42 percent in 2019, thanks at least in part to deliberate Gender and Development Plans of Action beginning in 2002 and deliberate staffing strategies to increase the recruitment of women professionals.

Where are the women leaders in international organizations?  149

Source: CEB annual UN human resources statistics reports.

Figure 10.2

Female professional staff in select entities across the UN System

 

Where the data are most instructive with regard to the potential for more women leaders is in the breakdown of the Professional Staff grades P1 to P5, directors (D1–2), and ungraded (UG). As Figure 10.3 indicates, there is a persistent female bulge in the lower Professional grades across the system (60 percent women in P1–2 and P1 close to 70 percent) – evidence of the persistence of barriers to advancing to top ranks and leadership roles. As Haack (2014) noted, these are “cracks” in the “glass ceilings” that let a few women through to high level positions while keeping UN system leadership predominantly a men’s club. Implicit biases have continued to operate at two levels. On the one hand, there are “glass walls” channeling women into entities based on gendered assumptions. On the other hand, gender assumptions also operate as “glass ceilings,” limiting women’s access to many senior positions. The top four categories from P5 to UG remain below 40 percent. Still, increasing the proportion of female professional staff within each UN entity eventually increases the potential for more women to be promoted to higher ranks. The years 2017, 2018, and 2019 were notable for recruiting women to positions in the 45-member Senior Management Group (SMG) which as of February 2020 comprised 30 women (67 percent), thanks to UNSG Guterres’ aggressive pursuit of his Gender Parity Strategy. There is a striking contrast between the UN system as a whole and the core UN Secretariat, however. Where the SMG had a majority of women in 2020, the Chief Executives Board (CEB) which includes the primary decision-makers across the 15 specialized agencies, 12 funds and programs plus three related agencies, included just ten women among the 31 members. Women headed just three specialized agencies in 2020 (UNESCO, IMF, and ICAO) – two of which, however, are “hard” issue areas. In 2020, all five regional economic commissions (Europe, Western Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia-Pacific) were headed by women, and women also headed all five UN environmental conventions.10 The

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Source: CEB annual UN human resources statistics reports.

Figure 10.3

Female staff by professional grades

UN Environment Program’s Executive Director was a woman, as was the secretary-general of CITES. Women also held five of six Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) and special adviser positions included in the SMG in 2020 – notably posts covering violence against children, children and armed conflict, sexual violence in conflict, disaster risk reduction, and Africa. Not surprisingly, men held the trade, development, economic and social affairs, counterterrorism, and drugs and crime posts. Although only a “related” organization to the UN, the World Trade Organization in 2021 selected a woman as its director-general. There are important questions to be raised about what posts have been included in the SMG and which have not, as the choice of what to include is up to the UNSG. It is possible that gender equality among the leadership posts on the SMG in 2020–21 was achieved by not inviting the holders of certain SRSG posts to be part of the body. Yet, UNSG Guterres has pursued his Gender Parity Strategy consistently by demanding candidate rosters equally split by gender for posts he appoints and by asking other chief executives to do the same (Donner and Gupta, 2020). As noted earlier, however, neither the UNSG nor the General Assembly and Security Council have any authority over appointments in UN specialized agencies. The UNSG can strongly encourage the members and the officers of those agencies to adopt gender equality strategies, but he cannot mandate nor enforce such efforts. The question of the status of women in leadership in the UN has much wider significance than merely accounting for the most recent hirings of the Secretary-General. The question of gender equality, or indeed inequality, could not be conceived as a problem without the data to show women’s absence. While personnel data has been collected and reported since 1945, gender inequality (i.e., the lack of parity between men and women) could not be addressed before data revealed women’s absence, be that among the Professional staff or in the decision-making and leadership roles. Only since 1990 has there been comparable data across the entire UN system. And gender equality will never be the only priority for member states

Where are the women leaders in international organizations?  151 since developing countries have long insisted on respect for the norm of geographic distribution of posts, and candidates’ professional qualifications are also a necessary consideration. A recent study by Sokolova et al. focused on both nominees and selected heads of 123 IOs as well as vice leaders of some organizations. The dataset includes many entities within the UN system as well as regional organizations and a selection of NGOs. By the authors’ estimates, since 1990, women have only held 25 percent of the top positions in global IOs, and 47 of the institutions included in the study have never had a woman elected or appointed to the top leadership position. They note an important point, however, namely “The obligation does not solely rest on the organizations to choose woman leadership, but on countries which participate and especially those that have adopted gender equality laws to nominate women candidates” (Sokolova et al., 2021, 2). Their data also reveal the tendency of some organizations to be led by women which they note “has the effect of obscuring in aggregated data about organizational leadership by [sic] the fact that some organizations appear to be ‘set aside’ for women leadership while others have never had a woman head.” Similarly, women leaders often appoint women to second-in-command positions, and IOs that that have had more than one woman as their head show “the higher the share of women among the staff” (Sokolova et al., 2021, 6–7). In this regard, however, they note that changes in the composition of an organization’s staff are likely not to come with the appointment of the first woman head – as in the case of the IMF and the appointment of Christine Lagarde, as Pamela Blackmon (2021) had also found − but with further appointed women (Sokolova et al., 2021, 6). Sokolova et al. (2021) note the “pipeline” issue of the numbers of women in the various ranks of Professional staff that we discussed above with regard to the UN, the increased number of women in general, and gradual increases at the higher ranks. They also note the correlation between institutions that have never had a woman leader and those with the lowest share of women professional and DG staff as well as the corollary – more women leaders paralleling high shares of women staff. What makes the Sokolova et al. data unique is the information on candidate pools and nominees in 38 of the IOs and 89 leadership positions within those organizations. The study also includes some information on the geographic origin of women leaders, supporting a not-too-surprising decrease in leaders of European origin. With respect to the point often made about the lack of women leader candidates with appropriate qualifications, Sokolova et al. (2021, 7) raise the very interesting question of whether having more women candidates for senior posts has a positive effect on the election or appointment of women. Their findings are complicated by the relatively short time frame and data, but confirm a positive relationship between the share of women candidates and the election of a woman leader as well as the positive effect of an IO having previously had a woman leader (Sokolova et al., 2021, 9–13).

WHERE NEXT? Who governs international organizations and how? Today’s leaders are no longer only men. Women have not been entirely absent from governance in IOs; however, their presence has grown only very slowly. Women face a range of hurdles, both attitudinal and institutional. These hurdles rarely amount to formal discrimination but work instead to structure women’s access to IOs and their participation within them in specific ways.

152  Handbook on governance in international organizations In the absence of overt discrimination, women continue to face glass ceilings and glass walls. Despite considerable advances toward gender parity across many international organizations and UN agencies, specifically since the adoption of a system-wide gender parity strategy in 2006, women’s participation continues to lag in the upper levels of management and leadership and in organizations with hard/male portfolios. A 2021 report by the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee (UNHRCAC, 2021) on the levels of representation of women in human rights organs and mechanisms offered insights into both the achievements and lags in women’s access to relevant bodies, as well as insights into how the UN’s thinking on gender equality has changed over time. In doing so, it offered a glimpse into the future of gender equality in policy and law. The Committee found that gender parity was lacking in many of the treaty bodies. While in some the gender balance moved toward greater parity, others remained stubbornly unequal. In some cases, parity was achieved at some points, only for it to disappear shortly after. Moreover, the report showed glass walls structuring women’s participation in human rights bodies and mechanisms, with women significantly over-represented at 95–100 percent in the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and at parity (or historically over-represented) in the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC). While the report repeated earlier findings on women’s representation, it offered a different perspective on why parity is needed and justified. Fairness and equality between the sexes has been the fundamental purpose of gender equality goals; however, as the HRCAC argued, underrepresentation of women also has a significant impact on the outcome and status of policies, especially those relating to gender equality. It noted the lack of legitimacy in international organizations’ decision-making processes and policy implementation, as well as reflecting Lovenduski’s (2005) point that women’s perspectives needed to be fully integrated into policy-making – not just as beneficiaries of UN aid but as rights-holders. In other words, governance is seen as improved when it includes women leaders. It is clear, then, that women can and do make a difference to the governance of international organizations as well as supporting social justice and equality issues and promoting women’s issues and interests. Yet actions to achieve gender equality need to be substantive and results oriented. In other words, gender equality needs to be addressed not merely in negative terms through the absence of discrimination, but also by considering the cultural values, sociopolitical institutions, and economic structures that shape discrimination. This knowledge, specifically the lived experiences of this tacit form of discrimination, has been brought to bear on IOs and policy-making by women who have held formal leadership positions as well as providing leadership through activism within and outside of international organizations.

NOTES 1. 2.

See, for example, Vogelstein and Klein (2020). The four are Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand), Erna Solberg (Norway), Katrín Jakobsdόttir (Iceland), and Angela Merkel (Germany). 3. For example, Alice Tepper Marlin played a central role in developing international social and environmental accreditation and labeling standards. We are grateful to Craig Murphy for calling our attention to Alice Tepper Marlin’s leadership in ISEAL. For further information, see Yates and Craig (2019), chapter 9. 4. Among the sources on personality of leaders, see Hermann (1980); Hermann and Hagan (1988). On role conceptions in foreign policy, see Breuning (2017). Breuning draws both on the early work in the 1970s by Kalevi J. Holsti as well as more recent work.

Where are the women leaders in international organizations?  153 5. Among the many publications on leaders in foreign policy decision-making, see Hermann (1980) and Herman and Hagan (1998). Two more recent sources are Aggestam and Towns (2018) and Bashevkin (2018). 6. On the point about breakthroughs, see Jentleson (2018). In it, he looks at a variety of individuals who exercised “statesmanship” in the twentieth century, including four women, among them Gro Harlem Brundtland, former director-general of the WHO. 7. See, for example, Aggestam and True (2021); Bashevkin (2018); Aggestam and True (2020); Aggestam and Towns (2018). 8. The extensive literature on women in leadership includes Njunjiri and Madsen (2015); Madsen (2017); Jalalzai (2013); and Skard (2015). It is worth noting that a late 2018 World Economic Forum report was entitled “From glass ceiling to glass cliff: women are not a leadership quick fix.” It focused on the tendency to appoint women to top positions when organizations are in crisis and they risk being held responsible for problems that predate their appointment. 9. This data section draws on the unique dataset created by the authors along with Jean-Pierre Murray using Chief Executives Board Human Resources Statistics Reports since 1991. It has enabled us to show the patterns in both the UN Secretariat and the secretariats of 18 agencies, funds, and programs. For more information on the data and findings, see Haack, Karns, and Murray (2022). 10. The five conventions are the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the Minimata Convention on Mercury, and the Vienna convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and its successive protocols.

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154  Handbook on governance in international organizations Breuning, Marijke (2017), ‘Role theory in foreign policy,’ Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Retrieved 9 Nov. 2021 from https://​oxfordre​.com/​politics/​view/​10​.1093/​acrefore/​9780190228637​ .001​.0001/​acrefore​-9780190228637​-e​-334. Budabin, Alexandra and Hudson, Natalie Florea (2020), ‘UN goodwill ambassadors and the WPS agenda,’ unpublished paper, Women in Leadership in Global Governance workshop, June. Chesler, Ellen (2020), ‘Beijing, 25 years later: are women better off?,’ September 4, available at https://​ www​.passblue​.com/​2020/​09/​04/​beijing​-25​-years​-later​-are​-women​-better​-off/​. Childs, Sarah (2006), ‘The complicated relationship between sex, gender and the substantive representation of women’, European Journal of Women's Studies, 13 (1): 7–21. Dahlerup, Drude (1988), ‘From a small to a large minority,’ Scandinavian Political Studies, 11 (4): 275–98. Dahlerup, Drude (2006), ‘The story of the theory of critical mass,’ Politics & Gender, 2 (4), 511–22. Dietrichson, Elise and Sator, Fatima (2021), ‘The Latin American women: how they shaped the UN Charter and why Southern agency is forgotten,’ in Adami, Rebecca and Plesch, Dan, eds., Women and the UN: A New History of Women’s International Human Rights, New York: Routledge, pp. 17–38. Donner, Francesa and Gupta, Alisha Haridasani (2020), ‘Antόnio Guterres wants gender parity at the U.N. It may take time,’ New York Times, 5 March, available at https://​www​.nytimes​.com/​2020/​03/​05/​ world/​antonio​-guterres​-un​.html. Enloe, Cynthia (1989), Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Berkeley: University of California Press. Elvebakken, Johanne Rokke and Tryggestad, Torunn L. (2021), ‘Women ambassadors on the UN Security Council: do they make a difference? The exceptional year of 2014,’ unpublished working paper presented at the virtual 9 June 2021 Workshop on Women in Leadership in Global Governance. Grey, Sandra (2006), ‘Numbers and beyond: the relevance of critical mass in gender research,’ Politics & Gender, 2 (4), 492–502. Haack, Kirsten (2014), ‘Breaking barriers? Women’s representation and leadership at the United Nations,’ Global Governance, 20 (1): 37–54. Haack, Kirsten (2021), Women’s Access, Representation and Leadership in the UN, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Haack, Kirsten, Karns, Margaret P. and Murray, Jean-Pierre (2022), ‘From aspiration to commitment: the UN’s “long march” toward gender equality,’ Global Governance, 22 (2): 155–79. Hermann, Margaret G. (1980), ‘Explaining foreign policy behavior using personal characteristics of politics leaders,’ International Studies Quarterly, 24 (1): 7–46. Hermann, Margaret G. and Hagan, Joe D. (1988), ‘International decision making: leadership matters,’ Foreign Policy, 100: 124–37. Hudson, Valerie M. and Leidl, Patricia (2015), The Hillary Doctrine: Sex & American Foreign Policy, New York: Columbia University Press. IAEA (2019), Personnel: Women in the Secretariat, report by the Director General, GOV/2019/37-CC(63)/16, 19 July, https://​www​.iaea​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​gc/​gc63​-16​.pdf. Jalalzai, Farida (2013), Shattered, Cracked, or Firmly Intact? Women and the Executive Glass Ceiling Worldwide, New York: Oxford University Press. Jentleson, Bruce (2018), The Peacemakers: Leadership Lessons from Twentieth-Century Statesmanship, New York: Norton. Kobayashi, Ayako (2020), ‘Sadako Ogata’s ideas into action: from “Imagine Coexistence” to peacebuilding and human security,’ Annual Convention of the Japan Association for Human Security Studies, 29 November. Krook, Mona Lena and True, Jacqui (2012), ‘Rethinking the life cycles of international norms: the United Nations and the global promotion of gender equality,’ European Journal of International Relations, 18 (1): 103–27. Lovenduski, Joni (2005), Feminizing Politics, Cambridge: Polity. Madsen, Susan R., ed. (2017), Handbook of Research on Gender and Leadership, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Miller, Will, Kerr, Brinck and Reid, Margaret (1999), ‘A national study of gender-based occupational segregation in municipal bureaucracies: persistence of glass walls?,’ Public Administration Review, 59 (3): 218–30.

Where are the women leaders in international organizations?  155 Njunjiri, F. W. and Madsen, Susan R., eds. (2015), Women as Global Leaders, Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Richey, Lisa Ann and Brockington, Dan (2020), ‘Celebrity humanitarianism: using tropes of engagement to understand North–South relations,’ Perspectives on Politics, 18 (1): 43–59. Simpson, R. and Kumra, S. (2016), ‘The Teflon effect: when the glass slipper meets merit,’ Gender in Management, 31 (8): 562–76. Singh Rathore, K. (2021), ‘Excavating hidden histories: Indian women in the early history of the United Nations,’ in Adami, Rebecca and Plesch, Dan, eds., Women and the UN: A New History of Women’s International Human Rights, New York: Routledge, pp. 39–54. Skard, Torild (2015), Women of Power: Half a Century of Female Presidents and Prime Ministers Worldwide, Chicago, IL: Policy Press. Sokolova, Maria V., DiCaprio, Alisa, Bivens Collinson, Nicole and Quirante, Zyra (2021), ‘Breaking the odds: history of women leadership in international organizations,’ unpublished paper. UN (2020), ‘Make this the century of women’s equality: UN Chief’, UN News Centre, 27 February,’ available at: https://​news​.un​.org/​en/​story/​2020/​02/​1058271. UN News Centre (2017), ‘Secretary-General launches UN system strategy on gender parity,’ 14 September, available at https://​www​.un​.int/​news/​secretary​-general​-launches​-un​-system​-strategy​ -gender​-parity. UNHCRAC, Human Rights Council (2021), ‘Current levels of representation of women in human rights organs and mechanism: ensuring gender balance,’ Report of the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, A/HRC/47/51, 21 May. US Department of State (2010), ‘Remarks at the TEDWomen Conference,’ 8 December, available at https://​2009​-2017​.state​.gov/​secretary/​20092013clinton/​rm/​2010/​12/​152670​.htm. Vogelstein, Rachel and Klein, Jennifer (2020), ‘Let’s make women’s power culturally acceptable,’ Foreign Policy, 3 September. Yates, JoAnne and Murphy, Craig N. (2019), Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880, New York: Cambridge University Press.

(2017–19)

UN-HABITAT: Maimunah Mohd

2018

UN Deputy-Secretary-General: Amina

2017

J. Mohamed (Nigeria)

UNFPA: Natalia Kanem (Panama)

States)

UNICEF: Henrietta S. Fore (United

2017

2018

UNEP: Inger Andersen (Denmark)

2019

Sharif (Malaysia)

UNOG: Tatiana Valovaya (Russia)

Leone)

UNON: Zainab Hawa Bangura (Sierra

Waly (Egypt)

2017

UNODC/UNOV: Ghada Fathy Ismail 2019

2019

2019

UN funds and programs

2019

Secretary-General

António Guterres

2019

2019

2019

2019

2019

2019

2019

2018

2018

States)

Affairs: Rosemary DiCarlo (United

USG Political & Peacebuilding

(Ghana)

UNOAU: Hanna Serwah Tetteh

OHCHR: Michelle Bachelet (Chile)

ESCWA: Rola Dashti (Kuwait)

Melissa Ruth Fleming (United States)

USG Global Communications:

Zealand)

Special Adviser: Jan Beagle (New

Fatoumata Ndiaya (Senegal)

USG Internal Oversight Services:

UNIDIR: Renata Dwan (Ireland)

(Uganda)

UNAIDS: Winnie Byanyima

Pollard (Jamaica)

USG Management Strategy: Catherine

Departments, offices, and other entities

UNESCO: Audrey Azoulay (France) 2018

(Bulgaria)

IMF: Kristalina Georgieva

UN specialized agencies

Women in UN leadership positions 1987–2020

Table 10A.1

APPENDIX I

156  Handbook on governance in international organizations

Secretary-General

(2007–16)

Ban Ki-moon

(2007–16)

Ban Ki-moon

(2017–19)

António Guterres

UN Women: Phumzile

2013

2007–12

2007–11

2009–17

WFP: Josette Sheeran (United States)

Asha-Rose Migiro (Tanzania)

UN Deputy-Secretary-General:

UNDP: Helen Clark (New Zealand)

(Chile)

UN Women: Michelle Bachelet

2007–17

2009–17

UNFCCC: Christiana Figueres (Costa

2010–15

Rica)

UNON: Sahle-Work Zewde (Ethiopia) 2011–19

2011–18

2010–13

WFP: Ertharin Cousin (United States)

2012–17

Mlambo-Ngcuka (South Africa)

UNOPS: Grete Faremo (Norway)

WHO: Margaret Chan (HK, China)

UNESCO: Irina Bokova (Bulgaria)

IMF: Christine Lagarde (France)

ICAO: Fang Liu (China)

UN specialized agencies

UNFCCC: Patricia Espinosa (Mexico) 2015

2014

2016

UN funds and programs

USG Disarmament Affairs: Izumi

2017

2007–08

2007–14

2008–12

2008–14

2008

2010–15

2010–15

2010–17

2012–15

2012–15

2014–18

2015–19

2015–17

2017–19

Ibarra (Mexico)

USG Management: Alicia Bácena

ESCAP: Noeleen Heyzer (Singapore)

(Germany)

USG Management: Angela Kane

Africa)

OHCHR: Navanathem Pillay (South

(Mexico)

ECLAC: Alicia Bácena Ibarra

Lapointe (Canada)

USG Internal Oversight: Carman

OCHA: Valerie Amos (UK)

ESCWA: Rima Khalaf (Jordan)

ODA: Angela Kane (Germany)

(Ireland)

UNITAR: Sally Fegan-Wyles

ESCAP: Shamshad Akhtar (Pakistan)

Mendoza (Philippines)

USG Internal Oversight: Heidi

Gallach (Spain)

USG Communications: Cristina

Smale (UK)

USG Global Communications: Alison

Beagle (New Zealand)

USG Management Strategy: Jan

Nakamitsu (Japan)

ECE: Olga Algayerova (Slovakia)

2017

2017–19

ECA: Vera Songwe (Cameroon)

2017

(Indonesia)

ESCAP: Armida S. Alisjahbana

Departments, offices, and other entities 2018

Where are the women leaders in international organizations?  157

(Norway)

Fréchette (Canada)

UNOV: Margaret Anstee (United

1997–2002

2000–07

2000–01

2002–05

2003–05

2004–08

2005–10

OHCHR: Mary Robinson (Ireland)

ESCWA: Mervat Tallawy (Egypt)

ECE: Danuta Hübner (Poland)

(Slovakia)

ECE: Brigita Schmögnerova

(United States)

USG Management: Catherine Bertini

OHCHR: Louise Arbour (Canada)

Ahlenius (Sweden)

USG Internal Oversight: Inga-Britt

Departments, offices, and other entities

Note: Heads of funds and programs along with deputy- and under-secretaries-general are appointed by the UNSG; heads of UN specialized agencies are chosen by the member states of each agency. This list does not include a number of other senior positions such as special representatives of the secretary-general (SRSGs).

Kingdom)

1987–92

(1982–1991)

de Cuéllar

UNHCR: Sadako Ogata (Japan) UNFPA: Nafis Sadik (Pakistan)

States)

WFP: Catherine Bertini (United

(Canada)

UNEP: Elizabeth Dowdeswell

States)

UNICEF: Carol Bellamy (United

WHO: Gro Harlem Brundtland

UN specialized agencies

UN Deputy-Secretary-General: Louise 1998–2003

(Tanzania)

UN-HABITAT: Anna Tibaijuka

Arabia)

UNFPA: Thoraya A. Obaid (Saudi

(United States)

UNRWA: Karen Koning AbuZayd

1990–2000 1987–2001

1992–2002

1993–98

1995–2005

1998–2006

2000–10

2001–10

2005–10

States)

Javier Pérez

(1992–96)

Boutros-Ghali

Boutros

(1997–2006)

UNICEF: Ann M. Veneman (United

UN funds and programs

2005–10

Secretary-General

Kofi Annan

158  Handbook on governance in international organizations

Where are the women leaders in international organizations?  159

APPENDIX II Selected Examples of Women’s Substantive Leadership in International Organizations Peace and security ● Women, Peace and Security (WPS) and UNSCR 1325 – Madeline Rees and WILPF; Felicity Hill Ruby and the NGO Working Group; UNIFEM head, Noeleen Heyzer; Cora Weiss, Critical Peace/Hague Appeal for Peace; US Secretaries of State Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton for subsequent Security Council resolutions. ● Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict – Karen Pierce (UK UN Ambassador); Sam Cook of WILPF; Kathleen Cravero, head of UNDP’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery; Noeleen Heyzer of UNIFEM; Rima Salah, deputy director of UNICEF. ● Children and armed conflict – Graça Michel; Radhika Coomaraswamy. ● Arms control – anti-personnel landmines – Jody Williams. Economic development and finance ● Women in Development – Esther Boserup; Aida Gindy; Devaki Jain; Gita Sen; Peggy Antrobus; Neuma Aguier. ● Global corporate minimum tax – Janet Yellen, US Treasury Secretary. Human rights and humanitarian relief ● Women’s rights as HR – Charlotte Bunch. ● Violence against Women – Charlotte Bunch and DAWN. ● Rape as a war crime and crime against humanity (gender justice) – Navanethem Pillay, judge ICTR; Florence Mumba, judge ICTY; Louise Arbour, ICTR Prosecutor, Brigid Inder, Coalition for the International Criminal Court. ● Sexual violence in conflict – Angelina Jolie. Environment ● Climate change Vandana Shiva, International Forum on Globalization; Achala Abeysinghe, European Capacity Building Initiative; Winnie Byanyima, co-founder Global Gender and Climate Alliance, co-chair, World Economic Forum 2015; Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, climate finance for developing countries; Wangari Maathai; Greta Thunberg.

Civil society and IO governance

11. “Nothing about us without us”: governance at the United Nations through affected persons federations of LGBTIQ+ activists and sex workers Robyn Linde

INTRODUCTION Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have more influence at the United Nations than with any other international governmental organization (IGO). Yet only a limited number of large, international NGOs have historically been able to proficiently access the avenues open to civil society within the United Nations, exposing a (widely commented upon) democracy deficit (Agne et al., 2015; Bexell et al., 2010; Scholte, 2004; UN General Assembly, 2004). Efforts to remedy this deficit at the United Nations have been met, historically, with a sub-standard answer: consultation with NGOs as the voice of civil society. While the United Nations was designed to empower its member states at the expense of other actors, the inclusion of NGOs has long been seen as a means of democratizing global governance, even though the leaders of many of these NGOs are not democratically elected and many organizations do not have procedures within their governing bodies to promote equitable representation. Moreover, many of these NGOs have a tenuous relationship to their claimed constituencies or to those constituencies on whose behalf they purport to speak. As the number of international NGOs grew over decades, their bureaucratic structures and professionalization distanced many of them from populations of affected persons, a subset of Carol Gould’s (2014) “distant others,” for whom they claim to work. I utilize here Jochen Bernstorff’s definition of affected persons as “groups which, based on prior, and often negative, experience, can make a plausible claim to be existentially affected by the concrete repercussions of a certain structure of governance” (2021, p. 20) and Jan Sandig, Jochen Bornstorff, and Andreas Hasenclever’s (2018) use of affected persons organizations or APOs to denote collections—both formal and informal—of affected persons that work together toward a common goal. This chapter will begin with a summary of the sparse literature on federations before presenting a brief history of civil society involvement at the United Nations and the various methods and spaces in which NGOs participate in UN governance. Then, I will examine evolving conceptualizations of representation in UN fora, where NGOs are increasingly expected to reduce the degrees of separation between those with access to the United Nations and those affected by UN policies. This trend, growing stronger over the 1990s and early 2000s, has meant that, within their competency, NGOs are now expected to speak with direct approval of APOs or, even better, to bring APOs themselves directly to spaces of governance within the United Nations. 161

162  Handbook on governance in international organizations I argue in this chapter that federations of APOs are effective and efficient at empowering local-level actors and raising local, regional, and national concerns at the United Nations. I examine in this chapter two cases of APO federations: The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer + Association (ILGA) and the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP). These cases were selected because affected people occupy positions on the boards, staff, and executive leadership of these federations, a point of difference with most NGOs. I compare these cases with a non-APO federation, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, to highlight the differences in effectiveness and efficiency with regard to concerns about democratic deficiencies at the United Nations. Drawing on annual reports from 2016 to 2020 (the most recent available); reports addressing UN advocacy; organizational structures; and practices of NSWP and ILGA, I suggest that global APO federations—especially those examined here with a lean, centralized staff and with affected persons in leadership positions—maximize the agency of affected people in global fora and provide a promising answer to concerns about representation in global governance.

APO FEDERATIONS IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs via its integrated Civil Society Organizations System lists 14,472 civil society organizations active at the United Nations (UN ECOSOC, n.d.). Of these, more than 420 declare themselves to be NGO federations in their title, although federative structures may be found under many names, including associations, coalitions, networks, and umbrella organizations. NGO federations are broadly defined as a collection of semi- or fully independent organizations that come together for strategic purposes. They are a type of associative organization in that they join together similar groups of actors but are distinguished from more temporary associations such as coalitions (Melville, 2010; Selsky, 1998). My focus in this chapter is not on the differences between the various types of associations—umbrella versus federation, for example—but rather on the distinction between those associations that are led by affected persons and those that are not. NGO federations provide a bridge between a sub-group of NGOs (usually local- or national-level actors) and a supra-group or international office. The relationship between federated units and the central, international office may vary, as there is nothing in the definition of a federation to specify organizational structure. Some may have tight control with limited member autonomy, while others may be highly decentralized with a principal office that provides support (Young and Faulk, 2010a, p. 222). As Wendy Wong (2012) has demonstrated, the right balance between centralized control and decentralized action is an effective strategy to increase an organization’s influence. Members of NGO federations not only share a common advocacy goal, but also may draw from the same resource base (funders), experience similar challenges, and share similar organizational issues (Hunter, 1993, p. 129). Federations—as one type of organizational structure in civil society—are undertheorized in international relations and global governance. While there has been some interest in national or regional federations, primarily in sociology, there is very little scholarship on international federations (Hunter, 1993; O’Flanagan and Taliento, 2004; Selsky, 1998; Young and Faulk, 2010a). They are nonetheless important international actors. As brokers or middlemen within the global system, international federative networks make possible democratic representation, though they do not guarantee it. They also allow organizations to scale up or down on

“Nothing about us without us”  163 the “vertical axis of community” by strategically including organizations on campaigns as relevant (Hunter, 1993, p. 126). As Albert Hunter has argued, most federations develop from the ground up, as collections of local groups, as the case studies examined in this chapter did. However, participation in federations, once established, “defined organizing,” meaning that joining the relevant federation was one of the central tasks of all new local groups within the issue area (Hunter, 1993, pp. 126–7). In their analysis of federations, Dennis Young and Lewis Faulk distinguish federative control from decentralization (2010a, p. 222). Federations could be decentralized but still maintain an international office that controls membership (2010a, p. 222). In this way, federations can resemble franchise NGOs (Oster, 1996; Young and Faulk, 2010a, p. 222) with highly organized and legal relationships of (usually) state-level charters with strict rules and guidelines. On the other hand, federations usually differ from most franchises, which are top-heavy, with a well-known brand that, ideally, brings donors and legitimacy and “efficient back-office operations” (Young and Faulk, 2010a, p. 221). Likewise, units within an NGO federation may vary in terms of size, funding access, national or local support, and advocacy methods. ILGA, discussed below, is a good example: The Human Rights Campaign in the United States, a relatively well-funded and well-known organization, shares equal footing in ILGA with the smaller Kapul Champions in Papua New Guinea. The NGO federation’s role in global governance is robust. Federations can serve as focal points (Selsky, 1998), drawing attention to specific issues shared by members and offering common solutions. They can produce economies of scale by becoming more efficient as their numbers and pooled resources increase (Young and Faulk, 2010a, p. 220). They can also benefit from economies of scope, where different parts of a federation accomplish different, but complementary tasks (Young and Faulk, 2010a, p. 227). They can lower transaction costs by centralizing advocacy, outreach, and research. They can, as ILGA did, move their central office to the same city as the target institution—in this case, near the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva—to facilitate engagement. NGO federations can diversify strategies. Tactics can vary based on location and circumstance, and strategic experiments can minimize risk for others in the federation (Young, 1989, pp. 112–13). Federations can also increase the resilience of the movement as a whole since the failure of a campaign in one location can be a learning opportunity. Large associations of members can develop successful campaigns by pursuing what has been shown to work and discarding what has not (Young, 1989, p. 113). Most importantly, for the purposes of this chapter, federations can foster the empowerment of APOs in a variety of international institutions, advocating a collective position by taking advantage of economies of scale, and streamlining processes including networking, documentation, accountability, and reporting (O’Flanagan and Taliento, 2004). APO federations differ from other types of federations in global civil society. For example, one well-known federation, International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), exhibits a federative organizing structure, but there are important differences between the IPPF and the case studies presented here, as will be discussed later.

164  Handbook on governance in international organizations

NGO ENGAGEMENT WITH THE UNITED NATIONS NGO access to the United Nations began in the formative conferences of Dumbarton Oaks (1944) and San Francisco (1945), where more than 1,200 NGOs participated in an effort to shape the global order after World War II (Alger, 2002, p. 93; Willetts, 1996b, p. 63). Although their presence was tolerated by the states assembled to draft the UN charter, they were excluded from any substantive role in the organization outside of an opportunity to be consulted based on their expertise. While the relationship between the United Nations and civil society has become exponentially more complicated since the 1940s, it still retains the sharp power disparities seen in those early days. Calls for greater NGO accountability at the United Nations became louder in the 1990s for a number of reasons, including two relevant to this chapter: First, funders, civil society, states, other actors, and NGOs themselves pushed for measurable assessment of impacts in response to (or in conjunction with) a move toward NGO professionalization in the mid-1990s (Alverez, 2009). Second, even NGOs that primarily provided services were increasingly expected to engage in advocacy (Hortsch, 2010, p. 129; Slim, 2002, p. 4). The demand for NGO accountability dovetailed with demands for greater democratization in global governance after the Cold War, resulting in efforts to increase the participation of those typically shut out of public discourse—the affected (Bernstorff, 2021, p. 17). The 1992 Rio Conference on Sustainable Development created nine major groups of affected actors that would partner with states and the United Nations to promote sustainable development: local actors, farmers, scientists, business/labor, indigenous communities, women, children, youth, and NGOs (Alger, 2002, p. 94). These efforts were driven by a growing demand from APOs and affected persons for direct participation in global policymaking and governance, captured in the slogan, “nothing about us without us.” As the number of NGOs gaining consultative status increased, calls for accountability expanded accordingly. These took many forms, but a central expectation was for NGOs to specify “on whose behalf” they spoke, or on what authority they advocated (Hortsch, 2010, p. 131). An INGO Charter was established in 2003, confirming a commitment by signatories to properly attain the support of affected persons and acknowledging that NGOs uphold their legitimacy by doing so (Hortsch, 2010, p. 135; Slim, 2002, p. 5). Beginning in Rio in 1992 and increasingly during the early 2000s, NGO moral authority was challenged by actors who were directly affected by global issues and demanded a greater voice in policymaking. Some NGOs responded by expanding their efforts to facilitate APO access to UN mechanisms. Over time, the legitimacy of an NGO at the United Nations came to be linked to its proximity to affected persons. No longer was a principled position enough; NGOs must provide a conduit between states and locally affected people. The trend toward viewing accountability through the lens of advocacy for affected persons was supported by the ECOSOC Resolution 1996/31, which encouraged the participation of national NGOs alongside larger, international NGOs (Bernstorff, 2021, p. 15; UN ECOSOC, 1996). Sandig, Bernstorff, and Hasenclever have argued that involving affected persons in lawmaking and policy development has become “a guiding principle for legitimacy in international politics” (2018, p. 589). There are multiple ways that NGOs participate in UN activities, but this summary will focus briefly on three sites of governance most relevant to the APO federations discussed in this chapter: consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC); the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism of the Human Rights Council; and the treaty Committee

“Nothing about us without us”  165 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). First, NGO consultation to the United Nations was finalized five years after the charter, when an arrangement was made to allow a few large NGOs with expertise useful to ECOSOC to participate—labeled consultation (UN General Assembly, 1946; Willetts, 1996a, p. 32). One indication that consultative status is important to state actors is the politicization of the admission process. Beginning with Catholic opposition to consultative status for the IPPF in the 1950s, efforts to keep certain issue areas off the UN agenda by denying consultative status has been a UN constant (Willetts, 1996a, p. 36). For example, only in the last 15 years have LGBTIQ+ groups been re-granted access after decades of opposition, discussed below. Importantly, for the purposes of this chapter, ECOSOC membership is a prerequisite for participation in many of the UPR procedures (Moss, 2018, p. 130). Second, the creation of the UPR was an outcome of the negotiations over the Human Rights Council (hereafter Council) which came into force in 2006 and replaced the previous Commission on Human Rights. The Council is one of the major bodies within the United Nations established to promote and protect human rights globally. In its meetings, held three times a year, the Council reviews reports from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN Special Procedures, and stakeholder reports from civil societies, also known as shadow reports. Shadow reports are the key way that APOs can participate in this process, and these may be submitted to counter or deny claims by the state pertaining to its compliance with human rights norms and law. The OHCHR may receive dozens of shadow reports from APOs located in a country under review, and it must determine which to include in its 10-page report (Moss, 2018, p. 132). Lawrence Moss argues that NGOs that are well-known, international, active in Geneva, and have consultative status with ECOSOC are more likely to be considered sufficiently credible to include in the OHCHR statement, and that consequently, reports by local and even national organizations are far less likely to be included. Third, NGOs may participate in the treaty commissions pertaining to one of the nine core human rights treaties.1 For this chapter, I will examine the procedures of the treaty commission for CEDAW, the primary target in the human rights regime for NSWP. To participate in the state review process via the committee, NGOs, APOs, and other organizations can submit a shadow report that provides specific information about state compliance, especially how the state is failing to implement or is in violation of a treaty. It is in these spaces—ECOSOC, the UPR, and the treaty bodies (CEDAW, in this case)— that APOs and affected persons can best shape the interpretation of human rights law and norms, including specific treaty articles, and their application to their home state. It is also here that NGOs with consultative status can be most useful to APOs in helping them to research, frame, draft, generate interest in (especially from the OHCHR), and present their shadow report.

CASE STUDIES The case studies of APO federations presented here, NSWP and ILGA, differ from typical federations because, as collections of affected persons, they are rooted in affected communities who experience acutely the impact of global policy on sex work and sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sexual characteristics (or SOGIESC). While a comprehensive

166  Handbook on governance in international organizations study of NGO federations has yet to exist, the APO federations examined here share the qualities of a lean, centralized staff with member associations that are independent of one another but rely on the central office to provide research, access to international fora, information on global and national advocacy, and, if funding permits, transportation costs to come to international institutions and speak directly to officials and policymakers shaping global human rights norms. Most importantly, affected people serve as secretaries-general, executive directors, board members, and staff of ILGA and NSWP and are therefore able to shape global policy that directly impacts the exercise of their human rights. The direct participation of affected persons at the United Nations can be seen in fora addressing many different issues, including HIV/AIDS, disabilities, child labor (Hahn and Holzscheiter, 2013; Holzscheiter, 2016), police violence and racial discrimination (Beckett and Hankins, 2021), and food sovereignty (Claeys, 2019; Dunford, 2017; Sandig et al., 2018, pp. 587–8; Shawki, 2014). To understand the unique qualities of an APO federation, it is worth considering what they are not. The IPPF, for example, is a federation that does not have strong representation of affected persons in its leadership and does not empower those who suffer directly from restrictions on reproductive and sexual health care. Importantly, I am not arguing that IPPF is an ineffective organization. Rather, I suggest that degrees of separation exist between the IPPF, with its access to UN spaces, and those that experience the consequences of restrictions on reproductive care. There are three key differences between the case studies of APO federations presented below and the IPPF. First, the IPPF is not composed of grassroots APOs, but national offices with a maximum of one member association per country, although multiple affiliates may serve different areas. (IPPF, “Member,” n.d.). Second, the IPFF is top-heavy, with a relatively large, centralized headquarters consisting of approximately 100 staff and a complicated bureaucracy. Third, and most important, affected people—in this case, those individuals without access to reproductive health care because of a lack of money or support or restrictive laws or policy—do not, as a general rule, hold positions in executive leadership, or on the board or other governing structures. NSWP Case Study Sex work and the rights of sex workers have become a global organizing issue since the 1960s. This movement can be distinguished from the anti-prostitution efforts that preceded it and found sure footing in international law in the early twentieth century with concerns about white slavery (Garcia, 2018). Anti-trafficking efforts, as they are now known, gained traction in the 1980s and 1990s as some feminists drew links between violence against women, including sexual violence, and a global category of woman. Yet anti-trafficking discourse makes little distinction between forced and consensual sex work, broadly categorizing all sex workers as victims. An anti-trafficking framework prevailed at the United Nations in the 1980s and 1990s for understanding sex work (discussed as prostitution), as women-focused NGOs took advantage of a greater number of avenues to advance their cause. These efforts came to fruition in the 2000 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Palermo Protocol), which expanded the Convention against Transnational Organized Crime with an agreed-upon definition of trafficking. Progress for sex worker advocates at the United Nations began with efforts to limit the spread of HIV/AIDS, as UNAIDS and other organs saw the criminalization of sex work as a barrier to

“Nothing about us without us”  167 prevention (Overs and Hawkins, 2011, p. 2). Over decades, the Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) has worked on shifting language at the United Nations from “prostitution” to “sex work” and “sex worker,” in response to changing norms around victimhood, consent, and agency. From the fertile spaces of organizing around HIV and AIDS, NSWP emerged in 1990 during the Second International Conference for NGOs working on AIDS. NSWP registered as an NGO in the United Kingdom in 2008, headquartered in Edinburgh (NSWP, 2019b). NSWP is a membership-based organization with local, national, and regional APOs holding membership (NSWP, Who we are, n.d.). Beginning in 2010 and continuing today, the organization is governed by a board of directors, which consists of the president (voted on by the membership), a vice president (voted on by the board) and two representatives from each region: Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and North America and the Caribbean (NSWP, 2019b). The president and vice president must be current or former sex workers (NSWP, 2019b, p. 11). Central to NSWP’s principles, regional organizations enable participation in global governance by national and local APOs. Regions are autonomous of the larger organization and select their leadership and structure independently, but are guided by a set of agreed-upon principles (NSWP, 2019b, p. 6). The Global Secretariat of NSWP carries out administrative tasks, including programming, capacity building, and communications (NSWP, 2019b, p. 3). There are currently 10 employees at the Global Secretariat, including the senior staff member or global coordinator (who must be a current or former sex worker). Although sex worker advocates can join the network, only sex-worker-led organizations can vote and obtain membership (NSWP, Management and governance, n.d.). There are currently 314 organizations within the NSWP federation,2 most of which are APOs.3 NSWP’s primary objective is to amplify members’ voices and support “rights-based services, freedom from abuse and discrimination, freedom from punitive laws, policies and practices, and self-determination for sex workers” (NSWP, 2019b, p. 3; NSWP, What we do, n.d.). NSWP is funded by the Open Society Foundation, UNAIDS, Mama Cash, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the Global Fund, among others (NSWP, 2019b, p. 2). Importantly, the NSWP enables sex worker input into a number of recommendations and tools relating to sex work via the World Health Organization (WHO), UNFPA, UNAIDS, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the World Bank (NSWP, What we do, n.d.). The organization produces copious amounts of materials addressing sex work across multiple UN and global governance fora. Policy briefing papers, community guides, and global and regional reports track the key issues for advocates and offer talking points within the core values of NSWP. At the United Nations, NSWP produces guidance reports specific to HIV, STDs, and sex work directed at UNAIDS, WHO, and UNFPA and focuses on the implementation of its guidelines with these bodies as well as the UNDP (NSWP, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019a and b, 2020). While much of the engagement with UN bodies is carried out by the leadership headquartered in Edinburg, the majority of NSWP’s advocacy vis-à-vis its APO members has focused on CEDAW. Concerted action to coordinate CEDAW shadow reports began in 2013 when two member associations, International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW-AP) and Advocacy Network for Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, sought strategic input on bringing sex worker issues to the treaty commission. Out of these efforts, NSWP, along with the IWRAW-AP, created a framework for shadow reports to the CEDAW treaty body as well as guidance for how to frame discussions of sex work within a discourse of women’s and human rights (NSWP, CEDAW, n.d.).

168  Handbook on governance in international organizations Shadow report guidelines drafted by NSWP along with others in its federation present the purpose, strategy, and process of CEDAW engagement (NSWP et al., 2018). While many articles within CEDAW are relevant to sex worker rights, NSWP focuses on seven: Equal protection and non-discrimination; Freedom from stigma and prejudice; Freedom from violence; Right to work and equality in work and working conditions; Right to privacy and freedom from arbitrary interference; Right to health; Equal right to marriage (or not marry) and found a family; and Right to economic and social security (NSWP et al., 2017, “Framework”). APO engagement takes place at three key moments in the review process of the CEDAW treaty body: in response to the periodic report, after the state responds to questions and concerns from the committee, and via monitoring after the cycle finishes. The NSWP guidelines focus on a “constructive re-readin[g] of the initial text of the treaty” (NSWP et al., 2017, “Framework,” p. 30), specifically Article 6, which calls for the suppression of “all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitution of women.” NSWP guidelines suggest that shadow reports make note of the distinction between the suppression of prostitution and the suppression of exploitation of prostitution, noting the latter suggests that some forms of “prostitution” are not exploitative (NSWP et al., 2017, “Framework,” p. 31). Between 2016 and 2020, twenty-one shadow reports were filed to the CEDAW committee by APOs with the assistance of NSWP from Bangladesh, Botswana, Canada, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Germany, Kazakhstan, Kenya (two different APOs), Macedonia, Mozambique, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, South Africa, Serbia, Seychelles, Singapore, Thailand, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe (NSWP, CEDAW, n.d.). ILGA Case Study While homosexual advocacy has its origins in the late nineteenth century in Germany (Ayoub, 2016, p. 37; Krouwel and Duyvendak, 2000, pp. 113–14), the modern movement began in the 1960s on the heels of other successful identity-based movements (Altman and Symons, 2016; Kollman and Waites, 2009, p. 3). In the 1970s, the movement was primarily based in Western cities, with a notable divide between the more urban, gay male movement centered on expression and sexual freedom and a lesbian movement focused on women-only spaces and feminist politics (Faderman, 1991). These two parts of the gay rights movement would coalesce during the AIDS crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, as a shared queer identity was forged through urban organizing and opposition from conservative social forces both in the United States and Europe (Faderman, 1991; Weiss, 2013, p. 164). As with sex work, HIV/AIDS brought externalities, or windows of opportunity, that accelerated organizing in response to an external crisis. The (then) International Gay Association was founded in 1978 by 11 gay male organizations located in Europe, Australia, and the United States. Based in Dublin and Amsterdam, it focused its early efforts on changes in European law, specifically via cases in the United Kingdom and Ireland,4 changes to the WHO’s classification of homosexuality as a disease, and campaigns to persuade the human rights gatekeeper, Amnesty International, to adopt lesbian and gay rights in 1991 (ILGA, The History, n.d.; Linde, 2018). Women were included in the organization with the addition of the “women’s secretariat” in 1980, and the organization became known as ILGA (ILGA, The History, n.d.). ILGA first shot to global attention when it gained ECOSOC consultation in 1993, as the first gay rights organization to do so, which it subsequently lost (via suspension) in 1994. Its

“Nothing about us without us”  169 suspension from ECOSOC was brought on by a homophobic and anti-pedophile campaign led by US Senator Jesse Helms, who discovered and publicized the presence of pro-pedophilia groups within ILGA’s federation. Despite the removal of these groups from its federation, ILGA would not regain consultative status for 17 years, until 2011, after a handful of younger LGBT organizations gained entry. Based now in Geneva to be close to the Council, ILGA World is a federation of more than 1,700 organizations in 169 countries,5 most of which are APOs. It is organized through six regions: Pan Africa ILGA (formed in 2007), ILGA Asia (formed in 2002), ILGA-Europe, ILGALAC or ILGA Latin America and the Caribbean (formed in 2002), ILGA North America, and ILGA Oceania (formed in 2014). The board is elected at the World Conference, held every other year, from among the activists participating in ILGA World governance (ILGA, About Us, n.d.). ILGA Europe split from the organization in 1996 to focus on European institutions and the corresponding funding sources that these bring. It is important to note here that ILGA World is part of a larger network of LGBTIQ+ advocacy organizations that commonly work in partnership on training, reports, and UN advocacy (Linde, 2018). Two organizations in particular partner with ILGA World on many of their activities related to UN bodies: ARC and COC Netherlands, organizations also focused on LGBTIQ+ capacity-building at the grassroots level. Neither are member-based NGOs. There are currently 10 ILGA World staff members, whose key role is to make UN access and advocacy for APOs possible through information dissemination and access via their consultative status at the United Nations. The 19-member executive board is the primary governing body of ILGA World, with its representatives elected during world conferences.6 The board is drawn from the membership so that it consists of affected persons who take on an international role for a two-year period. The guidelines for the board require that there be two secretaries-general, at least one of which should identify as a woman, one chair of the Intersex Steering Committee, one chair of the Trans Steering Committee, one chair of the Women’s Steering Committee, one chair of the Bisexual Steering Committee, one chair of the Youth Steering Committee, and two representatives from each of the six regions, one of which from each must identify as a woman. The five steering committees were developed in 2016 as a way to ensure even greater representation of affected persons on the board. Every steering committee has seven persons, one of whom is elected to the executive board. These rather exact requirements have resulted in a form of leadership that is a “larger and more geographically diverse body working on the specific concerns of a population group” (ILGA, Steering Committees, n.d.). Sources of funding include several states, especially Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the Netherlands, and foundations, especially Arcus, Open Society Foundation, and HIVOS. ILGA World’s advocacy at the United Nations is focused primarily on the Human Rights Council in Geneva, although important work on LBTI women is also carried out at the Commission on the Status of Women in New York. At the Human Rights Council, ILGA World conducts awareness events for experts, diplomats, and staff on SOGIESC issues. ILGA World was also crucial in organizing support for the appointment and renewal of the post of Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, established in 2016 and renewed through 2026—a key achievement in global LGBTIQ+ rights. ILGA World offers guidance on engaging with the treaty bodies through general reports on strategic litigation as well as more specialized reports on specific treaty bodies. Its yearly reports, the

170  Handbook on governance in international organizations State-Sponsored Homophobia Report (since 2006) and Trans Legal Mapping (since 2016), are key sources of information on global LGBTIQ+ rights and the issues facing these communities. Importantly, ILGA World also assists APOs in engaging with these bodies. Much of this work involves training APOs to advocate at the United Nations, including notifying organizations when their country is up for review, notifying about upcoming deadlines, and providing technical assistance (ILGA World, 2017, SOGIESC UPR, p. 25). This process includes support with research, drafting, and presenting reports to the Council via materials created by ILGA, including annual toolkits, advocacy reports, training, and aid in implementation after the UPR. These toolkits, guidelines, and trainings are critical to APO engagement at the United Nations. Prior to every UPR session, ILGA World holds an advocacy training week in Geneva (online during the pandemic) to maximize the effectiveness of visiting APOs as they speak before the Council and, at times, meet with the official diplomatic delegation from their countries. Some APOs even receive funding to travel to Geneva to engage in advocacy. At these trainings, APOs get help in drafting oral statements and advocacy papers, developing strategies for participation, and meeting with diplomatic missions from their countries (ILGA World, 2017, SOGIESC UPR, p. 25). Between 2016 and 2020, ILGA World held more than 360 consultations with LGBTIQ+ organizations seeking to engage the treaty bodies (ILGA World, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020). Moreover, between 2016 and 2020, ILGA World facilitated 141 meetings between APOs and diplomatic missions from their respective counties (ILGA World, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020).

APO FEDERATIONS AS GLOBAL POLITICAL DIALOGUE The case studies of IGLA and NSWP demonstrate similarities and differences from other types of NGOs affiliated with ECOSOC. The most important similarity is that the APO federations have access to UN bodies and mechanisms via consultative status. The important differences are threefold: First, the units of the APO federation are grassroots organizations of communities and individuals most affected by policies on sex work and SOGIESC, as opposed to bureaucracies or professionalized, national staff. Second, the headquarters or secretariats are lean, with few employees engaged in the cost-efficient consolidation and distribution of information that informs strategy. Third, the key objective and method of advocacy of APO federations is to bring APOs directly to sources of power. The increased involvement in UN governance of affected persons and APOs—such as those experiencing human rights violations based on their sexual orientation or gender identity or those engaged in sex work—is a positive and democratizing development that connects international policymaking with those affected by international policy. APO federations in global governance deserve more attention than they receive because these organizations are efficient and effective at facilitating the engagement of APOs and affected persons in UN bodies. In effect, they help to bridge the gap between the international system and the global public sphere, including individuals whose human rights have been violated. Because affected persons are central decision-makers within the federation, their operations—what the federation does—serve as a form of global political dialogue that shapes the institutions where they work.

“Nothing about us without us”  171 The process by which APOs seek to bring attention to issues that impact them was first theorized as a boomerang model by Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink (1998). Gatekeepers— understood in this context to mean international NGOs with consultative status—recognize some of these grievances and call attention to them in international fora (Shawki, 2014, p. 308). Clifford Bob (2004) suggests that gatekeeping NGOs, in turn, choose which issues to adopt based less on their inherent value or the greatest need, but instead on the gatekeepers’ strategic calculations and on the ability of affected persons and their organizations to market their cause within networks. For Bob, gatekeeper NGOs accrue many benefits from these relationships, including legitimacy, purpose, evidence that their agenda is “unfulfilled,” prestige, and symbolic power (2004, p. 15). Gatekeeping NGOs also incur risks and costs, including the use of finite resources, association with a group that could harm its reputation in the future, and the opportunity costs of working with one group at the expense of another (Bob, 2004, pp. 37, 40, 164). The competition for gatekeeper attention exposes the inequality between gatekeepers and affected persons (Bob, 2004, p. 5). Local or national organizations that win the support of gatekeepers tend to have certain qualities in common: they are already known and respected in the international community; they have “enhanced access” to gatekeepers; they have knowledge of global governance structures; they are savvy with information and communication technologies; they have greater financial and institutional resources; and they have organizational resources such as English fluency, charismatic leaders, and group unity and coherence (Bob, 2004, pp. 43–7; Thrall et al., 2014). Alone, local organizations of sex workers and LGBTIQ+ activists may have none of these advantages. APO federations, on the other hand, embody an increasingly institutionalized model of self-representation, one that departs from the typical gatekeeper model. APOs and affected people themselves broker access to sites of authority through leadership positions and processes of governance that are designed by them. Drawing on Bob’s (2004, p. 10) work, we can consider APO engagement both in terms of breadth, or the numbers of affected persons whose engagement is facilitated by federations, as well as depth, the degree to which their access is enabled by federations. APO federations are particularly skilled at both because affected persons and APOs make up the bulk of their membership and leadership. We can also think of breadth and depth in terms of efficiencies and the aggregation of power (Hunter, 1993, p. 128; Young and Faulk, 2010a). APO federations produce economies of scale (breadth) where efficiencies are formed by the collective production and dissemination of knowledge, by way of shadow reports based on local information (from APOs) and knowledge of procedures and global norms (from the central office). For example, in drafting a template shadow report, NSWP spreads best practices—such as which arguments will resonate with the target audience, which treaty articles are most open to interpretation—among APOs engaging with the CEDAW committee. The volume of procedural interventions from a federation is multiplied by training member APOs to engage with international bodies, a process that can lay the groundwork over time for changing norms. APO federations also produce economies of scope (depth) where the cumulative impact of a variety of interventions is amplified. For example, the creation of the mandate for the SOGI Independent Expert was made possible,7 in part, because of ILGA’s extensive use (and other LGBTIQ+ organizations’ use) of shadow reports in the Council over years. These repeated efforts, combined with other actions, contributed to the mandate of an Independent Expert.

172  Handbook on governance in international organizations APO federations also bridge the experience gap in world affairs. Generally speaking, employees of international NGOs with consultative status do not have direct experience with suffering and oppression (Slim, 2002, p. 5). The experience gap is directly related to class differences between affected persons and those with access to UN fora (Slim, 2002, p. 5). APO federations may bridge these class differences within an issue area by employing a skeletal staff who provide knowledge about institutional procedures and processes, legal standing to participate in global governance, and even financial and other resources to physically bring APOs to the United Nations. They can provide translation, internet access, even insight into institutional cultural norms (Gould, 2014, p. 203). In important ways, the success of APO federations hinges on empowering actors directly affected by the issues for which they advocate. In providing these services, APO staff are not chasing or seeking legitimacy. Nor is the staff’s role to interpret or legitimate rights-based claims. Rather they assist the already legitimated. Indeed, the central staff, instead, is legitimated by their proximity to affected persons. As such, APO involvement reverses the means by which legitimacy is granted or conferred. By changing the traditional gatekeeping model, APO federations also relinquish some control over advocacy. While federations can spread out risks via economies of scale (Young and Faulk, 2010a, p. 226), they can also expose themselves to systemic risk. One such risk is the decline of trust for the brand, which can affect the work of member associations locally and make funding more difficult. As O’Flanagan and Taliento state, federations are only “as trusted as their least trusted brand” (2004, p. 112). Lesbian and gay groups and international advocacy for gay and lesbian issues suffered such a systemic blow in the aftermath of ILGA’s suspension from ECOSOC in 1993, when all organizations within the federation were tainted by proximity to pro-pedophilia groups. Young and Faulk label this type of impact an inter-organizational externality, where the actions of a few members can shape the reputation of the group as a whole (2010a, p. 232). The sovereignty of individual APOs is maintained within the federations of both NSWP and ILGA, but there are specific tasks they delegate to central office staff, including communications, research, programming, routine administrative tasks at the United Nations, and coordination. APO federations, at the end of the day, are subject to the same institutional and resource-based constraints as federations in general. Relatedly, the two cases reviewed here demonstrate that APO federations carry with them one unsustainable feature: they are funded not by member associations but by external sources—states, foundations, UN organs, and private donors. In both cases, the APOs affiliated with NSWP and ILGA pay minimal membership fees; the bulk of funding for research, travel, translation, coordination, and expertise comes from these external sources. Even APO participation in global conferences and federation leadership is heavily subsidized by NSWP and ILGA, which in turn are funded by those sources that are interested in empowering affected LGBTIQ+ individuals and sex workers. In other words, member associates of the federation do not “fund up”; rather, the central office “funds down.” Sex work and LGBTIQ+ activism are issues that generate funding today, but the donor community is fickle, and these issues may not receive the same funding and resources in the future.

“Nothing about us without us”  173

CONCLUSION APO federations embody an institutionalized model of self-representation, one that departs from the typical gatekeeper model by providing access to global institutions without an intermediary and, as such, deserve further attention. I have argued in this chapter that APO federations are both effective and efficient at empowering local-level actors and raising regional, national, and local concerns of affected persons at the United Nations. Indeed, in many ways, an NGO’s access to affected persons is a form of currency, granting it the voice and legitimacy to participate in international institutions. The responsiveness to distant others has become part of the global vision for cosmopolitan human rights at the United Nations today, as APOs and affected persons have increasingly demanded, “nothing about us without us.”

NOTES 1. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment and Punishment; Convention on the Rights of the Child; Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families; and the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances. 2. As of October 7, 2022. 3. For safety and privacy reasons, NSWP does not specify which NGOs are APOs. 4. Dungeon v. United Kingdom (1981) and Norris v. A.G (Ireland) (1983). 5. As of October 7, 2022 6. Or occasionally regional conferences if circumstances permit. 7. To date, the independent expert’s mandate only includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

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174  Handbook on governance in international organizations Claeys, P. (2019), ‘The rise of new rights for peasants: from reliance on NGO intermediaries to direct representation,’ Transnational Legal Theory vol. 9, nos 3–4, pp. 386–99. Dunford, R. (2017), ‘Peasant activism and the rise of food sovereignty: decolonising and democratising norm diffusion?’ European Journal of International Relations vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 145–67, https://​doi​ .org/​10​.1177/​1354066115614382. Faderman, L. (1991), Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in the Twentieth Century, New York: Columbia University Press. Garcia, M. R. (2018), ‘The ILO and the oldest non-profession,’ in Bosma, U. and Hofmeester, K. (eds), The Life of a Labor Historia: Essays in Honor of Marcel Van Der Linden, Boston, MA: Brill, pp. 90–114. Gould, C. C. (2014), Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hahn, K. and Holzscheiter, A. (2013), ‘The ambivalence of advocacy: representation and contestation in global NGO advocacy for child workers and sex workers,’ Global Society, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 497–520. Holzscheiter, A. (2016), ‘Representation as power and performative practice: global civil society advocacy for working children,’ Review of International Studies vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 205–26. Hortsch, D. (2010), ‘The paradox of partnership: Amnesty International, responsible advocacy, and NGO accountability,’ Columbia Human Rights Law Review vol. 42, no. 119, pp. 119–55. Hunter, A. (1993), ‘National federations: the role of voluntary organizations in linking macro and micro orders in civil society,’ Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 121–36. ILGA World (n.d.), About Us, available at https://​ilga​.org/​about​-us (accessed 23 September 2021). ILGA World (n.d.), The History of ILGA: 1978/2012, available at https://​ilga​.org/​ilga​-history (accessed 23 September 2021). ILGA World (n.d.), Steering Committees, available at https://​ilga​.org/​steering​-committees (accessed 23 September 2021). ILGA World, ‘Annual report (2016),’ ‘Strengthening each other,’ available at https://​ilga​.org/​downloads/​ ILGA​_Annual​_Report​_2016​.pdf. ILGA World, ‘Annual report (2017),’ available at https://​ilga​.org/​downloads/​ILGA​_Annual​_Report​ _2017​.pdf. ILGA World, ‘Annual Report (2018),’ available at https://​ilga​.org/​downloads/​ILGA​_Annual​_Report​ _2018​_eng​_web​.pdf. ILGA World, ‘Annual Report (2019),’ available at https://​ilga​.org/​downloads/​ILGA​_World​_Annual​ _Report​_2019​.pdf. ILGA World, ‘Annual Report (2020),’ available at https://​ilga​.org/​downloads/​ILGA​_World​_Annual​ _Report​_2020​.pdf. ILGA World (2017), ‘SOGIESC UPR advocacy toolkit: a guide for defenders working on sexual orientation, gender identity and express and sex characteristics,’ available at https://​ilga​.org/​downloads/​ SOGIESC​_UPR​_Advocacy​_Toolkit​.pdf. IPPF [International Planned Parenthood Federation] (n.d.), ‘Member Associations,’ available at https://​ www​.ippf​.prg/​about​-us/​member​-associations. Keck, M. E. and Sikkink, K. (1998), Activists Beyond Borders, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kollman, K. and Waites, M. (2009), ‘The global politics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender human rights: an introduction,’ Contemporary Politics vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 1–17. Krouwel, A. and Duyvendak, J. W. (2000), ‘The private and the public: gay and lesbian issues in political science,’ in Sandfort, T., Schuyf, J., Duyvendak, J. W. and Weeks, J. (eds), Lesbian and Gay Studies: An Introductory, Interdisciplinary Approach, London: Sage, pp. 113–31. Linde, R. (2018), ‘Gatekeeper persuasion and issue adoption: Amnesty International and the transnational LGBTQ network,’ Journal of Human Rights vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 245–64. Melville, R. (2010), ‘Umbrella organizations,’ in Anheier, H. K. and Toepler, S. (eds), International Encyclopedia of Civil Society, New York: Springer, pp. 1577–81. Moss, L. (2018), ‘Opportunities for nongovernmental organization advocacy in the universal periodic review process at the UN Human Rights Council,’ Journal of Human Rights Practice vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 122–50. NSWP (2015), ‘Strategic plan 2016–2020,’ available at https://​ www​ .nswp​ .org/​ sites/​ default/​ files/​ Strategic​%20Plan​%202016​-2020​%2C​%20NSWP​%20​-​%20November​%202015​_1​.pdf.

“Nothing about us without us”  175 NSWP (2016), ‘Monitoring and evaluation framework: strategic framework 2016–2020,’ available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​Monitoring​%20and​%20Evaluation​%20Framework​%2C​ %20NSWP​%20​-​%202016​.pdf. NSWP (2017), ‘Annual report 2016,’ available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​annual​_report​ _2016​_nswp​_​-​_2017​.pdf. NSWP (2018), ‘Annual report 2017,’ available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​en​_nswp​ _ar​_2017​_​-​_nswp​_2018​.pdf. NSWP (2019a), ‘Annual report 2018,’ available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​annual​ _report​_2018​_​-​_nswp​.pdf. NSWP (2019b), ‘Organizational development and operational handbook,’ available at https://​www​.nswp​ .org/​sites/​nswp​.org/​files/​en​_organisational​_development​_and​_operational​_handbook​_​-​_nswp​_2019​ _0​.pdf (accessed 22 September 2021). NSWP (2020), ‘Annual report 2019,’ available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​nswp​_ar​ _2019​_english​.pdf. NSWP (2021), ‘Annual report 2020,’ available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​nswp​_annual​ _report​_2020​_0​.pdf. NSWP (n.d.), CEDAW, available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​what​-we​-do/​cedaw (accessed 25 September 2021). NSWP (n.d.), Management and Governance, available at https://​www​.nswp​.prg/​who​-we​-are (accessed 22 September 2021). NSWP (n.d.), Secretariat, available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​page/​secretariat (accessed 22 September 2021). NSWP (n.d.), What We Do, available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​what​-we​-do (accessed 22 September 2021). NSWP (n.d.), Who We Are, available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​who​-we​-are (accessed 22 September 2021). NSWP, IWRAW-AP, and Miller, A. M. (2017), ‘Framework on rights of sex workers & CEDAW,’ available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​framework​-on​-rights​-of​-sex​-workers​-cedaw​-1​ .pdf. NSWP, IWRAW-AP, and Miller, A. M. (2018), ‘Shadow report guidelines on CEDAW & rights of sex workers,’ available at https://​www​.nswp​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​shadow​-report​-guidelines​-on​-rights​-of​ -sex​-workers​-under​-cedaw​-1​.pdf (accessed 25 September 2021). O’Flanagan, M. and Taliento, L. (2004), ‘Nonprofits: ensuring that bigger is better,’ McKinsey Quarterly vol. 2, pp. 112–22. Oster, S. M. (1996), ‘Nonprofit organizations and their local affiliates: a study in organizational forms,’ Journal of Economic Behavior & Organisation vol. 30, pp. 83–95. Overs, C. and Hawkins, K. (2011), ‘Can rights stop the wrongs? Exploring the connections between framings of sex workers’ rights and sexual and reproductive health,’ BMC International Health & Human Rights vol. 11, suppl. 3, pp. 1–10. Sandig, J., Bernstorff, J. and Hasenclever, A. (2018), ‘Affectedness in international institutions: promises and pitfalls of involving the most affected,’ Third World Thematics vol. 3, nos 5–6, pp. 587–604. Scholte, J. A. (2004), ‘Civil society and democratically accountable global governance,’ Government and Opposition vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 211–33. Selsky, J. W. (1998), ‘Developmental dynamics in nonprofit-sector federations,’ Voluntas, International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 283–303. Shawki, N. (2014), ‘New rights advocacy and the human rights of peasants: La Via Campesina and the evolution of new human rights norms,’ Journal of Human Rights Practice vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 306–26. Slim, H. (2002), ‘By what authority? The legitimacy and accountability of non-governmental organisations,’ paper presented at The International Council on Human Rights Policy; International Meeting on Global Trends and Human Rights—Before and After September 11, Geneva, 10–12 January. Thrall, A.T., Stecula, D. and Sweet, D. (2014), ‘May we have your attention please? Human-rights NGOs and the problem of global communication,’ The International Journal of Press/Politics vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 135–55. UN ECOSOC (1996), Resolutions and Decisions of the Economic and Social Council E/1996/96 Supplement 1.

176  Handbook on governance in international organizations UN ECOSOC, NGO Branch (n.d.), ‘Integrated civil society organizations system,’ available at https://​ esango​.un​.org/​civilsociety/​login​.do (accessed 13 September 2021). UN General Assembly (1946), ‘Representation of non-governmental bodies on the economic and social council 33;’ A/RES/4 (I) (14 February). UN General Assembly (2004), ‘We the peoples: civil society, the United Nations and global governance: report of the Panel of Eminent Persons on United Nations-Civil Society Relations;’ A/58/817 (11 June). Weiss, M. L. (2013), ‘Prejudice before pride: rise of an anticipatory countermovement,’ in Weiss, M. L. and Bosia, M. J. (eds), Global Homophobia: States, Movements, and the Politics of Oppression, Champaign: University of Illinois Press, pp. 149–73. Willetts, P. (ed.) (1996a), The Conscience of the World: The Influence of Non-Governmental Organizations in the UN System, Washington, DC: Brookings International Press. Willetts, P. (1996b), ‘From Stockholm to Rio and beyond: the impact of the environmental movement on the United Nations consultative arrangements for NGOs,’ Review of International Studies vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 57–80. Wong, W. H. (2012), Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Young, D. R. (1989), ‘Local autonomy in a franchise age: structural change in national voluntary associations,’ Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 101–17. Young, D. R. and Faulk, L. (2010a), ‘Franchise and federations: the economics of multi-site nonprofit organizations,’ in Seaman, B. A. and Young, D. R. (eds), Handbook of Research on Nonprofit Economics and Management, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishers, pp. 220–37.

12. Opening up to civil society: access, participation, and impact Christer Jönsson and Jonas Tallberg

INTRODUCTION Does civil society play a role in the governance of international organizations (IOs)? Skeptics would argue that IOs are arenas of multilateral diplomacy, where states settle their differences peacefully and attempt to solve common problems. State governments, in this view, are principals delegating some authority to agents in the form of international organizations without renouncing their own ultimate authority. As the predominant mode of decision-making in IOs is intergovernmental, one may speak of “executive multilateralism” (Zürn, 2004). This state-centric perspective overlooks the fact that some of the earliest initiatives to organize internationally were taken by civil society actors rather than states. The Catholic Church has a long history of organizing beyond state boundaries, and the antislavery movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was an early example of civil society mobilization to address an international problem. Furthermore, the private initiative leading to the creation of the International Red Cross predates the International Telegraph Union (ITU) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU), usually identified as the first intergovernmental organization (IGOs) with global reach. Civil society, in short, plays a seminal role in the history of international organization. Today, the United Nations (UN) stands out as the emblematic IO. “There has always been a tension between the UN’s state-centered character and its aspiration to represent ‘We the peoples of the United Nations,’ the opening words of the organization’s Charter” (Wapner, 2007: 254). Civil society is often seen as a stand-in for the people. At the 1945 San Francisco Conference that established the UN, the US hosts allowed representatives of some 1,200 civil society organizations to attend to avoid the failure to gain domestic approval for the League of Nations in 1920 (Götz, 2008: 241). The UN Charter introduced the term non-governmental organization (NGO), a label that was not used in the League of Nations (Charnovitz, 2006: 351). And Article 71 of the Charter empowers the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to grant consultative status to NGOs on issues in which they have competence. While the UN was initially restrictive in allowing NGOs into the organization, more than 5,500 NGOs now have consultative status with ECOSOC, as compared to 48 in 1948. This pattern of growing participation by civil society actors is reproduced in other IOs. Since 1945, participatory arrangements have expanded dramatically and today span organizations in all areas of global governance. IOs with an historical record of limited access have slowly opened up, while those that already had a tradition of interaction with civil society have become even more open (Tallberg et al., 2013: 53–97). This development has brought about a reconsideration of the traditional view of IOs as arenas of interstate multilateralism. “Multiple multilateralisms” (Weiss et al., 2009: 204), 177

178  Handbook on governance in international organizations “new multilateralism” (Schechter, 1999), “complex multilateralism” (O’Brien et al., 2000), and “polylateralism” (Wiseman, 1999) are labels suggested to capture these new realities. Another way to conceptualize distancing from the traditional view is to understand IOs as “falling across an intergovernmental-nongovernmental continuum defined by the degree to which governments actually control their work” (Grigorescu, 2020: 1). In short, civil society actors today have carved out a role in the governance of IOs. In this chapter, we take stock of existing research and knowledge regarding this development. We focus specifically on three subjects. Our first theme is access: to what extent and why do IOs present civil society with institutional opportunities for involvement? Our second theme is participation: given that civil society enjoys some level of access to IOs, to what extent and under what conditions do they make use of these opportunities? Our third theme is impact: does the growing involvement of civil society in IOs, through access and participation, have consequences for democracy, effectiveness, and legitimacy in global governance? Before turning to these themes, we will review how civil society has been conceptualized and used in the field of International Relations (IR).

THE STUDY OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE The concept of civil society can be traced back to Ancient Rome, denoting a community of citizens whose lives are regulated by a system of law (Wapner, 2007: 255). In the history of Western political thought civil society has concerned the problematic relations between the private and the public, between the individual and the social (Seligman, 1995: 5). Among seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political theorists civil society came to refer to a realm in which citizens could relate to each other independent of, and sometimes in opposition to, the state. As societal rules were formulated and implemented almost exclusively by states for centuries, political theorists tended to relate civil society to the state exclusively (Scholte, 2016: 715). In some contemporary conceptualizations civil society is said to constitute a “third sector,” distinguished from the public sector, which encompasses the government and its branches, and the private sector, which includes business and corporations. The term civil society was long applied primarily to domestic societies. When transferred to the international stage and IOs, the differentiation between civil society and the state or public sector remains central. However, the question whether actors from the private sector should be included among, or excluded from, our understanding of civil society actors in IOs is more contentious. Jan Aart Scholte (2016: 714; 2018: 353) proposes a broad definition of civil society in the context of global governance as “a political space where associations of citizens seek, from outside political parties, to shape societal rules.” While excluding political parties, he implies that “a fuller scope of nonofficial voices and influences in global regulatory processes” might include “the important role in contemporary global governance of business lobbies such as chambers of commerce, employer federations, and industry associations” (Scholte, 2016: 713; 2018: 352). To avoid the association of civil society with a third sector between government and commerce, some scholars prefer the terms “transnational actors” (Tallberg et al., 2013) or “private actors” (Green, 2010, 2013) when discussing “polylateral” relations in international organizations. In this chapter we will use the term civil society organizations (CSOs), which can be broadly defined as organizations that seek political influence yet have no interest in gaining executive

Opening up to civil society  179 or legislative power themselves (Hanegraaff et al., 2013: 448, referring to Beyers et al., 2008). CSOs are synonymous with NGOs; both denominations cover “a heterogeneous set of organizations often with a conflicting set of priorities or interests” (Nasiritousi, 2019: 332). CSOs are advocacy organizations, espousing a great variety of policies. When we intermittently refer to transnational or non-state actors, this reflects the broader scope of the cited researchers. Civil society is a concept that is used not only descriptively but also normatively. Connotations of an ideal type “civilized,” “just,” or “good” society translate into an idealized view of civil society in international relations and organizations. In the global context, CSOs are sometimes regarded as agents that promote democratic and humanitarian values and give voice to the voiceless, in contradistinction to state governments that are ostensibly driven by realpolitik. This is ultimately an empirical question. Existing empirical studies paint a nuanced picture of the merits and shortcomings of CSOs (see, e.g., Gourevitch et al., 2012; Mitchell and Schmitz, 2014). Moreover, civil society encompasses a wide variety of actors from Oxfam and Amnesty International to criminal and terrorist networks. The growing importance of global governance as an analytical concept goes hand in hand with an increased interest in civil society among IR scholars. CSOs may become involved in global governance indirectly, seeking to influence the position governments take on global issues, or taking their concerns to political parties, mass media or online social networks (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Scholte, 2018: 356–7). Engagement at the global level may take several forms, all of which have been subjected to extensive research. One mode is to organize global campaigns on individual issues. The campaign for improving access to HIV/AIDS drugs in the 1990s is an example of individual CSOs gradually building network links and joining forces in an extended global process that eventually resulted in policy change. Other examples of successful campaigns include the processes leading to the creation of the International Criminal Court, and the Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and Their Destruction. Other campaigns have been directed against IOs, such as the anti-globalization movement culminating in the “Battle of Seattle” in connection with the WTO meeting in 1999. Participation at global conferences is another mode of CSO involvement. A watershed moment was the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, which attracted thousands of CSO representatives. Collaboration in public–private partnerships (PPPs) is yet another mode of CSO engagement. The proliferation in recent decades of partnerships spanning the public–private divide in such areas as human rights, public health, environmental protection, and development represent a new and growing mode of global governance (Bexell and Mörth, 2010; Andonova, 2017). The most prominent and most studied aspect of civil society involvement in global governance, however, is the role CSOs are playing in IO governance. As outlined above, we will discuss three aspects of this role: (1) access, (2) participation, and (3) impact. To be granted access, formally or informally, to the deliberations of IOs is a first, necessary step to play a role in their governance. What patterns of access have researchers revealed, and how can these be explained? However, even if granted access, far from all CSOs choose to participate. What patterns of participation and non-participation have been found, and how can these be accounted for? Thirdly, researchers have addressed questions concerning the consequences of CSO involvement. Has it contributed to the democratic quality, effectiveness, and legitimacy of IOs?

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CIVIL SOCIETY ACCESS TO IOs The growing openness of IOs has been an important aspect of the changing nature of global governance. In political science scholarship, mapping forms and levels of non-state access in an historical perspective has been a necessary first step toward explaining this development, while in legal scholarship, mapping and describing access provisions has contributed to understanding the changing nature of international law (see, e.g., Lindblom, 2005; Ripinsky and Van Den Bossche, 2007). Existing research highlights variation in civil society access to IOs across several dimensions. Perhaps the most common finding is evidence of an increase over time. It has become common to claim that IOs are increasingly inclusive. In a first generation of contributions, this observation was primarily based on evidence from individual IOs, such as the EU, the WTO, the World Bank, and the UN (see, e.g., Bunyan, 1999; Saurugger, 2010; Udall, 1998; O’Brien et al., 2000; Weiss and Gordenker, 1996; Willetts, 2000; Charnovitz, 2000; Steffek and Ehling, 2008). More recently, this claim has been subject to more systematic, large-N assessments, which have corroborated the earlier picture of a transformation in the institutional design of IOs. Based on a comprehensive quantitative mapping of formal non-state access since 1950 to 50 IOs, including 298 IO bodies (e.g., secretariats, courts, committees), Tallberg et al. (2013) find that the opening up of IOs is mostly recent and very broad. While the share of IO bodies with some level of openness was at 20 percent in 1950, this doubled to about 40 percent in 1990, and then almost doubled again over the next twenty years, to 70 percent in 2010. At the level of IOs, they find that almost all organizations today offer formal access to CSOs in some form. And if measurement of access is expanded to include informal procedures and practices, then hardly any IO or IO body remains closed to civil-society actors. The leaders in this historical development have been a set of large Western or global IOs – the UN, the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – for which CSO access was an institutional feature of some significance already in the decades after World War II. Yet, for a large population of IOs, extensive non-state access is a more recent phenomenon, with 1990 as the central turning point. Tallberg et al. conclude that the opening up of IOs over the past two decades has been broad and comprehensive, pervading all issue areas, all policy functions, all forms of IO bodies, and all world regions. Exploring an important subset of this development, Alter similarly finds that growing private access to international courts and tribunals is a distinct trend, with nearly all new courts created since 1990 offering direct mechanisms for individuals, NGOs, or firms (Alter, 2014). Green (2010) finds a similar pattern when assessing delegation to private actors in about 150 multilateral environmental treaties over the past century. The proportion of policy functions delegated by states to private actors has grown remarkably over the past quarter-century in this domain, and particularly since the early 1990s. This pattern holds true for both delegation through treaties and delegation through decisions subsequently taken to implement treaties. Research further documents differences in openness across issue areas. Steffek presents findings from a cross-issue area comparison of civil society access to more than 30 IOs (Steffek, 2010, 2013). The results point to significant variation between policy fields. There is a high level of CSO involvement in environmental policy institutions and processes, such as the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Framework

Opening up to civil society  181 Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), both of which offer particularly good access for CSOs to official negotiation and decision meetings, including speaking rights. Another policy area with extensive civil-society access is human rights, where institutions such as the Council of Europe and the Human Rights Council of the UN both operate well-developed consultative arrangements and rely on private actors to monitor state compliance. By contrast, Steffek finds that security is a policy area at the other end of the spectrum, with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), for example, remaining closed to civil society in most respects. Likewise, in the field of finance, the IMF has been very reluctant to open up to societal actors, even if it engages in certain policy dialogue with them, and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) remains highly inaccessible as well. While not based on comparable measurements, case studies of individual IOs active in different policy domains tend to reinforce the picture from these studies (see, e.g., Raustiala, 1997; O’Brien et al., 2000; Reimann, 2006; Hawkins, 2008; Mayer, 2008; Jönsson and Tallberg, 2010). Expanding from comparative case studies to a large-N mapping of access in 50 IOs, Tallberg et al. (2013) corroborate the existence of distinct patterns across issue areas. They find that, in 2010, IO bodies in the field of human rights were by far the most open. Multi-issue bodies were the second most open category, followed by development and trade. The lowest levels of openness could be found in finance and security. All issue areas have followed the same clear trend of an increase in openness over time, most notably after 1990. At a closer look, three additional patterns in the temporal development are observed. First, IO bodies in human rights and development, as well as multi-issue bodies, have been pioneers of civil-society access. Second, early differences in access have proven highly resilient over time, as IO bodies in some fields consistently have been the most open (human rights) or the most closed (security, finance). Third, unlike the overall trend of a steep increase from 1990 onwards, access in some fields, such as environmental politics and commodity regulation, grew in a more linear way. Other issue areas, such as trade and security, have experienced a late and rather abrupt opening up. Existing research further points to variation across policy functions. Multiple contributions conclude that IOs tend to be more open to non-state actors at the stages of policy formulation, implementation, and monitoring/enforcement, than at the stage of decision-making (Raustiala, 1997; Risse, 2012). In this vein, it has been established that IO bodies involved in the monitoring and enforcement of member state compliance have been by far the most open category from 1950 to 2010 (Tallberg et al., 2013). The second most open category in 2010, and during the first two decades of the observation period, was implementation bodies. Between 1970 and 1990, however, organizational bodies involved in policy formulation were more accessible than implementation bodies. Finally, the least open policy function in international cooperation has consistently been decision-making. Yet, even in this category, we see a strong increase in the level of CSO access between 1990 and 2010. Focusing specifically on delegation to private actors in multilateral environmental treaties, Green (2010) finds this to be particularly common in policy formulation and implementation, and less common in decision-making and enforcement. In addition to descriptively mapping developments in civil-society access to IOs, existing literature has explored the sources of these patterns. Accounts have primarily centered on three sets of factors. To begin with, several contributions have demonstrated the explanatory power of functional benefits. Raustiala (1997: 719) concludes that states gain rather than lose in authority

182  Handbook on governance in international organizations as a product of NGO access to international environmental institutions: “Rather than undermining state sovereignty, active NGO participation enhances the abilities of states to regulate globally. The empirical pattern of NGO involvement has been structured across time and functional areas to reap these gains.” Observing a development over time in the design of international environmental regimes toward greater CSO access, Raustiala explains this shift with the move in the 1980s and 1990s toward the negotiation of environmental issues – ozone depletion, transboundary air pollution, hazardous wastes, climate change, and biodiversity – that were more complex and demanding than those of the earlier resource regimes. In another contribution on global environmental governance, Green (2010) assesses the extent to which the pattern of delegation to private actors in environmental treaties over the past century matches the expectations of rationalist theories. As multilateral environmental agreements became more complex, Green argues, we witnessed an increasing interest in engaging private actors because of the policy expertise they can contribute. Demand for expertise influences the pattern of delegation across policy functions as well, with private actor involvement particularly common in policy formulation and implementation. By contrast, states are reluctant to engage private actors in the decision-making and enforcement phases of cooperation, which involve higher sovereignty costs and fewer functional benefits from private actor participation. Relatedly, a number of contributions explaining patterns in IO openness draw on rationalist resource-exchange theory. In this vein, Steffek (2010) finds that IOs demand varying levels and kinds of resources from CSOs, depending on the characteristics of the issue area they are active in, while CSOs in return are offered much desired access to policymaking. Focusing on the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Liese (2010) finds that the wish to access resources constitutes the organization’s principal motive for openness vis-à-vis non-state actors. In a similar way, Mayer (2008) accounts for variation across security IOs by highlighting distinct differences in their respective demands for the resources that CSOs can contribute. A final illustration is the work of Bouwen (2002), who explains the varying access of business interests to the principal institutions of the EU through a demand and supply theory of access goods. Another set of empirical contributions on the sources of openness explore the emergence and spread of a participatory norm in global governance. Several works focus on the UN, emphasizing Article 71 of the UN Charter as the original source of this development and “a benchmark for other U.N. agencies” (Charnovitz, 1997: 253; see also Weiss and Gordenker, 1996; Willetts, 2000). Others highlight how the norm of openness spread and became consolidated in the UN system through the large UN conferences of the 1980s and 1990s (Friedman et al., 2005; Reimann, 2006: 60). According to the general argument, this norm defines open and inclusive governance mechanisms as the new, appropriate standard in the UN. As Brühl and Rosert (2009: 26) note: “[W]hereas before, arguments were needed to justify the involvement of non-governmental actors in governance processes, now we face a reversal, so the pressure is there to justify the exclusion of non-state actors from governance processes, that is, to explain why the new norm of appropriate governance does not apply to the concrete case.” The EU presents another organizational context where scholars have identified the emergence, diffusion, and consolidation of a new norm of democratic governance. Saurugger (2010) submits that the mid-1990s witnessed the establishment of a hegemonic discourse in the EU, prescribing openness to civil society. According to Saurugger (2010: 472), “[t]he participatory turn at the EU level [reflects] a polity norm understood as a normative idea

Opening up to civil society  183 about a legitimate political order.” This norm is closely linked to the concept of participatory democracy as a solution to the EU’s democratic deficit. Others highlight the role of domestic democratic norms. Tallberg et al. (2013, 2016a) suggest that IOs’ openness toward civil society is shaped by the existence of democratic norms in their membership. Since states seek to extend abroad the ideals to which they adhere domestically, IOs with more democratic memberships will be more likely to adopt democratic arrangements, including civil society access. This argument ties in with research showing how the democratic composition of memberships influences the policies and institutions of IOs (e.g., Mansfield and Pevehouse, 2008; Grigorescu 2010). Moving from a “thick” to a “thin” constructivist analysis, a range of works find that growing CSO access stems from purposeful attempts to legitimize IOs in response to criticism. In this vein, O’Brien et al. (2000: 4) argue that public opposition was the principal reason why the IMF, the World Bank, and WTO began to open up: “Under increased pressure from some elements of civil society for transparency and accountability the institutions have in the 1990s embarked upon a strategy of incremental reform. The intent is to extend and universalize existing multilateralism while blunting opposition through coopting hostile groups.” Summarizing evidence from more than 30 IOs, Kissling et al. (2008: 210–11) highlight an “increasing willingness of international organizations to turn to CSO participation in order to confront the external criticism of their perceived missing legitimacy.” Moving beyond the rationalist–constructivist divide, Tallberg et al. (2013, 2014) establish that variation in non-state access within and across IOs is mainly explained by a combination of three factors: demand for the resources and services of non-state actors, domestic democratic standards in the membership of IOs, and state concerns with national sovereignty. In their account, the principal drivers of greater openness in global governance have been functional demands for resources that enable IOs to address governance problems more efficiently and effectively, and domestic democracy among the member states of IOs. Sovereignty costs associated with reductions in state control have been the principal constraint on access, also contributing to distinct patterns of variation across policy functions and issue areas. According to Tallberg et al., the central transformative event in the historical development of CSO access was the end of the Cold War, which led to growing functional demands for non-state actor involvement in international cooperation and strengthened democracy as a principle of governance. In a follow-up account that also bridges the rationalist–constructivist divide, Sommerer and Tallberg (2019) show how the spread of non-state access to IOs has been shaped by dynamics of diffusion. The more connected IOs are to each other through formal and informal links, the more likely they are to borrow models of CSO access from each other.

CIVIL SOCIETY PARTICIPATION IN IOs Today CSOs are allowed to attend the meetings of a broad range of IO bodies, from preparatory committees to executive councils, across a wide range of issue areas, providing policy-relevant information, representing constituency interests and, ultimately, influencing policies. However, access is not equivalent to participation. Nor does CSO participation always aim at influencing the policy of IOs; sometimes organizational maintenance objectives – aiming at expanding or sustaining their resources – drive CSO participation (Hanegraaff et al., 2016). Some of the CSOs that have been granted access to IOs play central roles in

184  Handbook on governance in international organizations their policy processes, whereas others are less active and have little noticeable impact on policymaking. When it comes to CSO participation, one may thus distinguish between ‘core players’ and ‘peripheral players’ (Hanegraaff et al., 2020: 289). Scholars have revealed uneven participation along several dimensions. A basic distinction can be made between the density, diversity, and volatility of CSO participation (Hanegraaff et al., 2013: 453–5). Density refers to (changes in) the total population of CSOs participating at any given time. Diversity refers to (skewed) patterns of representation. Volatility points to the ability to maintain participation over longer time periods. Increasing access does not necessarily lead to growing density of CSO participation. Simply opening up IOs to a larger set of CSOs is no guarantee for infinite, linear growth of active participation. The WTO displays a density-dependent pattern, with the number of mobilized CSOs growing slowly in the initial phase. Their participation had not yet gained a taken-for-granted status, and they still searched for ways to approach the decision-makers. As these constraints disappeared, the number of participating CSOs grew rapidly. At a certain point, growth slowed, as increasing density discouraged further entry: … once a substantial number of organizations get mobilized the entry of new groups and the exit of unsuccessful groups will be driven by competition of scarce resources. Or, after some time, groups encounter more and more constraints in realizing their policy goals and, in response, they may exit and/or seek access to other international organizations. (Hanegraaff et al., 2013: 457)

The diversity of CSO participation has been studied primarily in terms of their geographical origin and their issue-area orientation. All existing studies point to the overrepresentation of CSOs from rich and developed countries among “core players.” CSOs from the global South are typically poorly funded, have less access to information and often lack the resources necessary for active participation in IOs (Uhre, 2014: 4). When UN World Conferences and other international fora moved south in the 1990s, rising numbers of CSOs from the global South came to participate. This was seen as a promising sign of geographical diversification (Uhre, 2014: 3; Orr, 2006; Piewitt, 2010). It was also an indication that proximity to the venue is an indicator of a CSO’s likelihood to participate in IO meetings (Uhre, 2014; Hanegraaff et al., 2011; Friedman et al., 2005). Overall, however, the skewed pattern of CSO participation in favor of those hailing from the global North persists. As for issue-area orientation, a rough distinction can be made between specific-interest and diffuse-interest CSOs. The conventional wisdom is that participation patterns in IOs tend to be skewed in favor of specific-interest CSOs. Due to their lack of resources and expertise that would allow them to gain direct access to policymakers, diffuse-interest CSOs are expected to prefer “outside” strategies, such as media campaigns and protests, to “inside” strategies of active participation in IOs (Hanegraaff et al., 2016). Yet recent large-N studies challenge the conventional wisdom. Statistical analysis of a novel data set covering CSO participants in 94 policymaking bodies of 25 global IOs between 1998 and 2017 displays substantial variation in the participation patterns among specific-interest and diffuse-interest CSOs across issue areas, policy stages and time. Not only did the average share of diffuse-interest CSOs increase over time, but decision-making bodies and environmental-policy IOs were, contrary to expectation, among those with the highest participation by diffuse-interest CSOs (Vikberg, 2021). Similarly, a study drawing on interview data with CSO representatives shows significant variation among CSOs when it comes to how they balance “inside” and “outside” strategies (Hanegraaff et al., 2016).

Opening up to civil society  185 Some issue areas elicit more CSO participation than others, in the same way that access varies across issue areas. Thus, environmental politics, development and human rights represent domains of high CSO participation; finance and security areas of low CSO participation. Even within any given issue area there may be skewed participation. For instance, a study of CSO representation at WTO Ministerial Council meetings demonstrates that agricultural CSOs have become increasingly dominant, whereas finance and transport sectors are far less represented (Hanegraaff et al., 2013: 468). Volatility, finally, is important for the role CSOs may play in IOs. The less volatile and thus more stable the pattern of participation, the more CSOs will be capable to build long-lasting networks with key policymakers. CSOs that maintain only a temporary presence are much less likely to create such networks and consequently less likely to be influential. Studies indicate that CSO participation in IOs is relatively volatile. One study of CSO participation patterns over time in WTO Ministerial Council meetings shows that repeat players – CSOs that attend those meetings more than once – remain a minority, and the number of CSOs exiting after attending one meeting has grown over time (Hanegraaff et al., 2013: 468). Similarly, the findings of a comparative study of non-state actors over time within two environmental regimes, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) “raise serious questions” whether these actors “are capable of building the kind of long-term presence necessary to become an integral part of the process” (Uhre, 2014: 16–17). Another study of the 5,627 non-state actors that have been active at the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) of the UNFCCC between 1997 and 2011 found that almost 65 percent attended only one conference, and more than 75 percent attended no more than two conferences. A mere 0.3 percent attended all conferences, and less than 4 percent attended nine out of the 16 conferences (Hanegraaff et al., 2020: 300). Volatility and density are interrelated. CSOs that enter a dense environment face more competition for access and are less likely to maintain their participation, whereas those who enter when a modest number of others are active experience less competition and are more likely to develop a steady participation (Hanegraaff et al., 2020: 291). In sum, if the opening up of IOs to CSO access led some scholars to exaggerate the influence of CSOs, studies of participation in policymaking provide a cautionary note against leaping to conclusions. These studies indicate that participation is typically skewed and that relatively few CSOs have been repeatedly involved in the policymaking process. To explain these patterns, students of CSO participation in IOs have borrowed concepts and theories from the literature on interest groups and lobbying in comparative politics. Prominent scholars in that field, such as David Truman, Elmer Eric Schattschneider and Frank Baumgartner, are frequently cited. Explanations of the observed patterns of participation are typically sought at three levels, often in combination. In addition to international and domestic factors, characteristics of the CSOs themselves may account for participatory patterns. At the international level, CSO mobilization may be affected by global opportunity structures. The access rules of IOs can be seen as necessary but not sufficient conditions. Political attention at the global level to a specific issue has been shown to contribute to triggering CSO participation (Hanegraaff et al., 2015). The effect of issue salience on CSO participation can operate through two mechanisms. On the one hand, IO bodies may demand participation from CSOs representing a constituency for which a specific issue is salient, often to preempt opposition. IOs with more authority are particularly concerned with political support from CSOs.

186  Handbook on governance in international organizations On the other hand, CSOs themselves can be expected to be more willing to participate when an issue is salient to their constituency (Vikberg, 2021: 12–14). In addition to issue salience, governance problems of IOs can be drivers of CSO participation. Concerns for efficient problem-solving affect an IO’s interaction with CSOs. For instance, some CSOs can provide needed technical knowledge; others possess vital local knowledge, by having ties to local populations and having access to places that IOs do not (Vikberg, 2021: 9–12). Whereas international factors center on the political as well as functional demand for CSO participation, explanations at the domestic and actor levels focus on the supply side. Domestic factors concern characteristics of CSOs’ country of origin. The immediate context in which domestic civil society is embedded will affect participation internationally. The level of democracy is of consequence. By producing larger civil society populations and allocating more resources to them, countries with higher levels of democracy enable a larger contingent of CSOs to establish participation in IOs (Uhre, 2014: 6; Hanegraaff et al., 2011: 9). Empirical assessment offers strong support for this correlation in a study of environmental regimes (Uhre, 2014: 14). In the WTO, countries with low levels of democracy send almost no CSOs to Ministerial Council meetings. With increasing levels of democracy, CSO participation grows (Hanegraaff et al., 2015: 1615). The resources available at the domestic level, either overall or issue-specific, constitute another explanatory factor. Transnational mobilization of domestic CSOs is expected to co-vary with the national resource base that enables their engagement. The study of the WTO, referred to above, finds a correlation between the level of democracy and the national resource base: “a resourceful context that lacks democratic institutions produces, on average, considerably less transnational advocacy compared with a similar context with democratic institutions” (Hanegraaff et al., 2015: 1615). Among explanations at the actor level, finally, the most prominent one is that the ability by CSOs to participate in IOs in a sustained and consistent manner depends on their financial resources. The connection between financial resources and successful lobbying is well established in the interest group literature; it “is a relationship that holds true in the national context and may therefore reasonably be assumed to hold also in an international context” (Uhre, 2014: 5). To maintain a presence at the venues of IOs incurs considerable costs. If CSOs do not possess sufficient resources, they cannot carry on their participation in IOs for long and will exit prematurely (Hanegraaff et al., 2020: 290). In addition to financial resources, less material “political resources,” such as information and expert knowledge, account for CSO participation. CSOs that can supply valuable information to policymaking have the best odds to sustain their participation (Hanegraaff et al., 2020: 290). Financial and political resources are interrelated. Information and expertise cannot be procured for free (Uhre, 2014: 5). In sum, efforts to explain CSO participation patterns in IOs point to political and functional demands from IOs, the level of democracy and the resource base of their countries of origin, and their own financial and political resources, as factors that, either alone or – more commonly – in combination, may account for observed variations in participation.

Opening up to civil society  187

CIVIL SOCIETY IMPACT ON IOs A third area of research are the consequences of civil society involvement in IOs. Does it matter for political outcomes in global governance whether CSOs have access to, and participate in, the policymaking processes of IOs? The wider question addressed by analysts is whether CSOs are at all able to influence IO policies. More specifically, researchers have examined the impact of civil society involvement on the democratic qualities of IOs, the effectiveness of IOs, and the legitimacy of IOs. On the general issue of CSO influence, there is evidence that CSOs sometimes succeed in their efforts to shape IO policies in areas such as human rights, environmental protection, conflict resolution, international trade, and humanitarian aid (Risse, 2012; Hale, 2020). Most studies documenting such effects consist of qualitative case studies, tracing the influence of CSOs from preferences to activities and outcomes (e.g., Joachim, 2003; Gulbrandsen and Andresen, 2004; Betsill and Corell, 2008; Deitelhoff, 2009). However, an increasing number of studies use survey or preference attainment methods to identify CSO influence in IOs such as the EU (Klüver, 2013) and UN (Tallberg et al., 2018). A key question in this literature is why CSOs sometimes are influential in shaping IO decisions and sometimes not. Research points to four complementary explanations of variation: the material resources that CSOs have at their disposal (Klüver, 2013), the transnational networks that CSOs can rely on (Hadden, 2015), the information that CSOs can contribute (Tallberg et al., 2018), and the public pressure that CSOs can mobilize (Gulbrandsen and Andresen, 2004). It is a common observation in the literature that CSOs, to influence IO policies, rely on a combination of so-called inside and outside strategies – both lobbying decision-makers on the inside and generating advocacy pressure from the outside (Hanegraaff et al. 2016; Dellmuth and Tallberg, 2017). The establishment of CSO influence in IOs feeds into debates about three broader types of CSO impact in global governance. To start with, civil society actors are increasingly seen as holding the promise of a democratization of global governance. The question of whether IOs suffer from democratic deficits, and, if so, what might be done about it, generated extensive interest over the past two decades. Simplifying slightly, the scholarly debate features three main positions. According to the first, democracy at the global level will be impossible to achieve, because of the absence of a transnational demos (Dahl, 1999; Scharpf, 1999). Proponents of a second position question the diagnosis of a democratic deficit in global governance and claim there are few reasons to engage in democratizing reforms (Kahler, 2005; Moravcsik, 2005). Advocates of a third position recognize the presence of a democratic deficit considering it both desirable and possible to democratize international organizations (Held, 1995; Zürn, 2000; Scholte, 2011). One prominent line of theorizing in this third tradition highlights the potential for a democratization of global governance through closer involvement of CSOs. Rejecting confederal and federal blueprints for global democracy, theorists have advanced models for how to democratize existing institutional arrangements through the involvement of civil society actors. These normative visions are varyingly referred to as global stakeholder democracy, transnational democracy, and democratic polycentrism (Macdonald, 2008; Jönsson and Tallberg, 2010; Archibugi et al., 2011). Terry Macdonald (2008: 13) argues that “we should embrace the prospect of a ‘pluralist’ liberal democratic order in global politics, composed of multiple agents of public power held to account by their overlapping ‘stakeholder’ communities.” In the same

188  Handbook on governance in international organizations vein, Jan Aart Scholte (2005: 88–9) submits that “civil society associations … offer significant possibilities to increase democratic accountability in global regulatory arrangements,” while Jens Steffek and Patrizia Nanz (2008: 3) suggest that “[o]rganized civil society … has the potential to function as a ‘transmission belt’ between a global citizenry and the institutions of global governance.” Whether civil society involvement in global governance can live up to these normative expectations is largely an empirical question. For this reason, several contributions have sought to map existing patterns of civil society involvement and discuss their implications for the normative vision of global stakeholder democracy (Steffek et al., 2008; Bexell et al., 2010; Tallberg and Uhlin, 2011; Kalm et al., 2019). These contributions are part of larger research agenda focused on exploring the empirical preconditions of alternative models of global democracy (Scholte, 2011; Archibugi et al., 2011). While normative theory presents a range of democratic values against which empirical practices could be evaluated, the model of global stakeholder democracy places particular emphasis on participation and accountability. Participation as an ideal specifies that all people significantly affected by a decision should have equal possibility to participate in its making (Dahl, 1970). Accountability as an ideal stipulates that some actors should have the right to hold other actors to a set of standards, to assess whether they have fulfilled their responsibilities in the light of these standards, and to impose sanctions if they find that these responsibilities have not been met (Grant and Keohane, 2005). According to the model of global stakeholder democracy, civil society involvement in IOs can help both to expand participation, by bringing on board CSOs representing a broad array of societal interests, and to strengthen the external accountability of IOs vis-à-vis stakeholders. When judged against these criteria, developments and patterns in civil society involvement are both good and bad news. In general, the growing role for civil society actors described above reflects favorably on the preconditions for global stakeholder democracy. The opening up of IOs to NGOs, social movements, transnational parties, and other forms of CSOs, expands participation, establishes complementary channels of citizen representation, and improves the prospect of those being affected by global decisions to have a stake in their formulation and implementation (Steffek et al., 2008; Bexell et al., 2010; Tallberg et al., 2013). In addition, this development empowers civil society actors as agents of external accountability, by instituting a range of non-electoral mechanisms through which stakeholders may hold IOs accountable, including legal redress, monitoring of commitments, and policy evaluation (Scholte, 2005, 2011). More problematic for the vision of global stakeholder democracy are the enduring imbalances and limitations in global governance as regards the involvement of civil society, identified above. First, opportunities for involvement are seldom equally distributed. When IOs open up, they are typically quite selective and only rarely provide unconditional access to all facets of civil society (Tallberg et al., 2013). Even when civil society actors have the same formal opportunities to participate, involvement tends to be far from evenly balanced (Hanegraaff et al., 2011; Uhre, 2014; Vikberg, 2021). Second, the imbalances in CSO access and participation in terms of issue areas and policy phases, discussed above, represent other complications for the stakeholder model (Steffek et al., 2008; Tallberg et al., 2013). Civil society involvement tends to be particularly weak in the democratically most important phase – decision-making. Finally, the institutional conditions for civil society involvement are rarely designed to enable profound participation. At any stage of the policy process CSO involve-

Opening up to civil society  189 ment may vary ranging from passive observation to full participation at the level of member states. Yet deep and influential forms of participation are rare, while more shallow and less consequential forms of involvement are more common. These patterns may help to explain why civil society actors in some IOs, such as the WTO, make decreasing use of available institutional possibilities for participation (Casula Vifell, 2010). Whether these patterns lead to a positive or a negative conclusion about the prospects for global stakeholder democracy partly depends on perspective. Should they be judged against global democracy as a condition or democratization of global governance as a long-term process? Clearly, existing patterns of civil society involvement fall far short of the threshold requirements that would have to be fulfilled for global stakeholder democracy to be realized. Yet, if we put these patterns in the perspective of democratization as a long-term process, there is some scope for cautious optimism. Compared to the situation only three decades ago, the involvement of civil society actors has undergone profound transformation, with more citizen activism on a global scale and more venues of access to IOs, contributing to expanded participation and strengthened accountability in global governance. A second issue regards the consequences of civil-society involvement for the effectiveness of global governance. Does involvement of CSOs in policymaking make IOs more effective in solving the problems they were set up to address? Or does civil-society involvement rather obstruct policymaking in IOs with reduced effectiveness as a result? Existing research offers several contributions that address the implications of CSO involvement for the effectiveness of IOs. In conceptualizing effectiveness, these contributions tend to draw on the larger literature on international regime effectiveness and IO performance (Miles et al., 2002; Young, 2011; Gutner and Thompson, 2010; Tallberg et al., 2016b; Lall, 2017). Understanding effectiveness as the extent to which international cooperation succeeds in reducing or solving societal problems (Young, 1999), scholarship tends to use one of three measures: output, outcome, and impact (Underdal, 2002). Output refers to the capacity of IOs to adopt policy decisions, while outcome indicates IOs’ ability to secure compliance with those decisions, and impact captures whether those decisions reduce or worsen the actual societal problem. Using these three alternative indicators, scholarship arrives at competing answers to the question of whether civil society involvement favors or undermines IO effectiveness. One strand of scholarship suggests that an IO’s cooperation with CSOs can improve its effectiveness. Research in the rational functionalist tradition normally assumes such a positive relationship, emphasizing how benefits of CSO involvement drive IOs toward increasingly open designs. When exploring this relationship empirically, research frequently highlights how IOs open up to CSOs in order to close governance gaps, and how the positive lessons from doing so lead to a diffusion of openness to other IOs (Tallberg et al., 2013; Sommerer and Tallberg, 2019). Focusing specifically on output, several studies suggest that involvement of CSOs should be beneficial to IO decision-making. When IOs address complex problems, finding collective solutions may require expert or local information and resources. IOs often lack such information and resources, and distributional problems can prevent states from individually providing them. CSOs fill these gaps and enable decision-making (Raustiala, 1997; Betsill and Corell, 2008; Abbott et al., 2015). One recent study evaluates this expectation and provides a conditional answer: greater CSO involvement combined with greater reliance on majority voting in IOs helps make IOs more effective decision-making machineries (Sommerer et al., 2022).

190  Handbook on governance in international organizations Majority voting raises the threshold for states to block CSOs’ contributions to policymaking, while a requirement of unanimity in IO decision-making means that any single state can block a decision and thereby undermine the contributions made by CSOs. With respect to outcome, a range of studies underline how CSOs occupy a unique position allowing them to boost compliance with international norms and rules. Positioned between IOs and the grassroot populations experiencing violations, CSOs gather and channel information on state violations to IOs, increasing the likelihood that infringements are addressed (Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Tallberg, 2015). It is likely no coincidence that IOs are most open to CSO involvement in the policy phase of monitoring and enforcement (Tallberg et al., 2013; Koremenos, 2016), and that international courts increasingly involve procedures whereby private litigants may bring complaints (Alter, 2014). Several studies highlight how CSOs perform a crucial role in monitoring state compliance with human rights and environmental policies (Raustiala, 1997; Keck and Sikkink, 1998; Cichowski, 2007; Hale, 2020). Identifying the contribution of CSO involvement to the impact of IOs on societal problems is more difficult, given the general difficulties of controlling for confounding factors in impact studies. However, research suggests that alliances between IOs and CSOs improve the performance of IOs in achieving their objectives (Lall, 2017). Since CSOs typically advocate for IOs to take on more ambitious policy commitments, greater involvement and influence for CSOs is expected to have positive effects on problem-solving (Betsill and Corell, 2008; Tallberg et al., 2018). In contrast, another strand of scholarship documents adverse consequences for IO effectiveness of involving civil society. Several studies focus specifically on IO decision-making and the implications of CSO involvement for output effectiveness. Giving CSOs a formal role in decision-making increases the number of players and the range of interests to consider, potentially making agreements more difficult to construct. While formal roles for CSOs are still rare, even consultation processes may slow down decision-making, since hearing more actors and listening to more concerns can be time-consuming. A case in point is the EU, where consultations with CSOs at the policy formulation stage have been found to “increase the transaction costs of subsequent bargaining by prolonging the time needed to form the necessary coalitions and reach legislative deals” (Rasmussen and Toshkov, 2013: 366). Another study examining stakeholder involvement affecting the reaction speed of IOs in response to food crises finds that it has adverse consequences (Agné, 2016). Turning to outcome and impact, one influential study submits that CSO involvement in the implementation of international development programs often leads to perverse effects, as market pressures can increase the likelihood of dysfunctional and opportunistic behavior by international relief organizations: “Powerful institutional imperatives can subvert IO and INGO efforts, prolong inappropriate aid projects, or promote destructive competition among well-meaning transnational actors. Attempts by IOs and INGOs to reconcile material pressures with normative motivations often produce outcomes dramatically at odds with liberal expectations” (Cooley and Ron, 2002: 6). In sum, existing research suggests that greater civil society involvement can have beneficial effects on IO effectiveness, but also identifies conditions that reduce the likelihood of such positive consequences. Finally, civil-society involvement may have consequences for the legitimacy of global governance. Legitimacy has two main alternative conceptual meanings: normative and sociological. Normative legitimacy refers to an institution’s right to rule based on its conformity to

Opening up to civil society  191 certain philosophically formulated values and principles. In contrast, sociological legitimacy refers to the beliefs or perceptions within a given audience that an institution’s exercise of authority is appropriate. In this context, we focus on consequences that CSO involvement may have for how IOs are regarded by people (i.e., sociological legitimacy). It is a common expectation among policymakers and scholars that CSO involvement enhances the legitimacy of IOs in the eyes of citizens. If the norms for how global governance ought to be organized have changed, such that IOs nowadays are expected to include civil society in policymaking (Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2009; Saurugger, 2010), then organizations which can show greater CSO involvement ought to be seen as more legitimate than those which cannot. Policymakers have acted on this expectation by seeking to boost the legitimacy of IOs through greater incorporation of civil society, anticipating such reforms to translate into a legitimacy dividend (O’Brien et al., 2000; Tallberg et al., 2013; Kalm and Uhlin, 2015). Kissling, Nanz, and Steffek (2008: 210–11) point to an “increasing willingness of international organizations to turn to CSO participation in order to confront the external criticism of their perceived missing legitimacy.” Similarly, Zürn (2014: 61) suggests that “[i]nternational institutions that are politicized respond by giving greater access to transnational non-state actors as a move to increase legitimacy.” Yet, for long, it was an open question whether such reforms led to greater IO legitimacy. Various studies have now shed light on this issue, tending to support the conventional expectation. One study examines attitudes toward global climate policymaking and finds that greater civil-society involvement has a positive effect on perceptions of legitimacy (Bernauer and Gampfer, 2013). Another explores which institutional features of IOs make them more legitimate to citizens and establishes that more extensive CSO involvement is one of them (Dellmuth and Tallberg, 2023). In sum, IOs bringing civil society on board appears to strengthen their popular legitimacy. Such legitimacy may be useful for IOs, making it easier to secure resources for their operations, government support for ambitious policies, and domestic compliance with their policies.

CONCLUSION As demonstrated by this overview, research related to civil-society involvement with IO governance has multiplied in recent decades. Whereas early contributions consisted predominantly of single or comparative case studies of individual CSOs in specific issue areas, large-N studies based on newly created databases have provided broader insights. Inquiries combining the fine-grained pictures of case studies with the bird’s eye views offered by large-N studies are often called for, but more seldom implemented. Another notable development is that scrutiny from a distance has increasingly been complemented with close-up observations based on interviews and surveys with participants in IO governance. The growing openness of IOs and CSOs offers yet rarely exploited opportunities for research based on participant observation. The findings of existing research do not paint a uniform picture of CSO involvement with IOs. On the contrary, the lasting impression is one of considerable variation along several dimensions, as far as both empirical patterns and suggested explanations are concerned. In this chapter, we have tried to capture this diversity under the rubrics of access, participation, and impact. The role of CSOs in IO governance varies according to different characteristics

192  Handbook on governance in international organizations and resources of the CSOs and IOs involved, but variance also has been documented along other dimensions, such as issue area, stages in the policy cycle, and issue salience. Similarly, research has not yielded unequivocal conclusions concerning the consequences of CSO involvement for the democracy, effectiveness, and legitimacy of IOs. Our overview points to thought-provoking research under each of our three rubrics. What we find missing are broader endeavors to explore the interplay of access, participation, and impact. In the same way that methods can be refined and combined in future studies, the habitual call for more research applies to the substance of civil-society involvement in IO governance as well.1

NOTE 1. The authors would like to thank Tim Bartley, Felicitas Fritsche, Robyn M. Linde, Naghmeh Nasiritousi and Carl Vikberg for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

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PART III GOVERNANCE DONE WELL; GOVERNANCE GONE BAD

Doing good by doing well? Success stories of effective governance

13. Development, human rights, and the rights-based approach: evolving global governance Joel E. Oestreich

INTRODUCTION Promoting economic development, and promoting human rights, have both been on the agenda of the United Nations (UN) since its foundation. Each is part of the social mission of the UN: they come from an early understanding that global peace and stability could not be simply a political matter, but required a world where there is progress, good government, respect for the individual person, and a general sense of an improving world for its citizens. The international effort to promote human rights through international organizations predates the Second World War and its humanitarian catastrophes, but it certainly gained momentum from that cataclysm. Similarly, promoting social welfare in the global South did not begin with post-war decolonization, but it too was a watershed in promoting that agenda. Integrating these two priorities, however, has been a long and arduous process. The connection between them might seem intuitive, if not obvious: we assume, or at least hope, that countries with improving economies also will have better social progress and human rights records, and that countries with the rule of law and respect for the individual person will advance economically. However, there has been considerable pressure on the UN to keep these two areas separate, and this separation has, this chapter will argue, worked to impede progress in both areas. Yet with the UN and its Specialized Agencies (notably the World Bank) at the centre of the process, the connection is gradually being made and this in turn has helped promote progress in both areas. In the terms of the present volume, the global machinery has gradually found innovative solutions to the “wicked problem” of connecting these two global priorities, even against the wishes of many powerful member states. This chapter will not make the UN or its agencies the heroes of this story: progress has been slow, uncertain, and contested, and continues to face existential challenges. Still, the UN system has been at the heart of the development system since its foundation and has provided the intellectual centre for thinking about development and human rights. The merging of these two issues, an ongoing process, solves several problems related to sovereignty, effective development practice, and rights promotion.

THE PROBLEM: INTEGRATING RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT Both development and human rights were specifically incorporated into the UN Charter. Chapter IX of the Charter pledges member states to cooperate on matters of “Economic 199

200  Handbook on governance in international organizations and Social Cooperation” and further pledges states to seek “higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development” among members. Chapter IX also establishes that the Specialized Agencies of the UN are brought into a relationship with the main body and are to work with the UN towards common purposes. These agencies include the World Bank, created in July 1944 at the Bretton Woods conference, which has the primary responsibility for promoting economic development. Chapter XII, which establishes the Trusteeship Council, also gave the UN a role in the development and progress of former colonial areas – which make up the bulk of those states considered “developing countries”. At the same time, a respect for human rights and “fundamental freedoms” suffuses the UN Charter, from the Preamble (which also speaks of social and economic progress) to several other chapters and articles. The notion that human rights would be central to an international organization’s mandate was not novel – the League of Nations had already taken steps in this direction – but its importance must still be mentioned: traditional notions of sovereignty were at odds with attempts to promote or enforce international human rights, and writing them into the Charter was not a matter taken lightly (Forsythe, 2000, pp. 41–7). The idea that these two areas are mutually reinforcing and closely related has some obvious merit. Scholars and practitioners suspect – although the evidence is actually mixed (Grugel & Piper, 2008; Helliwell, 1994; Zhou, 2000) – that as countries progress economically, they are more likely to develop democratic political systems and a respect for human rights. And it seems, through similar intuition, that democratic and rights-respecting states have better development records. Regardless of which direction the arrow of causality runs (or, more likely, that it goes both ways in a virtuous circle), it seems counterproductive to keep these two priorities separated. Yet at least until the debt crisis of the 1980s, this was largely the case. There were several reasons for this compartmentalization, but we will highlight three here. First, early theories about the “modernization” of the former colonial areas and their economic development saw this as an essentially technical issue, not a political one. Less developed states, it was assumed, would follow naturally along the path of the wealthier ones. They would take advantage of their lower labour and input costs to compete effectively in the world economy, and go through the same stages of development as wealthy states (Jolly, 2011; Williams, 2012, pp. 125–45). This would, in fact, happen quite a bit more quickly that it had for those wealthier states, since there was no need to invent the process de novo. In this view, promoting development would not require much political input: it was simply a matter of capital and expertise. Second, development promotion, like so many other supposedly apolitical issues, was derailed early by Cold War politics. Partly this expressed itself in the ways in which the Capitalist and Marxist blocs began competing for the loyalty of the developing states. It also became a matter of which political system would be ascendant in each of those states (Tyson & Said, 1993). Since human rights promotion likewise was caught up in Cold War politics – with the United States and its allies insisting on the primacy of Civil and Political Rights, and the USSR and its bloc on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights – any link between rights and development became especially difficult to approach in an apolitical way. Third, and in a related matter, the World Bank and other development agencies (such as the UN Development Programme, UNDP) decided early on that human rights issues were too inherently political for them to deal with; the Bank sidestepped human rights not because of a feeling that they were irrelevant, but because they were too controversial (Darrow, 2003; Shihata, 1992). A key example of this was an early determination by the World Bank to inter-

Development, human rights, and the rights-based approach  201 pret its Articles of Agreement as prohibiting it from considering any political matters while making lending decisions (Shihata, 1988). Article IV Section 10 of the Bank’s Articles of Agreement states that “The Bank and its officers shall not interfere in the political affairs of any member; nor shall they be influenced in their decisions by the political character of the member or members concerned. Only economic considerations shall be relevant to their decisions.” The Bank has strictly adhered to this restriction. In literature on the Bank, this adherence often is thought to be a Cold War artefact (i.e. a desire to avoid getting caught up in favouring either US- or Soviet-aligned states). However, Bank Presidents have seen political neutrality not just as a political necessity but a financial one: if the Bank allowed itself to be swayed by political considerations it might make loans based on favouritism or politics rather than clear-eyed economic rationality, thus leading it to make financially unwise and potentially perilous decisions (Kraske, 1996). This interpretation helped to keep the Bank largely out of the Cold War, and financially solvent; but it also prohibited the Bank from considering human rights issues in any of its lending decisions (Marmorstein, 1978; Shihata, 1988). The Bank neither considered the human rights records of its borrowers before making loans, nor the effect of its loans on the rights of those affected. And as the Bank was itself a thought leader for the global development enterprise, this interpretation largely was reflected by other agencies as well (Ascher, 1983; Cahn, 1993; Dethier, 2007). UN agencies generally were expected to be “neutral” in terms of politics, favoring neither East nor West, North nor South, and this meant that anything as political as human rights would be off the table for any international agency not explicitly created in the rights sphere. What made this an untenable situation for the UN development system was the debt crisis of the 1980s and its aftermath. Crushing debt in the developing world had dangerous implications for the Bretton Woods Institutions, and for the system in general. For one thing, to help developing countries work themselves out of debt the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank imposed harsh “structural adjustment” measures, enforced by IMF conditionality, which said that states could receive loans to cover their existing debts only if they adopted neo-liberal economic policies (Haggard & Kaufman, 1992; World Bank, 1990). These policies were seen to make a mockery of the putative political neutrality of the Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs), as they clearly implicated the BWIs in all kinds of political matters within borrower states as governments in those states adjusted their economies (Haggard & Kaufman, 1992; Paarlberg & Lipton, 1991; Stein & Nafziger, 1991). Also immediately apparent was the devastating human cost of structural adjustment. While the BWIs might justify the suffering of those hurt by their policies as the inevitable result of bad decisions by states – they used a “crossing the desert” metaphor to suggest a rosier future once hard decisions were made (Bello, 1994; Harrigan & Mosley, 1991; World Bank, 1990, 1995) – the suffering caused by these policies was impossible to overlook. This expressed itself in all manner of human rights violations. These were not just economic and social violations, such as depriving people of their rights to food and shelter: they were also civil and political, as all manner of repression and conflict resulted from these policies and the social turmoil they created. For the institutions to ignore these violations by claiming to be politically neutral seemed one hypocritical bridge too far (Cahn, 1993; Gibbon, 1993; Green, 1993; Haggard & Kaufman, 1992). In response to this situation, while the IMF appeared to dig in its heels, the World Bank and other agencies (notably the United Nations Children’s

202  Handbook on governance in international organizations Fund (UNICEF)) began to reconsider the prohibition on thinking about politics in framing development programmes (Cornia, Jolly, & Steward, 1987). From the World Bank, consequently, emerged the idea of “Good Governance” as a development priority. Hard analysis of the failure to promote development in such a large part of the Global South led the Bank to conclude that it would have to confront political factors – corruption, lack of transparency, lack of accountability, etc. – before it could effectively promote economic growth (Uvin & Biagioti, 1996; World Bank, 1992, 1994). But this would require it to relax the existing firewall between development and politics. It would not explicitly embrace rights promotion, but it would at least consider government reform. Similarly, softening the blow from structural adjustment policies by promoting social safety nets and protections (if, again, not explicitly rights) would greatly expand the range of development priorities. Demands from civil society that the BWIs consider the well-being of those whose lives were devastated by the debt crisis and its aftermath made these changes inevitable (Oestreich, 2004). This last point should not be overlooked in the UN’s evolution: the protests directed at the World Bank and the IMF had a real impact on their functioning. While it is difficult to quantify the effect, there were sustained efforts from civil society to change Bank and IMF practice, and these were difficult to ignore. Loud, visible protests worked in tandem with other, less colourful efforts by civil society organizations to protest structural adjustment and the neo-liberal ideology behind it. The UN system came under considerable, sustained, and high-profile pressure to change its ways and to consider the human toll of its policies (Rich, 1994). How these changes came about, and then were incorporated in the UN development institutions is the key point of this chapter. We posit that UN bureaucracies are, importantly, bureaucracies, and in particular that they are “open systems”, not closed (Scott, 1992). They take ideas from the outside world, learn from them, and exchange those ideas with other actors (Risse-Kappen, 1994; Sikkink, 1991). They do not constitute a separate sphere of thinking that reflects only state interests; instead, they are open to new ideas and are able to slowly adopt those ideas as their own. IOs in fact make an effort to carve for themselves a sphere of independent action, and follow imperatives that are as much bureaucratic as political (Johnson, 2014). So, for example, it was around the same time as the IMF/World Bank protests that UNICEF was embracing the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (Oestreich, 1998). This was another idea that originated outside the UN, but ultimately was taken on by one of its agencies as a guiding principle. As with the World Bank, UNICEF had resisted talk of human rights for fear it would politicize what it thought should be a technical matter, in this case helping children with their nutrition, health, and similar needs. But sustained pressure from civil society ultimately convinced UNICEF Executive Director James P. Grant of the utility of a children’s rights convention, and he in turn put pressure on member states to accept that convention as international law. By the 1990s, there was increasing pressure on the development system to shed the traditional separation between development policy, on the one hand, and social policy and human rights, on the other. This was not always framed as a human rights issue per se. While UNICEF, for example, by the 1990s could talk openly of children’s rights given the cover of the CRC, the World Bank and other development actors felt more constrained. It is here that we see the real issue involved in this chapter, where the limitations on development policy and the limitations on human rights policy converge. Development policy was seen to be failing because

Development, human rights, and the rights-based approach  203 of the political limits on it, which prevented it from dealing with the underlying problems of poor governance: development professionals could not address the true causes of that failure. At the same time, human rights promotion was in a similar dilemma. Constrained by state sovereignty, the UN human rights machinery was limited to “naming and shaming” policies to promote human rights, an approach that was of only very slight effectiveness. In the same way that development agencies could not address issues of corruption, poor governance, elite capture, and other “political” ills because they lacked the authority to address politics, the human rights agencies could do little more than collect information about states’ human rights violations and issue reports. Each side of the equation was limited by state sovereignty rules. The connections between rights and development were becoming increasingly obvious, and each part of the UN machinery saw how they could help each other, while overcoming the same barriers. On the part of the key UN thought leader in development, the World Bank, this led to a few vital new policy initiatives. One was the creation of World Bank “safeguard” policies around issues such as gender, indigenous peoples, forced relocation, and the environment (Dunkerton, 1995; Gray, 1998; Sarfaty, 2005; World Bank, 2002a, 2002b). Interestingly, the Bank consistently denied that these were “rights” policies, even while specifically promoting the rights of women, indigenous peoples, and other vulnerable groups. Instead, they were presented as policies based on rational economic thinking. Promoting the rights of women was vital to economic growth; indigenous peoples could provide knowledge about responsible land use; and so forth (World Bank, 1998). From other UN actors, by the early 2000s there was more talk about a “rights-based approach to development” (Bellamy, 1998; Chapman, 2005; Rozga, 2001; UNDP, 2006; United Nations Development Group, 2003), which could more explicitly integrate the two concepts. This was by no means entirely or uniquely a UN idea; rather, it resulted from considerable interaction with outside development experts, NGOs, and civil society in general, pushed by global trends in thinking about the failures of past ways (Cornwall & Nyamu-Musembi, 2004; Gready & Ensor, 2005; Kirkemann & Martin, 2007; Overseas Development Institute, 1999). But the key point here is that it was increasingly incorporated by the various UN actors and made increasingly into an “official” development ideology of the primary global development agencies. The role of the UN human rights machinery also should not be ignored here. As the next section will show, the UN Human Rights agencies understood and sought to capitalize on these recent shifts, to help their own role in promoting rights (Hunt, Nowak, & Osman, 2002; Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2006; UNHCHR, 2006). In particular, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights saw that UN development agencies both should be promoting human rights, and were well positioned to do so, with institutional presence inside nearly every developing country. Development could defend and promote human rights, and working with those agencies both leveraged power (after all, what agencies are more powerful than the BWIs?) and helped get around the firewall of sovereignty. From the 1990s, then, the connection between rights and development began to transition from being something about which no agency could talk openly, to becoming a standard part of the UN development and human rights effort. The 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action had reaffirmed the “right to development” and declared that human rights and development were inextricably linked. A decade later the UN Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG) published its “joint understanding” on the rights-based approach to development, integrating the two concepts into a single approach. Then in 2013 UN Secretary-General Ban

204  Handbook on governance in international organizations Ki-moon launched the “Human Rights Up Front” (HRuF) initiative to integrate human rights into all UN operations.

THE UN AND THE RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH: SOLVING A “WICKED PROBLEM”? Defining the Rights–Development Link These trends in development thinking converge into what has become known as the human rights-based approach (HRBA) to Development. A human rights-based approach might be seen as having three components. The first states that UN development agencies – and other actors in the development system – should be active in the promotion of international human rights, as enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international documents (United Nations Development Group, 2003). Thus, the firewall between development and human rights is broken down, and the development agencies are not just allowed but required to consider rights in planning and undertaking their work. It is, in the argument of this chapter, the vital admission that the firewall was untenable and illogical, and that development agencies by definition are involved in the promotion of human rights. It is important to note some things here. One is that this new approach transforms the ability of agencies to pressure states to act on development. For instance, if access to clean water or to education are rights, then governments can be held more accountable as duty-bearers to provide these rights. Providing these services and helping their citizens to a better standard of living is not just a morally good thing, but an obligation under international law. This provides a new form of pressure which agencies can bring to bear on recalcitrant governments (Nelson & Dorsey, 2008). Another point to note is that this does not only apply to what we call Economic, Social, and Cultural rights. Properly understood, a rights-based approach also tackles Civil and Political rights. These so-called “negative rights” include freedom of speech, the right to life and liberty, due process rights, and ultimately some form of political participation in the governance of a state and a voice in the decisions that affect people (UNHCHR, 2006). This less-noticed redefinition of what development agencies can do means that they are more actively involved in some of the most sensitive political issues, such as advocating right-to-information laws, reforming judicial systems, promoting children’s freedom of speech, and so forth. As the current author has documented elsewhere (Oestreich, 2010, 2014), this has been a substantial expansion of how UN agencies can work to promote human rights. Second, a rights-based approach states that human rights standards should guide all UN programmes of development and be involved in all stages of the development process. In practical terms, this means that development agencies must take into consideration the rights of those affected by development programmes. For example, since people have a right to equal treatment, a development programme must be designed to eliminate inequalities and hidden biases (Sage & Woolcock, 2008). This might mean making sure that men and women benefit equally from development programmes (e.g. making sure that jobs created are equally distributed), that indigenous peoples or lower caste people are not overlooked in development planning, considering the welfare of the disabled, and so forth. Agencies are required to ask

Development, human rights, and the rights-based approach  205 themselves, does this project violate or advance rights? Does it empower people, or deprive them of their political agency? There are many similar questions to incorporate into development action plans. Third, the UN common understanding of HRBA asks whether “cooperation contributes to the development of the capacities of ‘duty-bearers’ to meet their obligations and/or of ‘rights-holders’ to claim their rights” (United Nations Development Group, 2003, p. 3). This means working with governments to enable them to meet their obligations regarding citizen welfare, and regarding rights promotion: again, a clear incorporation of politics into the development process. Governments might be happy enough to see agencies provide money and services, but they often baulk at anything that seems to challenge their political power (Oestreich, 2017). HRBA however speaks of governments as duty-bearers towards both rights and development, and seeks to hold them accountable for their responsibilities. This means building up democratic systems, empowering citizens to organize and make demands on government, and creating government bureaucracies that run on internationally recognized human rights principles (De Langen & Barendrecht, 2009; UNDP, 2010). All these ideas challenge government power, and thus are likely to face a backlash. But they are central to the rights–development link. We should not imply here that all this is entirely an invention of the UN and its agencies. NGOs and civil society played a role, and embrace HRBA at least as much as the UNSDG (Brouwer, Grady, Traore, & Wordofa, 2005; Gready & Ensor, 2005; Kirkemann & Martin, 2007). And here again, we see again the UN development system as an open system, or set of open systems, interacting with external ideas. Along with impetus from development think tanks such as the Danish Institute of Human Rights, and the protest movements around structural adjustment, there was also an intellectual movement around a “capabilities approach” to development, led by the economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum (Sen, 1988, 1999; Sen & Nussbaum, 1993). This helped to redefine development as the achievement of those rights that provide people with the capabilities that they need to make the most of their abilities. It meant promoting both positive and negative rights as part of a larger effort to empower people to improve their own lives. These ideas then were turned into policy prescriptions by experts both inside and outside the UN system. Implementing the Rights-Based Approach: Bureaucratic Factors Actual implementation of RBA remains uneven and incomplete, and this importantly speaks to the ways in which the UN, while trying to solve problems, does so through complex bureaucratic mechanisms rather than in a clean and linear fashion. UN agencies, like all large bureaucracies, can be difficult to change: they prefer old procedures to new, they have staff who respond to short-term incentives rather than the long-term welfare of their organization, and they guard their control over information as a source of power (Gruber, 1987). The World Bank, in particular, has been studied as an example of a bureaucracy that resists change and suffers from principle–agent problems that stymie reform (Sarfaty, 2005; Wade, 1997; Weaver, 2008), but all such agencies have similar problems (Cortell & Peterson, 2006; Gailmard, 2014; Oestreich, 2012). So, for example, at one end of the spectrum there are agencies which have enthusiastically embraced the concept of a rights-based approach to development. UNICEF stands out, as already mentioned. It was an early adopter which had seen the advantages of the Convention

206  Handbook on governance in international organizations on the Rights of the Child and put it at the heart of their programming; although that was a slower process than many now realize, as Director James P. Grant had relegated the CRC, even after accepting it as an important advocacy tool, to a largely rhetorical exercise (Black, 1986, 1996). Even today, with the CRC considered fundamental to all UNICEF programming, there are questions about just how effectively a rights-based approach can be used to guide, say, health policy, or work on emergencies (Oestreich, 2017). Some within UNICEF continue to feel that it applies primarily to the “child protection” sphere rather than to more technical interventions in health, nutrition, sanitation, and so forth. The UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) – now known as the UN Population Fund but with the same acronym – for another example, has also put rights promotion at the vital heart of its mission. In the case of UNFPA, much of the motivation came from some rights debacles in its policies, similar to what had plagued the World Bank. The UNFPA has been accused of turning a blind eye to rights violations in China around that state’s “one child” policy, in India where it appeared to condone coerced sterilization of poor and lower-caste women (and men), and in Latin America, where it was accused of standing by while the government also used forced sterilization (Gellman, 2000; Wilson, 2015). Here, strong incentives have pushed for the adoption of RBA. Similarly, UN Women puts women’s rights at the core of its mission and now defines itself, first, as a rights agency. On the other hand, some bodies have been more reluctant to adopt a rights-based approach. One of these, ironically, has been the World Bank. Despite its early work with connecting development to governance reform, the Bank continues to be wary of speaking too openly of human rights in development. Partly this stems from its Articles of Agreement, which still limit how openly political it can be (Shihata, 1988; Shihata, 1991). Partly it is held back by the fact that its staff is still dominated by economists, whose quantitative biases make them hesitant to consider “softer” issues such as human rights or social welfare. Their “expert” training in one field inhibits them from considering other areas which do not easily fit into their education and experience (Easterly, 2015; MacNiven, 1990). Recall that the Bank has considered some human rights areas as essential: Gender, for example, is critical to Bank planning, and this includes an emphasis on women’s rights. Although even here, the language is more about participation, equity, and inclusion, rather than rights per se. Changes in the Bank’s leadership have also hindered progress in this area, with some Bank Presidents being more amenable than others to rights language. Another agency that has struggled with human rights is the World Health Organization (WHO). It, too, has been held back on this issue by the technical training of its staff, dominated by medical doctors and people with PhDs in Public Health, whose scientific training makes them as wary of – or as unfamiliar with – rights language as the economists at the Bank. The WHO also struggles with a highly centralized structure that discourages innovation, and a lingering fear that rights language will politicize what should be technical interventions. So while the link between health and human rights has gained considerable currency in global development circles, and WHO certainly ascribes to these ideas, its actual implementation of a rights-based approach has lagged. What all this tells us, is that to understand the progress being made in connecting human rights to development and the implementation of the RBA, we must see that this progress is also the result of complex bureaucratic processes. UN agencies are idea creators, interacting with both material factors and ideational ones to create new paradigms of development. These work their way through the system, making progress unevenly, but moving forward neverthe-

Development, human rights, and the rights-based approach  207 less. They are not separate from what is happening in the wider development dialogue, but instead interact with that dialogue and help to shape it (see, e.g. Jolly, 2004). Innovation in Rights Protection through Development This chapter began with twin challenges. The first, addressed above, was how the development machinery could address human rights issues. The flip side of this is how the UN human rights system could overcome the problems posed by the principle of national sovereignty, which is explicitly and significantly protected by the UN Charter. Article 2(7) prohibits the UN from involving itself in the domestic affairs of states, which would seem to preclude strong human rights enforcement; states can and do simply claim that these are internal matters. But the integration of rights and development has helped on this side of the ledger, too, providing opportunities to circumvent Article 2(7) sovereignty protections in innovative ways, and presenting new modalities to move rights promotion beyond mere “naming and shaming”. It does this by framing the promotion of rights as a development matter, and thus an appropriately apolitical area of work for UN agencies. One of the most wide-ranging examples of this was the HRuF initiative, mentioned earlier. This was launched by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in response to the humanitarian catastrophe that accompanied the civil war in Sri Lanka. A UN review panel in 2012 determined that there had been a “systematic failure” of the UN system to take action in the face of an impending humanitarian crisis, as the Sri Lankan government’s military forces moved in to destroy rebel forces in the north of the Island (United Nations, 2012). HRuF says that all UN country teams – primarily comprised of the development agencies and led by a country Resident Coordinator – should be engaged in human rights promotion, and in providing early warning about pending humanitarian problems. Country teams, it notes, should “reflect an understanding of the overall country situation; identify human rights concerns affecting the UN’s core goals; identify priorities; and align the UN’s various entities accordingly” (United Nations, 2012, p. 3). Most importantly here, HRuF calls for close cooperation between country teams and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to enlist them in rights monitoring. It recruits UN development agencies, which have a country presence and working relationship with government in nearly every UN member state, to assist the work of the UN Human Rights project. Similarly, the incorporation of human rights into the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) moves rights out of the traditional machinery and into the larger context of development. This includes those SDGs that map easily onto economic, social and cultural rights – for example SDG 2 (the right to safe, nutritious and sufficient food), SDG 3 (the right to the highest attainable standard of health), or SDG 4 (inclusive and equitable quality education). Also included are civil and political rights, such as SDG 5 (gender equality), SDG 10 (reduced inequality within and among countries), and SDG 16 (peace, justice, and strong institutions). Considerable work has been done by some analysts about how the SDGs map on to human rights standards (Arts, 2017; Curry, 2019) and how rights can be promoted in tandem with the SDGs. Although some analysts worry that the SDGs do not make enough of their rights content (Ramcharan, 2015), for the most part the Goals have come to be seen as part of the larger rights enterprise. In pursuing the SDGs as the primary goal of the UN development system the development agencies, working with the human rights mechanisms, continue to

208  Handbook on governance in international organizations bring rights standards into the development agenda, thereby further eroding the traditional division between the two priorities. The connection between the SDGs and rights has been mirrored by greater cooperation between the human rights monitoring bodies and the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process of the Human Rights Council. This includes International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (monitored by the Human Rights Committee), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (monitored by the Committee on the Rights of the Child) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (monitored by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women), among others. This still-evolving interaction between rights monitoring bodies in the UN system, and the development agencies, has enormous future potential for rights promotion. Once again it was UNICEF that innovated in this area, with their early involvement with the Committee on the Rights of the Child. States are required to submit reports to the Committee. These reports were often prepared with input from UNICEF, as the key partner on child rights. UNICEF then assisted the Committee in reviewing these reports and, once the reports had been reviewed, offered their services to help states respond to the recommendations issued by the Committee. In this way, not only were child rights integrated more closely with the development process: a UN agency was able to have a hand both in critiquing state performance, and then helping to improve that performance. Established in 2007, shortly after the creation of the UN Human Rights Council, UPR requires all states to submit reports to the Council every 4.5 years, which are then reviewed by a “troika” of states, along with supporting documents from other parties such as UN agencies and civil society organizations. As with the treaty body reviews, UN development agencies are invited to submit reports and to help states prepare their own reports. In a still-evolving process, the UN Sustainable Development Group has identified this as an opening to promote both development and rights by incorporating the results of the UPR into Country plans of operation (Charlesworth & Larking, 2015; United Nations Sustainable Development Group, 2016a, 2016b). For example, if the UPR determines that a state has not done enough to promote women’s rights, or information access rights, UN Country Teams will make improving that situation part of the next country action plan. Thus, development agencies directly promote rights as directed by the UPR. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has deployed human rights advisors to UN Country Teams in various countries to facilitate this innovation, and the Sustainable Development Group has its own guidelines on rights promotion through national plans of action (HuriTalk Corner, n.d.). Again, this process is still evolving, and it remains unclear how successful it will be. The development agencies are, to be sure, fickle and uncertain instruments for promoting human rights. Still, this chapter began by saying that there were two factors that stymied progress in the development/rights nexus. On the one hand, development agencies were having difficulty addressing the political factors that were holding back progress in the development sphere: through HRBA they found a way around this, by merging rights and development. At the same time, human rights agencies have always found themselves in the role of outsiders, able to “name and shame” countries but with few other practical resources to overcome the protections of national sovereignty. They are increasingly recognizing that they can seek to do this by turning the development agencies – which already have a country presence, and which are in position to shape national policies in the name of development – into allies in the rights field.

Development, human rights, and the rights-based approach  209 This merging of rights and development, and the search for synergies, is likely to continue, and is already reshaping how both sides of the equation go about their business.

BUREAUCRACIES, AND THE “WICKED PROBLEM” OF RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT In the traditional, Realist theory of international relations, international organizations (IOs) are generally reduced to irrelevance, or at any rate as only intermediary factors in global relations. States, it is assumed, pursue their own interests, defined as power, security, and wealth. They set up international organizations to serve specific purposes: reduce transaction costs, facilitate solving collective action problems, or perhaps just to give some moral cover while the states pursue their self-interest. This view of IOs has been largely overturned in past decades by various new perspectives. Principal–agent theory, for one, explains how the bureaucratic nature of IOs gives them a level of independence from states, based on their control of information not available to states. Bureaucrats use this information to pursue their own institutional (or even personal) self-interest, which might be at odds with what states want. Constructivist approaches look to IOs as creators of ideas, which they use to shape global politics in the directions they favor (Goldstein & Keohane, 1993; Sikkink, 1991). And from environmental issues to humanitarianism to international trade, these agencies take seriously their role as innovators, even if their own ideas are not always fully implemented through their own complex bureaucratic structures. Principal–agent theory explains some of the independence that international organizations have that allows them to chart their own course. It relies on a model of decision-making where self-interested individuals act to further their own goals, and thus largely fits into a rationalist model of human behaviour. At the macro level, however, we also see how UN agencies and other actors (particularly civil society organizations) act to further the work of their institutions. Development organizations want to innovate in the area of development; human rights agencies want to promote human rights; and so forth. They often face resistance from states, mostly to respect national sovereignty. The progression of development thinking from promoting growth, to focusing on poverty alleviation and human development, and finally to the promotion of a rights-based approach, was not something that was initiated or even championed by most states. Rather, these were ideas innovated by actors who were trying to solve the problems that had been put in front of their agencies (Emmerij, Jolly, & Weiss, 2001; Jolly, 2004; Oestreich, 2007). An important indication of the independence of these agencies – a sign that they are working to solve problems, rather than just reflecting state preferences – is in the resistance that they face in these innovations. One has already been mentioned at some length: many developing states have resisted the rights-based approach to development, as well as the incorporation in development planning of the UPR and Treaty Body recommendations, on the grounds that these represent a violation of national sovereignty. This has hindered adoption of not just RBA, but other development and rights innovations. States also chafe at the reporting requirements of rights-based approaches, finding them expensive and burdensome; and many prefer a focus on growth rather than on rights-promotion, arguing that economic growth must precede more far-ranging goals like human rights (Eyben & Savage, 2013). There has also been the “Chinese Model” of development, which deemphasizes rights, particularly civil and political rights, in

210  Handbook on governance in international organizations the name of centralized planning and a focus on growth (Chen, 2017; Halper, 2012). This has been both a rallying cry for some states that resist RBA, and an important alternative model backed by investment capital from China. We also must not overlook the bureaucratic issues that hamper progress in this area. It would be a mistake to imply that the entire UN system and its specialized agencies are pulling in a single direction or have agreed and decided unequivocally on this merging of rights and development. In particular, the bureaucratic problems mentioned earlier have not gone away: the World Bank continues to hedge about its rights policies, professionals continue to argue for more “technical” interventions, and agencies still worry that too much rights language will be counter-productive in a world where state cooperation is still essential. The importance of these hurdles, and the fact that they have slowed but not stopped the development/rights agenda, points to the capacity for agency of the UN development system. These bureaucracies are often tasked with overcoming difficult problems: not just development and human rights but problems of the environment, trade, communications, and so on. The record, to be sure, is far from spotless. More to the point, the record shows considerably more innovation in some areas than others: in particular, in areas away from the core security interests of states, where the powerful actors are least likely to delegate discretion. The continuing efforts of UN agencies to bring together rights and development, however, does demonstrate a capacity for innovation and one that is likely to continue to evolve.

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214  Handbook on governance in international organizations World Bank (1995), Adjustment in Africa: Reform, Results, and the Road Ahead. https://​documents​ .worldbank​.org/​en/​publication/​documents​-reports/​documentdetail/​219981468192845881/​adjustment​ -in​-africa​-reforms​-results​-and​-the​-road​-ahead. World Bank (1998), Development and Human Rights: The Role of the World Bank. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank (2002a), Integrating Gender Into the World Bank’s Work: A Strategy For Action. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank (2002b), Safeguard Policies: Framework for Improving Development Effectiveness: A Discussion Note. https://​documents​.worldbank​.org/​en/​publication/​documents​-reports/​ documentdetail/​528291468314712349/​safeguard​-policies​-framework​-for​-improving​-development​ -effectiveness​-a​-discussion​-note. Zhou, S. (Ed.) (2000), China and Democracy: Reconsidering the Prospects for a Democratic China. Abingdon: Routledge.

14. President of the United Nations General Assembly: least-known leader Alistair D. Edgar

INTRODUCTION This chapter examines the evolution of the Office of the President of the General Assembly (OPGA) as an institution, and in particular the role and influence of the President of the General Assembly (PGA) as an individual actor seeking ‘to help guide the Assembly toward a stronger role on all issues’ (Christensen, 2018, p. 3). I am interested especially in whether, and how, the OPGA as an institution and the PGA as an individual exercise agency. Do the OPGA and the PGA ‘matter’, and if so, how? Do they make a substantive – independent, effective – difference in the operations and outputs of the General Assembly and the UN system? In recent years, the work of the President has received only cursory interest from media, the public, and scholarly research.1 A similar limitation exists for scholarly studies focusing on the General Assembly, with notable exceptions.2 In The UN General Assembly M. J. Peterson observed ‘Its own inability to break from a mind-numbing routine of adopting a resolution on nearly all of the more than 150 items on its agenda each year deepens its obscurity and confirms its modest hold on media and public attention’ (Peterson, 2006, p. 1). However, as Paul Kennedy noted, while ‘it may often pretend to powers it does not possess, the General Assembly remains the only sounding board at the governmental level for what much of the world thinks and feels. Without it, there would be no United Nations’ (Kennedy, 2006, pp. 212–13). It also is important to have realistic expectations of what the Assembly can accomplish: ‘The General Assembly began and remains an intergovernmental body designed for broad deliberation rather than close management of operational activities’ (Peterson, 2014, p. 234). I begin by framing the topic within the literature on international organizations and the UN in global governance, and then offer case studies profiling the work of three PGAs whose initiatives and experiences were significant for a variety of reasons.3 Paul-Henri Spaak headed the Belgian delegation to the UN Conference on International Organization at San Francisco in 1945, and then served as vice-chair of the UN Preparatory Commission in London before being elected as President during the first General Assembly session, January–December 1946 (Schechter, 2015). Vijay Lakshmi Pandit of India was the first woman and first Asian President of the General Assembly (eighth session, 1953–54). Mogens Lykketoft of Denmark served as President of the seventieth session of the Assembly (2015–16). Mogens’ presidency was the period during which the General Assembly and the PGA sought increasingly active roles. At least since 1991, the examination of the OPGA and PGA also must be understood within the context of discussions of the ‘revitalization’ of the General Assembly. The OPGA is ‘separate but not separable’ from the GA, while the PGA needs to be understood both as an officer of the Assembly and as an individual actor. The chapter concludes with lessons learned 215

216  Handbook on governance in international organizations from the challenges facing the ‘least-known leader’ – the President of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION(S) IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE In the fourth edition of Swords into Plowshares, Inis L. Claude Jr expressed dissatisfaction with ‘the widespread tendency for international organization – particularly, in our time, the United Nations – to be treated as an ideological issue’ by champions and critics (1971, p. 5). Instead, Claude argued that ‘the United Nations has no fixed purposes, either as to what it shall do or as to what it shall become; its functional objectives and developmental directions are set and shifted by the operation of its political process’ (1971, p. 7). Four decades4 later, Kelly-Kate Pease expressed a different frustration on the subject.5 Most texts, Pease argued, viewed international organizations through ‘liberal lenses’ that characterized international organizations as ‘inherently “good”’ institutions, while ‘their “good” efforts are often thwarted by organizational weaknesses, world politics, or self-interested governments’ (2012, p. ix). A growing number of new texts (or new editions) on international organizations and global governance, at least, have begun to address both mainstream and critical theories, or to deal explicitly with questions of theoretical and normative developments in the field (for example, Devin et al., 2020; Daws and Weiss, 2018; Hurd, 2018; Weiss et al., 2017; Karns, Mingst and Stiles, 2015; Weiss and Wilkinson, 2014; Muldoon et al., 2011; Weiss and Thakur, 2010; Barnett and Finnemore, 2004). Courtney Smith draws on the opinion of Jacob, Atherton and Wallenstein (1972) that the Assembly president ‘was never granted substantial authority, and what little authority the position did have was rather quickly eroded’ with the unanticipated emergence under Dag Hammarskjöld of the post of Secretary-General as the leading symbol of the UN6 (Smith, 2006, p. 204), as well as the growing divisiveness of the Cold War. Nonetheless, Smith argues while the president may lack ‘power to command, demand, or require’, they do have ‘the responsibility to push, prod, and inspire’ and ‘their leadership is essential to get the decision process moving and keep it running smoothly’ (2006, pp. 200–201). Writing on the topic of Assembly revitalization, Lydia Swart quotes Ambassador Christian Wenawassar of Liechtenstein who commented that ‘the General Assembly has been a politically more relevant body when headed by somebody who was willing to lead its activities and to give real guidance to the membership, based on prior consultations’ (2008, p. 29). These observations echo Bailey’s (1960) point that capable leadership does not ensure success, but ‘an incompetent presiding officer can, single-handedly, create procedural chaos if he [sic] does not understand the Rules, or does not enforce them, or acts in a dictatorial or partisan manner’ (quoted in Smith, 2006, p. 200). The underlying premise explored here is that international organizations, which includes their executive secretariats or bureaucracies, can exercise a degree of agency as what Joel Oestreich (2012) has called ‘self-directed actors’. That agency may not be consistent and is not irreversible; it may or may not be welcomed by other actors; and it may or may not have positive effects on policy actions and outcomes. The case studies provided below suggest that individual PGAs can exercise agency to positive and constructive effect, within limits.

President of the United Nations General Assembly  217

THE OPGA AND PGA IN GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Individuals elected as Presidents over the past 75 years normally have been leading political figures in their own countries. However, in recent years these individuals have been the ‘least-known leader’ of the United Nations. Who was PGA when the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 took place? Which PGA helped to shepherd the negotiations of Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals? Who had the responsibility as PGA to help manage and lead the General Assembly in 2019–20 as the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted global diplomatic affairs including the functioning of the Assembly?7 According to Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, President of the Seventeenth Session of the General Assembly in 1962, ‘In a formal sense, the President of the General Assembly has only one function – the conduct of the Assembly’s business – and in performing this task, he [sic] must serve the will of the Assembly’ (1964, p. 233). At the same time, although any ruling by the President ‘can be upset by a simple majority vote’ by the member states, Khan noted ‘The President cannot, of course, and should not shirk from giving a ruling in order merely to avoid controversy’ (1964, p. 233). It may be that an effective General Assembly president is an invisible one, handling the workload of the Office efficiently and apolitically as a ‘servant of the Assembly’ (1964, p. 233) within the guidelines of the Assembly’s rules of procedure, assisting them in reaching agreements or heading off disputes before they become headlines. It also may be that these figures find themselves elected to a demanding and potentially important role, but one in which they struggle with insufficient resources in terms of personnel, financial and material support. These challenges are in addition to the PGA’s having to cope with 193 sovereign states, each reluctant to recognize the PGA, the UN, and the Assembly as an authority, even if the individual Permanent Representatives working in Assembly may accept her or him as primus inter pares.8 Finally, it may be the case that the PGA and her or his Office are at the helm of a principal organ of the UN that has been sidelined over time by the Security Council, Secretary-General, and the politics of the most powerful states. The First President (1946) – Paul-Henri Spaak On Thursday, 10 January 1946 in Westminster Central Hall in London, Dr Eduardo Zuleta Angel – head of the Columbian delegation and President of the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Organization, serving as temporary President of the meeting – delivered the opening speech of the first United Nations General Assembly (The New York Times, 11 January 1946, p. 3). British Prime Minister Clement Attlee then spoke, declaring that ‘It is for us today, bearing in mind the great sacrifices that have been made, to prove ourselves no less courageous in approaching our great task, no less patient and no less self-sacrificing. We must and will succeed’ (Marshall, 2016, p. 10). One of the members of the press in attendance, James B. Reston of The New York Times, reported: Then, with a little less dignity than marks the balloting at a political convention at home, they proceeded to elect Paul-Henri Spaak, Belgian Foreign Minister, as President of the first General Assembly, despite a determined effort by the Soviet Union to replace him with the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie. (Reston, 11 January 1946, p. 1)

218  Handbook on governance in international organizations Thus began the term of the first President of the General Assembly, with political controversy and procedural uncertainty, and considerable attention from the press and public. Lie would be elected soon thereafter as the first UN Secretary-General on 1 February 1946, a position he neither sought nor wanted and for which he was not the first choice of any of the major powers (Muldoon, 2007, pp. 78–9). It is perhaps surprising to observers today that the role of Secretary-General was seen at the time as being secondary in prestige to that of the President of the General Assembly. However, it was believed that ‘In the spirit of the Charter’s authors, the President of the General Assembly should be the incarnation of the United Nations Organization’, and the presidency thus ‘was meant to be a prestigious, global-level function’ held by an individual who would be ‘universally accepted and independent’ (Smouts, 2000, p. 37). In contrast, the Secretary-General was seen as the chief administrative officer of the new Secretariat, as per Article 97 of the UN Charter (Christensen, 2018, p. 4). About the proceedings of Spaak’s first full day (Friday 11 January) in his new role, James Reston wrote in The New York Times (12 January 1946, pp. 1, 5) that ‘the new Assembly President … proved himself an accomplished and experienced parliamentarian’ as he directed the proceedings. The day’s work ‘was about as exciting as the building of a complicated machine’. However, ‘Since that is precisely what this meeting was called to do, it produced by its very drabness a sense of order and accomplishment that most delegates considered essential to the attainment of its purpose.’ Under Spaak’s direction the Assembly delegates adopted the preparatory Committee’s rules of procedure on a provisional basis, approved the agenda, established the six working committees of the meeting (each composed of the full membership of the Assembly, with a chair),9 and set up a smaller General Committee of 14 members to guide the Assembly.10 In the latter instance, when the Cuban delegation also proposed a 51-person General Committee to ‘guide’ the Assembly, ‘President Spaak settled the issue by proposing that a committee of fourteen be adopted pending study of the Cuban proposal by the legal committee’ (Reston, 12 January 1946, pp. 1, 5). However, it then was determined that the General Committee would not make decisions on political questions, and instead would be ‘limited to assisting the President in organizing the agenda and work of the Assembly and in coordinating the activities of its committees’ (Laves and Wilcox, 1946, p. 347). Spaak also ruled against a new request from the Philippines to place onto the Assembly agenda a proposal for a UN conference on freedom of the press, referring the request to committee per the rules of procedure, and did likewise with a Ukrainian proposal that the Assembly should make nominations for positions from the floor rather than by secret ballot.11 Two days later, the Times reported that Spaak’s management of the first few days’ proceedings – ‘calm and precise, now witty, now eloquent’ while demonstrating the independence and nonpartisanship required of the role – had gained him the trust and confidence of both the American and Russian delegations, even though the former had voted for Lie as President and the latter had opposed Spaak’s election (The New York Times, 14 January 1946, p. 3). The first part of this first session of the UN General Assembly closed in the early morning hours of Friday, 15 February 1946. After 37 days of deliberations under Spaak’s presidency, the organization had taken shape. In addition to the Assembly and its committees, the memberships of the new Security Council, Atomic Energy Committee, Military Staff Committee, and Economic and Social Council, and the first slate of judges elected to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, were in place.12 Trygve Lie had been elected as the first United Nations

President of the United Nations General Assembly  219 Secretary-General and was assembling his executive office staff (The New York Times, 15 February 1946, p. 2). Reviewing the work of the six committees for The American Journal of International Law, Walter Laves and Francis Wilcox (1946, p. 373) concluded: those who followed closely the work of the First Part of the First General Assembly agree that the meetings were successful. The over-riding objective of the Assembly was realized – namely, to transform the United Nations into a going concern.

The emerging post-war divisions between the USA and USSR had entered the proceedings of the new organization, including debates within the Security Council and in the Assembly on issues including the role and authority of the Atomic Energy Commission, the return of refugees, the terms of trusteeship for territories under the Trusteeship Council, and the participation of nongovernmental organizations in the activities of the UN. Nonetheless, President Spaak in his closing remarks to the first meeting pointed out that ‘Those who thought that we would perform miracles are disappointed but those who understand the economic and political problems left by the war will be satisfied’ (Reston, 15 February 1946, pp. 1, 2). Having already dealt with much of the initial setting up of the new international organization, the second part of the Assembly session featured an array of contentious issues, including the first dispute to be taken to the General Assembly (Lloyd, 1990, p. 131). This came at the behest of the Government of India, which in June 1946 requested that the treatment of Indians in South Africa be placed on the agenda for the Assembly – raising the initial question whether the matter was ‘essentially domestic’ to South Africa or if the General Committee could decide to place it on the agenda of the Assembly. That question eventually would be answered in favour of India’s position, under the carefully independent and procedurally innovative watch of President Spaak (Lloyd, 1990, p. 148). The Assembly delegates also debated the veto power held by the Permanent members of the Security Council (The New York Times, 30 October 1946, p. 14); and continued to clarify the role of the General Committee in relation to the full Assembly and its working committees (Hamilton, 1946, p. 1). Speaking two years later, Spaak (1948) expressed his personal concerns regarding some of the Assembly’s decisions or choices during his Presidency, and about negative trends in the UN – including states refusing to act upon (and instead seeking to undermine) Assembly recommendations with which they disagreed, and the tendency of Assembly delegates to engage in propaganda under the guise of ‘open diplomacy’ rather than parliamentary-style debate.13 More positively, Spaak commented: At a certain moment, in 1946, one felt that one was sitting in a sort of world parliament and, for myself, I cannot forget the debate on the rights of Indians in South Africa between [Britain’s] Sir Hartley Shawcross and [India’s] Madame Pandit. (1948, p. 612)

In 1946, ‘Madame Pandit’ was the well-recognized and widely respected head of the Indian delegation to the United Nations. The Eighth President (1953) – Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit When Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was elected as the eighth President of the General Assembly on 15 September 1953 – the first Asian and first woman14 to be elected to the position – the

220  Handbook on governance in international organizations head of the Indian delegation to the United Nations already was a well-known figure in UN diplomacy, and ‘the acknowledged leader of the emerging Arab-Asian bloc’ (Plotke, 2008, p. 3101). Pandit gained public prominence and popularity in the United States and on the international stage in 1945 as the leading unofficial representative of India at the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO) in San Francisco (Laut, 2018). Pandit was appointed as the head of India’s delegation to the first United Nations General Assembly in 1946, a position she held through the 1948 Assembly session. By the time of her election as President of the General Assembly, Pandit also had served as newly independent India’s first Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1947–49) and the United States and Mexico (1949–52), after which she again headed the Indian delegation to the United Nations in 1952 and 1953. In this same period, Pandit led India’s ‘Goodwill Mission’ to China in 1952 during a time of heightened tensions over Sino-Indian border disputes. In March 1953 after Secretary-General Trygve Lie had submitted his resignation, Pandit was put forward by the Soviet Union as a candidate (Rosenthal, 1953). Moscow opposed two Western-backed candidates, Lester B. Pearson of Canada – serving at that time as PGA for the seventh session of the Assembly, 1952–53 – and Carlos P. Romulo of the Philippines. The Soviets vetoed both Pearson and Romulo, with France also voting against the latter. From the 11-member Security Council, Pandit received only two positive votes from the Soviet Union and Lebanon with eight abstentions. The Nationalist Chinese representative on the Security Council vetoed Pandit, who had been vocal in declaring India’s support for Communist China to be given the Chinese seat at the United Nations (Hamilton, 1953a). The purpose for recounting these points in Pandit’s career is not simply to offer biographical tidbits, but to highlight again the breadth of political experience that PGAs invariably possessed as individuals. It also illustrates Pandit’s deep commitment to political causes – a commitment that she would have to set aside when taking up the role of President. The election process for the next Secretary-General also illustrated the dominance of the Council over the Assembly on that matter, within the broader geopolitical context of deepening divisions between East and West and as newly independent member states sought to carve out their own place and voice. The election of the first Asian President of the General Assembly in September 1953 was believed by member states at the time to be especially significant because of the influence they felt the President would have on Assembly decisions on two ‘thorny questions’ directly related to Asia: ‘Whether the Assembly should reopen the question of the Korean peace conference and what action it will take on the admission of representatives of Communist China’ (Hamilton, 1953b). Pandit was elected over Prince Wan Waithayakon of Thailand15 by 37 votes to 22 in a secret vote. The USA, Britain, the Soviet bloc, and most British Commonwealth, African and Asian delegations voted for Pandit. France and most Western European and Latin American delegations supported the Thai candidate. Addressing the eighth session of the Assembly as its new President, Pandit stated: ‘I regard their choice as a tribute to my country and a recognition of its profound desire to serve the purposes of the United Nations … It is also a recognition on the part that women have played and are playing in furthering the aims and purposes of this great Organization (United Nations General Assembly, 1953, p. 14). Shortly after closing her first meeting and leaving the Assembly chamber, however, the new President spoke to the Press saying that ‘I don’t care for this emphasis on women as women. It is an honour for my country rather than an honour for a woman. The purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter apply to human beings, not to men or women’ (Teltsch, 1953).

President of the United Nations General Assembly  221 Pandit’s apparently contradictory statements may have reflected the expectations or requirements of her new position as President – initially acknowledging the role of women, but then distancing herself from being seen to adopt a position on a ‘political’ matter. Indeed, while being ‘best known at the United Nations for her fiery speeches on behalf of countries that are not yet free’ – including the French protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia, matters on the Assembly agenda for that session – ‘In her new role as president, Mme. Pandit declared, she must now dissociate herself from her delegation … [in order to] act to discharge her new duties with complete impartiality’ (Teltsch, 1953). That impartiality was demonstrated again two weeks later, when the Soviet delegate – Georgi N. Zarubin, Ambassador to Washington – challenged the Assembly’s vote to approve the report of the Credentials Committee accepting Nationalist China’s representative. The Indian representative, V. K. Krishna Menon, had announced that he would oppose recognition of Nationalist China, reflecting the official Indian position which Pandit also had advocated while head of the delegation, but the Soviet delegate rose first to raise the question. In response, President Pandit read out the US resolution that had been passed on the opening of the eighth session just prior to her election, and said ‘she would rule out of order accordingly any proposals to exclude the Nationalists unless some delegate moved reconsideration of the question or challenged her ruling. Neither Mr. Zarubin nor Mr. Menon did so.’ Her earlier roles as ambassador to the Moscow and to Washington, and as head of the Indian delegation to the UN, held no sway in this case: ‘An Indian spokesman said that Mme. Pandit did not consider herself a member of the delegation at this session although officially she is still head of it’ (Hamilton, 1953c). It is worth noting that the second ‘thorny question’ for the General Assembly agenda under its first Asian President, also was not directly addressed in the Assembly. The peace talks to end the Korean War following the initial Armistice Agreement signed in July 1953 and to settle the conflict over the dismantlement of French Indochina took place separately from the UN in Geneva in April–July 1954. Talks between the USA, USSR, Communist China and the two Korean parties over the Korean conflict failed to achieve a final political settlement, while France, the USSR, UK, Communist China and the Viet Minh eventually signed the Geneva Accords on 21 July 1954.16 In her final address as the outgoing PGA, on 20 September 1954, Pandit observed that even though the peace agreements were not handled by the UN, This great event of the current year was an application of United Nations methods for the advancement of United Nations purposes and we should not cavil that, in this instance, the nations concerned chose to act technically outside the United Nations.

However, President Pandit did note that ‘the [UN] machinery we have patiently built up … in order to be useful, must be kept running’ (The New York Times, 22 September 1954, p. 6). The Seventieth President (2015) – Mogens Lykketoft Mogens Lykketoft, Speaker of the Danish Parliament and a former Foreign Minister of Denmark, was elected as President of the seventieth session of the General Assembly in 2015. By then, several useful reform initiatives had taken place for the President and the Office of the President within the context of a debate on General Assembly revitalization that was almost a quarter century old. Samir Shihabi, President of the 46th Assembly (1991–92) had

222  Handbook on governance in international organizations highlighted the problems he saw arising from the ever-increasing Assembly agenda and an Office of the President that relied heavily for its personnel, material and financial resources on support provided by the incoming President’s home government (UN General Assembly, 11 September 1992). These deficiencies meant that the capability and capacity of the office could vary greatly across presidencies, while making the incumbent potentially more vulnerable to her or his home government’s priorities. Shihabi’s concerns were discussed repeatedly (itself part of the problem of the lengthy Assembly agenda) by successive PGAs throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, as the Assembly continued to discuss ‘revitalization’.17 The marginalization of the General Assembly and its President at that time was symbolized by the decision of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, after becoming Secretary-General in 1992, to move the OPGA from the 38th floor of the UN secretariat building – the executive floor which houses the Secretary-General’s offices – to the second floor of the UN conference building (Christensen, 2018, pp. 4–5). Since 2002, the election of the PGA and the Vice Presidents and Chairs of the Main Committees was held at least three months prior to taking office, although this positive reform was a consequence of the 9/11 attacks in New York as much as being a direct result of Assembly revitalization initiatives.18 Whatever its immediate impetus, earlier elections provided the President-elect more time to prepare her or his team, and to consider priorities for the upcoming year – Lykketoft’s election, for example, took place on 15 June 2015, with the Assembly scheduled to open on 14 September. In 2003, as part of the ongoing General Assembly revitalization discussions, resolutions were passed making changes to the Assembly’s agenda, the working methods of the committees, and notably in terms of this chapter’s subject, adding five funded support staff positions to the OPGA. In 2004, the Assembly authorized the President to identify and organize a limited number of informal thematic debates; and in 2005, as part of the follow-up to the World Summit that year marking the 60th anniversary of the United Nations, the General Assembly established an Ad Hoc Working Group on the Revitalization of the Work of the General Assembly, which helped to consolidate the existing process and led to additional practical reform proposals.19 These new reforms included tasking the President with holding regular briefings with the Secretary-General and with the presidents of the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council, and then reporting back to the Assembly on the proceedings. All of these, it should be noted, also bring with them a heavier, more complex, and substantive workload for the President and her or his Office. In a 2010 report on General Assembly revitalization, Ali Treki, President of the 64th General Assembly (2009) had observed that although the OPGA received administrative support from the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management (DGACM) in the Secretariat, the still-small staffing level of the OPGA – five positions including one General Service staff member provided from the UN’s regular budget – and the annual high staff turnover ‘makes it difficult to maintain the institutional memory of the Office’ (United Nations General Assembly, 2010, p. 19). The following year, when Joseph Deiss of Switzerland served as the President of the 65th General Assembly (2010), the Swiss Permanent Mission produced The GA Handbook (2011 and 2017) as ‘a practical guide to the procedures and practices of the General Assembly’. Another, informal and state-led initiative in support of ‘revitalization’ came from the Permanent Mission of Finland, which from 2011 onwards hosted annual retreats in June (following the election of the PGA) under the title ‘Towards a stronger General Assembly’. These meetings brought together past, present and incoming PGAs and as well as elected members of the General Committee and invited UN secretariat staff, to familiarize

President of the United Nations General Assembly  223 newcomers with Assembly working methods, share lessons learned from past experiences, and discuss future efforts towards revitalization.20 Helpful as all such preparations could be for familiarizing the President-elect with the demands of the role, the General Assembly Rules of Procedure21 still meant that ‘the transition of the President and the staff in his or her office takes place in a single week, in effect four working days, before the busiest week in the UN’s New York calendar’ with the high-level week and general debate in September (Christensen, 2018, p. 5). One of President Lykketoft’s most valuable new staff members undoubtedly was his Chef de Cabinet, Tomas Anker Christensen, who previously had served in the Danish mission to the UN as Denmark was preparing to serve a two-year term on the Security Council in 2005–06, as well as most recently being a Senior Advisor in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General.22 If Lykketoft benefitted from the revitalization process over the several years prior to 2015, he also faced a new kind of challenge. Former President John William Ashe, who held the post in 2013, subsequently had been arrested and indicted in the USA on tax fraud charges connected to a broader bribery scheme (The United States Attorney’s Office, 2015; The Globe and Mail, 2016). This is not the place to review that matter – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in October 2015 established a Task Force to review the functioning of the OPGA, with its findings and recommendations forwarded to the President in March 2016 and through him to the Assembly.23 As the Secretary-General’s report observed, the indictment had made headline news and harmed the UN’s reputation. Facing a crisis of credibility regarding the functioning of the OPGA, Lykketoft took that as an opportunity to make reforms that helped to renew member states’ confidence in the integrity of the Office and the Presidency. Coordinating closely with the Ad Hoc Working Group and the Secretary-General’s task force, a draft code of conduct, a new oath of office, and new language on financial disclosures were developed for approval. His calendar of work, all appointments of co-facilitators, and OPGA financial records related to the UN regular budget and the recently established Trust Fund, were made available publicly through the UN General Assembly website.24 One of the most widely publicized processes in which Lykketoft played a significant role related to the selection of the next Secretary-General of the United Nations. In this case, the General Assembly – led by the ACT group advocating Security Council reform, and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – asserted a degree of institutional authority over the process, despite strong opposition from Russia and China on the Security Council. The political will of the Assembly members was boosted by a major civil society lobbying campaign, ‘1 for 7 billion: Find the Best UN Leader’, launched in November 2014 and including over 750 nongovernmental organizations demanding a more open and transparent selection process instead of the closed-door one led by the Security Council with the outcome effectively determined by political dealings amongst its five permanent members. Against this background President Lykketoft ‘fully exploited his mandate to act based on [General Assembly] Resolution 69/321’ (Terlingen, 2017, p. 119). The president issued a joint letter with the president of the Security Council to start the selection process; created a format for open hearings with the slate of candidates that would be accessible through webcasting, encouraging all candidates to come forward and participate actively in that process; and Lykketoft even succeeded in ensuring civil society participation – albeit limited – through short interventions during the candidates’ two-hour-long ‘dialogues’. All these activities, notably, were to be undertaken before the Security Council started its typical internal discussions of the candidates.

224  Handbook on governance in international organizations If these initiatives were amongst several important positives for Lykketoft’s presidency, he also had frustrations and failures. One of these came in the late stages of the Secretary-General selection process once the Security Council moved its discussion into its secretive closed-door phase. As the Council held a series of four informal straw polls on candidates, the Council president (Ambassador Churkin of Russia) informed the PGA on the occurrence of each poll but without providing any details. Lykketoft replied – and again, made the exchanges public via statements released on his website – ‘that the absence of any further details beyond the fact that the informal straw poll has taken place adds little value and does not live up to the expectations of the membership and the new standard of openness and transparency’ (General Assembly, 2016a). Security Council members who initially favoured keeping poll results secret changed their views during this process, and in fact leaked the results of the polls, but Russia reportedly remained opposed to publishing the outcomes. Terlingen notes that the Council’s failure to disclose poll results harmed its standing in comparison to the openness shown by the Assembly (2017, p. 123). A second frustration for President Lykketoft came from the member states of the General Assembly rather than the politics of the Security Council. Lykketoft – who came to the role as PGA directly from years of service with the Danish Parliament – strongly favoured civil society stakeholders’ inclusion as participants in General Assembly meetings. The President worked closely with the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service and the Department of Economic and Social Affairs towards this inclusion and had some success (as noted above) in the case of the Secretary-General selection process, but also met with resistance. In his remarks to those attending the [Finnish-sponsored] July 2016 retreat on strengthening the General Assembly, Lykketoft commented that ‘decisions in the GA will always be the preserve of member states’, but he added – reminiscent of President Pandit’s urging more than 60 years earlier – efforts to reinforce the Assembly’s relevance and effectiveness required that it must ‘communicate with the outside world’ (General Assembly, 2016b). In that context, regarding the June 2016 High-Level Meeting on Ending AIDS, the President noted: it was extremely frustrating that a number of LGBT related NGOs were barred from attending the HIV/AIDS High Level Meeting. It is also disappointing that the NGO Committee under ECOSOC has become such a battle-ground and that modalities for stakeholder participation becomes such a major stumbling block during GA negotiations.

Through discreet outreach, the Office of the President was able to reduce the long list of NGOs that some member states wanted to bar from participation in the meeting from over 50 to 22, ‘although this still led to a public outcry’ (Christensen, 2018, p. 8). The member states may have shown their desire and willingness to assert a stronger institutional role for the Assembly in terms of its relationship to the Security Council, but they were not equally willing to heed their president’s call to open their own proceedings to the participation of ‘we the peoples’.

CONCLUSION What lessons about institutional and individual actors’ agency and effectiveness might be learned from these rather brief highlights of the efforts and experiences of three PGAs across seven decades? Lykketoft’s experiences of mixed successes and frustrations is reflected in Christensen’s observation that while the demands and expectations placed on the PGA and

President of the United Nations General Assembly  225 OPGA may have increased, ‘the support from the Member States for the President and the Office, or indeed the way they organize their time and business in the Assembly, has not followed suit’ (2018, p. 14). In that case, the former Chef de Cabinet to the President suggested, those same member states ‘are arguing against creating a stronger and more efficient Office of the President because they are concerned that this might empower the President to pursue agendas with which they do not agree’ (2018, p. 14). When a President is perceived as overstepping, or not adequately representing the varied if not opposing interests of all interested member states on an issue, they may be reminded very quickly of their role as the ‘servant of the Assembly’. Germany’s Permanent Representative, Ambassador Christof Heusgen, publicly and sharply criticized Volkan Bozkir, President of the seventy-fifth session of the General Assembly, in May 2021 during the Assembly’s Plenary session discussion on Security Council reform after the PGA had announced the rollover of the Assembly’s Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) to the seventy-sixth session without including the phrase ‘to instill new life’ into the negotiations. While noting his personal friendship with, and respect for, the PGA, Ambassador Heusgen – representing Germany as one of the ‘G4’ group that also includes India, Brazil and Japan – stated that ‘it is not the task of the President of the General Assembly to represent the position of one group, but also to say that this does not constitute extending privileges of a handful of countries’ (Heusgen, 2021). A subsequent amendment proposed by the G4 including the phrase would be adopted by consensus in the General Assembly in June 2021. Continuing the matter of the IGN then would fall to the next PGA, Abdulla Shahid, the former foreign minister of the Republic of Maldives who was elected as President of the seventy-sixth session of the General Assembly in an election process that – unusually – featured two candidates, the other being Dr Zalmai Rassoul, former National Security Advisor and Foreign Minister of Afghanistan. When interviewed on the topic, the new PGA was careful to say that the question of Security Council reform was a member state-driven issue, although adding that ‘in 1979, Maldives was one of the countries who initially signed on to a group of 10 countries who initiated the Security Council reform. And I was only 17 years old then’ (The Economic Times, 2021). Shahid might have mentioned that that Paul-Henri Spaak as the first President of the General Assembly also oversaw debates on the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council 75 years earlier, in 1946. While the ‘least-known leader’ enjoys some scope for constructive initiative, and can play valuable managerial roles, the ‘big issues’ of member states’ interests remain beyond the reach of PGA agency or effective influence.25

NOTES 1. Khan (1964), Al-Nasser (2014) and Christensen (2018). The first two authors served as PGA in 1962 and 2011, respectively; the third author was Chef de Cabinet for two PGAs (2015–17). Spaak (1948) delivered a lecture on the work of the Assembly shortly after completing his term as its first President. Smith (2006, pp. 200–206) and Kille and Lyon (2020) provide very helpful brief commentaries on the topic of the PGA; and Alger (2006) gives a brief entry on the President along with a list of past Presidents. 2. Delegates new to the UN General Assembly use as a core reference The GA Handbook: A Practical Guide to the United Nations General Assembly, prepared by the Permanent Mission of Switzerland in 2011 and updated in 2017. Substantive and substantial scholarly work focused on the General Assembly is provided in Bailey (1960), Peterson (1986 and 2006) and Devin et al. (2020). Peterson

226  Handbook on governance in international organizations

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

subsequently (2014) provided an updated analysis as a single chapter in an edited volume by Weiss and Wilkinson. In one of the earliest studies, Laves and Wilcox (1946) offered a detailed description of the work of the first General Assembly. In February 1947, Volume 1 Issue 1 of International Organization also provided a detailed chronological narrative of the work of the Assembly and its several committees during both the First Part and Second Part of the just-completed (15 December 1946) First Session. After the indictment of John Ashe in 2015, Edith Lederer (2015) in an AP News column gave a list of eight PGAs with her reasons for them having been notable. Not surprisingly, at least two of those individuals – Spaak and Pandit – also are featured here. The first edition of Claude’s work was published in 1956, with subsequent editions in 1959, 1964 and the fourth edition referenced here, in 1971. The first edition of Pease’s text was published in 2003, although the Preface cited here comes from the fourth (2012) edition. Pease situates Claude in the liberal theoretical tradition (2012, p. 124), as pointed out in Pentland (2012, fn. 26). Likewise, Weiss and Wilkinson (2014, p. 7) feel that Claude’s approach like ‘other classic definitions’ of international organization, is ‘inexorably bound up with a normative desire to see the organizations that we currently have as moments in a progressive march toward growing global institutionalization’. Marie-Claude Smouts (2000, p. 38) makes this point in her valuable chapter on the UN General Assembly. Interested readers can find the chronological list of past General Assembly Presidents at https://​ www​.un​.org/​pga/​75/​about/​past​-presidents/​. The total number of 193 member states is used here, since the PGA is expected to preside as a neutral party and not as a representative of the agenda of her or his national delegation, even if she or he still formally may be part of that delegation. The six working committees (with names and nationalities of chairs in brackets): Political and Social Committee (Dr D. Z. Maniulsky, Ukraine); Economic and Financial Committee (Waclaw Konderski, Poland); Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee (Peter Fraser, New Zealand); Trusteeship Committee (Dr Robeerto MacEachen, Uruguay); Budgetary Committee (Faiz [Faris] al-Khoury, Syria); Legal Committee (Dr Roberto Jimenez, Panama). The General Committee was composed of the President and seven Vice-Presidents of the Assembly (from the USA, UK, USSR, France, China, South Africa and Venezuela), and the chairs of the six working committees. Laves and Wilcox (1946, p. 348) suggested that ‘certain small states in particular’ were concerned that unless elections were conducted in secret and without nominations or explanations from the floor, they might lose their freedom and independence in voting. The Security Council members included the five Permanent members (USA, USSR, UK, France and China) and six others elected for different terms – Egypt, Mexico and the Netherlands until 1947, and Australia, Brazil and Poland until 1948. The Military Staff Committee consisted of the Chiefs of Staff (or their representatives) of the five Permanent members; the Atomic Energy Committee consisted of the Security Council members plus Canada (whenever the latter was not a Council member). This was a topic Spaak also had written about after the close of the second part of the Assembly session on 15 December 1946; see Spaak (1946). To date, only four women have served as President: Pandit (8th session, 1953–54); Angie E. Brooks of Liberia (24th session, 1969–70); Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa of Bahrain (61st session, 2006–07); and Maria Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador (73rd session, 2018–19). Wan was elected as the eleventh PGA three years later, in 1956. Neither the USA nor the State of Vietnam (South Vietnam) signed the agreement, although the USA ‘took note’ of its terms. Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly was proposed as an agenda item for the next (46th) Assembly session by President Guido de Marco (Malta) at its 45th session in 1990. It then was included as a dedicated item for the agenda of the 46th session under President Samir Shihabi (Saudi Arabia) and adopted by consensus on 12 December 1991 as General Assembly resolution 46/77. See, for example, UN General Assembly (1992, 1998, 2002, 2010, 2017a).

President of the United Nations General Assembly  227 18. Christensen (2018, p. 5, fn. 4) explains that the 9/11 attacks took place on what would have been the opening day of the 56th session in 2001; for security reasons the General Assembly did not meet, and the election of the incoming President (Han Seung-soo of South Korea) had to be postponed until the following day, thus leaving the Assembly in limbo. 19. For a summary of the various resolutions and other initiatives on General Assembly revitalization up to 2020, see https://​www​.un​.org/​en/​ga/​revitalization/​index​.shtml. 20. Summary reports of the retreats also were prepared by the Permanent Mission of Finland: see United Nations General Assembly (2011, 2013a and 2013b, 2014, 2016, 2017b). 21. According to Rule 30 of the Rules of Procedure, the President and Vice-Presidents ‘will assume their functions only at the beginning of the session for which they are elected’. See https://​www​.un​ .org/​en/​ga/​about/​ropga/​prez​.shtml. 22. For Christensen’s biographical note on the website of the PGA at that time, see https://​www​.un​.org/​ pga/​70/​president/​pga​-team/​biography​-christensen/​. Christensen also would serve in the role of Chef de Cabinet for the 71st President, Peter Thompson of Fiji, as an individual example of the effort to ensure at least some critical continuity in OPGA staffing. 23. See https://​www​.un​.org/​pga/​70/​wp​-content/​uploads/​sites/​10/​2015/​08/​29​-Mar​_AHWG​ -Revitalization​-29​-March​-2016​.pdf. 24. The President’s website is available at https://​www​.un​.org/​pga/​70/​. 25. I have benefitted from the excellent research assistance of Peter Lawler, Fiona McGee and Analia Silviera, as three Copp Research Scholars at the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada, who prepared profiles with annotated bibliographies for each PGA, 1946–2020.

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President of the United Nations General Assembly  229 Reston, J. B. (1946), ‘Assembly Speeds Peace Body Set-Up: Soviets in New Bid,’ The New York Times, 12 January, pp. 1, 5. Available through subscription, https://​ timesmachine​.nytimes​.com/​browser (accessed 2 August 2021). Reston, J. B. (1946), ‘Assembly of UNO Adjourns; Organization Survives Test,’ The New York Times, 15 February, pp. 1, 2. Available through subscription, https://​timesmachine​.nytimes​.com/​browser (accessed 4 August 2021). Rosenthal, A. M. (1953), ‘Mme. Pandit or Rau favored By Soviets for Lie’s U.N. Post,’ The New York Times, 18 March, pp. 1, 6. Available through subscription, https://​timesmachine​.nytimes​.com/​browser (accessed 6 August 2021). Schechter, M. G. (2015), ‘Spaak, Paul-Henri,’ in Reinalda, B. Kille, K. and Eisenberg, J. (eds), IO Bio: Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-General of International Organizations, 19 January. www​.ru​ .nl/​fm/​iobio (accessed 19 July 2021). Smith, C. B. (2006), Politics and Process at the United Nations: The Global Dance, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Smouts, M.-C. (2000), ‘The General Assembly: Grandeur and Decadence,’ in Taylor. P. and Groom A. J. R. (eds), The United Nations at the Millennium: The Principal Organs, pp. 21–60, London: Continuum. Spaak, P.-H. (1946), ‘The Challenges of Open Diplomacy,’ The New York Times, 22 December, pp. 13, 42. Spaak, P.-H. (1948), ‘The Role of the General Assembly,’ International Conciliation, vol. 26, pp. 591–615. Swart, L. (2008), ‘Revitalization of the Work of the General Assembly,’ in von Freiesleben, J., Swart. L., Martinetti, I. and Yeboah N. (eds), Managing Change at the United Nations, pp. 21–35, New York: Center for UN Reform Education. Teltsch, K. (1953), ‘Mme. Pandit Mutes Status as Woman,’ The New York Times, 16 September. Available through subscription, https://​ timesmachine​ .nytimes​ .com/​ browser (accessed 14 August 2021). Terlingen, Y. (2017), ‘A Better Process, a Stronger UN Secretary-General: How Historic Change Was Forged and What Comes Next,’ Ethics & International Affairs, vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 115–27. The Economic Times (2021), ‘U.N. Security Council reform is a membership-driven issue: General Assembly President Shahid,’ 2 October. https://​economictimes​.indiatimes​.com/​news/​india/​un​-security​ -council​-reform​-is​-a​-membership​-driven​-issue​-general​-assembly​-president​-shahid/​articleshow/​ 86701459​.cms​?from​=​mdr (accessed 20 December 2021). The Globe and Mail (2016), ‘Former UN Official John Ashe died as he was facing criminal charges,’ 23 June. https://​www​.theglobeandmail​.com/​news/​world/​former​-un​-official​-john​-ashe​-died​-as​-he​-was​ -facing​-criminal​-charges/​article30594228/​ (accessed 11 August 2021). The New York Times (1946), ‘History Repeated at Peace Session,’ 11 January, p. 7. Available through subscription, https://​timesmachine​.nytimes​.com/​browser (accessed 2 August 2021). The New York Times (1946), ‘Assembly Speeds Peace Body Set-Up: Soviet in New Bid’ [J. B. Reston], 12 January, p. 1. Available through subscription, https://​timesmachine​.nytimes​.com/​browser (accessed 2 August 2021). The New York Times (1946), ‘Spaak is Success as Assembly Head,’ 14 January, p. 3. Available through subscription, https://​timesmachine​.nytimes​.com/​browser (accessed 2 August 2021). The New York Times (1946), ‘How UNO Has Been Set Up,’ 15 February, p. 2. Available through subscription, https://​timesmachine​.nytimes​.com/​browser (accessed 3 August 2021). The New York Times (1946), ‘Big 5 Veto Right Upheld by Spaak,’ 30 October, p. 14. Available through subscription, https://​timesmachine​.nytimes​.com/​browser (accessed 6 August 2021). The New York Times (1953), ‘Mme. Pandit wants to Make U.N. ‘Live’ By Aid to Underprivileged and Dependent,’ 16 November, p. 2. Available through subscription, https://​timesmachine​.nytimes​.com/​ browser (accessed 16 August 2021). The New York Times (1954), ‘Excerpts from Addresses at the Opening of the U.N. Assembly,’ 22 September, p. 6. Available through subscription, https://​ timesmachine​ .nytimes​ .com/​ browser (accessed 16 August 2021). The United States Attorney’s Office Southern District of New York (2015), ‘Former UN General Assembly President and Five Others Charged in $1.3 Million Bribery Scheme,’ United States

230  Handbook on governance in international organizations Department of Justice, 6 October. https://​www​.justice​.gov/​usao​-sdny/​pr/​former​-un​-general​-assembly​ -president​-and​-five​-others​-charged​-13​-million​-bribery​-scheme (accessed 11 August 2021). United Nations General Assembly (1953), Eighth Session Official Record, 15 September, A/PV.432. United Nations General Assembly (1992), ‘Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly: Note by the President of the General Assembly,’ 11 September, A/46/969. United Nations General Assembly (1998), ‘Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly: Report of the Secretary-General,’ 17 April, A/52/856. United Nations General Assembly (2002), ‘Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly: Note by the President of the General Assembly,’ 23 July, A/56/1005. United Nations General Assembly (2010), ‘Report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Revitalization of the General Assembly,’ 8 September, A/64/903. United Nations General Assembly (2011), ‘Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly,’ 12 September, A/65/945. United Nations General Assembly (2013a), ‘Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly,’ 5 February, A/67/730. United Nations General Assembly (2013b), ‘Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly,’ 20 December, A/68/669. United Nations General Assembly (2014), ‘Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly,’ 6 November, A/69/562. United Nations General Assembly (2016), ‘Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly,’ 14 January, A/70/666. United Nations General Assembly (2017a), ‘Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly,’ Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 8 September 2017, 20 September, A/RES/71/323. United Nations General Assembly (2017b), ‘Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly,’ 15 June, A/71/933. Weiss, T. G., Forsythe, D. P., Coate R. A. and Pease K.-K. (2017), The United Nations and Changing World Politics, 8th edn, New York: Routledge. Weiss, T. G. and Thakur, R. (2010), Global Governance and the UN: An Unfinished Journey, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Weiss, T. G. and Wilkinson, R. (eds) (2014), International Organization and Global Governance, New York: Routledge.

Facing crises from within and outside: can IOs hold themselves to account?

15. Holding individuals serving the United Nations to account for wrongdoing Ai Kihara-Hunt

INTRODUCTION For nearly three decades, the United Nations (UN) has tried to improve its performance in holding individuals accountable for wrongdoing. The issue initially became public in the 1990s with large Peace Operations, such as those in Cambodia and former Yugoslavia. Scandals about UN personnel misbehaviour, ranging from rape, sexual assault, smuggling, and human trafficking, to frequenting brothels and having supposedly consensual sexual relations with their beneficiaries, were repeatedly reported by media and civil society organizations. Allegations quickly arose not only in the Peace Operations context, but also in humanitarian assistance circles (Kihara-Hunt, 2017). In addition to individuals’ misconduct, trust in the UN was undermined by examples and evidence of condonation or acquiescence by the wrongdoers’ superiors and within the UN system, sometimes indicating a certain level of organized complacency.1 The fact that wrongdoers did not appear to be held to account was a blow to the trust that peacekeepers and humanitarian workers received – and needed – from host communities and the international community. In peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance settings, the trust of the local population and beneficiaries plays a key role in the effectiveness of the mission, and it was the issue of effectiveness that first caught the attention of the UN (United Nations, 2006). Eventually, the UN would turn its attention more towards concern with the human rights of victims. Misconduct can range from serious crimes, including murder, rape, and sexual assault; civil wrongs, such as tort, breach of contract, and breach of trust; to other exploitative acts, such as transactional sexual relationships. Due to the availability and reliability of information, this chapter will focus on breaches of publicly available codes, such as criminal codes and UN codes of conduct, and exclude civil wrongs. Crimes are defined as acts or omissions that are criminal under the laws of virtually all states. This chapter will investigate the UN’s response to individual wrongdoings and inquire how effective it is in holding individual wrongdoers to account. It examines prevention only to the extent that holding individuals accountable may work to prevent further wrongdoing. Provision of training and selection of personnel are therefore outside the scope of this chapter. The first question in assessing the effectiveness of individual accountability for wrongdoing is how effectiveness is measured. Here, effectiveness is assessed by how the UN ensures that alleged wrongdoers are individually held to account for their misconduct. In exceptional circumstances, where the UN cannot legally or administratively act, such as in the prosecution of personnel, the UN’s efforts to enable, facilitate and ensure that the relevant state can investigate and prosecute the wrongdoer will be assessed. While ground realities, such as the supposedly insufficient number of qualified investigators within UN field operations, will be taken into consideration, this will not be used to justify inaction. Accountability measures 232

Holding individuals serving the United Nations to account for wrongdoing  233 include criminal, disciplinary, and administrative accountability. It is possible that a civil suit is made against an individual wrongdoer in a domestic forum, but because that would essentially be a matter between two individuals outside the UN’s dealings, civil proceedings are not the focus of this chapter. It is acknowledged that that a victim of wrongdoing, including a crime, may seek civil redress, such as compensation for the damage caused. There may also be an issue for the UN to provide information and to cooperate with the proceedings, which may include issues of immunity of the alleged wrongdoer, witnesses, or the UN itself, as well as issues related to inviolability of UN properties and documents. Civil claims against the individual within the UN are briefly discussed. However, ex officio payments for claims made against individual wrongdoers do not involve the acknowledgment of wrongdoing (Schmalenbach, 2006, p. 43), and are therefore also outside the scope of this chapter. A few basic points must be addressed. First, the UN cannot directly hold someone to account criminally; only states can. Because this analysis focuses on the UN system, criminal sanctions are discussed in the context of how the UN is enabling, facilitating, and making states prosecute crimes committed by UN personnel. Second, there are cases in which wrongdoers work for an organization that is an implementing partner for a UN entity. In such cases, there may be issues surrounding the employer’s responsibility to hold the individual to account. Accountability will be examined to the extent that the UN’s effort is concerned. Third, although there are misconduct issues in various UN settings, a major part of the analysis will be on Peace Operations and humanitarian assistance contexts because those are the settings where misconduct issues are most apparent and discussed within the UN system. Furthermore, because numerous UN agencies and offices involved in humanitarian assistance exist, each with different codes, policies, and practices, this chapter will focus on the UN Secretariat in its examination of how the UN responds to allegations or information of its personnel’s misconduct. As such, much of the discussion will centre on Peace Operations. This is not to suggest that misconduct and individual accountability issues are most prevalent in Peace Operations. Fourth, even within Peace Operations, the extent of the reporting of misconduct does not reflect the actual scale of misconduct. Fifth, this chapter will not discuss the UN’s vicarious responsibility as an employer, nor the state’s responsibility in selecting and sending personnel (military or police, and some civilian), apart from briefly addressing the state’s responsibility insofar as its potential criminal jurisdiction over its nationals. Information about how the UN’s individual accountability mechanisms are set up and how effectively they function is collected from publicly available sources including policies, reports, and other information imparted by the UN itself; reviews and reports by researchers, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations; and related media reports. The analysis relies on data about actual allegations of misconduct, collected from public sources and covering the period 1948 to 2021, as well as available information on court proceedings at national courts. Major UN sources on individual allegations are those published by Conduct and Discipline Services (CDS – previously called the Conduct and Discipline Unit, CDU), the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), Secretary-General (SG)’s reports on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) and on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV), UN mission websites, UN News and Public Information, and UN Wire: Smartbrief.2 Information on specific allegations also was collected from other publicly available sources, including through internet searches. Languages used for this research were English, Japanese, French, Tetum, Indonesian, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, and German, but predominantly English and

234  Handbook on governance in international organizations French. The information is compiled in the form of a database to analyse the type and scale of the issue, as well as how these allegations were responded to by the UN.3

ISSUES: THE TYPES OF WRONGDOING COMMITTED When setting out what types of wrongdoing are committed, at what scale, by whom and in what environment, it is important to note a few considerations that stand in the way of forming a comprehensive picture. The first of these is the scarcity and uneven coverage of information. Until the mid-2000s, the UN did not make misconduct allegations data public, making it virtually impossible to assess the extent of misconduct and how allegations were responded to. Since the establishment of both the Conduct and Discipline Unit (CDU) and OIOS, allegations data has been kept in three main places within the UN: the CDU (currently CDS), the OIOS, and the Department, Office, or Agency of the accused’s affiliation. With Kofi Annan’s decision to make the allegations data public, and further decision to make public the alleged perpetrators’ nationality, there is certainly more data available than in the past. Since the mid-2010s, the UN has made a significant effort in systemizing data collection and storage in relation to SEA across the entire UN (United Nations, n.d., Preventing Sexual Exploitation). Currently, Conduct and Discipline Service data on misconduct by personnel in UN field missions is made public (United Nations, n.d., Conduct in UN Field Missions), and SEA allegations are differentiated from other allegations. This means that information about SEA allegations and subsequent actions is more readily available to the public than other types of misconduct. Even though the availability of data has improved significantly, the UN’s data collection methods are not suitable to properly assess how effective the responses have been to alleged misconduct. For example, CDS statistics categorize sexual misconduct into sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, often providing little further information. It is impossible to know which conduct amounted to crimes, and thus, whether the conduct warranted criminal action. Moreover, there is duplication of data between UN offices, and various changes in the categorization of misconduct, making it difficult to construct a comprehensive picture of wrongdoings (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, ch. 4). Nonetheless, CDS data indicates the nature and scale of the issue. Between 2007 and 2021, 1,170 SEA allegations and 14,130 other misconduct allegations were lodged with the UN. This makes, on average, 78 SEA allegations and 942 other allegations annually, with both types of allegations generally decreasing over time. During the 15 years of recorded data, 340 SEA allegations were against civilian personnel, 648 against military personnel and 160 against police personnel. Regarding other misconduct allegations, 5,942 out of 14,130 allegations were of serious misconduct. Allegations were most frequently made against civilians (8,076 allegations), followed by those against military personnel (3,231 allegations) and those against police personnel (2,164 allegations) (United Nations, n.d., Conduct in UN Field Missions). Considering the proportion of personnel in UN Peace Operations, this means the civilians received the largest proportion of allegations per personnel.4 This trend was more prevalent for non-sexual misconduct. Separately, there is UN-system wide data on allegations made against UN and associated personnel working in non-Peace Operation settings; 535 allegations of SEA incidents are entered in the data between 2017 and 2021 (United Nations, n.d., Preventing Sexual Exploitation).

Holding individuals serving the United Nations to account for wrongdoing  235 The author’s data is affected by the availability of information, which does not provide the foundation necessary for quantitative analysis. Nonetheless, this data may help to provide a sense of the kind and extent of misconduct committed by UN and associated personnel: 1,062 allegations are entered in the author’s database (as of 17 November 2021). Among them, entries are concentrated in several missions: operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic, United Nations–African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur, United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan, and missions in Haiti (United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti, United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, United Nations Support Mission in Haiti, United Nations Transition Mission in Haiti, and the United Nations Mission in Haiti). Civilian personnel received a larger number of allegations per the number of personnel than uniformed personnel – 685 allegations involved military personnel, 140 involved police and 208 involved civilian personnel, with 24 others against unknown categories of personnel – even though media outlets report almost exclusively on misconduct by uniformed personnel (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, ch. 3). This trend appears to be the same for sexual misconduct. Wrongdoing can be grouped in various ways. One is the differentiation between criminal and non-criminal misconduct. However, the UN’s recent methods of collecting and publishing information on misconduct, both generally and on SEA specifically, make it difficult to distinguish crimes from other misconduct. SEA allegations are categorized into abuse, exploitation, or both; other misconducts are categorized into serious misconduct and other misconduct, as well as according to the theme. Despite this limitation, it is clear that crimes, including serious crimes, are prevalent. The CDS’ data includes subcategories that reveal the criminality of allegations, such as sexual abuse (including rape) within the SEA category, or bribery, theft, and life threat/murder in the other misconduct category. The author’s data includes allegations of murder, rape, human trafficking, sexual abuse, theft, and traffic offences. Wrongdoing can also be grouped by sexual misconduct and other misconduct. Due to scandals that were widely reported in the media, the UN has focused primarily on sexual misconduct. This does not mean that misconduct is overwhelmingly of a sexual nature. CDS data shows that most misconduct allegations are not classified as SEA: between 2007 and 2021, 1,170 SEA allegations and 14,130 allegations of misconduct other than SEA were registered with the CDU/CDS (United Nations, n.d., Conduct in UN Field Missions). Because the UN does not make driving-related misconduct data public, despite the evidence that a significant number of driving offences are committed on the ground (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, pp. 89–91), it is likely that the proportion of sexual misbehaviour is in fact even less than current data suggests. In the humanitarian setting, information is yet to be made systematically available, apart from that concerning SEA allegations. Therefore, media reports, occasional NGO reports and SEA-related data by the UN give only a partial picture of alleged misconduct. While it is impossible to have a full image of what is happening, available data indicates that there are SEA incidents committed in humanitarian settings, exploiting the vulnerability of local communities. Overall, there is sufficient information that indicates that misconduct, including that of a criminal nature, is committed by UN and associated personnel working in Peace Operations and humanitarian assistance.

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HOW IS THE UN RESPONDING? There are four different paths for holding individual wrongdoers to account: criminal proceedings, disciplinary proceedings, administrative proceedings, and civil proceedings. For each type, there is more than one possible forum. For criminal proceedings, the UN cannot prosecute anyone; only states can. There are primarily two fora for prosecution: the host state, and the state of nationality of the accused personnel. The latter is especially important in cases where the suspect is uniformed personnel, as they are mostly selected and seconded by their states.5 However, military contingent personnel are, as normally agreed in the Status-of-Forces Agreement arranged between the UN and Host Countries, subject to the exclusive criminal jurisdiction of the Troop Contributing State (Oswald et al., 2019, pp. 45–64). Other states may have jurisdiction over certain criminal conduct, for example, if the suspect is in a third state on holiday or after the mission, but such cases remain exceptional. Disciplinary proceedings can be brought against the wrongdoer by the UN, by the contributing state if the personnel were sent through the state, by the military or police if the wrongdoer is uniformed personnel or seconded civilian personnel, or by the organization he/she works for if the wrongdoer is employed by or through an external entity. For most UN Offices and Agencies, there are no uniformed personnel, and the primary disciplinary jurisdiction is with the Office/Agency. Within the UN, there may be more than one entity involved in such proceedings, such as if the alleged perpetrator is a UN Volunteer. Administrative proceedings can be brought by the same actors identified for disciplinary proceedings, and multiple actors may be involved within the UN. Civil proceedings addressed in this chapter only include claims that were brought to the attention the UN, and subsequently handled directly. Evolution of Accountability Approach and Mechanisms The UN responded to allegations related to Peace Operations in an ad hoc manner until the 1990s. The Field Administration Book of 1974 gave general guidance for disciplinary procedures in relation to misconduct by Staff members, local hired staff, and Representatives of States and Military Observers, but there was no set mechanism to pursue investigations into misconduct (United Nations, 1975). The first established mechanism was the Board of Inquiry, whose only task was to collect facts regarding fatal or serious accidents involving UN staff members ‘in the mission area’. This was unrelated to disciplinary or administrative measures for misconduct but was a tool for investigating vehicular accidents. In the 1990s, with more Peace Operations and a greater number and variety of personnel per mission, the UN began developing internal accountability mechanisms, with the UN Administration Manual including relevant information on how to deal with complaints of misconduct (United Nations, 1993, p. 346). Ad hoc disciplinary measures (e.g. who had the authority to discipline), were clarified including for commanders and managers. The UN expanded the use of the Board of Inquiry (BoI), focusing on the need to protect the Organization’s financial interests (United Nations, 2005, para. 15).6 Complaints were lodged with different components, as there were no standardized information collection procedures nor any personnel assigned to investigate misconduct allegations (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, ch. 4). There is little information on the details of how the proceedings should have worked, but it appears that if a situation arose, prosecution would have taken place in the host state as the UN Office of Legal Affairs had concluded (United Nations, 2004, p. 323) that the host state could

Holding individuals serving the United Nations to account for wrongdoing  237 prosecute UN police personnel for criminal offences, and (United Nations, 2002, p. 466) that repatriation need not be provided for in a Status-of-Forces Agreement or a Status-of-Mission Agreement. Around 2000, those ad hoc measures started to become more systematized. Efforts were concentrated on clarifying disciplinary proceedings. The BoI was developed as a primary vehicle for addressing misconduct in Peace Operations (DPKO, 2003, paras 15–22). It was re-affirmed as an administrative body composed of three senior staff members. Its role was also clarified as being the body responsible for reviewing the findings of investigators and making recommendations regarding disciplinary action in individual cases of misconduct. Investigations were conducted by appointed investigators who were oftentimes the Board members themselves or UN Police personnel (United Nations, 2005, para. 27; Hansen, 2002, p. 30; Durch et al., 2009, p. 13). In the BoI system, resources posed a significant problem, as Board members served in addition to their ordinary functions. Investigators were not professional investigators, and the proceedings were lengthy (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, pp. 127–8). Board members were mission personnel, not independent from the mission hierarchy. These developments paralleled the introduction of mission-specific codes and offences in Peace Operations: for example, the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) set up a Trafficking in Persons Unit in 2000 (Oswald and Finnin, 2006, p. 22). Along with the BoI system, the UN OIOS was established as an independent office in the UN Secretariat in 1994. The OIOS was created as an oversight mechanism to assist the Secretary-General in fulfilling internal oversight responsibilities to increase organizational accountability. The initial remit was reviewing managerial responsibilities, auditing operations, and evaluating policy implementation. Although an Investigation Division existed within the OIOS, the office’s focus was on managerial misconduct, misconduct involving personal disputes, and misconduct related to the management of funds, assets, and procurement (UNGA, 1994, para. 5). With the publicity attracted by SEA allegations, the UN’s accountability approach was severely criticized, most notably by the ‘Zeid Report’. The main points of criticism were that UN efforts were ad hoc and inadequate, not holding the Organization and managers to account for their failure to tackle the issue of SEA (UNGA, 2005). The UN responded with multiple actions. The OIOS’ investigative capacity was reassessed in 2005, resulting in all cases of serious misconduct, including criminal conduct and SEA, being assigned to the OIOS Investigation Division.7 Along with that change, the BoI system was streamlined, returning to its original administrative and fact-finding role without the authority to recommend disciplinary action (UN DPKO/DFS, 2011, paras 35, 61, 63E(b); UN DPKO/DFS, 2008, para. 3). Since 2011, BoIs are only mandatory in specific circumstances – when an accident or incident results in death or serious injury of a mission member or third party if a mission member is involved; and major loss or damage of military or Formed Police Unit contingent-owned equipment. Other cases are to be investigated by the OIOS, and followed up by the Department of Peace Operations (DPO).8 Another significant step was taken in 2005 regarding the centralization and registration of allegations: the creation of Conduct and Discipline Teams (CDTs) and CDU. The CDU was formally established in the Department of Field Support in 2007, following the initial formation of a CDT in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in 2005. The CDU was located at UN Headquarters and provided ‘overall direction for conduct and discipline issues’ in Peace Operations, including policies, training, outreach, and dealing with misconduct allegations. CDTs worked in the

238  Handbook on governance in international organizations field as principal advisors to Heads of Mission on conduct and discipline issues. The CDU and CDTs became the central point for receiving complaints and registering them in a web-based database and referring them to the appropriate bodies for investigation and action. The new arrangement solved some problems, but not all. Resources were the biggest problem, and the OIOS suffered from a large backlog and pending cases. The new issue of the OIOS’ distance from the scene of misconduct made it difficult to collect evidence swiftly. In response, the UN eventually modified these arrangements. The OIOS started to send some of the less complicated cases back to the mission for investigation. These were investigated by mission personnel, such as police investigators and Security Officers. Security Officers are civilian mission personnel primarily tasked with ensuring the safety and security of the mission and its personnel (UNGA, 2003, para. 138). This arrangement brought back the earlier problem of the independence and quality of investigators but managed to address the backlog of cases and evidence collection. An important investigatory development after 2000 is that the UN has been increasingly cooperating with national investigations by the State contributing the personnel in question, and technically, the host state. This cooperation is seen through the conducting of joint investigations, providing information, or otherwise assisting or encouraging national investigation, and the UN providing its internal investigations findings to national authorities for possible prosecution. For cooperation to be feasible, it is important that National Investigation Officers (NIOs) are appointed by states contributing uniformed personnel. The UN has set a six-month timeline for the completion of investigation, and three months for SEA cases, and it is requesting that states do the same (United Nations, n.d., Conduct: Addressing). When misconduct amounts to a crime, criminal proceedings and subsequent sanctions are desirable. The UN refers criminal cases to states and follows up with states on their actions to hold individuals to account. In the early 2000s, one significant shift occurred. Before this point, the UN consistently stated that Peace Operations personnel, apart from military personnel, were subject to the host state’s criminal jurisdiction. However, with the increase of different and unexpected conditions in host states in newer Operations, namely either the complete lack of a legal system, or the lack of a system meeting international human rights law (IHRL) standards, the UN’s interests were no longer protected if it had to subject its personnel to criminal proceedings in the host state (UNGA, 2005, paras 67(b), 83). As a result, the UN started to pursue the possibility of criminal proceedings in sending states (Durch, 2010, p. 18). Two separate expert studies reached two different conclusions on this issue in 2005–06. The first considered the host state as the primary jurisdiction for criminal prosecution, and the second focused on possible prosecution in sending states (UNGA, 2006, 2008). Military contingent personnel, however, always have been subject to the exclusive criminal jurisdiction of their sending states. In recent years, the Sending States of Formed Police Unit (FPU) personnel have begun to agree to take necessary action to conduct criminal proceedings. For individual police officers and civilian personnel, there is no formal agreement to do so, as they are sent on an individual basis and the link between the personnel and their state of nationality/origin is not systematic. Nonetheless, the current primary forum for criminal proceedings is also assumed to be their state of nationality/origin (UNGA, 2015, para. 53). Referring a case or providing information to concerned states to elicit their action, including criminal proceedings, is not the end of accountability procedures. The UN follows up with the referred states to check what action has been taken. Since 2007, the UN has published the number of cases it referred to national authorities, and how many cases received a response

Holding individuals serving the United Nations to account for wrongdoing  239 (United Nations, n.d., Conduct in UN Field Missions: Data). The number of responses is simply the number of correspondences from the state concerned, irrespective of content (University of Tokyo, 2019). In January 2021, the UN changed the way it publishes the number of follow-ups, indicating actions taken by the UN and national authorities for SEA cases, while not publishing the number of follow-ups for other types of misconduct. Since the mid-2010s, particularly after Antonio Guterres started his term as SG, the UN has placed a strong focus on SEA. This was triggered by an independent report on a series of sexual abuse incidents against young children by members of international military contingents working alongside the UN operation in the Central African Republic in 2014. The forces were working with the authority of a UN Security Council resolution but not under the UN command. This attracted global attention, highlighting that the UN’s focus on dealing with this particular area of misconduct is neither neglected nor resolved (Westendorf, 2017). Issues highlighted in the report include MINUSCA leadership’s failure to follow up on allegations, the failure to centralize information swiftly and efficiently, UN staff’s failure to assume responsibility to take action, failure of facilitating any medical or safety measures for child victims, the UN’s overly formalistic and bureaucratic response and inaction, and the failure to prioritize victims' welfare and hold perpetrators to account (UNGA, 2016). The UN responded to this report with a series of SEA-focused UN-wide reforms (United Nations Peacekeeping, 2019). The SG appointed high-ranking positions to oversee and advise the UN on SEA, with a focus on victims’ rights. The first position to be established was the Special Coordinator of the SG on improving the United Nations response to sexual exploitation and abuse. Ms Jane Hull Lute was appointed to this position in February 2016, with Christian Saunders then taking over the role in September 2022. The UN’s new approach differs in that it is trying to tackle SEA issues with a coherent UN-wide approach, not only in Peace Operations or humanitarian settings. This initiative thus has cross-sectoral mechanisms in place, such as an Inter-Agency Task Force. Prevention is prioritized over post-incident response (United Nations, n.d., Special Coordinator). These characteristics indicate that the UN’s focus has shifted from considering SEA as the product of sporadic individual misbehaviour, to addressing SEA as an institutional issue. The other high-level appointment, made in August 2017, was that of Ms Jane Connors as the first UN Victims’ Rights Advocate. This position was established to strengthen the support that the UN gives to victims and ensure that a victim’s rights approach is integrated into the UN’s preventive and responsive actions related to SEA (United Nations, n.d., Victims’ Rights). Her office has become a major tool to shift the UN’s approach from pursuing accountability for individual wrongdoers to tackling contextual issues in order to protect victims’ rights (Deschamps et al., 2015). One of the related changes in the UN’s approach is that the UN has begun to acknowledge some extent of responsibility to address misconduct committed by personnel working outside of, but alongside the UN (UNGA/UNSC, 2013, Annex). With these two positions and additional mechanisms, including an Inter-Agency Task Force and Civil Society Advisors, the UN has set up a new four-pronged strategy to prevent and respond to SEA: (a) prioritize the rights and dignity of victims; (b) end impunity through strengthened reporting and investigations, including clarifying limitations on the United Nations to achieve criminal accountability; (c) engage with civil society and external partners; and (d) improve strategic communication for education and transparency. (United Nations Peacekeeping, 2019)

240  Handbook on governance in international organizations Procedures in response to SEA allegations have also been clarified during this reform. In particular, an information campaign on what misconduct is, what victims’ rights are, and where to report misconduct, has been conducted in multiple forums including radio broadcasts, posters, SMS information distribution, and through working with community-based mechanisms in high-risk areas. CDTs train trusted individuals in the local community, who are tasked with distributing information and receiving complaints from victims and the community, who are then linked to the UN (United Nations, 2018, pp. 3–4). Some additional tools to combat SEA have also been introduced. One such tool is the implementation of Immediate Response Teams to speedily gather and preserve evidence before an investigation is conducted. The members are not professional investigators but are appointed by the mission and receive training. The UN also started to assist SEA victims with paternity and childcare claims, mainly through the Office of the Victims’ Rights Advocate and CDS. Alleged personnel’s salary can be withheld to contribute to the Trust Fund for assisting actual and potential victims. In addition, the UN can repatriate entire uniformed units from the mission area where there are credible allegations of the units’ involvement in SEA. As part of Guterres’ three-fold reform to make the UN more transparent, agile and accountable (Wandel, n.d.), the Organization’s management system is being revised. The (former) Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Department of Political Affairs were reorganized as the Department of Peace Operations and Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (with the new Department of Operational Support replacing the former Department of Field Support). With the establishment of the Department of Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance, the CDU has been placed under the Office of Human Resources and remade into Conduct and Discipline Service (CDS). CDS is responsible for the UN Secretariat, not only for Peace Operations, but also for conduct and discipline issues. The Department advises the SG directly. With standard human resource planning linked with a performance appraisal system (United Nations, n.d., UMOJA), as well as internal administration of justice, it is hoped that individuals’ misconduct is prevented, and accountability will be sought more systematically. There is a visible shift to make information available to the public, and to other entities for accountability purposes. In addition to general data on misconduct, after much discussion within the Organization, the nationality of alleged perpetrators for SEA incidents is now revealed, if the accused are uniformed personnel. In 2020, the SG introduced a comprehensive data strategy to increase the effective use of data throughout the UN system (United Nations, n.d., Secretary-General’s Data Strategy). The SG continues to encourage leaders of offices and agencies to remove bureaucratic obstacles to sharing information on misconduct allegations and investigation with interested entities within and outside the UN. In summary, there have been significant developments in the UN’s practice in holding its personnel to account for their misconduct. The UN has responded to major scandals involving its field personnel with proportional reforms, largely influenced by the nature of these scandals. This may be the root of why the UN’s efforts have almost exclusively focused on sexual misconduct. There has been a shift in the accountability machinery from ad hoc response to systematic response, from response at the field-level to UN system-wide response, and from the ‘bad apple’ or ‘boys will be boys’ approach to institutional response taking the context in which misconduct is committed into consideration. Recent reform is significant in that the focus has moved from protecting the Organization’s operational effectiveness to protecting victims’ human rights and well-being.

Holding individuals serving the United Nations to account for wrongdoing  241 Ongoing Challenges Despite these developments, certain problems remain. One is local communities’ confusion on to whom to report. With the introduction of the rules that all Peace Operations personnel have an obligation to receive misconduct complaints, reporting should have become easier, but with the increased number of focal points, confusion remains (UNGA, 2021). This is coupled with distrust of the UN procedures by victims and the local population (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, pp. 143–4). Another issue is victim and witness protection. Victims, witnesses, and those who assist them to report misconduct fear retaliation from perpetrators, community members, and parents in the case of child victims and witnesses (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, pp. 141–3). In recent reforms, the UN has made efforts to strengthen victim and witness protection and support by utilizing victims’ rights representatives; mapping out, liaising, and assisting local victim support; and providing support using a Trust Fund for SEA victims (United Nations, n.d., Trust Fund). These efforts are evaluated as making visible progress and commitment across the UN system. Whistle-blower protection is another area where problems remain. A large proportion of UN personnel had reported that they do not trust that they will be protected if they report misconduct. In cases and testimonies by whistle-blowers, they expressed concern over retaliation they received, and discrimination by their managers for reporting misconduct (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, pp. 150–54). This led the UN to set out a policy on whistle-blower protection in 2005 and which it updated in 2017 (United Nations, 2005a; 2017), and entrust whistle-blower protection with the Ethics Office. In the UN Secretariat, the policy prohibits any ‘direct or indirect detrimental action recommended, threatened or taken’ (United Nations, 2005a, para. 3) as a result either of staff reporting misconduct or cooperating with an investigation/ inquiry (Martel, 2017, p. 271). The reform to these policies in 2017 added a procedure for an alternate Chair of the Ethics Panel to appraise Ethics Review decisions. Because the Ethics Panel is chaired by the head of the Ethics Office, there remains scepticism on how this added procedure can work independently, impartially, and effectively (Martel, 2017, pp. 284–5). An additional protection is that the OIOS and the Ethics Office can take preventive action. Still in 2017, one-third of UN personnel responded that they would not be protected if they reported misconduct (UN JIU, 2018). Separately administered organs and programmes within the UN have different whistle-blower protection mechanisms, but an independent review on whistle-blower policies within the UN system concluded that existing protection against retaliation policies are marked by inconsistencies and limitations in operational effectiveness and tend to vary in terms of the scope of activities and personnel covered, mechanisms and channels for reporting, and processes and procedures for mitigating and handling claims of retaliation. (UN JIU, 2018, p. iii)

After reports of misconduct are initially received, an effective system is necessary to centralize information. The CDU/T has functioned as a central repository for information since its establishment, holding records in a central database (United Nations, n.d., Conduct in UN Field Missions: Data). While initially only for Peace Operations, the CDS has started to cover the whole UN Secretariat. This works well with one exception. The CDS/U does not have access to complaints made directly to the OIOS.9

242  Handbook on governance in international organizations Within the UN Secretariat, recent reform is pursuing a simpler and smoother centralization of information. There are uniform processes of reporting, recording, and tracking SEA and other misconduct for the Secretariat under the Case Management Tracking System. Other agencies and offices have their own centralization of information within them. For SEA, a 2021 survey found that 104 initiatives had been in place, some contradictory, some long unfinished, which confuses personnel, especially in non-Peace Operation settings, agencies, and offices. The fact that code cables were used in providing updates on policies while leaving the outdated 2003 SG’s Bulletin untouched makes it difficult for personnel to find the right policies. This confusion and distrust in the system is supported by testimonies (UNGA, 2021a). Where the alleged misconduct is criminal, effective investigation is critical to enable the collection of the type and quality of evidence that can be used in criminal proceedings. Earlier, with the ad hoc system and Boards of Inquiry, there were issues regarding the quality, independence, promptness and thoroughness of investigation, largely because investigators were amateur in criminal investigation, based in the same UN mission, and lacked investigatory skills or tools (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, pp. 158–62). When all criminal misconduct allegations were assigned to the OIOS in the mid-2000s, some of these earlier problems were solved, as OIOS investigators are employed for investigating misconduct with investigatory skills.10 Moreover, OIOS has a quality control procedure, and reports directly to the SG (UNGA, 1994, para. 5). Remaining challenges include how to promptly conduct professional investigation. When the OIOS sends back an investigation to the mission, the original issues regarding the quality and duration of the investigation remain present, but the OIOS nonetheless continues to refer most cases to the mission and train those personnel who are involved in investigation within the mission (UNGA, 2010; UN OIOS, 2015). The introduction of Rapid Response Teams to secure evidence may partially address these issues. Disciplinary or administrative investigation has different standards. UN personnel employed for investigation, such as OIOS investigators, would be employed for that purpose. While their investigation likely suffers less from the issue of effectiveness, testimonies and cases indicate that due process may be an issue (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, pp. 162–72). When allegations involve more than one UN entity, the SG is encouraging joint investigations. Sanctions for misconduct by UN and associated personnel are conducted by various bodies. For UN Staff and associated personnel, including those in Peace Operations, the UN can initiate administrative and disciplinary proceedings and impose administrative/disciplinary sanctions. These can include administrative leave, reprimands, and termination of contracts (United Nations, 2018b, Rule 10.2.a). For SEA cases, payment can be withheld. For uniformed personnel deployed in units in Peace Operations, their respective organizations – military or police – have their own disciplinary/administrative sanctions. Where civil claims are made against UN personnel in Peace Operations, there may be consequences for the accused. Examples include claims for paternity and child support, and complaints involving traffic accidents. Whether criminal, disciplinary, or administrative, issues of follow-up and access to information arise when the UN refers proceedings to another entity. Even though for uniformed personnel in Peace Operations it is an obligation of the contributing states to pursue criminal proceedings, as written in the agreement between the UN and contributing states, issues remain with contributing states’ actions against individual wrongdoers, and their provision of information to the UN. The SG is also encouraging the leaders of offices and agencies to

Holding individuals serving the United Nations to account for wrongdoing  243 share information on a need-to-know basis on misconduct allegations and investigation with interested entities outside the UN. With criminal proceedings, barriers may exist even if the right kind of information is collected by the UN, or host or sending states. The first legal barrier may be criminal jurisdiction, in particular, enforcement jurisdiction.11 Jurisdiction needs to be considered at both international and national levels. Under international law, there is nothing that blocks willing host or contributing states from prosecuting wrongdoers. As the host state is where the criminal conduct is committed, it is the territorial state. This is the least contested mode of jurisdiction. For the contributing state, its exercise of jurisdiction would be under the principle of active nationality, which is firmly established in international law (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, pp. 204–8). At the national level, the host state has no issue, as virtually all states assert territorial jurisdiction (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, ch. 5). While issues may arise for contributing states, the author’s research found that jurisdiction is secured for the majority of UN police personnel for serious crimes either through the assertion of extra-territorial jurisdiction over nationals for all crimes, extra-territorial jurisdiction over nationals for particular acts, or extra-territorial jurisdiction over certain categories of persons including government officials and/or police personnel. For military contingent personnel, as previously mentioned, criminal jurisdiction is exclusively in the hands of their contributing states. There is, then, a potential issue of immunity. For individual criminal accountability, the most relevant type of immunity is the one that shields individuals from legal proceedings. Because this type of immunity derives from the needs of the UN to fulfil its purposes (Reinisch, 2011, p. 134), its protection is afforded to the extent necessary for the personnel to carry out their duties (UN Charter, Article 105–1). Accordingly, only very high-ranking personnel enjoy immunity from prosecution for all acts, and the majority of personnel are afforded only functional immunity: immunity for official acts (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, ch. 6). In addition, the UN has declared that there is no immunity for sexual abuse (United Nations, 2018a). This means that immunity does not shield prosecution for most crimes. The UN’s implementation practice is mixed, sometimes invoking immunity from the host state even though the allegation is clearly of a criminal manner, justifying it on the accused personnel’s human rights and due process rights, especially in Peace Operations where the host state’s judiciary is weak or is not perceived to be functioning in accordance with human rights standards (Kihara-Hunt, 2017, pp. 272–86). There are also certain practical barriers for prosecution by willing states. There may be issues for contributing states regarding evidence collection, the evidential standard for criminal proceedings, access to victims and witnesses and their protection, and difficulty locating the accused due to the rotation of personnel, especially in Peace Operations.

CONCLUSION This chapter has laid out various UN mechanisms of holding individual UN personnel to account for criminal, disciplinary, administrative, and civil misconduct of varying severity. Depending on the type of misconduct, the Office or Agency the personnel belong to, and the category of personnel, there are various paths towards accountability. It was noted that a full picture of the scale and nature of misconduct is impossible, due to the lack of systematic collection of information despite the UN’s efforts to improve its practice in

244  Handbook on governance in international organizations this respect. Nonetheless, it is clear that serious misconduct is committed, sometimes amounting to crime. The UN has focused its efforts in dealing with sexual misconduct. Accountability mechanisms in the UN have been developed in its Peace Operations settings first, followed by in the context of humanitarian assistance. Since the beginning of Guterres’ term as SG, the Organization has made efforts to develop system-wide accountability mechanisms. There are four different kinds of paths for individual accountability: criminal, disciplinary, administrative, and civil. For criminal accountability, there are two primary fora for prosecution: the host state, and the state of nationality of the accused personnel. Disciplinary and administrative accountability can be delivered by the UN, the sending organization, such as military, police, or ministry, if a sending organization exists, or sending states for seconded personnel. Multiple proceedings may occur. Civil accountability can be between individuals, through the UN, or through the unit to which the personnel belong, such as in the case of uniformed personnel in Peace Operations. This chapter focused on how the UN deals with accountability of individuals. It described the development of accountability mechanisms, mainly focusing on those in Peace Operations and humanitarian assistance in the field. From a generally ad hoc response before the 1990s, the UN started to establish policies and mechanisms to deal with individual wrongdoings, largely responding to scandals on sexual misconduct. From the first establishment of the Board of Inquiry mechanism, the Organization has shifted to having conduct and discipline procedures with the CDU/Ts, while entrusting the OIOS with investigation. The quality of investigation, awareness-raising within and outside the UN on misconduct issues, related policies, and where to report have improved in the latter half of the 2000s following recommendations in the Zeid Report. Most investigations are eventually sent back to the mission and office where the accused personnel belong, but information has been increasingly centralized. This can be seen in post-2015 reforms following sexual misconduct allegations in the Central African Republic. Certain issues, nonetheless, remain. New and sometimes conflicting policies contribute to confusion within the UN and local populations about where to report and what policies are. Another issue is insufficient victim and witness protection, coupled with the local population's distrust of the system. A similar issue exists within the UN, and that is the third issue: insufficient whistle-blower protection and UN personnel’s perception of lack of protection for reporting misconduct. The dilemma between rapid response and quality of investigation, as well as having the right type of personnel with appropriate skills to investigate is the next issue. Where criminal proceedings are warranted, it is important that the right type of personnel collects the right type of information swiftly. For states to bring criminal proceedings against UN personnel there may be legal issues of jurisdiction and immunity. However, the author’s research found that most cases would not block willing host or contributing states from prosecuting those who commit misconduct. Gaps remain in the UN’s follow-up on actions – criminal, disciplinary, or administrative – taken against uniformed personnel with substantiated misconduct allegations. It is also possible that practical barriers, such as access to victims/witnesses or evidence collection, prevents states from acting. Reforms since 2015 have addressed many of these issues. The UN made four major shifts in its practice. The first is that the conduct and discipline approach has been turned into a victims’ rights approach. The second is that the UN has started to implement accountability policies across the UN system. The third is that the UN has concentrated its efforts in improving transparency regarding misconduct and how it handles allegations. The fourth is that the

Holding individuals serving the United Nations to account for wrongdoing  245 UN is finally pursuing leadership accountability. These shifts are expected to continue with strong support by states, as seen in priorities for Action for Peacekeeping. The UN is working alongside Regional Organizations such as the African Union (AU) on accountability for peacekeepers (Burke, 2017). It appears that the UN and member states are, in fact, moving towards making significant improvements in holding individuals to account.

NOTES 1. For example, more than 100 Sri Lankan military contingent personnel were repatriated from a mission in Haiti for their alleged involvement in sexual offences. ‘Haiti – Over 100 Sri Lankan blue helmets repatriated on disciplinary grounds – UN’, UN News, 2 November 2007. Available at https://​news​.un​.org/​en/​story/​2007/​11/​238162. 2. UN, ‘UN News’ [Online]. Available at https://​news​.un​.org/​en/​ (accessed 18 January 2022). Other public information sites include UN, ‘UN Wire: Smartbrief’ [Online]. Available at https://​www2​ .smartbrief​.com/​getLast​.action​?mode​=​last​&​b​=​un​_wire (accessed 18 January 2022). 3. To be published on the University of Tokyo’s Humanities Center website in late 2022: see Humanities Center ‘Humanities Center’ [Online]. Available at https://​hmc​.u​-tokyo​.ac​.jp/​en/​ (accessed 18 January 2022). 4. At the end of 2021, there were about 67,000 military personnel, 7,000 police personnel and 12,000 civilian personnel. UN, ‘United Nations Peacekeeping: Data’. Available at https://​peacekeeping​.un​ .org/​en/​data. 5. Military contingent members are selected and sent to mission by their states and remain under national command. There are two kinds of police officers: Individual Police Officers (IPOs) selected and recruited directly by the UN (even for this category, they are mostly seconded by their sending states) and Formed Police Unit (FPU) members, selected and seconded by their states, remaining under national command while on mission. 6. According to UN, ‘Comprehensive Review of All Aspects of Boards of Inquiry Report’ (2005) UN Doc. (on file with author), para. 15, the rationale for BoI was ‘clearly financial’. 7. UN, ‘Code Cable on the Guidance on Cooperation with OIOS on Investigation’ (22 November 2005) (on file with author), para. 2. 8. Even where a situation demands a mandatory BoI, that is, where serious misconduct is involved, it is generally OIOS that investigates. If so, no other investigation is conducted. E-mail communication with senior UN Official, 16 September 2014. 9. Online interview with two senior UN officials, 17 November 2021. 10. For the skills required for OIOS personnel in investigation, for example, see UN Jobs (18 January 2012), ‘Investigation, Vienna’ [Online]. Available at http://​unjobs​.org/​vacancies/​1326958725958. 11. Two types of jurisdiction need to be distinguished: prescriptive and enforcement. The former is about the legally binding criminal law norms themselves, whilst enforcement jurisdiction is about the enforcement of those norms. The consideration in this chapter is on what hinders criminal prosecution, and therefore this chapter focuses on enforcement jurisdiction.

REFERENCES Burke, R. (2017), ‘Due Diligence and UN Support for African Union Security Forces: Peacekeeper Sexual Violence Exploitation and Abuse,’ Journal of International Peacekeeping vol. 21, pp. 1–61. Deschamps, M., Jallow, H. B., and Sooka, Y. (2015), ‘Taking Action on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by Peacekeepers – Report of an Independent Review on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by International Peacekeeping Forces in the Central African Republic,’ New York, United Nations. Available at https://​reliefweb​.int/​report/​central​-african​-republic/​taking​-action​-sexual​-exploitation​ -and​-abuse​-peacekeepers​-report.

246  Handbook on governance in international organizations DPKO (2003), ‘Directives for Disciplinary Matters Involving Civilian Police Officers and Military Observers,’ UN Doc. DPKO/CPD/DDCPO/2003/001 and DPKO/MD/03/00994. Department of Peacekeeping Operations, United Nations. Available at https://​police​.un​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​ directives​_for​_disciplinary​_matters​_involving​_civilian​_police​_officers​.pdf. Durch, W. J. (2010), ‘United Nations Police Evolution, Present Capacity and Future Tasks,’ Discussion Paper 10-03, GRIPS Policy Research Center, Tokyo. Available at https://​www​.grips​.ac​.jp/​r​-center/​wp​ -content/​uploads/​10​-03​.pdf. Durch, W. J., Andrews, K. N., England, M. L., and Wood, M. C. (2009), Improving Criminal Accountability in United Nations Peace Operations, Stimson Center Report No. 65 Rev. 1, Washington DC, The Henry L. Stimson Center. Hansen, A. S. (2002), From Congo to Kosovo: Civilian Police in Peace Operations, Adelphi Paper 343, Oxford, Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Kihara-Hunt, A. (2017), Holding UNPOL to Account: Individual Criminal Accountability of United Nations Police Personnel, Leiden: Brill Nijhoff. Martel, B. (2017), ‘The Protection of United Nations Whistleblowers against Retaliation,’ in Baetens, F. and Bismuth, R. (eds), The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals, Leiden: Brill Nijhoff. Oswald, B., Durham, H., and Bates, A. (2019), Documents on the Law of UN Peace Operations 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oswald, B. and Finnin, S. J. (2006), ‘Combating the Trafficking of Persons on Peace Operations,’ Journal of International Peacekeeping: The Yearbook of International Peace Operations, vol. 10 No. 1, pp. iii–32. Reinisch, A. (2011), ‘Privileges and Immunities,’ in Klabbers, J. and Wallendahl, A. (eds), Research Handbook on the Law of International Organizations, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 132–55. Schmalenbach, K. (2006), ‘Third Party Liability of International Organizations – A Study of Claim Settlement in the Course of Military Operations and International Administrations,’ in Langholtz, H., Kondoch, B., and Wells, A. (eds), International Peacekeeping: The Yearbook of International Peace Operations, Vol. 10, Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, pp. 33–51. UN DPKO/DFS (2008), ‘Policy Direction on the Boards of Inquiry,’ 27 May, UN Document Ref. 2008.23, New York: United Nations. UN DPKO/DFS (2011), ‘Standing Operating Procedure “Board of Inquiry”,’ 1 March, UN Document Ref. 2011.15, New York: United Nations. UN JIU (2018), ‘Review of Whistle-Blower Policies and Practices in United Nations System Organizations,’ Joint Inspection Unit, UN Document JIU/REP/2018/4, Geneva: United Nations. Available at https://​www​.unjiu​.org/​sites/​www​.unjiu​.org/​files/​jiu​_rep​_2018​_4​_english​_0​.pdf. UN OIOS (2015), ‘Investigations Manual,’ January, Office of Internal Oversight Services Investigation Division, New York: United Nations. Available at https://​oios​.un​.org/​sites/​oios​.un​.org/​files/​general/​ investigations​_manual​.pdf. UNGA (1994), ‘Review of the Efficiency of the Administrative and Financial Functioning of the United Nations,’ 12 August, UN General Assembly Document A/RES/48/218 B, New York: United Nations. Available at https://​documents​-dds​-ny​.un​.org/​doc/​UNDOC/​GEN/​N94/​333/​10/​PDF/​N9433310​.pdf​ ?OpenElement. UNGA (2003), ‘Report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services,’ 11 September, UN General Assembly Document A/58/364, New York: United Nations. Available at https://​documents​-dds​-ny​.un​ .org/​doc/​UNDOC/​GEN/​N03/​520/​43/​IMG/​N0352043​.pdf​?OpenElement. UNGA (2005); ‘A Comprehensive Strategy to Eliminate Future Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations,’ 24 March, UN General Assembly Document A/59/710, New York: United Nations. Available at https://​reliefweb​.int/​report/​world/​comprehensive​-strategy​ -eliminate​-future​-sexual​-exploitation​-and​-abuse​-united​-nations. UNGA (2006), ‘Ensuring the Accountability of United Nations Staff and Experts on Mission with Respect to Criminal Acts Committed in Peacekeeping Operations,’ 16 August, UN Document A/60/980, New York: United Nations. UNGA (2008), ‘Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Criminal Accountability of United Nations Officials and Experts on Mission,’ 15 April, UN Document A/63/54, New York: United Nations.

Holding individuals serving the United Nations to account for wrongdoing  247 UNGA (2010), ‘Report of the Office of Oversight Services on Peacekeeping,’ 23 February, UN Document A/64/326 (Part II), New York: United Nations. UNGA (2015), ‘Report of the Secretary-General on the Special Measures for Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse,’ 13 February, UN Document A/69/779, New York: United Nations. UNGA (2016), ‘Report of an Independent Review on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by International Peacekeeping Forces in the Central African Republic,’ 23 June, UN Document A/ /71/99, New York: United Nations. UNGA (2021), ‘Special Measures for Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse: Report of the Secretary-General,’ 15 February, UN Document A/75/754, New York: United Nations. UNGA (2021a), ‘Evaluation of the Prevention, Response and Victim Support Efforts against Sexual Exploitation and Abuse by United Nations Secretariat Staff and Related Personnel: Report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services,’ 22 March, UN Document A/75/820, New York: United Nations. UNGA/UNSC (2013), ‘Human Rights Due Diligence Policy on United Nations Support to Non-United Nations Security Forces,’ annexed to UNGA/SC, ‘Identical Letters Dated 25 February 2013 from the Secretary-General Addressed to the President of the General Assembly and to the President of the Security Council’ 5 March, UN Document A/67/775–S/2013/110. Available at https://​documents​-dds​ -ny​.un​.org/​doc/​UNDOC/​GEN/​N13/​249/​98/​PDF/​N1324998​.pdf​?OpenElement. United Nations (1993), ‘Liability of the Organization for Claims Concerning Loss of or damage to Personal Property of the Members of the Peacekeeping Contingents – Report of the Secretary-General Entitled “Review of the Background and Development of Reimbursement of Member States Contributing Troops to Peacekeeping Operations” (A/44/605/Add.1) of 12 October 1989 – Financial Arrangements with States Contributing Troops for UNIFIL and UNFICYP – Reimbursability of Extra and Extraordinary Costs as They are Incurred by the States as a Result of their Soldiers’ Participation in UNIFIL and UNFICYP – Loss and Damage to Personal Property Fall within the Category of Extra and Extraordinary Costs (15 July 1993)’, 1993 United Nations Juridical Yearbook, New York: Codification Division Publication. Available at https://​legal​.un​.org/​unjuridicalyearbook/​volumes/​ 1993/​. United Nations (2002), ‘Legal Status of Certain Categories of United Nations Personnel Serving in Peacekeeping Operations – Civilian Police and Military Observers – Military Members of Military Components,’ 2002 United Nations Juridical Yearbook, New York: Codification Division Publication. Available at https://​legal​.un​.org/​unjuridicalyearbook/​volumes/​2002/​. United Nations (2004), ‘Letter to the Acting Chair of the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations, United Nations, Regarding Immunities of Civilian Police and Military Personnel,’ 2004 UN Juridical Yearbook, New York: Codification Division Publication. Available at https://​legal​.un​ .org/​unjuridicalyearbook/​volumes/​2004/​. United Nations (2005), ‘Comprehensive Review of All Aspects of Boards of Inquiry Report,’ UN Doc. (on file with author). United Nations (2005a), ‘Secretary-General’s Bulletin on Protection against Retaliation for Reporting Misconduct and for Cooperating with Duly Authorized Audits or Investigations,’ 19 December, UN Document ST/SGB/2005/21. United Nations (2006), ‘Report of the Office of Internal Oversight Services on the Global Review of Discipline in Field Missions led by the Department of Peacekeeping Operations,’ General Assembly Doc. A/60/713, 8 March, New York: United Nations. Available at https://​documents​-dds​-ny​.un​.org/​ doc/​UNDOC/​GEN/​N06/​264/​78/​PDF/​N0626478​.pdf​?OpenElement. United Nations (2017), ‘Protection against Retaliation for Reporting Misconduct and for Cooperating with Duly Authorised Audits and Investigations,’ 20 January, UN Document ST/SGB/2017/2/Rev.1, New York: United Nations. United Nations (2018), ‘Office of the Victims’ Rights Advocate: Annual Report 2018.’ Available at https://​www​.un​.org/​preventing​-sexual​-exploitation​-and​-abuse/​sites/​www​.un​.org​.preventing​-sexual​ -exploitation​-and​-abuse/​files/​ovra​_annual​_report​_2018​.docx​_feb​_19​_final​_with​_signature​.pdf. United Nations (2018a), ‘Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General,’ 14 February. Available at https://​www​.un​.org/​press/​en/​2018/​db180214​.doc​.htm. United Nations (2018b), ‘Secretary-General’s Bulletin on Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations,’ 1 January, UN Document ST/SGB/2018/1, New York: United Nations.

248  Handbook on governance in international organizations United Nations (2021), ‘A4P+ Priorities for 2021–2023,’ A4P Background Paper V9, New York: United Nations. Available at https://​peacekeeping​.un​.org/​sites/​default/​files/​a4p​_background​_paper​.pdf. United Nations (1975), Field Administration Handbook, Field Operations Service, UN Document ST/ OGS/L.2/Rev.3, January, New York: United Nations. Available at https://​digitallibrary​.un​.org/​record/​ 661546​?ln​=​en. United Nations (n.d.), ‘Conduct in UN Field Missions: Addressing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.’ Available at https://​conduct​.unmissions​.org/​addressing. United Nations (n.d.), ‘Conduct in UN Field Missions: Data,’ Conduct and Discipline Service, Department for Management Strategy, Policy and Compliance. Online database, available at https://​ conduct​.unmissions​.org/​data. United Nations (n.d.), ‘Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse: Data on Allegations: UN System-wide.’ Online database, available at https://​www​.un​.org/​preventing​-sexual​-exploitation​-and​-abuse/​content/​ data​-allegations​-un​-system​-wide. United Nations (n.d.), ‘Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse: Special Coordinator.’ Available at https://​www​.un​.org/​preventing​-sexual​-exploitation​-and​-abuse/​content/​un​-special​-coordinator​-0. United Nations (n.d.), ‘Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse: Trust Fund in Support of Victims of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.’ Available at https://​www​.un​.org/​preventing​-sexual​-exploitation​-and​ -abuse/​content/​trust​-fund. United Nations (n.d.), ‘Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse: Victims’ Rights Advocate.’ Available at https://​www​.un​.org/​preventing​-sexual​-exploitation​-and​-abuse/​content/​victims​-rights​-advocate. United Nations (n.d.), ‘Secretary-General’s Data Strategy.’ Available at https://​www​.un​.org/​en/​content/​ datastrategy/​index​.shtml. United Nations (n.d.), ‘UMOJA.’ Available at https://​umoja​.un​.org/​. United Nations Peacekeeping (2019), ‘Fact Sheet on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse – Peacekeeping Initiatives in Action,’ 18 December, New York: United Nations. Available at https://​peacekeeping​.un​ .org/​en/​fact​-sheet​-sexual​-exploitation​-and​-abuse​-peacekeeping​-initiatives​-action. University of Tokyo Humanities Center (2019), ‘Roundtable on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peace Operations: Thematic Summary Report,’ 3 September. Available at https://​hmc​.u​-tokyo​.ac​.jp/​ja/​open​ -research/​uploads/​sea​-roundtable​-report​-final​.pdf. Wandel, J. (n.d.), Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on UN Reforms. Video linked from UN, ‘United to Reform,’ New York: United Nations. Available at https://​reform​.un​.org/​. Westendorf, J.-K. (2017), ‘WPS, CRSV and Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Peace Operations: Making Sense of the Missing Links,’ London School of Economics Blog, 5 October. Available at https://​blogs​ .lse​.ac​.uk/​wps/​2017/​10/​05/​wps​-crsv​-and​-sexual​-exploitation​-and​-abuse​-in​-peace​-operations​-making​ -sense​-of​-the​-missing​-links​-jasmine​-kim​-westendorf​-92017/​.

16. Accountability and the digital transformation of international organizations Niamh Kinchin

INTRODUCTION As of 2021, the United Nations (UN) was involved in over 200 artificial intelligence (AI) projects managed by 40 different agencies (ITU, 2021). A growing focus on AI for programme innovation and delivery reflects the UN’s goal of integrating ‘new technologies’ to ‘accelerate the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and to facilitate their alignment with the values enshrined in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the norms and standards of International Laws’ (UN, 2018). In the march to embrace digital transformation, International Organizations (IOs) like the UN must take heed. Although diffusion of innovation will have desirable consequences, it may also create unforeseen, dysfunctional effects (Roger, 2003). Undesirable effects of integrating new technologies into an organization cannot be only measured by their level of dysfunctionality. New technologies may impact the accountability obligations of an IO in ways wholly unanticipated. It is imperative that IOs prepare and plan for the diffusion of technological innovation to account for both positive and negative consequences of digital transformation on accountability. An organization undergoes a ‘digital transformation’ when technology is incorporated into its systems and processes in a way that fundamentally changes how it operates. ‘Technologies’ include Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), which are a combination of digital hardware, software, media, social media, and delivery systems, as well as more contemporary iterations such as AI, machine learning, blockchain, and robotics. The digital transformation of IOs reflect an expectation that as highly visible, well-resourced global bodies, they will innovate to respond to rapid changes in the global social, political, and economic contexts. The first part of this chapter presents accountability as an epistemic blind spot in the digital transformation of IOs, meaning that its nature must be fully comprehended before technologies are diffused. The second part argues that to identify and understand the accountability of an IO, its accountability relationships must be identified. Once the accountability relationships of an IO have been identified, the way that technology will impact the obligations that arise from those relationships can be planned for. The third part focuses on the inter-institutional and participatory relationships of IOs and suggests potential challenges and opportunities presented by digital transformations for their respective accountability obligations. The conclusion considers practical measures that could be taken to plan for digital transformation in a way that takes into account an IO’s accountability obligations.

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ACCOUNTABILITY AS AN EPISTEMIC BLIND SPOT OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Accountability has been described as ‘complex and chameleon like’ (Mulgan, 2000) and ‘a placeholder for multiple contemporary anxieties’ (Mashaw, 2005). It ‘is used as a synonym for many loosely defined political desiderata, such as good governance, transparency, equity, democracy, efficiency, responsiveness, responsibility, and integrity’ (Bovens, 2010). The variability of how accountability is understood means that it can be overlooked when new innovations are diffused throughout an organization. Accountability manifests differently depending on the frame, forum (Bovens, 2010) or regime within which it is placed. According to Dubnick (2002), accountability can be understood through an ‘institutional frame’, an ‘organizing/organizational frame’ or through ‘complex environments’ Mashaw (2005) conceives accountability as regimes, which he groups into three ‘family groups’: public governance, accountability in the market, and social accountability. Each group is inhabited by genera of accountability regimes. Within the family group of public governance is the genera of political accountability, administrative accountability, and legal accountability. The nature of accountability in the market will depend on the type of market in question. In product and service markets, for example, the overriding concern is responsibility to consumers, whereas financial markets are concerned with accountability to those who provide debt and equity capital. Social accountability depends on ‘community and culture’, societal and internally generated norms. The chameleon nature of accountability means that its form and content depend on the context within which it is located. Changeability can translate to opacity if an organization does not take time to ‘map out’ accountability. Without a clear understanding of what it is accountable for, and to whom, the organization may reconceive issues that impact its functionality or values to fit its own narrative. Consequently, accountability becomes an epistemic blind spot. Epistemic blind spots are a form of hidden bias (Bjola and Zaiotti, 2020) or an implicit belief over which actors do not always have ‘conscious, intentional control’ (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013). People tend to favour information that confirms their beliefs, meaning they choose not to consider how they may need to change in the face of contradictory information (Choo, 2008). People choose to ignore information that challenges their social perception, impression formation, and the judgments that motivate their actions (Banaji and Greenwald, 2013). Instead, they question its reliability and re-interpret its significance (Choo, 2008). Epistemic blind spots arise within an organization when courses of action are taken without the ability to assess the full implications of the available information (Bjola and Zaiotti, 2020). Decision-makers can ‘miss important signals, form a distorted view of the unfolding events, delay their reactions, or draw the wrong lessons from their experience’ (Bjola and Zaiotti, 2020, p. 290). As Choo (2008, p. 34) says, ‘A stream of warning signals is not heeded because the information does not fit existing beliefs, or because there is no frame of reference for the warnings to be recognized.’ Instead, an organization seeks to justify its actions by looking for evidence that supports its beliefs and decision-making premises (Moldoveanu, 2002). At the same time, the organization either ignores information that contradicts its premises or strengthens its theories to account for the contrary evidence (Choo, 2008). The introduction of new technologies into an organization can create epistemic blind spots if it is assumed they will improve functionality without a corresponding acknowledgment of

Accountability and the digital transformation of IOs  251 the possibility of dysfunctional or undesirable effects (Roger, 2003). For example, versatile AI systems combined with advances in machine learning make it highly likely that unforeseeable and unexpected AI behaviour will arise (Scherer, 2016). In 2017, Amazon abandoned an AI-based recruitment tool because it developed a bias for male candidates. The system was trained to vet applicants by observing patterns in resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year period. As most of the resumes came from men, the algorithm learnt to disregard activities that were associated with women (Dastin, 2018). Changes to individuals or social systems impacted by an IO’s decisions and actions can be an unanticipated consequence of technological innovation (Roger, 2003). A social system is ‘a set of interrelated units that are engaged in joint problem solving to accomplish a common goal’ (Roger, 2003, p. 23). An example of a relevant social system is indigenous farmers whose agricultural practices help the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) tackle issues of food security and climate change. Individual or social systems that are impacted by an IO’s decisions and actions are parties to an accountability relationship with the IO. An IO’s accountability relationships determine to whom it is accountable and what it should be accountable for, or its accountability obligations. Accountability obligations reflect an obligation, responsibility, compulsion, need, option, choice, or alternative that compels a body to perform an act because they will be ‘held to account’ by another party to do so. Accountability relationships of IOs can be classified according to whether they are institutional, state-based, or participatory. Institutional relationships are those that exist between, or within, organizations and can be characterized as intra-institutional or inter-institutional. Intra-institutional relationships exist between an IO and the actors that operate within its parameters, such as a secretariat, staff, committees, or boards. Inter-institutional relationships occur when an IO engages in transactions with other institutions. For example, some agencies of the UN have established relationships with NGOs that involve working together in humanitarian situations. The relationships that an IO has with states will depend upon its level of formality and its place within the framework of international law and relations. Perhaps the most recognizable example of a relationship between an IO and states is that between the UN and member states. An individual or group who is subject to, or affected by, an IO’s actions has a relationship with that body that can be classified as ‘participatory’. A participatory model of accountability is defined as relationships where ‘the performance of power-wielders is evaluated by those who are affected by their actions’ (Grant and Keohane, 2005). Those affected by the actions of a ‘power-wielder’ include individuals who are the subject of decision-making and/ or whose rights have been impacted by the actions of an IO. For some IOs, all members of the global public are potentially affected by its actions. For instance, the UN’s preamble, which determines to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’ and ‘reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights’ applies to all global citizens. Subject-specific IOs, such as the World Health Organization, potentially have a similar scope. Other IOs have a participatory relationship with a specific population, such as refugees (UNHCR), migrants (International Organization for Migration (IOM)), or European citizens and residents (European Union). The nature of an IO’s accountability relationships depend upon its structure, functions, and objectives. An organization’s structure is the ‘formal system of dividing up work tasks, coordinating the resultant activities of employees, and specifying reporting relationships to enable the achievement of organizational goals’ (Smith et al., 2012). For example, as a ‘social

252  Handbook on governance in international organizations arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of collective goals’ (Buchanan and Huczynski, 2010), the way an organization is structured can affect how its staff interact with management. Many organizations are formal organizations, meaning that processes and relationships are documented and planned by management (Smith et al., 2012). Their structures tend to encourage line-based relationships that are based on the acceptance of hierarchical authority. An IO’s institutional relationships may be a result of being part of a larger institutional structure or system, such as the UN. An IO’s relationship with other bodies or parties within that system will depend upon the structure, functions, and subject matter of the institutional framework within which it is situated. A body within the UN system may informally negotiate with other UN bodies to create mutually relevant policy, or the relationship may be more formal, relying upon traditional ‘lines of command’. A UN peacekeeping force, for example, will need formal approval by the UN Security Council to act. Institutional relationships can be determined by the position and interests of stakeholders. The World Anti-Doping Association (WADA), which is a hybrid public–private body, is comprised of various committees representing stakeholders from sports and anti-doping organizations, as well as governments and athletes. Different groups of stakeholders interact with the secretariat and each other on a horizontal basis or as ‘equals’ outside of a chain of command. Horizontal relationships between IOs and other bodies typically involve informal cooperation (Kingsbury et al., 2005) instead of binding decisions or sanctions. Techniques typical to horizontal relationships in this context include reputational pressure, the prospect of mutually beneficial outcomes for cooperative behaviour, and the influence of peer perception of actions and decisions taken. An IO’s accountability relationship also may result from its ‘constitutional design’. This refers to the presence, form, and effect of a body’s constitution. For example, an IO with a constitution built upon the principles of international law will mean that relationships are created that are either subject to, or affected by, international law. The UN’s relationship with states is based on its Charter, which is a general principle of international law. Constitutions can also expressly indicate an IO’s objectives, which in turn, identify accountability relationships. For example, Article 1 of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) statute (UNHCR, 1950) indicates that its objective is to provide international protection to refugees and to seek permanent solutions for the ‘problem of refugees’. The article explicitly identifies a participatory accountability relationship (i.e. refugees) and the obligations that arise from it (i.e. international protection and seeking permanent solutions). Accountability relationships of IOs provide a pathway to understanding how accountability can become an epistemic blind spot when an IO undergoes a digital transformation. IOs may assume that new technologies are ethically neutral and can be safely deployed without appreciating the impact on their accountability and legitimacy if they are not (Bjola and Zaiotti, 2020, p. 290). New technologies may have unforeseen consequences for the way an IO functions, meaning that any change in the fulfilment of its mandate, such as the impact on human rights, ‘is at risk of a lack of scrutiny’ (McGregor, 2019, p. 1084). Accountability can be addressed if the IO takes the time to predict the way the deployment of new technologies might impact its relationships. Mashaw (2005) argues that institutional design is a set of choices among competing and overlapping accountability regimes, meaning that the design and implementation of accountability mechanisms must pre-date the deployment of new technologies.

Accountability and the digital transformation of IOs  253 IOs cannot rely on ex post facto measures to ‘mop up’ the accountability issues that will inevitably arise after the fact. All systems of accountability have failures and ex post sanctioning is likely to be proof of a poorly functioning accountability mechanism (Mashaw, 2005). The true purpose of accountability is forward-looking or prophylactic (Mashaw, 2005, p. 132), which is particularly pertinent for IOs, who have had to keep up with technological standards set by the wider social and technological context (Hocking and Melissen, 2015). Once the time is taken to predict the impact of new technologies on accountability, IOs can ‘design in’ institutional, technical, and systemic measures to address its effects. Design and adaptation of accountability principles must ‘manage’ technology, ‘rather than starting from an assessment of the governance choices enabled by the new technology’ (McGregor, 2019, p. 1080). An organizational accountability model must be designed to ‘predict how technology may distort and disrupt governance choices in the future’ (McGregor, 2019, p. 1084). At the same time, however, accountability measures should be designed to take advantage of the opportunities that new technologies present. As Bailur and Gigler (2014) argue, technology enhances access to information, participation, collaboration, and empowerment. ‘The outcome is accelerated progress toward closing the “accountability gap” – the space between the supply … and demand … that must be bridged for open and collaborative governance’ (Bailur and Gigler, 2014, p. 14).

PREDICTING THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON ACCOUNTABILITY THROUGH AN IO’S RELATIONSHIPS Intra-institutional and participatory relationships of IOs are examined considering the impact digital transformation may have on the accountability obligations they create. These relationships provide a rich canvas for exploring the effect of new technologies on the individuals and groups to which an IO is accountable. State and inter-institutional relationships raise complex questions around the politicization of the use of data, the impact on collectively owned resources (Hess, 2012) and the potential ‘mandate trade-offs’ IOs will make when its mandate is reduced or cut and technological capability is increased (McGregor, 2019). Although these issues are outside the scope of this chapter, they present an opportunity for important research on the far-reaching impact of digital transformation on the accountability of IOs. Intra-Institutional Relationships Most organizations recognize accountability as a characteristic of the intra-institutional relationship between itself and its staff or other internal actors. Business and management discourse promotes ‘staff accountability’ as something that will achieve better outcomes for the organization (Miller, 2006). Most IOs have established staff support programmes, rules, regulations, codes of conduct and avenues for complaints. Staff members accept these rules and regulations knowing that they must ‘act with the interests of the organisation always in mind’ (De Cooker, 2005, p. 8) and agree not to do anything that undermines or jeopardizes its objectives. For example, UNHCR’s staff consent to its organizational values through UNHCR’s ‘Code of Conduct & Explanatory Notes’ (UNHCR, 2004) along with the UN Staff Regulations.

254  Handbook on governance in international organizations The relationship between staff and an organization, however, is ‘two-way’. The organization is accountable to staff for meeting expectations that are inherent in the employee/ employer relationship. An organization’s management is accountable to its staff for the fulfilment of the terms of their employment contracts. If an organization is to achieve more than just a basic level of staff performance, however, management must understand that its accountability to staff extends beyond contractual provisions. Management can only expect loyalty and optimal performance from staff if they understand they are accountable to them for encouraging career development and satisfaction, and providing job security, training, and safety. The digital transformation of an IO extends its accountability to harnessing technology to support and empower staff in their roles. Training Management has a responsibility to ensure that staff are well-trained in order to carry out the IO’s mandate (Türk and Eyster, 2010). Much of an IO’s work is highly complex. The development of standards and policy, participation in humanitarian activities and in some cases, supervision of states’ application of international conventions, requires a high level of technical training. Technology can be a tool for staff development. Used well, it can develop staff capacities and contribute to the advancement of organizational goals and functions at the same time. Training via online platforms is by no means new. A cursory look at the mandatory training for UN staff1 reveals that 16 out of 21 courses are offered in either an online or blended format. But new technologies present opportunities to enhance staff training beyond online platforms. AI, for example, offers opportunities for engaging and personalised learning experiences that can match employee learning styles and be broken into ‘bite size’ pieces to support active learning (Sharma, 2020). Creative thinking could see technology integrated into the way IO humanitarian workers are prepared for and supported in the field. The nature of fieldwork means that staff are potentially exposed to traumatic events and/or will have face-to-face dealings with traumatised people. It is essential that training is inclusive of psychological preparedness and inter-cultural and safety awareness. In a UNHCR commissioned report on work, mobility and wellbeing in the organization (Devadason, 2010), respondents were asked if they had received adequate social assistance and information prior to embarking on an international assignment. A high proportion of respondents indicated that they were not provided with mentoring (60 per cent), intercultural training (79 per cent), language training (66 per cent) and information about the context before arrival (61 per cent). In an earlier report on the state of UNHCR’s organizational culture (Wigley, 2005), UNHCR field staff were asked to identify the sources of workplace stress. Their responses were categorised as ‘environmental’, ‘organizational’, ‘social and interpersonal’ and ‘personal’ and included stressors such as demands and expectations of refugees and security issues, dwindling resources, less time for family, and feelings of guilt. Simulation games and virtual reality (VR) could be adapted for intercultural training and psychological preparedness. UNHCR has already created a digital decision-making game, ‘My Life as a Refugee’,2 which features three stories whose characters are separated from their families while fleeing persecution or armed conflict. Another example is a simulation game called ‘Syrian Journey: Choose Your Own Escape Route’, which asks the player what choices they would make for themselves and their family if they were fleeing Syria for Europe.3 Although these games are not specifically designed for staff, VR programs could be adapted

Accountability and the digital transformation of IOs  255 to support their technical and nontechnical skills in authentic scenarios that would allow for reflection on choices (Akdere et al., 2021). VR also presents an opportunity to develop a realistic self-assessment of intercultural competence levels (Akdere et al., 2021), countering the tendencies of some people to over-estimate their own intercultural competence (Valdivia et al., 2018). New technologies such as AI can go further to fill in training ‘gaps’. Take, for example, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN’s (FAO) ‘iSharkFin’. iSharkFin is an expert system that uses machine learning to identify shark species from fin shapes. The program is aimed at port inspectors, customs agents, fish traders and other users without formal taxonomic training. Users take a photo, select some characteristics of a fin, and upload it to the program. iSharkFin automatically analyses the information and tells the user the shark species from which the fin comes.4 Fundamental to accountability is ensuring that staff are not left behind by new technologies. IOs must invest in digital literacy that extends beyond ‘technology training portals’5 for technology-literate staff to develop the capacity of frontline workers. The World Food Program (WFP) has invested in technology training for health workers at remote locations in the Republic of Congo. Acknowledging that pre-deployment training in smartphones was not sufficient, the WFP is developing training that is tailored to match health workers’ capabilities and experience using mobile devices. Follow-up training at regular intervals to reinforce learning is also essential. According to WFP, health workers’ capacity to record information in digital logbooks will ‘contribute to the overall effectiveness of nutrition programmes by minimizing the risk of human error and enhancing data collection to guide effective decision-making’ (ITU, 2021). Career development Opportunity for career development is integral to job satisfaction and loyalty to an organization. As part of the career management process, employers are responsible for tracking career paths and developing career ladders (Zheng and Kleiner, 2001), providing opportunities and tools for career development. Bidirectional communication is an essential tool of career development because of the pivotal role it plays in addressing ‘information asymmetry’ within an organization (Benvenisti, 2018). ICTs can enhance bidirectional communication by giving staff the opportunity to signal the possession of knowledge and with it, the ability to influence decision-making (Treem and Leonardi, 2013). Bouchard (2020) found that ICTs, particularly social media platforms, have impacted the internal communication processes of IOs, particularly UN rules of procedures, strategic interactions, and informal relationships. As Bjola and Zaiotti (2020) point out, digital collaborative platforms can have a democratizing effect on knowledge contributions because staff increase their networks, obtain greater access to individuals higher up the hierarchy, and increase their social capital. Moreover, ‘they can more effectively participate in the discursive practices that contribute to the definition of the organisation’s narrative about itself’ (Bjola and Zaiotti, 2020, p. 295). UNDP is developing an AI chatbot to engage staff in developing norms, standards, and policies for data lifecycle management and empower them to adopt a ‘self-service’ approach to governance’ (ITU, 2020). However, undesirable effects of increasingly digitized communication and information have the potential to undermine career development and job satisfaction. The availability

256  Handbook on governance in international organizations of big data, the ‘vast swaths of metrics about human activities and natural occurrences that enable humans and machines to learn about the state of the world, human behaviour, and the human condition to shape and enforce public policies’ (Benvenisti, 2018, pp. 55–6), can cause organizations to consider traditional bidirectional communications processes as unnecessarily burdensome and superfluous (Benvenisti, 2018). Where digitization of information causes an organization to become more transparent, pressure for staff conformity can arise. Instead of ‘signalling knowledge’ staff ‘will merely reproduce the norms and practices spearheaded by the organizations’ leadership’ (Bjola and Zaiotti, 2020, p. 296). Increased transparency may result in ‘accountability overkill’, discouraging innovative and entrepreneurial behaviour (Anechiarico and Jacobs, 1996). As Bovens (2010, p. 958) says, ‘when administrators are scrutinised more frequently and intensely, they get better in meeting the requirements posed by their accountability forums’ but are not necessarily better at performing their roles. Social media allows organizations to monitor and track the practices of their workers and stakeholders (Zhang and Vos, 2014), potentially causing those participating in digital exchanges to become reluctant to express their opinions because of the fear of surveillance and possible reprisal (Bjola and Zaiotti, 2020). This is not an empty concern in an organization like the UN that has a fraught history of whistle-blower retaliation (UNSG, 2017). Dispute resolution Organizations are accountable to their staff for providing accessible and fair avenues for dispute resolution. Within most IOs are networks and systems that support employment-related disputes. For example, the UN Dispute Tribunal (UNDT) and the UN Appeals Tribunal (UNAT) are a part of the UN’s Internal Justice System. These tribunals hear and decide cases filed by current and former staff to appeal administrative decisions about non-compliance with terms of appointment or employment contracts. Based in New York, Nairobi, and Geneva, UNDT has been utilizing technology to allow for remote hearings long before COVID-19 made it a widespread practice in courts and tribunals. Videoconferencing has created greater access to justice by increasing the convenience of participation and reducing the time hearings take (Bannon and Keith, 2021), which has implications for cost-effectiveness and the reduction of delay. Increased technological connectivity and accessibility in dispute resolution does not come without its caveats. Some parties to disputes are located in duty stations that have an 11-hour time difference with the relevant Tribunal, which can result in both counsel and the applicant appearing before the Tribunal out of hours. In a 2015 report on the administration of justice in the UN, this practice was described as ‘unfair’. The difficulty of calling witnesses at such times was also noted (SAJ Report, 2015, paras 223, 374). The UNDT warned that ‘the Tribunal may be left with Counsel for the Respondent in New York being only available, for technical reasons, for a full hearing from 9 a.m. (New York time) and an applicant in Bangkok being required to commence a hearing at 8 p.m. (Bangkok time)’ (Survo v Secretary-General of the United Nations [2015]). Good video conferencing facilities and a sufficient budget to maintain communication technology are essential to allow witnesses and parties to give evidence over video links (Kinchin, 2018). It must also be acknowledged that increased use of technology comes with the risk of technological failures which may prevent participation in a hearing, negatively impacting open justice. This danger is heightened by insufficient technical support ‘and a general lack of expertise on the part of the judiciary as to how to utilise online tools’ (CCHRL, 2021).

Accountability and the digital transformation of IOs  257 Safety and security The nature of humanitarian work is often dangerous. Although humanitarian IOs cannot guarantee their staff absolute protection against violence, they must do all in their power to protect their staff. The UN Staff Regulations recognize this responsibility. Regulation 1.2 states that the Secretary-General has an obligation to ensure that ‘all necessary safety and security arrangements are made for staff carrying out the responsibilities entrusted to them’ (UN Staff Regulations, 2018). A lack of accountability in field security was identified as a fundamental issue by the UN General Assembly as early as 2001(UNGA, 2001), and continues to be a central objective in subsequent security policy development (UNGA, 2020). Responsibility for the security of UN staff lies with the UN Security Management System (UNSMS). UNSMS’ Security Policy Manual identifies that the UN has an accountability obligation to reinforce and, where necessary, supplement the capacity of the host government to fulfil their protection obligations (UNSMS, 2017, p. 8). IOs working in the humanitarian space are increasingly utilizing ‘humanitarian tech’ for the safety and security of staff. Humanitarian tech refers to ‘technologies used to collect, process, and analyse information that may contribute to improve the livelihoods of people affected by a devastating event’ (Camacho, 2019). Examples of ‘security humanitarian tech’ include incident mapping, serious gaming for security purposes, crowdsourcing for security information and tracking devices’ (Kalkman, 2018). However, security humanitarian tech can also have dysfunctional affects. It does not always reduce risks and can transfer those risks to vulnerable actors (Kalkman, 2018) in several ways. First, technology can be unreliable, especially in places with poor connectivity and infrastructure. Second, the IO may become part of a race with ‘malevolent actors’ such as terrorist groups or hackers. Governments, militia, or private cyber groups often have technological capacity that exceeds the security systems of humanitarian actors, including IOs (Sandvik et al., 2014). Securing the innovations becomes the goal, while the original aim of the technologies (i.e. providing security to staff) gets lost. In other cases, technology may not be deployed at all due to opposition to and their potential sabotage by armed groups such as Al-Shabaab and the Taliban (Kalkman, 2018). Third, developments in ‘cyber-humanitarianism’ (Duffield, 2013) have allowed security personnel, especially those in senior positions, to operate remotely, which removes staff from the field and potentially leaves local workers exposed to attack (Kalkman, 2018). Remote management of emergencies signifies a re-allocation of risk towards local organizations and beneficiaries, enabling ‘communities to quickly transform themselves into first responders’ (Sandvik et al., 2014). Geospatial technology, which involves computer-based mapping, modelling, and analysis of ‘spatially referenced data’ from a global positioning system (Verjee, 2005) enables physical segregation of aid managers from local communities and aid workers. As a result, transparency is decreased, and traditional methods of protection and rescue are abandoned in favour of ‘a hyper-bunkered system of disaster management dedicated to modulating the moods and behaviour of non-elites as they adapt to permanent emergency’ (Duffield, 2013).

258  Handbook on governance in international organizations Participatory Relationships Technology can be a methodology for an IO to enhance its responsiveness to the population it serves (Türk and Eyster, 2010) or its ‘participatory relationships’. If not carefully designed and implemented, technology may also be a tool to undermine its accountability to that population. Participation and transparency A growing expectation for citizen participation within domestic and global forums encourages the transparent communication of new issues, interests, and concerns by IOs. A global public sphere in which policy choices are exposed to public scrutiny (Steffek and Nanz, 2008) is emerging. A 2002 report by the International Law Association (ILA) on the accountability of international organizations (ILA, 2002, p. 9) confirms that transparency is a ‘principle of good governance’ and ‘IOs should not deny applications for access to information except for compelling reasons’. The global public will not have an opportunity to contribute to decision-making, policy, and regulation development if they are not appropriately informed. In enhancing bidirectional communication through technology, IOs have become more accountable to the global public. IOs can explain and justify their intentions and allow citizens and interest groups to pose questions and offer their opinions. As a result, the public’s confidence in, and acceptance of, the IO’s authority is promoted (Aucoin and Heintzman, 2000). IOs are using technology in a way that allows both an upward flow of information, as well as a downward flow from the IO back to the public (Bailur and Gigler, 2014). Hofferberth (2020) provides the example of Twitter, which has given the UN the opportunity to engage the public in discourse and increase the quality of governance through deliberation. Another example of a technological innovation that encourages public participation and transparency is the UN Global Pulse Project,6 using big data to detect changes in human well-being in a way that supports the UN SDGs. The project uses AI and data analytics and visualization to provide ‘crisis insights’ for global issues such as impacts of COVID-19 and combatting ‘disinformation’ campaigns. If the digital transformation of an IO is to promote transparency, the public must be highly informed, which relies on an effective ‘information commons’ (Allen et al., 2004), or publicly available information. The UN has always provided printed versions of its documents and was an early adopter of an online repository of documents.7 Other examples include UNHCR’s Refworld,8 and the World Trade Organization’s ‘WTO Documents Online’.9 Technology can empower poorer or vulnerable populations. Empowerment has been described as ‘enhancing the capacity of poor people to influence the state institutions that affect their lives, by strengthening their participation in political processes and local decision making’ (Naraya et al., 2000, p. 39). Communication technologies may lower the barriers to participation and enable horizontal flows of communication, which flatten hierarchies. Citizens can access information and communicate directly instead of being dependent on intermediaries who have ‘their own biases and insecurity regarding the sharing of power’ (Bailur and Gigler, 2014, p. 6). But technology can also be used to ‘shut down’ communication with the public and populations of concern. ICTs can be reduced to a ‘PR exercise’. In examining how the UN uses Twitter, Hofferberth (2020) found that neither the UN as an institution, nor the individuals within it showed an inclination for self-criticism or for engaging in deliberation with the online public. If not used with the intention to engage in debate and the willingness to be persuaded,

Accountability and the digital transformation of IOs  259 tweets can shut down public discourse and become an organizational ‘echo chamber’ of validation and promotion (Hofferberth, 2020). ICTs can become sites of misinformation. Channels of communication can be ‘polluted’ with misinformation through the deliberate spread of confusion, the increasing competition for the limited attention spans of the public, the fragmentation of the marketplace of ideas, and the big data divide (Benvenisti, 2018). Further, algorithms can be intentionally opaque to protect competitive commercial advantage or are intrinsically ‘illiterate’ so that only those with technical expertise can understand them (Tomlinson et al., 2019). This ‘black box’ problem means that as systems ‘begin to learn, iterate, and improve upon themselves in unpredictable or otherwise unintelligible ways, their logic often becomes less intuitive to human onlookers’ (Pasquale, 2015). If the people affected by an IO’s decisions are not able to fully comprehend the rationale behind them, they will not be able to respond to adverse information, which undermines a fundamental tenet of due process. The ‘digital divide’ can diminish transparency and participation. Some members of the public will be excluded from technology because of deficient digital skills and knowledge as well as limited, or a lack of technological equipment, including internet access. Governments may filter internet content and track its usage (Deibert et al., 2010). High barriers to entry for ICTs often mean that only the ‘elite’ may participate. As the economic and political elite become more politically engaged, governments only respond to their concerns, which excludes the participation of many of the world’s poor and disenfranchised (Bailur and Gigler, 2014, p. 14). A final, important point relates to populations of concern in humanitarian contexts. Humanitarian design, which is the design of ‘products, services, or systems for populations affected by natural and/or human-made disasters’ (Nielsen, 2020) aims to ‘make a difference’ and ‘turn a crisis into an opportunity’ (Keshavarz, 2020). ‘Humanitarian tech’ looks to improve the lives of those affected by disaster and displacement by addressing such issues as social inclusion (Leligou et al., 2020), rehabilitation (Choudhury et al., 2020) and aid-related information analysis (Jenerowicz et al., 2019). Design engagement and participation by affected populations is fundamental to the success of humanitarian tech. Keshavaraz (2020) argues that humanitarian design, especially after the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015, has been mobilized without proper consideration of the types of politics it produces and ignores. In being moralized as a decision to ‘save lives’ and ‘empower’ individuals, the global poor are ‘are constructed as design opportunities for the generosity of the elite, rather than as histori­ cal subjects with their own worldviews, skills, and political sensi­bilities’ (Keshavaraz, 2020, p. 24). Despite its risks, technology allows IOs to search out spaces for the participation of affected populations. In conducting design research in informal refugee settlements in Lebanon, Talhouk et al. (2019) reflected that the facilitation of continuous dialogue with refugees allowed for understanding and empathy. Enabling refugee participants to configure the design space and process allowed the researcher to conform to the customs of the participants. Betts et al. (2021) found that refugee-led organizations in camps and cities in Kenya and Uganda showed potential to be an asset to COVID-19 response by providing public information, supplementing capacity gaps, healthcare delivery, shaping social norms, and virus tracking and contact tracing.

260  Handbook on governance in international organizations An example of an IO already engaging in participatory humanitarian tech is the IOM’s project on ‘Using Collective Intelligence to reduce analytical bias and introduce local participation in designing humanitarian response in drought-affected displacement contexts’ (ITU, 2020). The project aims to utilize the unique insights that affected populations have into their situations and needs, to pilot an improved aid delivery process by reducing the biases both in agency data processing and the participation of affected populations. Human rights Many technological innovations within IOs, such as a UN Environmental Programme project that uses algorithms to recognize water bodies in satellite image data and map reservoir trends over time,10 apply technology to analyse inanimate data. Others, however, directly impact at-risk humans. In linking the development of AI to the SDGs, the UN declared that it ‘will not rest until everyone, everywhere is connected and can benefit from these technologies’ (ITU, 2020). Regardless of any altruistic intent behind digital transformations, technologies with the potential to affect vulnerable populations must be considered within a human rights framework (Molnar, 2018). IOs are not generally subject to human rights obligations by their constitutions, nor are they parties to binding human rights instruments. Although whether (and to what extent) IOs retain human rights obligations is yet to find international consensus (Clapham, 2006), accountability for human rights is more broadly accepted. Even without recent judicial moves to limit absolute immunity for IOs (Jam v International Finance Corp, 2019), IOs largely recognize their own accountability for human rights. A ‘culture of accountability’ is spoken about by UN agencies in a way that incorporates rights. In its strategic plan for 2020–23, UN-Habitat, which describes itself as ‘anchored in its core values of excellence, efficiency, accountability, collaboration and impact’, identifies human rights as underlying its mission (UN-Habitat, 2020, p. 57). Similarly, the first principle of IOM’s ‘Migration Governance Framework’ (IOM, 2015) is adherence to international standards and the fulfilment of migrants’ rights. Accountability is broader than a narrow legal notion of IO responsibility (Boon and Megret, 2019). Jacobsen (2015) argues that humanitarian actors tend to deploy new technologies experimentally, which exposes already vulnerable subjects to additional sources of harm. This risk to human rights is heightened when new technologies are ‘deployed in opaque spaces’ without sufficient international regulation (Molnar, 2018). Algorithms manifesting bias and assumptions threaten rights of equality and freedom from discrimination (International Human Rights Program, 2018). Algorithms are not neutral (Benvenisti, 2018); they can be discriminatory if pre-labelled data is embedded with human biases and assumptions (Zalnieriute et al., 2019) about race, religion, country of origin or gender or sexuality, amongst other things. The way that data is collected, structured, and labelled can impose rigid or exclusionary definitions of identity, such as ‘male’ and ‘female’, which may end up marginalizing queer, transgender, and non-binary people (Bogen and Rieke, 2018). Technologies that collect, ‘mine’, and analyse personal data pose risks to rights to privacy and data protection (International Human Rights Program, 2018). As the UN Human Rights Council points out, secret surveillance and ‘the mere generation and collection of data relating to a person’s identity, family or life’ interferes with the right to privacy because the individual

Accountability and the digital transformation of IOs  261 loses control over information that could put their privacy at risk (OHCHR, 2014). The public sharing of information, such as social media, does not render it unprotected (OHCHR, 2018). The rise of automated or algorithmic decision-making poses considerable risks for due process. ‘Algorithmic decision-making’ is based on machine learning, the application of algorithms that ‘learn’ from historic data to identify correlations, patterns or clusters in order for input data to be given as a probability, which can be used to inform a decision (Evans Cameron et al., 2021) or make a prediction. Input data must be pre-classified or labelled, based on the patterns and correlations the machine has ‘learnt’ from the historic data. The potential impact of algorithms on human discretion goes to the core of concerns about due process. Due process by IOs has been identified as an element of the principle of ‘procedural regularity’, meaning that IOs are expected to take necessary steps to ‘ensure respect for due process and fair treatment, especially when organs are exercising discretionary powers’ (ILA, 2004). Benvenisti (2018, p. 62) argues that algorithmic decision making ‘goes against the grain’ of two of the most fundamental tenets of administrative law, ‘the requirement that the public authority exercise discretion when making a decision and the public authority’s duty to hear the affected person’s complaint with an open mind’. Automated systems that are designed to replace the human thought processes (Benvenisti, 2018) cannot come to a decision with an ‘open mind’ because algorithms are trained based on pre-labelled training data. To maintain accountability to vulnerable populations IOs must avoid adopting potentially harmful technologies. For example, the potential for the use of algorithms in refugee status determinations (RSD) is growing. Since 2018, the Canadian government has been developing a system of ‘predictive analytics’ to automate certain activities conducted by immigration officials and to support the evaluation of some immigrant and visitor applications.11 UNHCR is a determining authority for RSD and may consider adopting similar technology. If so, UNHCR must be aware that algorithms will likely learn based on country-of-origin data, which can ignore or diminish threats to the safety of some groups in that society, such as LGBTQ+ (International Human Rights Program, 2018). Another example of proximity to harm is WFP’s partnership with data-mining company Palantir Technologies, which involved sharing 92 million aid recipients’ data and raised concerns about complicity with human rights abuse (UNGA, 2020). Palantir worked with the US police and immigration enforcement agency ICE, to use software linking tips from the public and law enforcement agencies with other databases in order to arrest undocumented people. Concerns around secrecy, profiling bias, enabling human rights violations, and harvesting of personal data have been raised.12 The IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix13 uses big data to monitor populations on the move to predict the needs of displaced people using mobile phone call records and geotagging, as well as analyses of social media activity. IOM must be mindful that migration data can be presented in a way that stokes fear and xenophobia, which is used to justify hard-line responses contravening international human rights law (UNGA, 2020). Of particular concern is the growing use of biometrics in humanitarian spaces. Biometrics are techniques that measure a person’s physical characteristics to verify their identity through physiological traits (Kairinos, 2019), such as fingerprints, faces, irises, and even DNA, voice verification, vein pattern recognition and keystroke dynamics (Kingston, 2018). UNHCR’s Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) captures and stores fingerprints, iris data, and facial images of asylum seekers for the purpose of registration. Identity theft based on biometrics is difficult to remedy and biometric data may be used for different purposes than

262  Handbook on governance in international organizations for which it was collected, including the unlawful tracking and monitoring of individuals (OHCHR, 2018). Refugee host governments often do not have robust data protection legislation and if refugees’ biometric data is shared with either the host nation or the nation of persecution, international protection may be compromised (Kinchin, 2021). The misuse of biometric data may leave vulnerable populations like refugees exposed to discrimination and rights abuse if authoritarian states utilize the data to identify individuals and groups whose loyalty they question and target them for surveillance or punitive action (Crisp, 2021). As the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism has noted, the impact of processing such sensitive data can be grave when systems are flawed or abused, especially when it leads to system aversion and loss of access to goods and services for survival (UNGA, 2020). Accountability within the digital transformation of an IO does not need to be focused on avoiding harm alone. IOs can harness technology to counter harmful technologies occurring elsewhere. UN-Habitat’s ‘Public control of AI in Cities’ project includes an assessment of fairness and accountability design needs for algorithmic support in public sector decision-making and dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations (ITU, 2020). The UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute developed a course that enhances judicial knowledge of AI by exploring its legal definition, the dangers and realities of algorithmic and output bias, and the attribution of responsibility in cases where harm is done by an AI system.14 Other projects focus on participation and transparency, including campaigns encouraging the dissemination of information and counteracting misinformation. UNDP’s ‘AI and Digital Divide’ project uses algorithms to analyse digital connectivity trends, the factors that impede connectivity and the impacts of exclusion, particularly in the wake of COVID-19.15 UNDP’s ‘iVerify’ project is designed to support democratic governance by assisting states to carry out free and fair elections. Open-source machine learning tracks misinformation and AI is used to detect hate speech. According to UNDP ‘trained experts use the platform to send potentially toxic content and/or misinformation to local partner organizations who can verify the content as true, false or somewhere in between’ (ITU, 2021). By first understanding technology within a human rights framework and second, by appreciating the IO’s role in potentially propagating and counteracting harmful technologies, IOs can maintain forethought in accountability design for their participatory relationships.

CONCLUSION Unpacking accountability (Mashaw, 2005; Bovens, 2010) provides a pathway for IOs to prepare for the impact of digital transformation on their accountability obligations. Unpacking accountability involves an IO asking, ‘through what processes is accountability to be assured?’ and ‘by what standards is accountable behaviour to be judged?’ (Mashaw, 2005), spurring it to develop or adapt accountability mechanisms before new technologies are diffused. In other words, the IO must determine what accountability mechanisms are needed to address and take advantage of the impact of digital transformation on the accountability relationships of IOs. The form and function of an accountability mechanism will depend on the individual needs and structure of the IO. However, all IOs should implement two broad ex post facto accountability mechanisms. First, IOs will need to ensure that an appropriate mix of professionals with expertise in the relevant technology and the subject area of governance are involved in the

Accountability and the digital transformation of IOs  263 design, adaption, and application of new technologies. The potential for rapid changes in the direction and scope of new technologies, particularly AI, may impair an IO’s ability to act ex ante (Shrerer, 2016). The right mix of experts will mean employing people who are responsible for predicting the dysfunctional effects of technology diffusion, including accountability. Designers and programmers must represent diversity to mitigate or reduce algorithms being embedded with programmer bias. A positive flow-on effect is that the right mix of professionals can encourage a transfer of knowledge, including an understanding of the impacts on accountability, through training. The Federation of International Civil Servants’ Associations and the United Nations International Computing Centre have created an initiative to train and familiarize staff with technology and digital tools.16 One of its goals is ‘identifying feasible solutions to address current inequalities in gaining access to and utilising enabling technology, including for those that are disadvantaged due to limited access’. The second accountability mechanism involves standards. Global standards for technology, which are a path to effective global solutions where national rules fall short and can serve to globally disseminate best practices (Cihon, 2019), already exist. The International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission Standards Committee on Artificial Intelligence17 and the working groups of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers AI standards series18 create international standards for AI. The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, launched in 2020, brings together leading experts from science, industry, civil society, IOs, and government to share multidisciplinary research and identify key issues to facilitate international collaboration, reduce duplication, act as a global reference point for specific AI issues, and promote trust in and the adoption of trustworthy AI.19 Although global standards will bring important guidance and consistency, IOs must consider how new technologies uniquely impact their accountability relationships. It will become increasingly important for IOs to develop codes of ethics for AI and technology that can respond to individual governance structures, organizational culture, technological needs, and accountability obligations. Precedents for organizational codes of ethics are found in multinational corporations such as Microsoft, which has a code of ethics on responsible AI based on fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency and accountability.20 Technology offers IOs innovative ways to create new sites for responsive global governance. The enthusiasm that inevitably accompanies the process of planning for the desirable effects of digital transformation must be tempered by a recognition that its undesirable consequences are not limited to functionality. If IOs fail to acknowledge how their relationships may be impacted by the diffusion of technology, accountability will become an epistemic blind spot with repercussions for due process, participation, transparency, human rights, and employee productivity and loyalty.

NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

https://​hr​.un​.org/​page/​mandatory​-learning (accessed 2 March 2022). https://​unric​.org/​en/​my​-life​-as​-a​-refugee/​(accessed 2 March 2022). https://​www​.bbc​.com/​news/​world​-middle​-east​-32057601 (accessed 2 March 2022). http://​www​.fao​.org/​ipoa​-sharks/​tools/​software/​isharkfin/​en/​(accessed 2 March 2022). https://​technologytraining​.un​.org/​thematicarea (accessed 14 February 2022). https://​www​.unglobalpulse​.org/​(accessed 2 March 2022).

264  Handbook on governance in international organizations 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

https://​www​.un​.org/​en/​our​-work/​documents (accessed 2 March 2022). https://​www​.refworld​.org/​(accessed 2 March 2022). https://​docs​.wto​.org/​dol2fe/​Pages/​FE​_Search/​FE​_S​_S005​.aspx (accessed 2 March 2022). https://​www​.sdg661​.app/​(accessed 18 February 2022). https://​buyandsell​.gc​.ca/​procurement​-data/​tender​-notice/​PW​-EE​-017​-33462 (accessed 18 February 2022). https://​www​.thenewhumanitarian​.org/​news/​2019/​02/​05/​un​-palantir​-deal​-data​-mining​-protection​ -concerns​-wfp (accessed 2 March 2022). https://​dtm​.iom​.int/​about (accessed 2 March 2022). http://​www​.unicri​.it/​news/​article​-1 (accessed 18 February 2022). https://​medium​.com/​omdena/​ai​-the​-digital​-divide​-analyzing​-the​-impact​-of​-digital​-connectivity​-on​ -human​-development​-6bb2bb814bc7 (accessed 18 February 2022). https://​www​.unicc​.org/​news/​2021/​03/​25/​ficsa​-and​-unicc​-team​-up​-for​-a​-brighter​-future​-of​-work​ -for​-un​-staff/​(accessed 2 March 2022). https://​www​.iso​.org/​committee/​6794475​.html (accessed 2 March 2022). https://​standards​.ieee​.org/​initiatives/​artificial​-intelligence​-systems/​index​.html (accessed 2 March 2022) https://​gpai​.ai/​about/​(accessed 2 March 2022). https://​www​.microsoft​.com/​en​-us/​ai/​responsible​-ai​?activetab​=​pivot1​%3aprimaryr6 (accessed 2 March 2022).

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Accountability and the digital transformation of IOs  267 Molnar, P. (2018), ‘Technology on the margins: AI and global migration management from a human rights perspective,’ Cambridge International Law Journal, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 305–30. Mulgan, R. (2000), ‘Accountability’: an ever-expanding concept?,’ Public Administration, vol. 78, pp. 555–73. Naraya, D., Patel, R. and Schafft, K. (2000), Voices of the poor: can anyone hear us? Washington, DC: World Bank Group. Available at http://​documents​.worldbank​.org/​curated/​en/​131441468779067441/​ Voices​-of​-the​-poor​-can​-anyone​-hear​-us (accessed 2 March 2022). Nielsen, B. F. (2020), ‘Humanitarian design,’ in Lauri, A. D. (ed.), Humanitarianism: Keywords, Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, pp. 97–9. OHCHR (2014), ‘The right to privacy in the digital age,’ A/HRC/27/37, 27th sess. OHCHR (2018), ‘The right to privacy in the digital age,’ A/HRC/39/29, 39th sess. Pasquale, F. (2015), The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms that Control Money and Information, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Roger, E. (2003), Diffusion of Innovations, 5th edition, New York: Free Press. SAJ Report [System of Administration of Justice at the United Nations] (2015), 71st session, A/71/62. Sandvik, K., Gabrielsen Jumbert, M., Karlsrud, J. and Kaufmann, M. (2014), ‘Humanitarian technology: a critical research agenda,’ International Review of the Red Cross, vol. 96, no. 893, pp. 219–42. Scherer, M. U. (2016), ‘Regulating artificial intelligence systems: risks, challenges, competencies, and strategies,’ Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 353–400. Sharma, A. (2020), ‘6 ways that AI is transforming employee training.’ Available at https://​ becominghuman​.ai/​6​-ways​-that​-ai​-is​-transforming​-employee​-training​-30182fec8b45 (accessed 2 March 2022). Smith, P. E., Yellowley, W. and Farmer, M. (2012), Organizational Behaviour, London: Hodder Education. Steffek, J. and Nanz, P. (2008), ‘Emergent patterns of civil society participation in global and European governance,’ in Steffek, J., Kissling, C. and Nanz, P. (eds), Civil Society Participation in European and Global Governance: A Cure for the Democratic Deficit? London: Palgrave Macmillan. Survo v Secretary-General of the United Nations UNDT/2015/069 (30 July 2015). Talhouk, R., Balaam, M., Toombs, A., Garbett, A., Akik, C., Ghattas, H., Araujo-Soares, V., Ahmad, B. and Montague, K. (2019), ‘Involving Syrian refugees in design research: lessons learnt from the field,’ Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), pp.  1583–94. https://​doi​.org/​10​.1145/​3322276​.3322335. Tomlinson, J., Sheridan, K. and Harkens, A. (2019), ‘Proving public law error in automated decision-making systems.’ Available at https://​ssrn​.com/​abstract​=​3476657 (accessed 2 March 2022). Treem, J. W. and Leonardi, P. M. (2013), ‘Social media use in organizations: exploring the affordances of visibility, editability, persistence, and association,’ Annals of the International Communication Association, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 143–89. Türk, V. and Eyster, E. (2010), ‘Strengthening accountability in UNHCR,’ International Journal of Refugee Law, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 159–62. UN (2018), ‘Staff regulations and rules of the United Nations’ (UN Staff Regulations) ST/SGB/2018/1. Available at https://​hr​.un​.org/​handbook/​index/​8278 (accessed 2 March 2022). UNGA (2001), ‘Special subjects relating to the proposed programme budget for the biennium 2002–2003 GA Res 56/255,’ UN GOAR, 56th session, 92nd plenary mtg, Agenda Item 123, UN Doc 56/255. UNGA (2020), ‘Contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,’ 75th session, A/75/590. UN-Habitat (2020), ‘The Strategic Plan 2020–2023’. Available at https://​unhabitat​.org/​sites/​default/​ files/​2020/​05/​strategic​_plan​_2020​-2023​.pdf (accessed 2 March 2022). UNHCR (1950), ‘Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, contained in the Annex to Resolution on Statute of the High Commissioner for Refugees,’ GA Res 428(V) UN GAOR, 5th session, 325th plenary mtg, Doc/A/Res/428(v) (1950). UNHCR (2004), ‘The UNHCR Code of Conduct and Explanatory Notes’. Available at https://​www​ .unhcr​.org/​en​-au/​admin/​policies/​422dbc89a/​unhcr​-code​-conduct​-explanatory​-notes​.html (accessed 2 March 2022). UNSG (2017), ‘Secretary-General’s Bulletin, protection against retaliation for reporting misconduct and for cooperating with duly authorized audits or investigations,’ ST/SGB/2017/2.

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17. Tweeting through the pandemic: self-legitimation and depoliticization in the WHO Twittersphere Matthias Hofferberth

INTRODUCTION For many years now, intergovernmental organizations (IOs) have not only ‘gone public’ but also ‘digital’ (Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2020). Whether on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, or elsewhere, almost all IOs have established their own social media presence (Twiplomacy, 2018). Because of the potential to disseminate information to global audiences in an instant at low cost, social media can be seen as an important asset to communicate and legitimate what an organization stands for and what governance it provides. With social media, IOs have a new tool at their disposal which, if used appropriately, allows otherwise abstract and distanced organizations to directly connect to their stakeholders, influence public deliberation, signal responsiveness, and thus overall increase their legitimacy (Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2020). At the same time, the adaptation of social media is still new to these organizations, poses risks, and can easily go wrong if holding on to a ‘web 1.0 mentality in web 2.0 environments’ (Manor, 2016: 90). On the one hand, IOs might misunderstand social media and ‘only’ broadcast their message without interacting with their audience(s). On the other hand, IOs, as they share their narratives, rationales, and reasons for action, open themselves up to debates on what kind of organizations they are and should be. This is risky since audiences ‘self-curate’ information they receive through liking, following, and selectively sharing in their networks. In other words, while providing means for self-legitimation and strengthening mandates, social media also enables potentially dangerous discourses in which IOs appear limited or even become contested. As Nahon (2016) puts it, ‘where there is social media, there is politics’. Such dynamics are crucial in moments of crisis when an organization is challenged. The World Health Organization (WHO) found itself in such a crisis in 2020 (Pevehouse, 2020). Called out in particular by the USA, the organization was heavily criticized for being ‘too China-friendly’.1 These raised stakes in the form of increased politicization, arguably, caught the organization off-guard since it had established itself as a technical support unit in the UN family and for the most part successfully avoided such critique in the past (Louis and Maertens, 2021). Against this background, I approach the WHO in this chapter to (a) determine which accounts tweet for the organization, (b) reconstruct how these accounts present the WHO throughout the crisis, and (c) consider how this reflects organizational responses to the challenges of its legitimacy in the context of COVID-19. To do so, I first connect research on legitimation efforts of IOs in global governance with work on social media. Second, I introduce the WHO Twittersphere and an event-driven timeline of COVID-19 tweets. Third, I introduce my coding scheme focused on crisis framing, purpose and sentiment of tweeting,

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270  Handbook on governance in international organizations as well as the WHO self-image. Finally, I discuss coding results and, based on those, assess the WHO use of Twitter considering broader discussions on IO legitimacy and digital governance. Speaking to the broader themes of this volume, the use of social media by IOs provides important insights into these organizations and helps us understand their governance. As IOs continue to expand their social media presence and produce more digital content, scholars interested in IO governance have new ground to cover. Becoming aware of the nature of social media and its potential to fabricate organizational legitimacy as well as studying such activities within IOs, helps to better understand these actors. Focused so far mostly on state actors and how they shape and practice international politics and public diplomacy (Jackson, 2019; Manor, 2016), it is important to recognize IOs as ‘digital global governors’ as they foster their governance through digital means. Echoing Bjola and Zaiotti (2020b: 295–8), it is indeed important for International Relations (IR) to rethink IOs in the digital age. This will help us better understand if and how these actors provide governance in crisis and the communication thereof. Recognizing both the potential and the risks of social media, I argue that the self-image created digitally determines whether an IO will be considered legitimate or not in the eyes of global public. To reconstruct and assess these images thus becomes an important task for the study of IOs in IR and beyond.

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, SELF-LEGITIMATION, AND SOCIAL MEDIA Just like any other global governor, IOs are ‘subjects of ongoing legitimation’ within their social environments as their mandate depends on acceptance and recognition from different stakeholders (Deephouse and Suchman, 2008: 54). In fact, cultivating support from different constituencies – including member states as principals but also civil society and those directly affected by IO governance – is a sine qua non for IOs (Dingwerth et al., 2014: 168–70). Their governance needs to be communicated and the assessment of their crisis response (or non-response) is co-determined by what an IO does and what it shares with its stakeholders. In other words, IOs must constantly relate to different actors to justify their existence and action as well as restate their responsibilities and (global) mandates as they otherwise remain ‘unfinished political projects’ (Koch, 2015; Barnett and Finnemore, 2004b). Legitimacy in this light can be thought of as a fluid, scarce resource: while it is needed to sustain authority to develop rules and norms in global governance, any IO can lose it if it fails to provide what it was meant to deliver or does not communicate with its stakeholders (Gronau and Schmidtke, 2016: 539–42). Legitimation as communicative practice then includes all efforts targeted at increasing legitimacy in complex and overlapping governance arrangements and often occurs through the IO itself in the form of self-legitimation, specifically when facing increased pressure and politicization through member states (Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2018b). Given their growing influence in global governance defined by the absence of any higher authority, IOs in fact have become heavily engaged in self-legitimation practices and have adopted far-reaching and detailed communication strategies to relate and connect to their stakeholders (Dingwerth et al., 2014: 180–85; see also Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2018a). Framed as ‘public diplomacy‘, outreach to shape beliefs of those in which name any IO governs has become critically important. As Hurd (2019: 717) recently argued, ‘[f]rom the point of view of the organization […], legitimacy is a useful property worth cultivating, defending, and deploy-

Tweeting through the pandemic  271 ing’. Against this backdrop, IOs have a vested interest in providing reason and justification for their action (or non-action). Such efforts of self-legitimation become ‘observable when international institutions’ representatives engage in proactive communication, in which they justify institutional identity and purpose on the basis of social norms’ (Gronau and Schmidtke, 2016: 541). Arguably, this ‘going public’ has become just as relevant as the substantial governance provided by any IO, given that it determines the perceived appropriateness thereof in organizational quests for legitimacy. At least, IOs attempt to become more strategic about it and IR scholars have recognized the need to consider these efforts in order to better understand these organizations (Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2018a: 2–4; Hurd, 2019). In the most recent iteration of ‘going public’, IOs have embraced social media to directly connect with their stakeholders. While still in an experimental stage, almost all IOs today have established a social media presence, hoping to use this to ‘effectively raise public awareness for global problems, publicly shame governments for not complying with interna­tional commitments, or teach norms and knowledge to citizens’ (Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2020: 21; see also Twiplomacy, 2018).2 Given their intergovernmental nature and dependence on member states, such communication, at least in official channels, cannot be expected to ‘go against’ their constituents. Nevertheless, moral authority can still be evoked, and member states reminded of their commitment to the greater good the IO hopes to represent. Figure 17.1 shows two such tweet vignettes from Dr Tedros aimed at fostering state cooperation at the UN General Assembly Session on COVID-19 in December 2020. Such dedicated and committed communication is important to counter populist sentiments of IOs being elitist, inapproachable, and technocratic (Zürn, 2018). In other words, most IOs have recognized social media as ‘a positive force in supporting communication with constituents’ (Ross and Bürger, 2014: 48) but the scope of their commitment remains uncertain. Just like engaging with ‘traditional media’, the adaption of social media brings certain risks and requires organizational coordination and learning. IO social media teams, for example, need to decide which channels they use, whether they use them in different ways, and how to balance authenticity and immediacy against a more centralized, streamlined narrative (Hofferberth, 2020). To be clear, with their recent proliferation, ‘social media adoption in organizations is outpacing [our] empirical understanding of the use of these technologies and our theories about why they may alter various organizational processes’ in dramatic fashion (Treem and Leonardi, 2016: 144). Compared to traditional forms of communication, social media features characteristics that appeal to an organization to take advantage of and utilize it towards self-legitimation. While the realm of social media is unpredictable and to some extent beyond one’s control, it still compares favorably to centralized mass media where ‘[e]ditors, publishers, and television producers […], many of them surprisingly unfamiliar with the organization, make the decisions about what to tell the public’ about the IO (Crossette, 2018: 379). Attempting to weigh in both the advantages and risks of social media, research on political communication in contested and politicized contexts such as global conferences and election campaigns has established in particular two mutually related, reinforcing features of social media when it comes to sharing one’s message, influencing stakeholders and fostering legitimacy (Hopke and Hestres, 2018; Thelwall and Cugelman, 2017; Usherwood and Wright, 2017; Ross and Bürger, 2014): ● Social media is instantaneous and direct. It establishes an immediate connection between the organization and its audience without delay or filter. There is virtually no limit such as airtime or space and new content can be produced in the blink of a tweet.

272  Handbook on governance in international organizations ● Social media is efficient and impactful. Given its cultural prevalence, low costs, and the potential to reach broad if not global audiences, social media significantly expands the ability of any organization to influence public relations and increase its visibility.

Figure 17.1

Tweet vignettes from the UN General Assembly Special Session on COVID-19

Tweeting through the pandemic  273 While both characteristics define social media in general, Twitter features particularly high degrees of connectivity and impact (or at least the potential thereof). Indeed, its brevity, conciseness, and immediacy amplifies the characteristics of social media and, as a sociocultural phenomenon, Twitter epitomizes a new way of communication among political elites and journalists (Murthy, 2012). Among these circles, tweets have become ‘common means of sharing opinions and updates for individuals as well as for business, governments and nongovernmental organizations’ (Denskus and Esser, 2013: 405). Instant message updates, hashtags and retweets, the ability to directly address other users and share content by embedding further media (images, videos, etc.) has made this micro-blogging application so successful. Despite recent scrutiny on its algorithms creating dangerous echo chambers, Twitter has become the ‘most used social media application in official public relations, advertising, and marketing campaigns’ and in theory allows IOs to share directly what traditional media does not cover (Lovejoy et al., 2012: 313; see also Usherwood and Wright, 2017).3 Against this backdrop, whether strategically motivated or organically grown, whether successful or failing, Twitter plays an important role for organizational self-legitimation. Consequentially, IOs invest into their Twitter account(s) and, if not in terms of quality engagement at least in terms of frequency, have become rather active on Twitter. IOs constantly send out tweets and thereby project and sustain their organizational governance and identity (Duncombe, 2017). While advanced in logic of self-presentation and branding, tweets reflect attempts to legitimate what an organization does and what it stands for. In other words, tweets sent out deliberately and strategically against a particular crisis express organizational claims on legitimacy and establish narratives which for scholars, despite the risk of appropriation by others, provide a direct and important window into the organization and its governance (Anderson, 2018).

TWEETING THROUGH THE PANDEMIC: THE WHO TWITTERSPHERE AND COVID-19 Given its mandate to educate about global health issues, the WHO became active in social media during the late 2000s (Guidry et al., 2017). Hosting a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Storify, foursquare, Vine, Ello, and Periscope, the organization understands its role in health communication broadly and recognizes the need ‘to keep abreast of changes and identify areas of improvement, such as using more visuals, pictures and infographics to simplify information, tell better stories, and create a fast but lasting impact’.4 The duality of potential impact vs. risk as well as the implied need to use social media in smart ways is echoed in the official WHO strategic communications framework, in which the organization ‘recognizes that effective, integrated and coordinated communication is integral to carrying out WHO’s goal to build a better, healthier future for people all over the world’ and continues to state that ‘appropriate use of social media can enhance the brand, but staff must know how to avoid negatively affecting the Organization when posting to their personal social media accounts’.5 When it comes to Twitter, there are several official accounts, both institutional and individual, recognized by the organization reflecting the real-world WHO structure in its Twittersphere. This includes the main account (@WHO) and the six WHO regional offices (@WHO_Europe, @WHOAFRO, @WHOWPRO, @pahowho, @WHOEMRO, @ WHOSEARO). These accounts are institutional in the sense that they do not feature iden-

274  Handbook on governance in international organizations tifiable individuals. As such, each account is permanent and carries a certain weight as it represents the WHO, at large or regionally. While these accounts can be expected to speak authoritatively for the organization, individual accounts exist as well, potentially ‘tweeting more freely’. In terms of senior leadership, this includes WHO Director-General Dr Tedros (@DrTedros), Executive Director for External Relations and Governance Jane Ellison (@ JaneEllison), Executive Director for the WHO Health Emergency Programme Mike Ryan (@DrMikeRyan), WHO Chief Scientist Dr Soumya Swaminathan (@doctorsoumya), and Dr Peter Singer, Special Advisor to the Director-General (@PeterASinger).6 In addition, some but not all regional directors are active on Twitter, including Matshidiso Rebecca Moeti (Africa), Carissa F. Etienne (Americas), Hans Kluge (Europe), and Takeshi Kasai (Western Pacific). Arguably, these individual accounts also speak for the WHO since the respective user is well-aware of her or his public role due to their exposed position and seniority within the organization. They are, however, at the same time not institutionally tied to the WHO and, in some cases, were active on Twitter before assuming their organizational position. Together with the institutional accounts, these individual accounts define the virtual space of the WHO Twittersphere (as reflected in Table17.1).7 Table 17.1

The WHO Twittersphere

Institutional

Total tweets in 2020

Individual

Total tweets in 2020

 

 

@DrTedros

5,696

@WHO

12,190

@JaneEllison

45

@WHO_Europe

2,631

@DrMikeRyan

108

@WHOAFRO

2,006

@doctorsoumya

2,770

@WHOWPRO

3,400

@PeterASinger

4,794

@pahowho

2,803

@hans_kluge

592

@WHOEMRO

1,412

@MoetiTshidi

682

@WHOSEARO

4,007

@takeshi_kasai

453

 

 

@DirOPSPAHO

1,570

Given the unprecedented nature of the pandemic and the pressure to respond, these WHO accounts tweeted, albeit with variation in frequency, on COVID-19 throughout 2020. Approximately 55–60 per cent of all tweets across these accounts referred to the pandemic either directly or framed the issue at hand through COVID-19 (see below). Collectively, these accounts express how the WHO framed the crisis, which aspects of the crisis it focused on, and how it presented itself throughout. Reaching millions of followers in an instant – @ WHO alone has 9.4 million followers and @DrTedros 1.4 million – these tweets influenced how global audiences perceived the WHO (Brown, 2020). For IO scholars, they are relevant as they reflect WHO governance and efforts of self-legitimation. Studying these in light of the crisis is specifically revealing since it cut right to the core of what the WHO is and what it does (Johnson, 2020: 151–3). In fact, COVID-19 and the organizational response to it became a focal point of contestation in terms of perceiving and assessing the WHO and its preparedness for future pandemics (Hanrieder, 2021). Against these dynamics, individual and institutional accounts, explicitly or not, carry efforts of self-legitimation to restore, sustain, or potentially even expand WHO authority and define its future governance. However, as argued above, the scope of these efforts and their nature needs to be carefully reconstructed.

Tweeting through the pandemic  275

TWEET SELECTION AND CODING SCHEMA To organize the selection of tweets and provide a manageable sample, an event-driven timeline of 2020 was developed. This timeline includes noteworthy developments within the WHO such as the meeting of the World Health Assembly as well as events that happened outside the organization but immediately affected the organization, such as the withdrawal announcement of the USA. Following Denskus and Esser (2013) to narrow down Twitter data by focusing on specific events, the timeline includes critical moments in which the WHO had to address the crisis. This focus produces a selection of tweets in which self-legitimation efforts can best be assessed since stakes were high. As shown in Table 17.2, I designated seven periods of different lengths throughout 2020 promising representative if not pointed insights into how the WHO tweeted throughout the crisis. Table 17.2

Crisis timeline, tweets collected and tweets analysed

Dates

Event

Total tweets

COVID tweets

31 Dec 2019 to

First reference & declaration of public health emergency

2,386

948

31 Jan 2020

of international concern

26 Mar 2020 to

Director-General addressing G20 & first explicit criticism

2,937

2,188

10 Apr 2020

of Trump administration

18 May 2020 to

73rd World Health Assembly & announcement of US

2,030

1,187

31 May 2020

withdrawal

6 Jul 2020 to

US notification to UN Secretary-General of its withdrawal

640

413

10 Jul 2020

from the WHO

15 Sep 2020 to

WHO outreach during 75th UN General Assembly &

3,742

1,750

10 Oct 2020

Executive Board session

25 Oct 2020 to

2020 World Health Summit

696

343

30 Nov 2020 to

UN General Assembly Special Session on COVID-19

992

536

7 Dec 2020

pandemic response

30 Oct 2020

Beginning with a one-month period between 31 December 2019, as the first reference to a ‘viral pneumonia’ through the initial WHO risk assessment and a first WHO mission to Wuhan leading to the declaration of a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), the WHO’s highest level of alarm, on 31 January 2020, the first period reflects initial engagement with and early sense-making of COVID-19. Next, tweets in light of the Director-General addressing the G20 on 26 March to the first explicit criticism (and threat) of President Trump during a coronavirus taskforce briefing on 7 April were considered. Third, the 73rd World Health Assembly in May 2020 provided a stage for the WHO to further discuss the crisis. This period was extended to include the 29 May announcement of the Trump administration to leave the WHO, claiming that the organization caved to pressure from China ‘to mislead the world when the virus was first discovered by Chinese authorities’ to further state that ‘China has total control over the World Health Organization’.8 Fourth, and following the US announcement to leave the WHO, tweets around 6 July 2020 – the day when the USA officially notified the UN Secretary-General of their withdrawal – were considered. The fifth and the sixth period covered the WHO outreach during the 75th UN General Assembly and the 2020 World Health Summit, respectively, in which the WHO called on world leaders to increase and coordinate their efforts to fight COVID. Finally, the first week in December was

276  Handbook on governance in international organizations considered since the UN General Assembly held a Special Session on the global COVID-19 pandemic response and directly brought in the WHO to speak to the issue.9 The approximate 13,500 tweets listed in Table 17.2, including retweets but limited to tweets in English, Spanish, and French, account for 30 per cent of all WHO tweets throughout 2020 (total sample size n = 45,159 tweets). They thus constitute a relevant sample of the overall WHO Twittersphere. Tweets sent out during the time periods discussed above were collected using Twitter’s application programming interface (API) and screened for whether they referred to the pandemic either directly or framed the issue at hand through COVID-19.10 As already stated above, approximately 50–60 per cent of all tweets across the accounts did, leaving a sample of 7,365 tweets.11 Out of these, I coded a random sample of 50 per cent for each handle in a qualitative content analysis (Schreier, 2012). Specifically, 3,735 tweets were coded in terms of their crisis framing, purpose, sentiment, spirit, and the WHO image they projected. Table 17.3 provides an overview of the coding scheme initially developed deductively and then refined through ongoing engagement with the material.12 Table 17.3

Coding scheme

Categories

Dimensions

Framing of tweet

Health crisis Crisis of politics Socio-economic crisis (Mis-)information crisis No explicit crisis framing

Purpose of tweet

Discussion statement Call for collective action Call for individual action Pandemic update Personal education Recognition & appreciation Announcement & information

Sentiment of tweet

Factual Emotional

Spirit of tweet

Cooperative Neutral Confrontational

WHO image in tweet

Positive Neutral Negative Not addressed

In terms of how the WHO framed the crisis, the project coded whether the organization read it as a health crisis, a crisis of politics, a socio-economic crisis, or a crisis of (mis‑)information. This is important since each reading implies a different role for the WHO to play and casts organizational legitimacy in different ways. Tweets in this category were coded in one dimension only, reflecting the primary framing of the crisis. An emphasis on health projects and an unwillingness to engage with the pandemic in broader, potentially more controversial terms, can be read as an attempt to depoliticize. On the flipside, emphasizing the political dimension of the pandemic indicates a willingness to engage in contentious debates, leading to higher degrees of politicization (Ecker-Ehrhardt, 2018b). The third dimension reflects a broader

Tweeting through the pandemic  277 WHO commitment to socio-economic issues, implying the need for a more holistic approach towards COVID and expanding the WHO’s mandate. Framing the crisis as such also relates the WHO to other organizations and potential partners (Hanrieder, 2021). In the fourth dimension – COVID as a (mis‑)information crisis – the WHO, using its expert knowledge and scientific facts (Barnett and Finnemore, 2004a: 173–4), sees itself responding to an ‘infodemic’ and provides recommendations and best practices for its audience(s). Taken together, the respective salience of each framing indicates how the WHO understands its own role (as well as limits) in the crisis. No explicit framing would express a rationale to stay non-committed and engage with the crisis by relating tweets to COVID-19 without a clear, larger mandate. The purpose of each tweet was coded in terms of whether it initiated or responded to a discussion, marked a call for collective or individual action or a pandemic update, committed to personal education, recognition, and appreciation, or provided an informational announcement. These dimensions reflect whether a tweet is intended to engage followers or shut down discourse (Lovejoy et al., 2012). Given the shortness of tweets, each was coded in one dimension only. Discussion statements featured arguments that audiences can relate to and either agree with or contest.13 To qualify as a call for collective action, tweets needed to express an immediate request for governments or other IOs to act upon. Calls for individual action, on the other hand, expressed the need to change one’s behaviour considering COVID, for example following particular guidelines. Pandemic updates, often in medical terms, provided numbers and trajectories of the crisis, whereas personal education, not unlike calls for individual action, targeted individuals to instruct them. Finally, recognitions and announcements marked non-political appreciation of donors and staff or event updates, publications, and new programmes (Smith and Gallicano, 2015: 84–85). While all relevant, discussion statements and calls for collective action are value-driven and hence represent more engagement, whereas updates, personal education, recognition and information, specifically trivial and non-controversial, were considered as further depoliticization (Anderson, 2018: 33–4). As to the sentiment of tweets, I coded whether the language of a tweet appealed to its audience in factual or emotional terms. Tweets were coded as factual if they reflected moderate language and remained neutral and sober, while emotional tweets had to contain expressive and affectual language, marking a colourful, charged message full of strong feeling and indicating willingness to ‘step up the tone’. Overall, a factual approach can be read as an attempt to establish WHO authority in a rational–legal logic of bureaucracy, seeking to keep its distance to its stakeholders, understanding this as an asset in health governance (McInnes, 2015: 1308–12). Given the comprehensive nature of the crisis and the fact that it continues to affect all of us in deep ways, on the other hand, emotional appeals and the empathy they express presented the WHO as a caring and humane organization. As such, they mark a communication strategy attempting to capitalize on the nature and dynamics of social media to personalize and connect to the feelings of one’s audience(s), making an IO appear more approachable and likeable (Guidry et al., 2017). In similar terms, the spirit of each tweet was coded whether it was presented in a cooperative, neutral, or aggressive tone. This dimension reflects the approach of the WHO on how to relate to member states, other global governors, and partners (i.e. whether it called out other actors, remained diplomatic throughout, or even actively sought out and valued partnerships). A commitment to remaining cooperative expressed recognition of delegated and shared authority vis-à-vis member states and others, sustaining the principal–agent logic of intergovernmental organizations and network governance more broadly (Barnett and Finnemore,

278  Handbook on governance in international organizations 2004a: 171–2). In other words, emphasizing cooperation confirmed meta-governance norms of seeking partnerships and collaboration in health governance. Becoming more explicit in its tweets, on the other hand, would indicate not only that the crisis is being politicized but also that the WHO is willing to be part of this politicization and become more ‘committed’ in its messaging, deriving its authority not from staying out of conflict but engaging it head-on (Hanrieder, 2021). Finally, the overall WHO image conveyed in each tweet was coded. This included a range from positive, and as such affirmative, to neutral or not referenced, to negative and critical. Affirmative tweets included appreciations of multilateral WHO efforts and (self‑)praise for what the organization is doing. It also includes efforts to strengthen the WHO to place the organization at the centre of global health governance (Holzscheiter et al., 2016). Negative tweets, on the other hand, include critical remarks on what the WHO does (or fails to do). Finally, presenting the organization in neutral terms or not referencing it at all was considered as a strategy to stay neutral and once more not openly commit and risk politicizing. Communicating a positive self-image was considered a proactive form of self-legitimation, whereas tweets presenting the WHO in negative terms would confirm critics of the organization and push it towards accepting a subordinate role. Against this scheme and selection of tweets, the next section presents and discusses coding results.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION This section summarizes the findings for all tweets included in the sample and thus provides a window into the WHO Twittersphere and its self-legitimation efforts during COVID-19. To begin with, across individual and institutional accounts, the crisis is very prevalent. As shown in Figure 17.2, 56 per cent of institutional and 53 per cent of individual tweets either directly addressed or at least referenced COVID in relation to other topics (e.g. other diseases and how the fight against them is affected by COVID). While there is little difference between institutional and individual accounts when it comes to the overall presence of COVID in the sample, regional and individual accounts differ. @WHO_Europe, for example, addressed COVID only in 45 per cent of their tweets, whereas the WHO Western Pacific Regional Office (@WHOWPRO), which includes China, tweeted about COVID in two out of three messages throughout the sample. Similarly, for individual accounts, @doctorsoumya and @ PeterASinger referenced COVID in only 47 per cent of their tweets, while @takeshi_kasai tweeted about COVID in 77 per cent of his messages. Those differences aside, to no big surprise, the WHO Twittersphere resonates strongly with COVID as the official account, its leading individuals, regional offices, and their directors addressed it frequently throughout 2020. In terms of framing the crisis, announcements of press briefings, releases of media, and repetitive sharing of statistics on COVID constitute more than a third of all institutional tweets and do not provide an explicit frame of the crisis. For individual accounts, this number is even higher with almost 50 per cent. As such, a vast majority of WHO tweets remain indeterminate as they share statistics, health guidelines, and best practices but do not frame the crisis otherwise. Focusing on those tweets which reflect a direct take on COVID-19, the pandemic is very frequently framed as a health crisis, specifically during the early periods of the sample. Frames of COVID as a political crisis in need of better leadership or a socio-economic crisis to be

Tweeting through the pandemic  279

Figure 17.2

COVID ‘positivity rate’ in sample tweets

addressed holistically remain rather limited: there is little willingness to engage in ‘pandemic politics’, neither in terms of global solidarity and multilateralism nor in domestic contexts in terms of equity, race, and health access. Framing the crisis in such a fashion can be read as an attempt by the WHO to project its core health expertise and competencies as sufficient to sustain its governance. That said, the WHO seems to deliberately follow a depoliticizing script throughout the crisis. When it commits, it focuses mostly on health and refrains from more explicit crisis framing (Louis and Maertens, 2021) (Figure 17.3).

Figure 17.3

COVID framing in the sample tweets

Granted, framing a novel virus that killed 1.89 million people in 2020 alone as a health crisis does not come as a surprise, specifically for an organization dedicated to furthering global public health (Hanrieder, 2021). However, it should be noted that the predominant health

280  Handbook on governance in international organizations framing, together with the otherwise indeterminate non-framing, downplays the political mandate and leadership of the WHO in the crisis, with many tweets featuring health statistics and guidelines but little recognition of the need for better leadership, more inclusive multilateralism, or a stronger WHO taking a more holistic approach to address COVID-19. Given that institutional and individual accounts follow this pattern, distinct and decisive framings that would call for a more active and comprehensive WHO mandate are not advanced. That is, the WHO does not frame COVID as an existential crisis, even though politicians, pundits, and scholars kept (over‑)stating the novel and disruptive nature of the virus and the high stakes for the organization to address it (Freyberg-Inan, 2021: 5–6). Corresponding with the lack of explicit framing, the WHO is not committed to a single purpose in terms of how it uses Twitter. As shown in Figure 17.4, most tweets, both institutional and individual, provide information and public health updates or educate the audience in terms of individual health measures. These three purposes, it should be noted, rather trivialize the WHO. Again, most tweets come down to announcements of press briefings without further specification or reminders of best practices for individual behaviour and hygiene (e.g. how to wear a mask and wash hands). What is less prominent in the sample are calls on member states to work together and combat the pandemic, pool resources, or strengthen the WHO. Rather, at least for the institutional accounts, responsibility to solve the crisis is strongly individualized. Only 19 per cent (institutional) and 27 per cent (individual) of tweets are normative and express the values driving the organization. To go into more detail, among the individual accounts, there was a subset of tweets recognizing achievements of countries and their leadership, including China as well as civil society and distinct individuals but there is no willingness to take a stand and confront any specific actor. Given that such tweets on contentious issues require the WHO to step out of its organizational comfort zone, overall discursive engagement remains limited and the organization does not exhaust Twitter as a means of political deliberation and mobilization. This conservative approach overall limits the WHO Twittersphere and surely does not reflect proactive self-legitimation. Arguably, in fact, as an unintended consequence, this non-realization of social media potential can eventually undermine the organization. At the very least, it does not reflect the hopes stated in the WHO strategic communications framework to ‘enhance the ability for […] subscribers to engage in conversations […], identify areas of improvement, such as using more visuals, pictures and infographics to simplify information, tell better stories, and create a fast but lasting impact’.14 More pointedly, it is troubling for any advocate of the WHO that when facing the worst global health crisis in recent times, the main global health organization consciously chooses caution over committing itself. Comparing institutional to individual accounts in more depth, however, there seems to be a division of labour between those. Institutional accounts provide more pandemic updates and personal education as well as feature more announcements and information. The institutional accounts collectively approach COVID as a service and education provider. Consequentially, most of their tweeting remains trivial. The individual accounts, on the other hand, are more willing to recognize and appreciate WHO partners and member states’ governments and express more value statements to engage in discussion. This larger number of ‘discussion tweets’ is specifically prominent in the sample of @DrTedros. As Director-General, he seems to be willing to play a more proactive role reaching out to member states and discussing issues such as multilateralism, global responsibility, and solidarity in response to the crisis. As will be shown below, however, even his statements mostly remain in the spirit of global

Tweeting through the pandemic  281

Figure 17.4

Purpose in the sample tweets

cooperation rather than directly confronting individual member states. Nevertheless, as shown in the tweet vignettes in Figure 17.1, he seems more willing to advance arguments on behalf of a global community and to assume moral authority to speak for those affected by COVID, who otherwise remain voiceless. ‘[A]s champions of the shared values of the [global] community against particularistic interests’, such tweeting and the moral claims it entails reflects at least a moment of politicization of the WHO (Barnett and Finnemore, 2004a: 173). Within its Twittersphere, however, these claims are presented as universally accepted and hence impartial and ultimately not contentious. As such, they can also be interpreted as limited politicization as their commitment mostly remains vague and non-actionable. When it comes to sentiment, the detached, neutral content translates into a similar pattern of communication in terms of tone and attitude. Specifically, tweets almost exclusively assume factual language and do not express any emotions. There are only very few tweets expressing emotional investment (roughly 100 out of 3,400). As displayed in Figure 17.5, the WHO Twittersphere presents itself in a sober, non-affective voice. This is equally true for institutional and individual accounts, which both seem to assume that emotionally neutral, technical tweeting suits the WHO best. Contrary to political actors deliberately embracing the heat of social media (Mancosu, 2018), the WHO de-emotionalizes its Twittersphere and only shares very few tweets with explicit emotional wording or empathy by expressing condolences for loved ones lost, for example. Mostly, pandemic deaths are aggregated in statistics, presented in the dry voice of rationalized, bureaucratic communication (Barnett and Finnemore, 1999: 710–11), making the WHO appear impersonal and unwilling to care for those who suffer most from the pandemic as well as non-relating to the challenges towards the organization, for example when the USA decided to leave the WHO. At least in this context, frustration could have been voiced.15 As to the spirit in which the WHO Twittersphere is advanced, there is virtually no confrontational tweeting. Equally interesting, the majority of tweets – 80 per cent (institutional), 70 per cent (individual) – do not mention cooperation or explicitly value partnership. The remainder, roughly a fifth of all tweets between institutional and individual accounts, are advanced

282  Handbook on governance in international organizations

Figure 17.5

Sentiment in the sample tweets

in cooperative character, recognizing that ‘we are in this together’ and the importance of partnerships. The range of entities recognized includes member states due to the need to work together with them, but also other intergovernmental organizations, non-state actors, and a broadly constructed global public of individuals as well. This can be seen as a testimonial of the ‘proliferation of issues, actors, and rule-systems’ in the global health landscape, in which the WHO has to work in and with the ACT-Accelerator or the COVAX Facility of the Gavi Alliance, to give but two examples of frequently mentioned partnerships (Pantzerhielm et al., 2020: 412). This result, arguably, reflects awareness of the WHO to communicate partnerships and shared governance at the local, national, and global level while also stating its centrality in such networked global health governance (Hanrieder, 2021) (Figure 17.6).

Figure 17.6

Spirit in the sample tweets

Tweeting through the pandemic  283  

Finally, as shown in Figure 17.7, the WHO leans towards presenting itself in a positive light (i.e. as a capable organization) in the fight against COVID-19. This commitment, however, remains moderate, with the vast majority of tweets not mentioning the organization or remaining neutral in terms of how they assess the organization. There is little identification with the WHO by individuals, who do not proactively connect themselves to the organization (e.g. by assuming ownership and by confidently speaking on behalf of the organization). At the same time, the institutional accounts equally remain neutral in their self-references and self-assessments, carefully not engaging in too obvious branding and promotion of the WHO. That said, virtually no tweet carried a message that could be read as a critique of the organization. The limited self-referencing avoiding any negative views can be referred to as ‘passive branding’ – while not communicating frequently how great the WHO is, the organization avoids talking about its failures, limitations, and shortcomings either. In other words, the WHO is not assuming strong advocacy for itself, but rather remains toned-down and modest, even in its own self-assessment.

Figure 17.7

WHO images in the sample tweets

Bringing the different coding dimensions together, the WHO on Twitter presents itself as a neutral provider of important health updates and a source of trustworthy information in the pandemic. There is, however, a tangible reluctance to embrace the politics that COVID-19 brought to the WHO and little desire to expand governance beyond that of a mere ‘technical’ health organization (Holzscheiter et al., 2016). This, intentionally or not, downplays the organization’s potential to influence member states and set the agenda towards more ambitious approaches to the crisis. The WHO deliberately takes a back seat as the politics of COVID-19 on a global scale are not addressed in its Twittersphere. Most tweets rather provide health guidance, educate the audience with best practices such as washing one’s hands and wearing a mask, and thereby individualize if not trivialize responsibilities and crisis solutions. Advocacy and programmatic agenda-setting on Twitter, for example, remains very limited as the WHO overall disconnects itself from politics. Likewise, despite the contestation it faced,

284  Handbook on governance in international organizations we see the organization connect to its member states only in friendly terms. Taken together, with very few exceptions, content and tone of the WHO Twittersphere reflect a cautious approach not to expose the organization to debate. At least there is little effort to use Twitter to connect to broader issues relevant for the global pandemic, such as how to respond to it and future ones globally and within multilateral frameworks (Pevehouse, 2020). Presumably, the WHO has stakes in such debates but is unwilling to express or follow them through on Twitter. The WHO Twittersphere does not seem to be the space where the organization wants discussions about its role in future health governance to take place. Potentially more concerned about the risks of confronting and thereby alienating member states and other stakeholders or having their narratives misappropriated by others than willing to wage on social media potential, the WHO seems to leave discussions about its mandate beyond the crisis to more traditional diplomatic settings (Hanrieder, 2021). The following conclusion will discuss what this means for IO governance and social media research more broadly.

CONCLUSION This chapter set out to consider whether and how IOs use social media for self-legitimation by looking into the WHO Twittersphere during COVID-19. Ever since its creation, the WHO faced criticism and the challenge to avoid being sidelined. Just as with many IOs, substantial debate has been at least paralleled by calls for broad institutional reform (Hanrieder, 2015, 2021). With a global pandemic upon us and the organization deeply challenged in its governance and identity, the WHO more than ever struggled to meet stakeholders’ expectations throughout 2020. Communicating the crisis in a cautious, conservative fashion, the WHO Twittersphere does not reflect proactive self-legitimation aimed at expanding its governance mandate. Rather, defining its role in COVID in neutral terms, the WHO attempts to depoliticize the crisis (Louis and Maertens, 2021). This specific (non‑)use of Twitter to stay on message, nevertheless, can be considered as a strategic attempt which assumes a low profile, engaging only in expert-driven, technocratic communication rather than becoming the subject of more contentious politics (Barnett, 2016: 138). Even in moments of contestation such as the US announcement to leave the organization, the WHO remained committed to its preferred modality and avoided confrontation with member states. In other words, while the WHO Twittersphere does not resonate with ambitious ideas to address the crisis, it still reflects a particular strategy of self-legitimation as the WHO enacts itself in neutral terms as a health service provider. While high hopes for social media as a game-changer through public deliberation, potentially empowering global audiences to participate in discourse, remain largely unfulfilled for the WHO, its Twittersphere thus still reflects a distinct example of how the organization tries to define itself on and through social media (Nahon, 2016). Whether it is working must be shown by research specifically bringing in the audience and its response. While normative engagement through committed tweeting remains limited, scholars of IO governance still need to consider social media as we move forward for two reasons. One is empirical and relates back to the fact that IOs have heavily committed themselves to social media and produce indisputable, tangible, written, and public data in this realm every day. It remains for the scholar to determine how this data can be used to provide novel insights. The second reason is that IOs over time will grow more sophisticated in their social media use. In this light, what we see today is arguably an early stage of limited communication that will ‘go

Tweeting through the pandemic  285 further’ over time. The UN, for example, has already decided to commit to social media more strategically and it is reasonable to assume that other IOs will learn how to use Twitter and other media outlets to better effect, too (Crossette, 2018). We need to not only better understand the current use of social media by IOs but potentially, through continuous academic scrutiny and consulting, can eventually contribute to better practices of more engaged use of social media to realize the dormant Habermasian promise of creating and sustaining new public spheres (Bruns and Highfield, 2016). Given the importance of comprehensive social media research to better understand organizational self-legitimation and justifications of IO governance, questions for future research remain. If one accepts social media as manifest IO sense-making, one needs to develop an inclusive methodology that considers written content as well as attached media and visual images. Likewise, one must make decisions about how to conceptualize and demarcate the virtual space of IOs (i.e. which accounts constitute organizational Twitterspheres). Finally, one needs to theorize what is institutional and individual as well as strategic and ad hoc about social media and relate this to traditional IO communication more broadly. All three items are important for the emerging field of IO social media research, which does not constitute a ‘coherent research program (yet) and lack[s] systematicity’ (Bjola and Zaiotti, 2020a: 3). Such a programme, however, is needed since social media carries the potential to respond to recent populist challenges towards IOs framing these as abstract elite projects of cosmopolitanism (Pevehouse, 2020). Against this spectre, the ability to reach out to and engage different audiences is normatively desirable for any IO. For scholars, triangulated with organizational mission statements, documents, and interviews with involved individuals, social media analysis can offer important insights into IOs and their governance. Put bluntly, social media analysis in itself captures only one dimension of IOs, but IO analyses without factoring in social media, its potential, and its risks remain equally limited.

NOTES 1.

https://​www​.npr​.org/​sections/​goatsandsoda/​2020/​07/​07/​888186158/​trump​-sets​-date​-to​-end​-who​ -membership​-over​-its​-handling​-of​-virus, last retrieved 9 June 2021. 2. As anecdotal evidence, the main UN account (@UN) was created in March 2008 and now has 13.4 million followers (Bouchard, 2020), while @WHO followed in April 2008, just two years after Twitter was launched. 3. See https://​www​.similarweb​.com/​top​-websites for a detailed ranking of social media websites. 4. https://​www​.who​.int/​communicating​-for​-health/​functions/​social​-media/​en/​, last retrieved 10 January 2022. 5. https://​www​.who​.int/​mediacentre/​communication​-framework​.pdf, last retrieved 10 January 2022. 6. https://​www​.who​.int/​director​-general/​who​-headquarters​-leadership​-team, last retrieved 10 January 2022. Note that Deputy Director-General Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab was not active on Twitter in 2020 and Executive Director Jane Ellison only sent 45 tweets of which two originate from the time periods considered (see below). 7. Note that this captures only the ‘second face’ of the WHO and that states and their representatives (first face) as well as non-state actors (third face) contribute to the WHO Twittersphere as well (Weiss et al., 2009: 125–9). Given the focus on organizational self-legitimation and the methodological challenge to systematically include social media responses, I decided to focus on these accounts but recognize the need to go further in future research. 8. https://​trumpwhitehouse​.archives​.gov/​briefings​-statements/​remarks​-president​-trump​-actions​-china, last retrieved 10 January 2022.

286  Handbook on governance in international organizations 9. The WHO response timeline, https://​www​.who​.int/​emergencies/​diseases/​novel​-coronavirus​-2019/​ interactive​-timeline, last retrieved 10 January 2022., as well as media coverage of the pandemic and the WHO were used to identify relevant events, developments, and dates. In most instances, an additional day or two were added. 10. In contrast to other social media platforms, Twitter provides comprehensive access to its data through its API. 11. The ‘positivity rate’ of COVID tweets varied throughout 2020 with few tweets early in January (about a third) and peaking during the second time period in March/April (about 80%). I am indebted to my graduate research assistant Perla Farias, who screened all tweets and thereby created the overall sample. 12. Further coding included targeted audience, language and media attachments for each tweet. Since this reflects formal coding and is not immediately relevant for this project, I will not further discuss findings in this regard. 13. Simply put, anything that reflected an expressed opinion fell under this code. This included the sharing of ‘facts’ as long as (a) the facts were contested or (b) the author presented them in an argumentative fashion. 14. https://​www​.who​.int/​mediacentre/​communication​-framework​.pdf, last retrieved 10 January 2022. 15. It should be noted that I only included text as such and not attached images in the coding. Arguably, adding individual faces when sharing aggregated data, speaks more directly to audiences and their emotions. In other words, visualization matters and including those could reflect more emotional appeal (Schlag and Heck, 2020).

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Tweeting through the pandemic  287 Crossette, B. (2018), Media. In: Weiss, T. G. and Daws, S. (eds), The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 370–82. Deephouse, D. L. and Suchman, M. (2008), Legitimacy in Organizational Institutionalism. In: Greenwood, R., Oliver, C., Roy, S., et al. (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism. London: Sage Publications, pp. 49–77. Denskus, T. and Esser, D. E. (2013), Social Media and Global Development Rituals. A Content Analysis of Blogs and Tweets on the 2010 MDG Summit. Third World Quarterly 34:3, pp. 405–22. Dingwerth, K., Lehmann, I., Reichel, E., et al. (2014), Many Pipers, Many Tunes? Die Legitimationskommunikation internationaler Organisationen in komplexen Umwelten. Politische Vierteljahreszeitschrift Sonderheft 49, pp. 165–90. Duncombe, C. (2017), Twitter and Transformative Diplomacy: Social Media and Iran-US Relations. International Affairs 93:3, pp. 545–62. Ecker-Ehrhardt, M. (2018a), International Organizations “Going Public”? An Event History Analysis of Public Communications Reforms 1950–2015. International Studies Quarterly 62:4, pp. 723–36. Ecker-Ehrhardt, M. (2018b), Self-Legitimation in the Face of Politicization: Why International Organizations Centralized Public Communication. The Review of International Organizations 13:4, pp. 519–46. Ecker-Ehrhardt, M. (2020), IO Public Communication Going Digital? Understanding Social Media Adoption and Use in Times of Politicization. In: Bjola, C. and Zaiotti, R. (eds), Digital Diplomacy and International Organisations: Autonomy, Legitimacy, and Contestation. London: Routledge, pp. 21–51. Freyberg-Inan, A. (2021), Separating the Old from the New, or the Death of Liberal Order (Not from COVID-19). International Studies Review 23:3, pp. 1102–6. Gronau, J. and Schmidtke, H. (2016), The Quest for Legitimacy in World Politics: International Institutions’ Legitimation Strategies. Review of International Studies 42:3, pp. 535–57. Guidry, J. P. D., Jin, Y., Orr, C. A., et al. (2017), Ebola on Instagram and Twitter: How Health Organizations Address the Health Crisis in their Social Media Engagement. Public Relations Review 43:3, pp. 477–86. Hanrieder, T. (2015), International Organization in Time: Fragmentation and Reform. New York: Oxford University Press. Hanrieder, T. (2021), Priorities, Partners, Politics. The WHO’s Mandate beyond the Crisis. Global Governance 26:4, pp. 534–43. Hofferberth, M. (2020), Tweeting to Save Succeeding Generations from the Scourge of War? The UN, Twitter and Communicative Action. In: Bjola, C. and Zaiotti, R. (eds), Digital Diplomacy and International Organisations: Autonomy, Legitimacy, and Contestation. London: Routledge, pp. 155–83. Holzscheiter, A., Bahr, T. and Pantzerhielm, L. (2016), Emerging Governance Architectures in Global Health: Do Metagovernance Norms Explain Inter-Organisational Convergence? Politics & Governance 4:3, pp. 5–19. Hopke, J. E. and Hestres, L. E. (2018), Visualizing the Paris Climate Talks on Twitter: Media and Climate Stakeholder Visual Social Media during COP21. Social Media+Society 4:3, pp. 1–15. Hurd, I. (2019), Legitimacy and Contestation in Global Governance: Revisiting the Folk Theory of International Institutions. The Review of International Organizations 14:4, pp. 717–29. Jackson, S.T. (2019), A Turning IR Landscape in a Shifting Media Ecology: The State of IR Literature on New Media. International Studies Review 21:3, pp. 518–34. Johnson, T. (2020), Ordinary Patterns in an Extraordinary Crisis: How International Relations Makes Sense of the COVID-19 Pandemic. International Organization 74:S1 (IO COVID-19 Online Supplemental Issue), pp. 148–68. Koch, M. (2015), World Organizations – (Re‑)Conceptualizing International Organizations. World Political Science 11:1, pp. 1–35. Louis, M. and Maertens, L. (2021), Why International Organizations Hate Politics: Depoliticizing the World. New York: Routledge. Lovejoy, K., Waters, R. D. and Saxton, G. D. (2012), Engaging Stakeholders Through Twitter: How Nonprofit Organizations are Getting More out of 140 Characters or Less. Public Relations Review 38:2, pp. 313–18.

288  Handbook on governance in international organizations Mancosu, M. (2018), Populism, Emotionalized Blame Attribution and Selective Exposure in Social Media: A Comparative Analysis of Italy and UK. Comunicazione Politica 10:1, pp. 73–92. Manor, I. (2016), Are We There Yet: Have MFAs Realized the Potential of Digital Diplomacy?: Results from a Cross-National Comparison. Leiden: Brill. McInnes, C. (2015), WHO’s next? Changing Authority in Global Health Governance after Ebola. International Affairs 91:6, pp. 1299–316. Murthy, D. (2012), Towards a Sociological Understanding of Social Media: Theorizing Twitter. Sociology 46:6, pp. 1059–73. Nahon, K. (2016), Where There Is Social Media There Is Politics. In: Bruns, A., Enli, G., Skogerbo, E., et al. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics. New York: Routledge, pp. 39–55. Pantzerhielm, L., Holzscheiter, A. and Bahr, T. (2020), Power in Relations of International Organisations: The Productive Effects of ‘Good’ Governance Norms in Global Health. Review of International Studies 46:3, pp. 395–414. Pevehouse, J. C. W. (2020), The COVID-19 Pandemic, International Cooperation, and Populism. International Organization 74:S1 (IO COVID-19 Online Supplemental Issue), pp. 191–212. Ross, K. and Bürger, T. (2014), Face to Face(book): Social Media, Political Campaigning and the Unbearable Lightness of Being There. Political Science 66:1, pp. 46–62. Schlag, G. and Heck, A. (2020), Visualität und Weltpolitik. Praktiken des Zeigens und Sehens in den Internationalen Beziehungen. Wiesbaden: SpringerVS. Schreier, M. (2012), Qualitative Content Analysis in Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Smith, B. G. and Gallicano, T. D. (2015), Terms of Engagement: Analyzing Public Engagement with Organizations through Social Media. Computers in Human Behavior 53, pp. 82–90. Thelwall, M. and Cugelman, B. (2017), Monitoring Twitter Strategies to Discover Resonating Topics: The Case of UNDP. El Profesional de la Informacion 26:4, pp. 649–61. Treem, J. W. and Leonardi, P. M. (2016), Social Media Use in Organizations: Exploring the Affordances of Visibility, Editability, Persistence, and Association. Annals of the International Communication Association 36:1, pp. 143–89. Twiplomacy (2018), Twiplomacy Study 2018. https://​www​.twiplomacy​.com/​twiplomacy​-study​-2018. Usherwood, S. and Wright, K. A. (2017), Sticks and Stones: Comparing Twitter Campaigning Strategies in the European Union Referendum. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 19:2, pp. 371–88. Weiss, T. G., Carayannis, T. and Jolly, R. (2009), The Third United Nations. Global Governance 15:1, pp. 123–42. Zürn, M. (2018), Contested Global Governance. Global Policy 9:1, pp. 138–45.

Calls for a changing of the guard

18. Small state, big table: the relevance of St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ election to the United Nations Security Council for small states in the multilateral system Kai-Ann D. Skeete

THE GROWTH OF THE MULTILATERALISM SYSTEM Evolution of Multilateralism Multilateralism is a concept that for some has evolved over the decades. Early definitions suggest it is ‘the practice of coordinating national policies in groups of three or more states, through ad hoc arrangements or by means of institutions’ (Keohane, 1990, p. 731). This can be seen particularly in the immediate decades after the Second World War, with the creation of the United Nations in 1945, which incentivized cooperation among states. With its establishment, came the proliferation of numerous global conferences which arguably, intentionally fostered multilateralism. In addition, the number of inter-governmental organizations also grew, with there being over 200 in 1960 and over 600 by 1980. The rise during this period was also bolstered by the many newly independent states such as those in the Caribbean that sought to obtain a slice of the proverbial multilateralism pie. This concept of multilateralism has not remained static. International relations from the late twentieth century began to see frequent involvement from non-state actors and this extended to multilateralism. Theoretical Perspectives Theoretical perspectives on multilateralism can be a useful tool for understanding the value of multilateralism for both large and small states. Realists contend that states inevitably pursue different goals when they enter multilateral cooperation due to their incompatible interests. Realists also argue that in some instances, stronger or larger states may not engage in this practice at all, if not parallel to the state’s interest. International institutions are either weak or function to limit hegemonic control. Their perspective also sees interdependence as a weak motivator of state behaviour (Waltz, 1999). Institutionalists purport that multilateralism serves to solve shared problems (Bouchard et al., 2013). Global issues such as Climate Change fall within this scope. Many smaller states such as those in the Caribbean adopt this outlook, given their inherent weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which make it particularly challenging to respond effectively in a unilateral manner. In contrast, dependency theorists take a more critical perspective. For them, the idea that multilateralism promotes international harmony is a fallacy, and the true motive is the exploitation of weak states. Such diverse theoretical perspectives allude to the reality that not all states view or value multilateralism in the same way. 290

Small state, big table  291

INTRODUCTION TO THE STRUCTURE AND OPERATIONS OF THE UNITED NATIONS The leading intergovernmental organization in the world, the United Nations (UN) was established on 24 October 1945 directly after the Second World War, as an effective world peace, security, economic, social and political organization. The UN continues to strive towards the maintenance of international peace and security and towards the development of friendly relations among nations, large and small, based on the respect for equal rights and self-determination by promoting and encouraging human rights and fundamental freedoms. (Evans and Newnham, 1998, p. 552)

The six organs that constitute the UN are the General Assembly (GA), the Security Council (SC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Secretariat, the Trusteeship Council, and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). These were created out of a perceived need for a ‘universal organization with a permanent secretariat … cover(ing) all fields of human endeavor’ (Roberts and Kingsbury, 1993, p. 120). The members of the UN are all independent states, totalling 193 at present. This figure arose throughout the decades especially due to the UN’s active ‘promotion of decolonization and self-determination’, as upon the creation of the UN only 51 states were members (Weiss et al., 2001, p. 228; Harris, 1998, p. 1080). UN Charter The Charter is the ‘constitution’ of the UN as it contains all of its rules and regulations. It is noteworthy to mention that any change to the structure of the Security Council can only be done as an amendment to the UN Charter through a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly and at least a majority of three-quarters of member states ratification. However, the Charter is flawed with severe limitations (Hiscocks, 1973, p. 72). In the 77 years since the UN’s inception there have only been five amendments to the UN Charter. UN Security Council (UNSC) The UN Security Council is deemed by the UN Charter to be that body which has the responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. According to the UN Charter, Article 24, the UNSC has the power to investigate any situation threatening international peace; recommend procedures for peaceful resolution of a dispute; to call upon other member states to interrupt economic relations as well as sea, air, postal, and radio communications, or to sever diplomatic relations; and to enforce its decisions militarily if necessary. In keeping with its mandate, the UN is thus allowed to make binding decisions; for instance, economic sanctions on member states as ‘the same Chapter made a wide range of diplomatic, economic and military sanctions available for use against the recalcitrant state(s)’ (Evans and Newnham, 1998, p. 493). According to Jaime De Pinies, the Spanish diplomat who served as President of the 40th UN General Assembly (1985) the UNSC is basically a political organ and has always been ‘an oligarchical, undemocratic mechanism lacking in transparency’ (Nicol, 1981, p. 220). After the dismal collapse of the UN’s predecessor, the League of Nations, the victorious Allied Powers sought to establish a new international body intended to support and promote

292  Handbook on governance in international organizations stability in the post-war international system. There the five most powerful states worldwide appointed themselves to be responsible for such a task. The UN Security Council was comprised at its core of five permanent members: the Republic of China, France, the United Kingdom, the USA, and the USSR. Each permanent member was endowed with a veto capability which could void any substantive resolution. In 1946, a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ was reached in London that supported the addition of six non-permanent members ‘in accordance with a fixed plan of regional distribution: two of the elective seats were to go to Latin America, one to the British Commonwealth, one to the Middle East, one to Western Europe, and one to Eastern Europe’ (Hiscocks, 1973, p. 71). Later, General Assembly resolution 1991A of 17 December 1963 established that the Council would comprise 10 elected members (thereby adding four new non-permanent seats), with five from the African and Asian states, one from Eastern European states, two from Latin American states, and two from Western European and other states (Nicol, 1981, p. 221). The newly enlarged Security Council came into effect on 31 August 1965. The General Assembly elects these 10 additional non-permanent members in slates of five new members per selection for two-year terms, and those elected are not eligible for immediate re-election. On the Security Council each member has one vote and any decision on substantive issues requires at least nine votes to be passed. On the other hand, resolutions are only passed if they are not vetoed by one of the five permanent members (Jordan, 2002).

DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN THE UN A Panoramic View of the UNSC The UN in the first two years of its existence had only 55 member states; in 1963, when the Security Council membership increased from 11 to 15, the UN had 113 states; and by 1995, the UN had 185 states. In comparison to the Council, the UN members-to-seats on the Council ratio in 1945 was 5:1; by 1963 it was 10.3:1; and by 1995 it was 12.3:1. It can be argued that at the beginning in 1945, the ‘founders of the organization regarded the original proportion as an equitable and proper one’ (Fassbender, 1998, pp. 198–9). For the non-permanent (elected) members, some states such as Trinidad and Tobago have sat on the Council only once, and twice for Jamaica; however, other member states have been elected much more often – Germany six times, Brazil 10 times, India seven times, and Japan 11 times. Originator of Small States Within the Caribbean Community, the majority of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME) participating states are classified as small in size on the basis of their geographical landmass or population. Other characteristics range from insularity, resilience, weakness, dependence and extreme openness. According to the Commonwealth Secretariat, small states ‘exhibit an exceptionally high degree of openness to external economic developments, in respect of trade, capital flows and technology’ (Commonwealth Secretariat, 1997). However, this in turn increases a country’s ‘sensitivity to and dependence on the international economic environment’ which leads to a reduction in the country’s ability to be sovereign and to manage its economic affairs.

Small state, big table  293 Currently, the UN consists of 193 member states, of which more than 50 per cent are Small States. This may be unsurprising given that within the functions of international organizations, small states arguably benefit the most (Ingebritsen et al., 2006). These benefits include the gathering, analysis and dissemination of data; forums for exchanges of views and decision-making; the defining of norms; the creation of rules; the monitoring and enforcing of rules; the settling of disputes; and the allocation of resources, provision of assistance, and deployment of forces (Thorhallson, 2018). Singapore’s former Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador V. G. Menon, stated that there is a special informal grouping in the UN called the Forum of Small States (FOSS). This is a ‘loose non-ideological and non-geographical coalition of small states based on common interests’ (Menon, 2009, p. 1). According to Menon, the FOSS ‘meet informally but invariably never attempt to develop common positions on any of the issues which are discussed at the UN’ (Menon, 2009, p. 2). Another practical benefit to small states of membership in international organizations is the reduction of transaction costs that is associated with bringing states, experts, and interested parties together in the same space. This effectively allows small states, with their limited financial and personnel resources, to access to an extent, information and best practices, to build relationships, to foster state coordination, and to secure deals (Thorhallson, 2018). In addition, as the makeup of states in the UN system suggests, the multilateral institution can also serve as an avenue of influence. The large membership is disproportionately represented in the UN Secretariat which gives them the potential for more meaningful influence, since the Secretariat strongly shapes the content of resolutions debated in UN bodies and implements decisions made by those same bodies (Novosad and Werker, 2014). Small States’ Active Participation within the UN Yet, a deeper analysis of the UN uncovers more than one narrative. Since their entry, small states have also pushed the boundaries of global cooperation as they derive great value from their UN membership. Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines explicitly highlighted his country’s faith in the principles and potential of the institution at the 2018 UN General Assembly, arguing that this is reflected in their active participation in all aspects of the body. Speaking to the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Academic Council on the United Nations System, former Ambassador of Barbados to the United Nations, Christopher Hackett, noted that Caribbean countries have been able to extract support from the international community on a number of issues of priority concern to them and a number of like-minded countries. (Hackett, 2011)

Similarly, former Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, argues that there are numerous examples of small states, often less constrained by political alliances and direct national interests, championing ideas that have led to major international agreements (United Nations, 2012). One such example can be seen with the role of Jamaica in leading the policy formulation on the decision to convene the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. Jamaica’s focus on coordinating policy among member states for this conference is valuable even now, given that the conference birthed the Agenda 21 document on Sustainable Development and ultimately led to the expansion of focus on

294  Handbook on governance in international organizations Sustainable Development today. Moreover, the process of negotiation on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which entered into force in 1994 and has now been ratified by 165 states, was spearheaded by small maritime states, with countries such as Malta, Singapore, and Fiji playing critical roles (Súilleabháin, 2014). While these multilateral achievements can be seen as modest, there is an often-unacknowledged significance of these small state actions in the UN. These achievements have impacted the inclusiveness of the United Nations in a positive way. Frequently excluded from key discussions, the efforts of small states seeking to be actively involved in international agreements and advocacy for reforms reduce the lack of inclusivity in the institution at varying levels. Put differently, small states play a critical role in securing and strengthening the ‘united’ element of the United Nations as prioritized in its charter. However, as alluded to, small states have faced several challenges. Perhaps most apparent are their capacity constraints, reflected in the size of their missions. For context, the UN delegation of Timor-Leste operates with three members while many larger states have a staff complement of over 50. The United States has as many as 150 members on its team and China has 80. The implications of these capacity limitations have been clearly visible in a number of instances. In particular, this constraint has affected small states’ ability to run as candidates for election to various UN bodies. Representation in elected bodies is crucial for UN member states and their effective diplomacy; however, small states often encounter financial and political barriers in advancing their candidacies (Súilleabháin, 2014). In addition, small states’ capacity issues are intricately linked to other challenges. The capacity constraints of small states prevent them from effectively filtering and processing information. They are faced with a paradoxical ‘information asymmetry’ – small states are overloaded with information they cannot process, while simultaneously lacking access to crucial insider information (Súilleabháin, 2014). Moreover, some UN structures also present hurdles for small states as many have expressed the belief that more can be done to facilitate their participation in the multilateral institution. Attempts have been made to address this situation through the establishment of a Small Island Developing States (SIDS) unit within the United Nations Secretariat. However, some small state ambassadors argue that there are still issues with the functionality of this mechanism. These barriers are often driving forces behind the foreign policy choices and outcomes of small states, particularly in the UN. Within this scope, small states have been known for their formations of groups in the UN system. Groupings have been critical in keeping the spirit of multilateralism alive, as well as providing small states with avenues to seek more effectively to address issues that are critical to them. The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is a multi-regional coalition of small island states and low-lying developing states (AOSIS, n.d.). Established in 1991, the grouping now has 39 member states and five observers and aims to amplify marginalized voices, highlighting their areas of interest, particularly on the subject of climate change. Interestingly, the small state grouping achieves its aims mainly through partnerships, which again signals the importance of multilateralism to these countries. AOSIS’ impact on multilateralism in the UN has been mainly seen through its role in global climate change negotiations. From its inception, AOSIS was involved in the formal negotiations leading to the adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since then, it has continued to play a very dynamic and successful role in the climate negotiation process itself, for example, in the shaping of the Copenhagen Accord negotiation process in 2009 and more recently, the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Small state, big table  295 By uniting as a negotiating bloc, SIDS used their collective power to overcome some of their individual limitations and make their voice heard (Betzold, 2010).

THE STORY OF ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES Led by the Hon. Ralph Gonsalves as Prime Minister since 2001, St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) is a democratic small island developing state, made up of an archipelago of islands. Geographically located in the Eastern Caribbean, SVG spans approximately 384 square kilometres, making it just over half the size of Singapore, another small state. Also qualifying as a microstate, the country has a population of 110,210 and a GDP per capita of US$10,939.80. In an international context, the small island developing state is involved in numerous international agreements and institutions and is known for its long-lasting relationships with countries such as Taiwan, Cuba, and Venezuela. Given its geographical positioning and inherent vulnerabilities, the people of SVG are acutely affected by and place high priority on issues such as climate change. When asked about considering a campaign for the election of SVG to the Security Council, Prime Minister Gonsalves observed that There is no country, as small as St. Vincent and the Grenadines – 150 square miles or 110,000 people – no country ever so small has been spoken of at the United Nations as becoming a member of the Security Council … the highest matters of international politics are discussed there – issues of war and peace, life and death. (I-Witness News, 2010b)

Despite these inherent barriers, Gonsalves showed continued faith in multilateralism and multilateral institutions. He asserted after the country’s ultimately successful election that the UN has limitations but also profound strengths, and the country intended to work very closely with the other members of the Security Council. The following outlines a chronology of the Vincentian UNSC Campaign, developed from interviews with Ambassador I. Rhonda King in June 2020, as well as conducting a thematic analysis from Vincentian newspapers, parliamentary contributions and speeches made from national diplomats. St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ UNSC Campaign – Chronology 2010: The conceptualization of the SVG campaign started prior to 2010 when then-Vincentian Ambassador to the UN, Camillo Gonsalves suggested it to his father, Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves: A number of countries had been inquiring as to whether St. Vincent and the Grenadines should not be on the Security Council. [The] position was simply this: St. Vincent and the Grenadines is an independent voice, a respected voice – under this government, that we are a CARICOM country and CARICOM has not been represented on the Security Council since 1999–2000. (I-Witness News, 2010b)

April 2010: Prime Minister Gonsalves briefed CARICOM Leaders in Brazil on SVG’s intentions to submit its candidature for the UNSC (I-Witness News 2010a). The briefing document stated that SVG’s candidature, ‘is an advancement of a principled position on the representation of CARICOM, SIDS and small states at the upper echelons of multilateral diplomacy’ (I-Witness News, 2010a). However, considered to be the insurmountable challenge at that

296  Handbook on governance in international organizations time was SVGs’ ‘late entry into the race, Colombia’s … (advanced) … campaign … and bias by UN members who feel that SVG is too small to be a Security Council Member (I-Witness News, 2010a). May 2010: SVG submitted its first candidature on 14 May 2010. October 2010: SVG postponed its candidacy for a non-permanent seat on the UNSC and instead, ‘instructed its Permanent Mission to the United Nations to submit the necessary documentation to formally announce its candidacy for the 2020–2021 term’ (I-Witness News, 2010c). This withdrawal was due to the lack of a unanimous CARICOM endorsement. According to Prime Minister Gonsalves, However, for varying reasons unrelated to SVG, 2 CARICOM states indicated that they did not view a 2011–2012 candidature as compatible with their individual national interests. As a result, these 2 CARICOM states declined at this time to endorse the potential Vincentian candidature. (I-Witness News, 2010c)

2011: During the campaign, Vincentian Prime Minister Dr Gonsalves continued the loud calls for UNSC reform: St. Vincent and the Grenadines is adamant that the Security Council must be reformed, and that the reform be underpinned by the expansion of the council in both permanent and non-permanent categories, with full regard to the legitimate aspirations of Africa and the necessary accommodations for Small Island Developing States, which have valuable and creative perspectives to peacebuilding and conflict resolution. (I-Witness News, 2011)

2013: The baton in New York was passed from Ambassador Camillo Gonsalves to incoming Ambassador I. Rhonda King, who took up the role of Permanent Representative to the UN in September 2013. In his departing words, Ambassador Gonsalves stated that Our on-going campaign to become the smallest nation ever to serve on the UN Security Council was also extremely memorable, and I hope that my successor will continue to build on the foundation we have to make this historic goal a reality. (I-Witness News, 2013)

August 2016: There was a renewed interest in the bid to secure a non-permanent seat on the UNSC for the 2020–2021 period. Prime Minister Gonsalves reflected that I am hopeful that we will get the endorsement of the Group of Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC) – that all the countries of Latin America, including the large countries, will understand what we did with Colombia and allow St. Vincent and the Grenadines to go forward so that we will not have any challenge out of GRULAC. We have received commitments from a large number of countries across the world including in GRULAC. (I-Witness News, 2016)

He then went on to note: ‘I am hoping that we have signaled – long signaled that GRULAC, the group of countries of Latin America and the Caribbean would respect this because we gave way to Colombia years earlier (I-Witness News, 2016). In September, Ambassador King was elected as Chair of the UN Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary). January 2018: The Prime Minister announced that the country’s foreign service was ‘ramping up its campaign for its 2019 bid’ (I-Witness News, 2018a).

Small state, big table  297 July 2018: Ambassador King was elected as President of the UN Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC, where SVG had sat as an elected member since 2017. November 2018: SVG received ‘almost complete unanimity’ from GRULAC (I-Witness News 2018c). The Vincentian Prime Minister thanked GRULAC for its support and stated that SVG ‘would still have to face the General Assembly where it will have to get a two-third majority of the world’s capitals (I-Witness News, 2018c). December 2018: SVG formally received GRULAC endorsement for its bid for election to the Security Council, having previously received CARICOM endorsement in February. 2019: In a bid to secure its campaign and increase its engagement as the June election drew near and, ‘with little money to finance its bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, St. Vincent and the Grenadines turned to innovation’ (I-Witness News, 2019b). In April, with an audience of diplomats and UN officials attending, former Ambassador to the UN, Camillo Gonsalves launched his book Globalised. Climatised. Stigmatised, that drew attention to the challenges facing small island states while bolstering SVG’s effort to show itself as a thought-leader at the United Nations. In addition, as a Small State with limited budget, SVG also distributed ‘chocolates and brochures at the United Nation’s Headquarters’: We set our wares at the United Nations today. Several long tables. We prepared a final brochure, beautifully designed with Amazona guildingii [the national bird] on it with a piece of – a twig, a sign of peace, because we are about peace and security. And we simply spread on it, hundreds and hundreds of St. Vincent Chocolate. So, as you pass and pick up one of the brochures, you take up one of our chocolate bars – it’s cheap. When I say, it’s inexpensive. We don’t have any money to carry anybody on any cruise but we can offer a brochure and a chocolate bar from St. Vincent to draw attention and it is different and people commented about how it was classy and very creative and so on. (I-Witness News, 2019b)

June 2019: SVG was elected to the Security Council, winning 185 out of a possible 191 votes with two abstentions, in a contested election with El Salvador to take up the Latin American and Caribbean seat (I-Witness News, 2019c). An elated Prime Minister Dr Gonsalves observed: One hundred and ninety-one countries voted and its electrifying and we knew that people were going to give us overwhelming support because, for the first time, we saw people making it known openly that they’re supporting St. Vincent and the Grenadines. They didn’t like this particular challenge and some even took photographs of their ballots to show us. It was impressive and I will tell you at the moment, tears came to my eyes when the verdict was announced. Historic! The smallest country ever to sit on the Security Council – in the 40th Year of our independence! (I-Witness News, 2019d)

Lessons for Small States from the Vincentian UNSC Campaign The importance of strategic leadership positioning Following the initiation of their campaign, the team of St. Vincent and the Grenadines settled in for the marathon race. As a small state, strategies must be curated within the multilateral space. Thus, SVG had to remain active and known as a thought-leader and to increase its profile within the UN space. On its path to remaining very active within the General Assembly, Ambassador King elaborated on several of the SVG Mission’s initiatives. Firstly, SVG in 2016 chaired the United Nations General Assembly Fifth Committee which is responsible for

298  Handbook on governance in international organizations the UN’s administration and budget – a significant administrative role. In the following year, SVG won election to a three-year term (2017–19) on the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), and in 2018 SVG’s Permanent Representative – Ambassador King – was elected as the 74th President of ECOSOC. Even earlier, in 2011, after SVG had postponed its first campaign for the Security Council seat, SVG served as the co-facilitator of the UN Working Group for the Revitalization of the Work of the General Assembly in 2011 (I-Witness News, 2011). According to Camillo Gonsalves, the current Vincentian Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Information Technology (and former Ambassador to the United Nations at the time of the first-announced campaign), I think that Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ leadership roles in the UN Conference on the Global Economic and Financial Crisis, the revitalization of the UN General Assembly, the Law of the Sea, the Marine Environment, and Security Council Reform all stand out as moments in which our flag was lifted just a bit higher on the world stage. (I-Witness News, 2019c)

In 2013, while serving as the country’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Minister Gonsalves had advocated for his country’s rise as an influencer and thought leader within the United Nations: We have joined and championed a number of causes that have increased our international profile immeasurably. Now countries seek us out to hear our views on particular subjects, to explain their point of view to us, and to solicit our leadership and support of various causes. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ voice has become influential among developing nations, particularly island states. We have also become a very respected international player in the eyes of the developed countries. (I-Witness News, 2011)

Gonsalves’ successor, Ambassador King, established herself as a leader not just on behalf of the regional groupings of CARICOM and GRULAC states, but within the wider diplomatic circles of UN representatives in New York. An innovative long-term campaign As a Small Island Developing State, the Vincentian UNSC campaign slogan was ‘Friends of All, We Strive for a Better World’. Former Permanent Representative Ambassador Gonsalves elaborated on some of the Vincentian tactics such as ‘contributing to global debates’ and being a ‘voice … as advocates for peace, development, equity and adherence to international law’ (I-Witness News, 2013). Prior to the election, Prime Minister Gonsalves stated that one of the priorities of SVG is that it ‘wants Africa to see SVG as the 4th African Representative’ while SVG expanded its diplomatic relations with Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries (I-Witness News, 2013). Reflecting in 2019, the Prime Minister stated that the length of time taken for the campaign was rationalized because his country did not possess the financial resources to spend on a big international campaign as other larger UN member states often pursued. Instead, he noted, ‘We have to win the campaign with ideas, we have to win the campaign with how we have conducted ourselves internationally and especially at the United Nations’ (I-Witness News, 2019b). Prime Minister Gonsalves then summed up the essence of the campaign:

Small state, big table  299 We have no money to take people on cruises. We do not have the resources to splurge on this or that campaign. But we have ideas and we have principled positions and people have observed us and particularly since we have put our name forward a decade ago and began this campaign that they are satisfied that St. Vincent and the Grenadines has what it takes to sit as a non-permanent member on the Security Council. (I-Witness News, 2018c)

A youthful and diverse permanent UN mission In addition to representing the smallest state ever elected to the UN Security Council, the staff of the Vincentian Permanent Mission to the UN is comprised of mainly young professionals. According to Prime Minister Gonsalves, ‘the bulk of them are young people, products of the education revolution’ (I-Witness News, 2019e). The diversity of capabilities amongst the staff was shown as some of them were capable of speaking fluent Russian and Mandarin; and the majority of members of the mission are women, led since 2013 by Ambassador King.

CONCLUSION: MULTILATERALISM, GOVERNANCE IN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, AND SMALL STATES The Value of Multilateralism to Small States Small states, which have varying definitions but perhaps most commonly are categorized by population size, tend to favour multilateralism more than their larger counterparts (Steinsonn and Thorhallsson, 2017). Samuel Insanally – who served as President of the 48th session of the UN General Assembly in 1993–94 – contends that while all states may see some value in preserving multilateralism, it is the small and vulnerable which have the most to gain from it. A more cynical view describes multilateralism as a weapon of the weak states (Insanally, 2013). The inherent weaknesses and limited resources of small states incentivize them to shape cooperation as a realistic and favourable means of advancing their foreign and domestic policy aims. This places it as a common item in the foreign policy toolbox of small states. Multilateralism provides small states with the opportunity to play a role in global affairs that, to some extent, discards the disparity in size between them and their larger counterparts (Súilleabháin, 2014). Even as the current polarized international political climate may suggest multilateralism as being under threat as states are becoming more unilateralist or populist, small states have remained firm in their belief that multilateralism can be a valuable instrument for propelling the collective interests of humankind (Insanally, 2013). Whether it be Peter David, Grenada’s foreign affairs minister at the 2009 UN General Assembly (David, 2009) as the global economy struggled to recover from the financial crisis, or Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley at the 2022 edition of that gathering (Mottley, 2022), small states consistently have expressed their commitment and belief in the value of multilateralism. The Value of the United Nations to Small States: The Centre of Global Governance According to then-Permanent Representative of SVG to the United Nations, Ambassador Camillo Gonsalves, the ‘UN remains the only venue that offers small nations both a seat and a voice in global affairs’. Therefore, ‘the UN must be the center of global governance because it is our only option for global governance’. According to Ambassador Gonsalves,

300  Handbook on governance in international organizations There are some states that fortuitously find themselves in the inner sanctums of the Security Council. And the G8. And the G20. And the OECD. For them, the centrality of the UN may vary with the political winds or the shifting sands of great power intrigue. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has no such luxury. We cannot take our ball and go home, to play on other fields and interact in other fora. The United Nations is all we have. Its centrality in global governance, for us, is therefore an essential and indisputable truth. (I-Witness News, 2010d)

Prime Minister Dr Gonsalves noted that there are over 50 Small Island Developing States within the membership of the United Nations, and we are at the frontline of the matter dealing with climate change. It is important that we have somebody at the table always to be reminding the Security Council that they keep to the pledges, because this is also a matter of war and peace, living and death. It is an existential question. (I-Witness News, 2016)

Calls for UN Security Council Reform International Organization theorists have described the UN Security Council as an open system that is ‘both highly sensitive to its environment and highly dependent on it’. The environment here is regarded as the total sum of ‘the international political, military, and economic systems, which include all the states, individuals, refugee floods, and other forces that create the threats to the international peace and security with which the UNSC must be concerned’ (Russett, 1997, p. 142). Therefore, for the UNSC to effectively fulfil its mandate it ‘must be responsive to changes in the international system … to maintain the ability to mobilize states and other actors and … to monitor impending international crises’. However, when states shift their relative power, the UNSC must be able to adapt, and so too must its membership. On that basis, SVG added to the calls for reform from inside the UNSC when Prime Minister Dr Gonsalves made a call for the members of the Security Council ‘to remind ourselves of the enduring core principles and purposes of the UN, to recommit to them, and sensibly to shape and reform our United Nations in appropriate ways to better execute its mandates in a rapidly changing global order’ (Gonsalves, 2020). Calls for the Maintenance of the UNSC Status Quo Those permanent members of the Security Council who ‘seek to preserve their privileged positions of power’ have been most of all united in their rejection of expansion as this could reduce their influence (Fassbender, 1998, p. 224). Paul and Nahory (2005) observed that ‘China has already announced it will block permanent membership for Japan’. It also must be noted that ‘enlargement is not an effective route to better representation’ since some states that are involved in ongoing conflicts may seek to block Council decisions: for example, ‘Rwanda notoriously sat on the Council during the genocide with negative effects on many neighbours’ (Paul and Nahory, 2005). Expansion could wreak havoc and make the Security Council more ‘cumbersome and ineffective’ as it is not a legislative body but rather an executive one; therefore, enlarging the Council ‘could delay the adoption of decisions’ (Nicol, 1981, p. 221). According to Hiscocks (1973, p. 321),

Small state, big table  301 If the Council is allowed to become a small version of the General Assembly and a sounding-board for propaganda, it cannot at the same time be an effective body for grappling, through constructive and cooperative discussion, with major problems of peace and security.

Calls for UNSC Reform: Time to Change the Guard with a Permanent Small States’ Seat Former Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Grenada to the United States of America, Gillian M. S. Bristol, while speaking at the Vice-Chancellor’s Forum on ‘Small States in Global Governance’ on 7 November 2019, argued that a state’s small size cannot be an impediment to its making meaningful global contributions. Bristol (2019) argued the paramount importance of climate change to all small states, and described the phenomena as ‘an existential threat to our environment’. Bristol continued by saying, ‘never mind our size, we all face the very same challenges as the big countries do’ (Bristol, 2019). In support of the case for small states’ inclusion, Dominic Brisbane argued that ‘a non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council gives small states the power to address climate change alongside some of today’s biggest challenges’ (Brisbane, 2019). According to Tarp and Hansen (2013, p. 21), the Small States’ Toolbox includes ‘thought leadership or brand building’. Having each served in various capacities with the Danish Foreign Ministry and the United Nations, Tarp and Hansen argue that The effectiveness and usefulness of the tools … depend on the user. They are unsurprisingly most effective if they are used by an effective, focused and coherent organization. Here small size and limited resources may oddly enough be an advantage if this provides the necessary flexibility, short distance from decision to implementation and cross-organisational communication that is necessary for acting strategically and coherently. (2013, p. 22)

The case of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the smallest state ever elected as a member of the Security Council, demonstrates these tools can be employed carefully, effectively, and successfully in order to have such a state’s voice and ideas heard.

REFERENCES AOSIS (n.d.), ‘About Us’. Available at https://​www​.aosis​.org/​about/​chair​-of​-aosis/​. Betzold, C. (2010), ‘“Borrowing” Power to Influence International Negotiations: AOSIS in the Climate Change Regime, 1990–1997,’ Politics, vol. 30, pp. 131–48. Bouchard, C., Peterson, J. and Tocci, N. (2013), Multilateralism in the 21st Century: Europe’s Quest for Effectiveness, London: Routledge. Brisbane, D. (2019), ‘SVG at the UN Security Council – History, Power and Our Coming of Age,’ Iwitness SVG, 8 June. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2019/​06/​08/​svg​-at​-the​-un​-security​ -council​-history​-power​-and​-our​-coming​-of​-age/​ (accessed 5 July 2021). Bristol, G. M. S. (2019), Speech to the Vice-Chancellor' Forum 'Small States in Global Governance,' The University of the West Indies, 7 November. Available at https://​www​.facebook​.com/​watch/​live/​?ref​=​ watch​_permalink​&​v​=​433918167254668 (accessed 23 June 2021). Commonwealth Secretariat (1997), A Future For Small States: Overcoming Vulnerability – Report by a Commonwealth Advisory Group, London: Commonwealth Secretariat. David, P. (2009), ‘Statement at the General debate of the 64th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations,’ New York, Permanent Mission of Grenada to the United Nations, 29 September. Available at https://​www​.un​.org/​en/​ga/​64/​generaldebate/​pdf/​GD​_en​.pdf.

302  Handbook on governance in international organizations Evans, G. and Newnham, J. (1998), The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations, London: Penguin Books. Fassbender, B. (1998), UN Security Council Reform and the Right of Veto: A Constitutional Perspective, The Hague: Kluwer Law International. Gonsalves, R. (2020), ‘St. Vincent and the Grenadines Contribution’ [Speech at the UNSC Open Debate: Maintenance of International Peace and Security; Upholding the UN Charter Security Council Chamber] 9 January Available at http://​svg​-un​.org/​wp​-content/​uploads/​2020/​01/​UNSC​-Open​-Debate​ -Statement​-Maintenance​-of​-International​-Peace​-and​-Security​-Upholding​-the​-UN​-Charter​.pdf. Hackett, C. (2011), ‘Small States at the United Nations,’ Address to the 2011 Annual Meeting, Academic Council on the United Nations. Available at https://​www​.youtube​.com/​watch​?v​=​KSLVOcgmDP0. Harris, D. J. (1998), Cases and Materials on International Law, 5th edn, London: Sweet and Maxwell. Hiscocks, R. (1973), The Security Council: A Study in Adolescence, London: Longman Group. Ingebritsen, C., Neumann, I., Gstöhl, S. and Beyer, J. (2006), Small States in International Relations, Reykjavik: University of Iceland Press. Insanally, S. R. (2013), Multilateral Diplomacy for Small States: ‘The Art of Letting Others Have Your Way,’ Georgetown: Guyenterprise Advertising Agency. I-Witness News (2010a), ‘Government Releases UN Security Council Candidacy Document,’ iWitness News, 4 May. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2010/​05/​04/​govt​-releases​-un​-security​-council​ -candidacy​-document/​(accessed: 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2010b), ‘PM: No Disrespect meant by Silence on UN Security Council Seat Issue,’ iWitness News, 5 May. Available a: https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2010/​05/​05/​pm​-no​-disrespect​-meant​-by​ -un​-security​-council​-seat​-silence/​ (accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2010c), ‘St. Vincent drops UN Security Council Bid,’ iWitness News, 15 May. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2010/​05/​15/​st​-vincent​-backtracks​-on​-un​-security​-council​-bid/​ (accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2010d), ‘Diplomat Says UN’s the Only Voice for Small Nations,’ iWitness News, 30 September. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2010/​09/​30/​diplomat​-says​-uns​-the​-only​-voice​-for​ -small​-nations/​(accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2011), ‘St. Vincent Adamant that UN Security Council must Reform: PM,’ iWitness News, 25 September. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2011/​09/​25/​st​-vincent​-adamant​-that​-un​ -security​-council​-must​-reform​-pm/​ (accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2013), ‘With Camillo Gonsalves as UN Ambassador, SVG “exercised influence beyond its size”,’ iWitness News, 11 August. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2013/​08/​11/​with​-camillo​ -gonsalves​-as​-un​-ambassador​-svg​-exercised​-influence​-beyond​-its​-size/​ (accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2016), ‘St. Vincent still eyeing UN Security Council Seat,’ iWitness News, 18 August. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2016/​08/​18/​st​-vincent​-still​-eyeing​-un​-security​-council​-seat/​ (accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2018a), ‘SVG Ramps up Bid for UN Security Council Seat,’ iWitness News, 15 January. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2018/​01/​15/​svg​-ramps​-up​-bid​-for​-un​-security​-council​ -seat/​(accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2018c), ‘SVG “on the verge” of sitting on UN Security Council – foreign minister,’ iWitness News, 5 November. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2018/​11/​05/​svg​-on​-the​-verge​-of​ -sitting​-on​-un​-security​-council​-foreign​-minister/​ (accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2019b), ‘Books, brochures, Chocolate in SVG’s final Push for Security Council Seat,’ iWitness News, 5 June. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2019/​06/​05/​books​-brochures​-chocolate​ -in​-svgs​-final​-push​-for​-security​-council​-seat/​ (accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2019c), ‘St. Vincent elected to UN Security Council,’ iWitness News, 5 June. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2019/​06/​07/​st​-vincent​-elected​-to​-un​-security​-council/​ (accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2019d), ‘Security Council election a sweet victory – Gonsalves,’ iWitness News, 7 June. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2019/​06/​07/​security​-council​-election​-a​-sweet​-victory​ -gonsalves/​(accessed 22 June 2021). I-Witness News (2019e), ‘SVG’s UN Staff to get 6 more Members,’ iWitness News, 11 June. Available at https://​www​.iwnsvg​.com/​2019/​06/​11/​svgs​-un​-staff​-to​-get​-6​-more​-members/​ (accessed 22 June 2021).

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19. Staffing global governance: an effective human resources policy for a spectacular United Nations Cristián Giménez Corte

The degree in which the objects of the Charter can be realized will be largely determined by the manner in which the Secretariat performs its task. UN General Assembly, February 13, 1946, A/RES/13 …it seemed almost axiomatic that the civil service had to be “politically celibate” (though not perhaps politically virgin). Dag Hammarskjöld

INTRODUCTION This chapter examines the human resources (HR) policies and procedures developed and implemented within the United Nations (UN) System.1 To this end, after this brief introduction, the chapter will try to determine the goals of the UN by discussing the historical evolution of these goals to which HR policies are a significant means; the analysis will then seek to determine what the current HR problems are, trying to understand the causes and the consequences of these problems; and then it will then explore how to reform the HR policies. Having set out these foundations, the concluding section proposes what the author considers to constitute a concrete solution – a human resources policy that can help to build a “spectacular” United Nations organization. Since public administration problems, and HR problems in particular, are basically political (Jonah and Scott Hill, 2018; Botham-Edighoffer, 2006), but not managerial or epistemological, this is not only an analytical study but also, and perhaps mainly, a policy study, which attempts to understand a problem, and to propose a solution to it. In this light, this chapter assumes as a starting point that there is a problem (Weiss, 2008; Botham-Edighoffer, 2006). This problem has been – and continues to be – expressly acknowledged by the UN itself, as evidenced by the innumerable and recurrent attempts to “reform” the UN, and its HR policies. Still, to fully understand the UN HR problems, it would not be enough to analyze them just from an exclusive HR perspective. Rather, it would be also necessary to take a deeper and broader view of these HR policies. In this sense, this chapter approaches the UN HR policies as means towards the UN goals. For this purpose, this chapter considers that HR policies need to be addressed in conjunction with two other intertwined areas: the UN management policies and the UN accountability policies. On the one side, management could be seen as an integral part of HR since managers, or senior officials, oversee managing the rest of the staff of an organization. But on the other 304

Staffing global governance  305 side, managers are in charge of leading the organization towards its goals. Accordingly, UN management policies impact HR policies and are in turn influenced by them. Concerning accountability, it is common knowledge that a given course of action, plan or program is always developed and implemented by the organization staffers, including senior officials and lower-level staff. To know whether the goals of a given program have been achieved, whether the program has succeeded or failed, that program as well as the staffers in charge of it need to be evaluated: Was the goal achieved? If so, was it within the proposed timeframe and budget? Accordingly, the efficiency of any HR policy is necessarily linked to a proper system of controls and evaluations, or the lack thereof. As a result, this chapter will study the UN HR policies in conjunction with management and accountability policies, in light of the UN goals. As will be shown, there is a clear picture of the human resources problems within the United Nations. As put by Kennedy, however, “it is far easier to state the problem than to propose the solution, and in all cases the difficulty is political” (Kennedy, 2006, p. 267). Considering the political nature of HR problems, this chapter proposes a politically feasible course of action for reforming and improving the UN human resources policies.

THE UN: FROM PERMANENT CONFERENCE TO GLOBAL GOVERNANCE The United Nations (UN) initial Human Resources (HR) policies were taken from the civil service policies of the League of Nations (LoN), which were based, in turn, on the English civil service traditions. The English civil service was staffed by tenured career professionals hired on merit rather than elected or appointed, and who represented the citizens of the country, but not a given government (Quayle, 2020; Jonah and Scott Hill, 2018; Newman, 2007; Botham-Edighoffer, 2006). Yet, these initial HR policies were not destined to last long: they were reformed in 1946 and in 1950 (Salomons, 2003, pp. 116–17) which constituted an early warning of what would become an extremely complex aspect of the UN (Botham-Edighoffer, 2006, pp. 1–2). Since then, the UN has been constantly amending its HR policies. An important shift occurred between the end of the decolonization process and the end of the Cold War when the UN member states started to demand more substantive changes, beginning a never fully accomplished, and therefore recurring “reforming the UN” process. On the one hand, the culmination of the decolonization processes increased the number of member states from the underdeveloped and developing world, which started to demand more support from the UN in the areas of development, technical and economic assistance, with the consequent expansion of the UN mandates in these fields (Jonah and Scott Hill, 2018, p. 278). On the other hand, Perestroika, and end of the Cold War, facilitated agreement between the two superpowers for the deployment of several new peacekeeping missions (Kennedy, 2006, p. 63). This expansion of the UN mandates, both in the areas of development and peacekeeping operations, which also led to a significant rise in operational costs and recurring financing problems, generated at the same time new pressures from member states to renew and “reform” the UN. The term “reform” has many meanings when looking at the UN: here it is used to refer to proposed reforms to the management, financing, accountability and HR policies in the UN

306  Handbook on governance in international organizations System, including the Secretariat, its subsidiary bodies, agencies, entities, funds and programs and associated international organizations. The Conference System: Rupture and Continuity The United Nations Organization constitutes the last manifestation of, and at the same time the rupture from, the international conference system established by the Congress of Vienna of 1815 (Lascurettes, 2017; Reinalda, 2013, pp. 3–35). The Congress of Vienna was a breakthrough in international relations because for the first time in history, on a continental scale, nation states would send their representatives to meet in the same place, over an extended period, to try to find durable multilateral solutions for their problems. Furthermore, the heads of state who met in Vienna in person decided not to meet just once, and then wait to see what happens. Instead, they established a system of conferences and follow up conferences with a view to keep the negotiation channels open, and to monitor the implementation of previous agreements. This conferences system, also called the Concert of Europe, worked relatively well, helping to maintain peace and the balance of power among European countries until the ignition of World War I. After the war the nations of the world insisted on keeping the same system, establishing a permanent conference in the form of the LoN (Goodrich, 1947, pp. 8–11). The failure of the LoN in preventing World War II eventually convinced the “Big Three” (the USA, the UK, and the USSR) of the need to establish a different type of organization, a sort of “world police,” equipped with the necessary means to enforce or “dictate” peace, as required (Morris, 2018). This initial proposal finally led to the establishment of the Security Council (SC) as one of the principal organs (if not the principal one) of the newly created United Nations Organization. The privileged position of the Permanent Members of the SC and their power to enforce their decisions constituted a clear departure not only from the Conference System but also from the absolute principle of the sovereign equality of nation states that had been agreed upon in the Peace of Westphalia. Writing in 1947, Morris observed that the Big Three “never envisage anything other than an institution in which the great powers would shoulder the greatest burdens in maintaining the peace while also enjoying the institutional privileges commensurate with such a task; hierarchy, if not dictation, would prevail” (Morris, 2018, pp. 75–6). Little has happened since then to alter that notion (Kennedy, 2006, pp. 51–76). On the other hand, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the Trusteeship Council, maintained and continued the conference system basic structure: a neutral and common forum where nation states would gather on an equal footing to discuss and negotiate solutions for their problems (Gimenez-Corte, 2018; Sloan, 1989). In turn, the UN Secretariat would provide logistical and administrative assistance, playing basically a clerical role. As put by Dirk Salomons (2003, p. 113), “[t]he Secretariat’s main role at the time was to support a set of intergovernmental committees: the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, and the Trusteeship Council,” and “The Organization’s mandate, and hence its function, were limited. The emphasis in all of this was on the servicing of the UN’s deliberative bodies. Operation activities were not foreseen.” Thus, initially the UN Secretariat also continued the tradition of the conference system and of the LoN in which “the international Secretariat was to be solely an administrative organ, eschewing political judgements and actions” (Hammarskjöld, 1961, p. 14).

Staffing global governance  307 From Clerical Assistant to Policymaker Gradually, however, the UN Secretariat started to play a more active role. It not only provided a common venue and administrative assistance to countries; it also began to get actively involved in negotiation processes, proposing diplomatic solutions when necessary and even bringing new issues to the attention of member states. There was a clear political need – recognized in Washington and Moscow – for a neutral third party to play an active diplomatic role at the international level, that was filled by the UN Secretariat (Kennedy, 2006, pp. 62–3; Jonah and Scott Hill, 2018; Velasco, 2010, pp. 219–21). The text of the UN Charter provided the legal basis for these new functions of the Secretary-General. Article 99 established that: The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security.

In the words of Dag Hammarskjöld (1961, p. 6), “[i]t is Article 99 more than any other which was considered by the drafters of the Charter to have transformed the Secretary-General of the United Nations from a purely administrative official to one with an explicit political responsibility.” These political responsibilities expressly assigned by the Charter to the Secretary-General constitute an essential rupture from the conference system, and from the “minimal role” originally foreseen for the UN by the Big Three. Yet, one may wonder why the Great Powers which gathered in Dumbarton Oaks in the boreal summer of 1944 agreed on such a provision, while on the other hand they wanted to create just an “international police force.” The Great Powers had one main and perhaps sole objective in mind: they needed to prevent another world war. To this end they established the Security Council; and at the same time the Great Powers were conscious that deficiencies of the Secretariat of the LoN had directly contributed to its failure. Then, “[t]he initial acceptance of Article 99 at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference appears to have reflected a feeling that the League system suffered from the fact that only a member state could bring an alleged ‘threat to the peace’ to the Council’s attention. [Conversely] Article 99 enables the Secretary-General to start the whole United Nations machinery moving on the basis of his own judgment regarding what is a threat to peace and security” (Kaladharan Nayar, 1974, p. 46). In this way, the UN Secretariat moved from merely providing administrative and clerical assistance to member states, to playing a more active a key diplomatic role in world affairs. It is sad to note, however, that the UN and its Secretariat are nowadays losing that central political role in international affairs (Gimenez-Corte, 2018). From Policy to Governance, and Back Aiming at meeting the demands from the developing world on technical and economic assistance, the UN started to be gradually pushed not only into the policymaking aspects of international affairs, but also the implementation of those policies in the field, trying to solve those new problems. For example, if member states agreed to develop and improve access to running water in certain underdeveloped region, then member states also “instructed” the Secretary-General

308  Handbook on governance in international organizations to take the necessary measures towards that end. Then the Secretariat has to develop and implement the necessary programs and plans to bring running water to that region. For this purpose, the Secretariat needs to develop specific projects and agreements in cooperation with the countries that would benefit from these initiatives. In turn, these projects need financing, so the Secretariat has to find a country willing to contribute the necessary financial resources. And once the funds are available, the UN needs to hire a construction company to install the water pipelines on the ground. The establishment of a peacekeeping mission requires extremely complex logistical operations. Following the mandate from member states, the Secretariat needs to ensure the financing of the mission, that member states contribute the necessary troops, the deployment of military and civil staff in the field, and the building and maintaining of the required premises and facilities. The Secretary-General will also need to ensure ways of communication and transportation, the supply of goods and services, the provision of medical services, and many more core operational and logistical functions (Little, 2019). The UN thus started to play not only a policymaking or diplomatic role, but also a managerial role. In other words, the UN has started to play a more active role in global governance. This change in functions is reflected in the nature and location of the staff work. While the UN used to be an organization based mostly at its headquarters in New York City, as well as Geneva and Vienna, and primarily dealing with administrative issues, nowadays about two thirds of the Secretariat’s staff work in the field, and in a variety of specialized areas, including communications, drug control, crime prevention, disaster management, emergency aid, financial assistance, development programs, migration, satellite regulations, and many others. Currently, globalization has brought further new opportunities but also major transnational problems and challenges, including climate change, mass migrations, refugee crises, failed states, international financial crises, terrorism, drug trafficking, and natural and humanitarian disasters. These transnational problems are beyond the power of any single nation state to solve, and thus can only be solved through transnational tools and policies. The recent Covid-19 pandemic is arguably the paradigmatic example of this situation. As the political need for a neutral third-party player was filled by the UN in the 1960s, in today’s fragmented world the UN again comes to mind as the global institution to address these transnational problems. The international community increasingly requests the UN to tackle them, and to assume the management of the so-called “global commons” (Schrijver, 2016). Those demands from the developing world plus these new global problems keep pushing the UN into new areas of work, as the UN is now getting directly involved in the delivery of goods and services to the peoples of the world. However, UN management structures have not evolved at the same pace or have not evolved at all. Disappointingly, the UN did not take the necessary steps to directly face these new challenges, but merely replicated its original structures. That is, fulfilling that initial secretarial and coordinating role, for every new problem or demand the UN would not try to manage or solve it directly, as a national government might do. Instead, member states would establish new and smaller “conferences” and “commissions” assisted by dozens of smaller secretariats and agencies. This way, member states have created the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to fight drug trafficking; the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), to address mass starvation; the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to help poor countries to develop; the

Staffing global governance  309 United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) to find solutions for displaced people; the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to support environmental sustainability; the World Health Organization (WHO), to prevent the dissemination of infectious diseases; and dozens if not hundreds of new agencies, entities, organizations, commissions, and “conferences.” It seems that instead of evolving into some form of global governmental structure, the UN is regressing to the old conference system, now even more fragmented. Without any rational strategy on how to cope with all those new global demands and mandates, the UN merely grew big, creating more bodies, developing bureaucratic administrative and managerial structures, increasing its budget, and increasing its number of staff members. As observed by the 2006 High-level Panel on UN System-wide Coherence, “The business practices, processes and culture of the UN system have evolved in an incremental and ad hoc manner over 60 years, in response to specific situations and agency needs. This has widened the disconnect between organizations of the system” (United Nations, 2006a, para. 82). However, this increase in the UN size has not been translated into a capability to tackle, let alone solve, our current global problems as we are now witnessing an increase in drug trafficking; an increase in the number of internal and international displaced persons, refugees and humanitarian crises; an increase in natural disaster and environmental crisis; an increase in armed conflicts all over the world; and paradigmatically, we have witnessed most recently the propagation (not the contention) of the Covid-19 pandemic globally. The UN administration, which has grown into a large bureaucracy as a result of its new member state’s mandates, started to be criticized “by these same member states for its wasteful operations, duplications, lack of control, lax management and excessive administrative costs, in particular its high expenditures for staff and staff-related costs” (Botham-Edighoffer, 2006, p. 2; Kennedy, 2006, p. 245).

THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RESOURCES POLICIES The Long List of Reform Proposals As a result, innumerable reform proposals on human resources, management, and coordination strategies among the various UN entities have been launched by successive UN Secretaries-General (SG), at their own initiative or on the recommendation of member states in the General Assembly (GA). This was added to an extensive list of reform proposals presented by NGOs, academia, independent committees, and governmental initiatives (Mueller, 2016), including those shown in Box 19.1.

BOX 19.1 SELECTED LIST OF REFORM PROPOSALS, 1949–2020 1949: Report of the Committee of Experts on Salary, Allowance, and Leave Systems (note by the Secretary-General document A/C.5/331), October 31. 1955: Establishment of a Committee to review the United Nations salary, allowance and benefits system (General Assembly Document A/RES/975), December 15.

310  Handbook on governance in international organizations 1968: Committee on the Reorganization of the Secretariat. 1970: General Assembly, “Special Committee for the Review of the UN Salary System,” GA Resolution 2743 (XXV), December 17. 1970: Study of the Capacity of the UN Development System (the “Jackson Report”). 1980: Committee of Governmental Experts to Evaluate the Present Structure of the Secretariat in the Administrative, Finance and Personnel Areas, S-1028–0002–10. 1985: Some Reflections on Reform of the United Nations (Joint Inspection Unit – JIU – document JIU/REP/85/9), Geneva, JIU/REP/85/9, prepared by Maurice Bertrand. 1986: Group of High Level of Intergovernmental Experts (Group of 18). 1997: Renewing the UN: a Program for Reform. Report of the Secretary-General (General Assembly Document A/51/950), July 14. 2000 Young Professionals in Selected Organizations of the United Nations System: Recruitment, Management and Retention. Joint Inspection Unit, document JIU/REP/2000/7. 2002: Strengthening of the United Nations: an agenda for further change: Report of the Secretary-General (General Assembly Document A/57/387), September 9. 2005: Independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nations Oil for Food Programme, Interim Report. 2005: World Summit Outcome, A/RES/60/1. 2006: Comprehensive Review of Governance and Oversight in the UN (Report of the Steering Committee on governance and oversight, Document A/60/883.Add.1–6), June. 2006: Low Level Panel: Practical Steps to a more effective and efficient United Nations, February 6. 2006: Delivering as One. Report of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel, United Nations, New York. 2010: In and above conflict. A study on the leadership of in the United Nations, Fabrizio Hochschild, Geneva. 2018: Shifting the Management Paradigm in the United Nations: implementing a new management architecture for improved effectiveness and strengthened accountability Report of the Secretary-General, General Assembly Document A/72/492/Add.2 21, September 5. 2019: Review of change management in United Nations system organizations, UN, Report of the Joint Inspection Unit, JIU/REP/2019/4. 2020: Independent Expert Review of the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute System Final Report (the “Goldstone Report”).

Staffing global governance  311 Problem Found: Inefficiency of the UN Generally speaking, all of these reform proposals presented an accurate assessment of the problems that UN faced and continues to face, while at the same time proposing reasonable solutions for them. For example, the 1949 Committee (United Nations, 1949) and the 1955 Committee (United Nations, 1955) had already discussed the issues of salary, allowances, and leave systems within the organization, an issue that has remained critical since then. The 1970 “Jackson Report” noted the organization’s obsolete management methods and the often-insufficient qualifications of its personnel. This Report also noted the diffusion of responsibility throughout the system, and the lack of “a coherent and consistent body of development policies … unfortunately … the multiplicity of organs having responsibilities for different aspects of development” usually propose policies and establish objectives that are conflicting (United Nations, 1970, II, p. 101). The 1985 “Bertrand Report” also noted the extreme fragmentation of the UN system, and the serious difficulties to set coordination strategies among the different UN entities. The report described in detail the efforts made in the 1970s with a view to establishing some kind of coordination mechanism among the UN System, including the UNDP “country programme” and the World Food Council “programme of action for co-ordination of relevant United Nations bodies and agencies” (United Nations, 1985, para. 28) in the fields of food and agriculture. However, “this extraordinary perseverance produced no results” (United Nations, 1985, para. 29). According to Bertrand, the decentralized and fragmented structures of the UN were the reason for its failure to adapt to the solution of development problems. The 1997 Renewing the UN Report stressed the need “to achieve greater unity of purpose, coherence of effort, agility and responsiveness throughout the United Nations, including its funds and programmes” (United Nations, 1997, para. 34) and proposed the creation of a new position deputy-secretary-general, in charge of the day-to-day management of the organization (United Nations, 1997, para. 37); the need to “act as one” at the country level, in one “UN House” (United Nations, 1997, paras. 49–51), strengthening the resident coordinator system, and establishing a UN development group for coordinating the work of development organizations (United Nations, 1997, para. 152). The Report also noted the need to invest “in staff training, including managerial staff … simplifications of rules, streamlined recruitment and administrative practices, and more effective career development … couple[d] with full accountability” (United Nations, 1997, para. 54). In this same vein, the 2000 Joint Inspection Unit Report on Young Professionals recommended sharing the roster of suitable candidates among the UN system organizations, especially for common occupational fields (United Nations, 2000, paras. 23–5); and recommended “young professionals to be assigned both at Headquarters and in the field in the course of their first five or six years” (United Nations, 2000, paras. 53–7), through the establishment of a managed program, which “could be usefully extended not only to the major programmes affiliated to the United Nations, such as UNDP, UNICEF, WFP or UNHCR, but also to other organizations in the United Nations system” (United Nations, 2000, para. 27). The 2006 Delivering as One Report again recommended more coordination and coherence within the system, to improve governance, managerial and funding mechanisms, and the establishment of “One UN at country level, with one leader, one programme, one budget and, where appropriate, one office,” under an empowered Resident Coordinator. However, this Report

312  Handbook on governance in international organizations did not “advocate a single UN entity because many individual agencies can best achieve their vital role in the provision of global public goods, advocacy, research, promoting best practice and global norms and standards by operating individually in their specific sectors” (United Nations, 2006a, para. 56). Finally, this Report also highlighted the need to change the HR policies on recruitment, mobility, and career development, harmonizing conditions of service, encouraging mobility and establishing a competitive and incentive-based system. The 2020 “Goldstone Report“ analyzed the management and human resources policies of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Rome Statute System, but its findings are similar and comparable to that of the Secretariat. For example, the report found that “the Court is widely perceived from within as too bureaucratic, too inflexible, and lacking in leadership and accountability” (International Criminal Court, 2020, p. 23, para. 63). The Report noted that it identified a number of factors that have contributed to this state of affairs, some of which are to be found in many international bureaucracies, including the UN Secretariat, the individual specialized agencies and other treaty-based secretariats. These include a mixing of management approaches due to the very different cultural backgrounds of staff; slow or non-existent promotion rates; language issues; different broader cultural attitudes (e.g. towards women, junior staff or to non-professional support staff); lack of a strong organisational leadership due in part to absence of a knowledge management strategy that would enable institutionalised memory retention; added to the regular rotation of chief executives, senior management staff have substantial influence on maintaining organisational culture, and thus making change more difficult; interference in management issues by member states; and inadequate or outdated management tools and processes. (International Criminal Court, 2020, pp. 65–6, para. 203)

The Report observed that “the recruitment system at the Court was considered as cumbersome, lacking transparency, and did not always recruit candidates with the skills needed for their positions.” However, it also noted that these “criticisms have some validity, [but] they are common to the United Nations (UN) and many other international organisations” (International Criminal Court, 2020, p. 70, paras. 218, 219). Proposed Solutions Pressure from member states, the finding of these reports, and the basic need to remain operative, has the UN system to introduce some positive new policies. For example, the main result of the 1955 Establishment of a Committee to review the United Nations salary, allowance and benefits system report was its proposal “to broaden the terms of reference of the International Civil Service Advisory Board (ICSAB)” in the interest of a better-coordinated common HR management system. The International Civil Service Commission (ICSC) was established in 1975 (Botham-Edighoffer, 2006, pp. 47–8). The ICSC is a subsidiary body of the UN that aims at “the development of a single unified international civil service through the application of common personnel standards, methods and arrangements” (Art. 9 of its Statute). Thus, the ICSC develops common standards on the employment conditions of staff throughout the UN System, including contractual arrangements, categories of staff, salaries, establishment of daily subsistence allowances, schedules of post adjustment, hardship entitlements, education grants, and rental subsidies. It makes recommendations on these matters to the GA and the 28 UN agencies, funds and programs,

Staffing global governance  313 and associates organizations that are part of this “UN common system,”2 which eventually led to the establishment of a common framework on these matters. The ICSC was a step forward, contributing to the development of some common background on important aspects of the HR policies across the system. Unfortunately, all too soon it started to be tainted with the same old ills of that of the UN system and started to be criticized as becoming (also) a political body that represented national interests rather those of the organization (United Nations, 2006a, para. 86). Accordingly, the Delivering as One Report recommended an “authoritative and independent external evaluation to reform” the ICSC (United Nations, 2006a, p. 42). Thus, like in a Jorge Luis Borges’ tale, the ICSC, a body set to reform the UN employment conditions, would have to be in turn reformed by yet another body. In this regard also, the legitimacy and efficiency of the ICSC has been very recently seriously questioned by the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organization (ILOAT) in the so-called “Geneva salary cut cases.” The Tribunal (International Labour Organization, 2019) found that a recommendation by the ICSC, subsequently implemented by the UN common system, to reduce the staff salaries was legally flawed, and was set aside. Another example of the establishment of coordinating policies may be found in the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund. The UNJSPF provides retirement, death, disability, and related benefits for UN staff upon retirement, from 24 UN system organizations. The UNJSPF has established a common framework for pension schemes across the UN system, and arrangements for the transfer of pension rights among the organizations that are part of the common system. The case of the UNJSPF is interesting and could be seen as model to follow, as this is not a policymaking body, but it is a businesslike organization with the specific mandate to manage, invest, and pay their monthly pensions to UN retirees.3 A further case on the establishment of coordinating policies among UN entities is given by the “secondment” arrangements. Since the different organizations that form the UN family are formally autonomous from each other, from the early days of the UN there was a need to establish methods to facilitate the transfer of personnel among the various organizations. There had been various attempts at establishing common inter-agency mobility schemes.4 Eventually the conditions of mobility of staff were established in the “Inter-Organization Agreement concerning Transfer, Secondment or Loan of Staff among the Organizations applying the United Nations Common System of Salaries and Allowances” (2012), with 18 participating organizations. Although the application of this system is rather cumbersome, as it requires the agreement of the staff concerned, the “releasing” organization and the “receiving” organization, it is a valid attempt to set coordinating policies.5 As noted in the reports mentioned before, from the early days of the organization there was a constant demand for greater coordination among the UN System. Newly created organizations, under Article 56 of the Charter, would enter bilateral “relationship agreements” with the UN with a view to coordinate their work, while different coordinating bodies were established with this same purpose. Eventually, in 2000, the UN system – including in this case the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – established the Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) that “brings together the executive heads of 31 specialized organizations to deliver as one at the global, regional and country levels,” with the purpose of “strengthening the coordination role of UN inter-governmental bodies on social, economic and related matters.”6

314  Handbook on governance in international organizations The CEB is composed of a High-Level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) and a High-Level Committee on Management (HLCM). The HLCM’s objective is to identify and analyze “administrative management reforms with the aim of improving efficiency and simplifying business practices.”7 To this end it established a HR Network, which “brings together Directors of Human Resources departments from over thirty UN and related organizations” and “provides strategic advice and leadership in the management of human resources.” The CEB has promoted coordination among the UN system, introducing, for example, International Public Sector Accounting Standards. Yet, the Delivering as One Report recommended that the CEB “should be used more effectively in its principal role as a high-level decision-making forum in the United Nations system on substantive and management issues” and that the “CEB reporting and transparency to intergovernmental structures should be improved” (United Nations, 2006a, p. 41). From a different perspective, the UN also has made great efforts at harmonizing its work in the development area, trying to “deliver as one” at least at the country level. To this end – and echoing the previous proposal of the 1985 “Bertrand Report” – it established the UN Development Group, and the figure of the UNDP Resident Coordinator (RC) was empowered as the coordinator and supervisor for the work of all the UN agencies working in the same country. While the RC could be seen as a successful story in establishing concrete coordinating policies at the country level (Einsiedel, 2018), it has been nevertheless criticized, and severely questioned. “There was a continued reluctance among UN [Country Team] institutions to stand up for the rights of the people they were mandated to assist. In Colombo, some senior staff did not perceive the prevention of killing of civilians as their responsibility – and agency and department heads at UNHQ were not instructing them otherwise,” reported an internal investigative panel in 2012 led by Charles Petrie, examining the UN’s actions in Sri Lanka during the final stages there of the civil war (United Nations, 2012). The Panel, almost literally, repeated the recommendations that have been made since the inception of the UN, throughout the long list of reform proposals: it recommended a “renewed vision of the United Nations,” as well as strengthening the management and promoting greater accountability and responsibility. Perhaps the most successful reform on HR and management policies in the UN System was the establishment of the new internal system of justice in 2009. The UN justice system for staff until 2009 had been found to be “neither professional nor independent.” A 2006 panel report on the UN System of Administration of Justice stated that: “The system of administration of justice as it currently stands is extremely slow, under resourced, inefficient and, thus, ultimately ineffective” (United Nations, 2006b, para. 5). The new system put in place an independent and professional tribunal with competence in personnel-related matters (employment and disciplinary matters) and, even more importantly, with the power to issue mandatory judgments against the UN administration.8 This is perhaps the most significant and successful reform that has been properly developed and implemented since the UN’s inception and is concrete evidence that change is possible.9 The above-mentioned studies on the UN HR and management policies present a clear picture of their weaknesses and proposed sound solutions for them. However, despite some isolated improvements and some exceptional cases of successful reforms, the UN HR policies are in a critical condition. This situation, one that has been reported for decades, remains the same today. There is lack of staff planning; a lack of career development and training; a persistence of old work methodologies that are labor intensive and time consuming; excessive recruitment

Staffing global governance  315 and placement periods; high resignation rates, especially among younger staff; an ageing UN; a high level of resentment, frustration, and mistrust; and a loss of values by the staff and an overall negative organizational culture (Bergsmo et al., 2017). As put by Jeffrey Feltman, a former UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs and former US Ambassador: “compared to State [Department], itself not always the most empathetic employer, the U.N. treats its own career staff abysmally, neglecting career development and too often ignoring staff welfare” (Feltman, 2020). From the managerial viewpoint, “the basic hierarchical structures of the UN bureaucracy were maintained through the years” (Botham-Edighoffer, 2005, p. 5). The Secretariat has continued to be an administrative body with no executive powers, providing clerical assistance to the GA. As a result, “(t)he UN Secretariat is today structured in virtually the identical scheme to the day of its foundation. There are departments … headed by politically appointed Under-Secretaries-General who report directly to the Secretary-General (SG). At the next lower level are offices of specific services under the management of Assistant Secretaries-Generals and these devolved further into Divisions, Sections and Units at succeeding lower levels” (Botham-Edighoffer, 2006, p. 3). To make things more complex, instead of evolving towards the establishment of a single centralized entity, gaining some executive powers, and developing a national government-like structure, the UN has kept descending into greater decentralization and fragmentation. Further, member states were and are aware that establishing a too-efficient world organization could create a (political) problem rather than a solution, as this organization might eventually challenge its own creators – the “Frankenstein problem,” whereby a new entity “has a life of its own and cannot be fully controlled” (Gusman, 2013). Despite some progress and some exceptional successful cases, the reform of UN HR and management policies overall has failed. The evidence of this failure is patently shown in the recurring launching of new reform proposals and reconfirmed once more by the new package of reforms recently proposed by the current Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.10 It is very telling that the most important reform proposals were made by external independent panels, working on an ex post and ad hoc basis, including, for example, the Oil-for-Food Report, the Report on Administration of Justice, the Internal Review Panel on Sri Lanka, and the various high-level panels. This also evidenced that the coordinating efforts and accountability mechanisms developed by different UN coordinating and governing schemes have not worked. Against that grim picture, the new HR and management policies proposed by Secretary-General Guterres do not introduce any major changes. Despite their title, the “Shifting the management paradigm” resolution has established a new superstructure of management with two different departments, one policy oriented, one operational, with the stated purpose of “establishing greater coherence in management structures, strengthening performance management culture, ensuring effective management of resources for mandate implementation, enhancing transparency and accountability” and “developing human resources policies and establishing accountability and compliance frameworks for human resources … with effective monitoring systems.” Yet, it does not introduce any substantive change, or any concrete plan of action.

316  Handbook on governance in international organizations Inefficiency Harms Staff Well-being The list of recurring and unresolved HR problems not only makes the UN inefficient and unable to achieve its goals, but also has led to resentment, frustration, and mistrust, deterioration of staff well-being, and even worse is provoking serious mental health problems among the UN staff. A recent study has shown the high prevalence of generalized anxiety disorders (GAD), major depressive disorders (MDD) and post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) among the UN employees. This study of UN personnel, published in 2020, found that generalized anxiety disorder “was significantly associated with low job satisfaction … , followed by longer duration of UN employment … younger age … and trauma exposure on … or off-duty … Similarly, multivariable logistic regression revealed that [major depressive disorder] associated with low job satisfaction … , followed by longer duration of UN employment … younger age … and trauma exposure on … or off duty exposure” (Brown et al., 2020). Notably, it is worrying that the vast majority of the staff that undertook this survey – 79 percent – are stationed in family duty stations, but not in conflict or war zone areas (Brown et al., 2020, p. 4). The same study of UN personnel observed that “The percentage of those screening positive for GAD, MDD, or PTSD is considerably higher than the prevalence in the world general population. Remarkably, about one-third of all UN personnel surveyed reported symptoms that qualify for screening positive for at least one mental health disorder” (Brown, 2020, p. 5). The rate of personnel screening positive for GAD, MDD, or PTSD, it noted, was similar to or even higher than that found in combat veterans and police services. The findings of the above survey are corroborated by the official UN Staff Well-Being Survey Data Report – the survey held in 2015, with the final report published in 2017 – which additionally found that “statistically significant associations were also found between perceived incivility/conflict at work and mental health issues. Levels of perceived incivility/conflict at work were higher among those screening positive for GAD, MDD, PTSD or hazardous drinking” (United Nations, 2017, p. 7). The comparatively high level of mental health issues among UN personnel necessarily leads to many staff on recurrent and extended periods of special sick leave due to mental health conditions, which eventual would lead to early retirement on disability benefits. This subsequently causes serious human resources problems as personnel on sick leave need to be substituted; and causes financial problems in the UN pension schemes.11 There is Always a New Reform Proposal to Launch The above-mentioned reports, studies, and proposals have not only established the problems with the UN’s management and human resources policies; they have also proposed solutions to these problems. Furthermore, in a sort of meta-analysis, these reports often have tried to determine why successive attempts at reform have failed repeatedly. Overall, from the above experiences it is possible to infer a common pattern: every time a new SG is appointed, they will propose a new set of reforms. However, although it is generally accepted that reform policies need to be implemented in the long run with a view to produce substantive results, UN reform policies are never sustained over time. As successive new proposals and strategies have shown, there is always a new reform strategy to be launched.

Staffing global governance  317 Furthermore, the successive attempts at reform have usually been partial. That is, reform proposals usually address only one issue, instead of being comprehensive or part of an overall reform strategy addressing all related problems simultaneously. It has also been noted that the UN often fails to monitor the impact of changes and, as a result, corrective actions are delayed or never introduced (Brown-Edighoffer, 2006, p. 10). Another problem that has been observed is the lack of power of the Secretary-General to develop and then advance a reform proposal, because – unlike the president or prime minister of a country – the SG has no executive power (Gimenez-Corte, 2018, pp. 30–41) and needs to garner the support of the GA, which is always difficult to secure. Staff resistance to change is another explanation for the successive failed attempts at reform, as well as the lack of credibility of reform proposals. So many reform proposals have already been proposed and then failed, that when yet another reform proposal is launched, in a twist to the Cassandra syndrome, everybody knows that nothing will happen. While the reasons listed above are challenging, there are more profound causes that better explain the failure of UN HR policies, and perhaps the perceived failure of the UN at large. The fundamental problem is that the member states of the UN, represented in the GA, often act as if they do not really know what the principal goal of the UN is; but even if member states have a clear understanding of the UN goals, they still prioritize their own national interests over the common interests of the international community, setting this way conflicting objectives. Therefore, without a clear and shared objective in mind, member states know even less how to achieve distant goals, they would neglect them, or – worse – would conspire against reaching these goals (Brown-Edighoffer, 2006, p. 27). As any basic manual on management and administration would put it on the front page: no organization can work without a clear objective and an established strategy. The Joint Inspection Unit’s 2019 report on change management in the UN System observed that “evidence suggests that an organizational reform will fail if its objectives are not clear, if it neglects to engage with staff on what is being proposed, if it does not explain to staff and equip and support them through the process, and if it does not outline ‘what is in it for them’ and what they will be expected to do differently” (United Nations, 2019, p. iii). Again, more than 30 years ago, Bertrand (United Nations, 1985, p. 14) argued that the possibility of improving the UN’s work and efficiency within the framework of the current structures was not possible. The main reason for this is that it is not certain that governments want this in the light of the conception they have of the role of the Organization. The United Nations Secretariat … [is] regarded at present by the member states as areas over which they have to exert political influence so as to gain maximum control over operations and install the largest possible number of their nationals. It is as if the elections for chiefs of secretariats, appointments to higher posts and even lower-level posts, represented a more important type of diplomatic action than that of ensuring the quality of the work to be carried out. This situation demonstrates that governments attach only secondary importance to the efficiency of the organizations. The mediocrity of the outputs does not strike them, in most cases, as a major concern, since the benefit they derive is negligible. In short, they do not have a clear picture of what purpose a World Organization could serve, even if it were better run. (United Nations, 1985, p.14)

Thus, perhaps the very first step in any new proposal for UN reform should be to remind member states, the Secretariat, and civil society what the UN goal is: to save succeeding

318  Handbook on governance in international organizations generations from the scourge of war, reaffirm human rights, promote social progress, better standards of life, in larger freedom, as clearly set forth in the Charter. As this chapter has argued, the UN is becoming progressively involved not only in the policymaking aspects of international affairs, but also in the implementation of those policies in the field. The UN is reluctantly, unpreparedly, and unsystematically assuming more, and new, global governance responsibilities. However, these new aspects of the UN’s work still need to be fully understood and properly addressed. To be exact, the UN, including its member states and the Secretariat, has not yet fully grasped the idea that it is no longer only a conference of nation states, but also an incipient form of global government. The UN has concrete and specific managerial responsibilities and the mandate to deliver, and to produce results in the real world – something that civil society has long been demanding of it (Weiss et. al., 2009). This distinction between the diplomatic and managerial functions performed by the UN, and the need to clearly differentiate between them has been long noted, but never fully addressed (United Nations, 1985, pp. 22–4). As the UN continues to be stuck in its infancy, when it was only a conference, so are its assessment, control, and accountability mechanisms. More specifically, how is the success or failure of the UN measured? The UN is not a national government subject to periodic elections, so nobody can vote the UN managers out. The UN is not a private company where if it is badly run the manager is fired, or the company goes bankrupt. Consequently, there are almost no comparable assessment or control mechanisms in place to determine when the UN is not working and what to do next. In this regard, and again unlike national governments and private corporations, the UN is not subject to the rule of law, and it is not subject to any court of justice. This lack of external and impartial control of the UN, which is called “immunity,” is again based on what was the nature of the UN’s work at its early stages. When the UN was only a relatively small secretariat mainly based in New York City and performing mostly clerical and political activities, it assumed almost no direct responsibilities to the outside world. The UN’s duties were clerical, and the implementation of the UN’s policies was the responsibility of national governments. The main concern of the drafters of the UN Charter, in this respect, was to ensure the independence of the staff from influence by the UN member states (Hammarskjöld, 1961, p. 6). That is why the UN was protected by absolute immunities, in accordance with the Convention on Privileges and Immunities. But when the UN started to implement those policies in the field, the Organization began to establish a wide and large range of relationships with the outside world, for example contractual relationships, which involved rights but also responsibilities. That is to say, following same pattern previously followed by national governments (Pereda, 2016, pp. 1–4), the UN started to perform duties not only in a public, official and policymaking capacity, but also in a private and civil capacity; for example, when renting an office or buying a vehicle. Yet, unlike national governments, which underwent a shift from absolute sovereign immunity to relative immunity and which, as a result, are now subject to the rule of law in areas not related to their sovereignty, the UN has frozen in time and continues to be protected by absolute immunity. Thus, if the UN failed to pay its electricity bill, it cannot be sued (Reinisch, 2006). This lack of accountably is not only contrary to any idea of justice or responsibility (Bode, 2016), and against the basic goals of the UN, but also runs counter to any idea of good man-

Staffing global governance  319 agement. Good management needs to be controlled, but UN management is not – yet – subject to any control.12 Some may argue that there are internal mechanisms that could perform that role of control. This is incorrect, however, as the UN does not even have a Court of Auditors responsible for overseeing how the organization’s funds are expended. The UN has a Board of Auditors with only recommendatory powers. The same is true for the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which has mere recommendatory powers that could be simply ignored. Therefore, there is no actual control of the organization’s work.

HOW TO REFORM THE UNITED NATIONS: FOCUS ON HUMAN RESOURCES POLICIES If we were to propose yet another reform strategy following the same model of proposals that have already been undertaken but either failed or petered out, we would easily predict that this new reform strategy is destined to fail. Conversely, if a reform proposal is to have a realistic chance of success, it needs to be a completely different type of proposal. In an ideal world, the UN should start a centralization process, a sort of “merger and acquisition process,” absorbing most of the current dozens and dozens specialized agencies, and related international organizations, and should start to gain some executive powers. But in our real current world, where nationalistic policies are here to stay, this will not happen (Gimenez-Corte, 2018, pp. 30–41). Leaving, then, the ideal (for some, anyway) of the UN evolving into a world governance institution on the side, more concrete reform proposals may be achievable. For example, without amending any single rule or regulation, and without enacting any new piece of legislation, the SG has the power to withdraw UN privileges and immunities and thus to voluntarily subject the UN Organization to the rule of law, making the UN accountable. As established by Article V.20 of the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, The Secretary-General shall have the right and the duty to waive the immunity of any official in any case where, in his opinion, the immunity would impede the course of justice and can be waived without prejudice to the interests of the United Nations.

The SG might, of course, need to reconsider what constitutes “the interests of the United Nations.” Another step that would be easier to accomplish would be to make managers responsible for their acts using the current internal justice system mechanisms. Even though existing UN rules provide for this possibility, managers are never held directly responsible for their acts.13 But perhaps a more profound, and at the same time simple and small but ambitious change, could be brought about by the establishment of new HR policies. As discussed in the previous section, reforming the UN HR policies would require not only a reform of the HR policies themselves, but also of all the related areas, such as financing, accountability, and management. But even if a reform process is focused only on what we may call HR sensu stricto, this would require a review not only of the recruitment and career development areas of HR, but also of salaries, employment conditions, benefits, social security schemes, vacations, spouse

320  Handbook on governance in international organizations employment, children’s education, training opportunities, geographical distribution, gender balance, evaluation and assessment and many other aspects. If the UN were to launch such a comprehensive package of reforms, it would need the full political support of the GA, in particular by its authorization of the SG to implement the proposed reforms; and the SG would need extra funding for this purpose. Furthermore, the proposed reforms would need to be advanced and maintained for a long period of time. Such a reform proposal would be, again, destined to fail.

CONCLUSION: A SIMPLE PLAN, FOR A SPECTACULAR UN Instead, our current reform proposal is much more modest but at the same time more realistic and, in the medium term, revolutionary. What is proposed here is a return to the initial idea of career service; an idea which, as previously mentioned, was abandoned relatively early in the life of the United Nations (Botham-Edighoffer, 2006, pp. 176, 194). A career service strategy would guarantee two goals in one shot: it would generate a new cadre of professional staff able to assume the contemporary and future managerial and governance challenges of the UN; and it would reduce, if not prevent, the political influence from member states. In this concluding section of the chapter, we lay down a simple plan. This plan has already been tested elsewhere and has proven to work well. The idea of career service is not new or original. Our proposal is to simply follow the civil service and foreign service policies that are in place in most UN member states, and to follow the recommendations by the 2000 JIU Young Professionals report. More specifically, as a model for our plan, we have chosen the foreign services policies of Uruguay and Germany, and to a lesser degree the HR policies of the European Commission.14 Accordingly, this reformed career service should be structured on the following basis: 1. Centralization: The development and implementation of HR policies in the UN, in particular regarding recruitment and promotion, would be centralized in the Office of Human Resources (OHR).15 The UN Secretariat would reach an agreement with the rest of the UN System organization for the establishment of this policy across the UN system – a proposal already made by the Joint Inspection Unit over two decades ago (United Nations, 2000, paras. 23–5). 2. Entry Exam: This Entry Exam would be based on the former UN National Competitive Recruitment Examinations (NCRE), which worked relatively well at this level. Interested candidates worldwide, who hold a professional degree would sit for a series of written examinations on general aspects of international affairs, on the work of the UN, and on specific aspects of their professional fields. Candidates would be able to take the exam in any of the UN’s six working languages and must demonstrate proficiency in one of the UN’s working languages. The candidates who pass the written tests would then be invited to participate in a series of oral interviews to evaluate the candidates’ skills and competences.

Staffing global governance  321 3. Placement: The successful candidates would fill all (i.e., 100 percent) of the professional positions at the entry level (P1 and P2) across the UN System organizations. No external candidates would be placed at this level. Successful candidates would be assigned to these positions on a probationary basis. In parallel with performing their duties, these new recruits would undertake a mandatory education and training program in international affairs, management, financing, international law, international politics, languages, conflict resolution, development, peacekeeping missions, and related topics.16 After the successful completion of the three-year probationary period, and after completing the courses and exams in the program, successful candidates would be given permanent contracts with the UN and offered a career track. 4. Promotion: The OHR would promote successful staff to the next career level (e.g., to the P-3 level), and simultaneously rotate the new staff out to a different duty station. One hundred percent of P3 positions should be filled with these staff members. No external candidates should be placed at this level and no vacancy announcements would call for external candidates for these positions. 5. Career Development: After having completed at least four years at the previous professional level, the OHR would promote staff to the next professional level and simultaneously rotate the staff to yet a different duty station. One hundred percent of P4 positions should be filled with these staff members. No external candidates should be placed at this level and no vacancy announcements would call for external candidates for these positions. 6. Promotion to the Highest Professional Level: After having completed at least four years at the previous professional level, the OHR will promote the staff to the next professional level (P-5) and again, simultaneously rotate the staff to a different duty station. One hundred percent of P-5 positions should be filled with these staff members. No external candidates should be placed at this level and no vacancy announcements would call for external candidates for these positions. Within a relatively short period of time, the UN would have created a strong, committed, and capable cadre of staff, knowledgeable and also powerful enough to be the agents of change themselves, the political force that can introduce required reforms and that will also compete for the higher political positions at the assistant secretary-general and under-secretary general levels. These experienced staffers would be the ones needed to introduce the required changes in finance, accountability, HR policies, management, and administration and to implement them sustainably over time. In 1959, Dag Hammarskjöld had considered that the “function of the Secretariat – and by necessity especially of the Secretary-General personally – is and should be unspectacular” (Hammarskjöld, 1959). At this juncture of its institutional history, the UN and its Secretariat need to assume and embrace the responsibility of global governance; but to succeed in this task the UN could no longer be a silent and passive clerk or a quiet diplomat – the Secretariat should necessarily become spectacular.

NOTES 1.

The UN System is composed of the United Nations Organization proper and a complex network of UN subsidiary bodies, agencies, entities, funds and programs, and associated international organ-

322  Handbook on governance in international organizations izations. For the composition, nature, and number of organizations that forms the UN System, see https://​www​.unsystem​.org/​content/​un​-system. 2. The UN Common system encompasses the United Nations, its affiliated programmes, 13 specialized agencies, and one organization with a special status under the ICSC statute, including UN, UNDP, UNFPA, UNOPS, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNRWA, OTC, ILO, FAO, WFP, UNESCO, WHO, ICAO, UPU, ITU, WMO, IMO, WIPO, IFAD, UNIDO, IAEA, UNWTO, UNWOMEN, ISA, UNAIDS, ITLOS, and CTBTO. 3. For the composition and mandate of the UNJSPF, see https://​www​.unjspf​.org/​. 4. For the development of the mobility schemes, see https://​www​.unsystem​.org/​content/​inter​ -organization​-transfer​-loan​-and​-secondment​-staff. 5. See, however, UN, JIU/REP/2019/8 Review of staff exchange and similar inter-agency mobility measures in United Nations system organizations. 6. For the composition and mandate of the CEB, see http://​www​.unsceb​.org. 7. Available at http://​www​.unsceb​.org/​content/​hlcm. 8. The UN Administrative Tribunals have jurisdiction over the Secretariat, UN Funds and Programmes, UNRWA, UNJSPB, ISA, ICAO, ICJ, IMO, ITLOS, and the WMO. 9. Even this achievement is at risk of being lost. For the current serious problems facing the internal justice system, see the Report of the Internal Justice Council, Administration of Justice at the United Nations, A/74/219: available at https://​undocs​.org/​en/​A/​74/​169. 10. “The majority of organizational reforms fail to achieve their expected outcomes” found the UN Joint Inspection Unit, after analyzing data “on change management practices in 47 organizational reforms carried out across 26 United Nations system organizations between 2010 and 2018.” JIU/ REP/2019/4 Review of change management in United Nations system organizations, p. iii. 11. Although there are not definite statistical figures it is possible to see UN, JIU/REP/2012/2, The Management of sick leave in the UN System. Available at https://​www​.unjiu​.org/​content/​ management​-sick​-leave​-united​-nations​-system​-1. 12. A recent decision by the US Supreme Court, rejecting the immunity invoked by an international organization, may mark a change, forcing IOs to submit to the rule of law, and may thus have a major impact on every aspect related to global governance. See US Supreme Court decision of February 27, 2019, Jam et al. v. International Finance Corporation (586 U.S. ___ 2019), in which it rejected the defense of absolute immunity invoked by the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Available at https://​www​.supremecourt​.gov/​opinions/​18pdf/​17​-1011​_mkhn​.pdf. 13. Article 9.5 of the UN Appeals Tribunal reads: “The Appeals Tribunal may refer appropriate cases to the Secretary-General of the United Nations or executive heads of separately administered United Nations funds and programmes for possible action to enforce accountability.” 14. On the structure of the foreign service in Uruguay, see the “Estatuto del funcionario del Servicio Exterior de la República” of 2018, available at https://​legislativo​.parlamento​.gub​.uy/​ temporales/​D2018111068​-006045561​.pdf. On the German Foreign service, see Freibert, A. (2004) “Classifications and Career Development in the German Foreign Service,” SIGMA, 1–7, available at http://​www​.sigmaweb​.org/​publications/​34874084​.pdf. On the EU Commission Civil Service see https://​ec​.europa​.eu/​info/​about​-european​-commission/​organisational​-structure/​commission​ -staff​_en. 15. This centralized system is based on the German and Uruguayan systems, and on the EU Commission’s European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO). In the UN, the management of HR policies has been increasingly delegated from the OHR to the managers of the substantive division, with poor results. On the failure of the decentralized HR system in the UN, see Botham-Edighoffer (2006, pp. 175–8). 16. This program will be based on the Uruguayan and German foreign service training programs. This training program will be carried out by the UN Staff College, as suggested already in the Jackson Report: see Some Reflections on Reform of the United Nations, p. 64.

Staffing global governance  323

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PART IV HAVE INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS HAD THEIR DAY?

20. International organizations are more than states make of them Roberto Dominguez and José Antonio Sanahuja

INTRODUCTION The globalized and interconnected world would be difficult to envision without International Organizations (IOs). Often invisible to the public, the norms and regulations that IOs provide allow the functioning of a wide range of activities ranging from the movement of people and goods to managing conflicts. IOs are expected to manage collective problems and provide collective goods whenever is possible. However, not everyone agrees with the argument about IOs’ functional benefits. Voices embracing practices that erode democracy and contest the liberal order have targeted globalization and IOs as the causes of domestic problems. The rise of illiberalism begs the question: Have IOs had their day? This chapter argues that the analysis of the impact of the recent wave of illiberal governments eroding the performance of IOs should be considered in a larger context. The administration of President Donald Trump (2017–21) was emblematic of the nativist and illiberal moment. Other like-minded governments preceded it, and others will follow the steps of undermining the work of IOs. While receding or eroded democracies (Brazil, Philippines, India, Hungary, and Poland) challenge globalization, their impact is contingent on the capacity and structure of IOs and the correlation of forces in the international order. The development of the argument is divided into five sections. It starts by exploring the challenge of IOs to adapt to the changing international order and accommodate different world views. While the global agenda encompasses numerous challenges, three have emerged as nodes or gravitational centers of multiple problems in the past decade: the erosion of liberal political practices, economic and social exclusion, and contesting global orders. For IOs, the main challenge is finding mechanisms to accommodate leading powers in addressing everyday challenges. The second part focuses on the concept of illiberal nativism as central to understanding the reluctance of some governments to fully embrace the global normative models, legal structures, and political practices that have been institutionalized since the end of World War II. The third section examines the enduring role of IOs beyond illiberalism. It argues that while nativist political parties and governments often blame IOs as the cause of some domestic problems, their impact is attenuated by the gap between narratives and policy actions and the possibility of reversing contestations against IOs, as the Biden administration did in 2021. More importantly, IOs are resilient over time. Beyond illiberal nativist governments, the fourth section argues that competing forces are more significant to shape international norms, rules, and IOs. Following Owen (2021), two competing and, to some extent, overlapping orders prevail today: the Liberal Internationalism Order (LIO) and the authoritarian–capitalist international order (ACIO). For IOs, the challenge is whether China (ACIO), on the one hand, and the United States and their respective like-minded allies (LIO), on the other, collide, 326

International organizations are more than states make of them  327 compete, or collaborate to make IOs more efficient. The last section explores the case of the role of China and the United States in the leading international economic organizations. It explains that the United States and China compete within the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB), and World Trade Organization (WTO). In contrast, in the case of the Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank (AIIB), China has increased its leverage and underpins a potential alternative regional order.

IOs: CHALLENGES TODAY Far from a global government, IOs facilitate channels of cooperation and coordination across multiple areas that interconnect the world. In the aftermath of World War II, IOs have changed the legal and political configuration of the international order. From the perspective of international relations, IOs are traditionally understood as collective groups of states who pursue a set of shared purposes with material entities possessing physical locations, personnel, equipment, and budgets (Young 1989). Beyond formal treaties or physical locations, IOs also facilitate institutions and regimes, which are “understood broadly as relatively stable collections of social practices consisting of easily recognized roles coupled with underlying norms and a set of rules or conventions defining appropriate behavior for, and governing relations among, occupants of these roles” (Jönsson 2018: 2). More importantly, an extensive literature has analyzed how IOs provide different types of collective goods (Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern 1999). For the past three decades, the demand for improving the role of IOs has moved hand in hand with the globalization process. Understood as a process, some characterizations of globalization emphasize the acceleration of interconnectedness (McGrew 2010), while others refer to the dynamic shrinking of distance on a large scale (Keohane and Nye 2000). Another perspective includes trans-nationalization, redistribution of productive capacities, and a comprehensive global process of diffusion of power and wealth (Sanahuja 2019). More complex is the analysis of the variety of strategies that states and non-state actors use to adopt, adapt, or contest the process of globalization, once it is filtered through ideas, ideologies, and languages at the local and state levels. Rejectionists, skeptics, modifiers, and globalizers are four categories that group the different understandings of globalization (Jung 2018). In contrast to globalization, globalism is a term associated with different meanings that range from an “ideology of rule by the world market” (Beck 2000: 9) to some form of imperial domination (Steger and James 2010). In the view of Nye (2002), globalism, at its core, seeks to describe and explain a world characterized by networks of connections that span multi-continental distances. The general point is that the increasing intensity, or thickness, of globalism – the density of networks of interdependence – changes relationships (Nye 2002). From the perspective of this chapter, globalism can advance globalization through networks of groups, but also develop networks that contest it. Networks of contesting voices argue that unaccountable international officials and plutocrats rule the world. These elites, it is alleged, rule in favor of the establishment, whose interests are opposed to those of the people, community, culture, and tradition and threaten the freedom of sovereign nations. In this way, a particular populist discourse of friends–enemies is constructed. The “authentic” people are confronted with foreign elites, and the internal political opponent is accused of being disloyal and a traitor to the country.

328  Handbook on governance in international organizations Against this background, the impact of the globalization process has been uneven around the world, as well as the responses of governments and societies. Local governments and states have implemented different instruments to adapt or contest globalization, while IOs and institutions have been mechanisms of discussion and production of norms and rules to ameliorate collective problems. The effective management of problems entails the collaboration of different levels of political aggregation (from local to global). In this regard, while the list of challenges afflicting the world is extensive, three are noticeable in the contestation to the global order: erosion of liberal practices, in particular, democracy; sluggish economic growth and inequality; and the contestations to the global liberal order. The first challenge is the erosion of democracy. As recorded in the EUI Democracy Index in recent years, democracy has not been in robust health for some time. The average global score in the 2021 Democracy Index fell from 5.37 in 2020 to 5.28, representing a bigger year-on-year decline than the previous year and setting another dismal record for the worst global score since the index was first produced in 2006. The decline in the global average score of 0.09 has been equaled only once before – in 2010, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, which led to major setbacks for democracy, some of which have persisted (Economist Intelligence Unit 2022). Polarization has been one of the key elements that has led to the erosion of democracy. The benefits of the internet of things, including social media, are numerous, as well as the substantial risks. In particular, the world of instant communications has affected the potential for disinformation and misinformation in political campaigns and exacerbated polarization. In politics, societal polarization has eroded democracy due to dissatisfaction with the political system’s perceived capacity to represent voters effectively. In addition to structural problems within democracies, increasing misinformation and disinformation have aggravated political discontent. In the face of the erosion of democracy, Sen (2017) argues that open discussion with extensive public reach and scrutiny can have a powerfully positive role in making elections and voters better informed. However, in the absence of critical scrutiny, vast public messages can distort people’s understanding of the issues and facts. Herd effects can impact the dissemination of truth through learning from signals and the spread of false beliefs (Sen 2017). The second problem international orders face is related to social and economic exclusion. The research conducted by the Paris School of Economics and Thomas Piketty argues that what made economic development and human progress possible was the struggle for equality and education. Contrary to what some strands of neoliberalism advocate, Piketty clarifies that progress did not result from the sanctification of property, stability, or inequality. In Piketty’s view, the inequality regime rests on both the theory of borders and the theory of property as well as on social nativism (Piketty 2020). From a different angle, Putnam reached similar conclusions for the case of the United States. By studying how political decisions have affected social inclusiveness, Putnam observes two general trends associated with political projects. First, progressivism is linked to liberalism by gradually climbing into greater interdependence and cooperation (1910–60). Second, steep descent into greater independence and egoism (1960–2020) is associated with neoliberalism’s rise. In his view, the challenge is to resurrect the earlier communitarian virtues that do not reverse the progress achieved regarding individual liberties (Putnam 2020). In addition to individualism, another economic problem is the concentration of competition in a few hands and the lack of mechanisms to address it. In 2001, the International Competition Network (ICN), an informal network of recognized antitrust authorities from developed and developing countries, had its first meeting but minimal impact.

International organizations are more than states make of them  329 US Senator Amy Klobuchar (2021) advocates modernizing US antitrust laws, enforcement, and policies to protect the middle class. In her view, some anticompetitive deals are affecting the US economy: Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp, AT&T–Time Warner, and T-Mobile’s purchase of Spring (Klobuchar 2021). The third challenge is the role of the International Liberal Order. The challenge of nodes of problems shapes the strategies that leading powers display to delay or embrace the reform of IOs. Processes such as the rise of emerging countries, which do not conform to the traditional pattern of hegemonic multilateralism inherited from the postwar order, also point in this direction. The plurality of actors in the international system and the dispersion of power became more salient than in the early 1970s. While nuclear and military variables largely determined the bipolar order, the world was already more plural economically. At the same time, international institutions were already in place, and the legalization or regulation of multiple areas had increased exponentially. As a result, the role of leadership in international relations became more difficult as more competing forces and institutions were at play. The main challenge regarding leadership today is what Bremmer calls the G-Zero situation (Bremmer 2013), in which there is a vacuum of leadership in international relations. Some governments will adapt more effectively than others to the G-Zero potential instability. Because global leadership is lacking and international cooperation has become impossible to coordinate, some governments turn to regional solutions that are more likely to produce results without factoring in the effects at the global level (Bremmer 2013). In the context of leadership, the role of the United States is critical. The direction of the United States faces challenges for three main reasons. The first is related to domestic constraints. The capacity to lead of the United States may be affected by the increasing attention needed to domestic factors, including the following: reducing government debt, rebuilding infrastructure, improving public education, investing more in the social safety net, adopting an intelligent immigration system, tackling political dysfunction by making it less difficult to vote, and undoing gerrymandering, as Haass (2019) indicates. The second is that global leadership has become more complicated because of the increasing role of alternative views about regional order, mainly China. Global leadership needs more collaboration from other international actors to be practical rather than rhetorical (Bremmer 2013). The third element is enduring alliances with middle or regional powers that are frontrunners in one or a variety of international agenda areas. A multispeed agenda with willing or interested actors could prove helpful to pave the way to becoming gravitational forces for preserving collective goods. From this angle, expecting that the United States will effectively embrace global leadership, it will be insufficient to produce significant global system transformations (Haass 2019).

THE DISRUPTIVE NOSTALGIA OF NATIVISM Populism, authoritarianism, and nativism have been rising for over a decade. The three political practices or the emphasis on one of them have been in the toolbox of some skeptical elected leaders who are often reluctant to collaborate with IOs. While these three political practices are interconnected, nativism is central to understanding the reluctance to globalization. Nativism is mainly a concept used in the United States, while Europeans tend to talk about ultra-nationalism, xenophobia, or racism rather than nativism. The conceptual differences entail nuances of the same phenomenon that embraces localism and the preeminence

330  Handbook on governance in international organizations of one group within a state. Following Kleinfeld and Dickas (2020), this chapter uses the term nativist to describe “the portion of any population who advocate, endorse, or believe in a racially, religiously, or ethnically defined notion of nationhood.” Nativists today believe that “true” national identity requires a particular racial, ethnic, or religious background. Often, the mythical “true” identity may potentially lead to exclusionary practices in which the focus on protecting the local group against the “foreign” (from immigration to trade) reinforces an idealized national identity. Nativism shapes policymaking based on the individual-level attitudes that are afraid of foreign influence that undermine their traditional way of life (Powers, Reifler, and Scotto 2021; Knoll and Shewmaker 2015). The rise of nativism is interrelated to a larger context of disappointment with the capacity of political systems to deliver collective goods. IPSOS Global Advisor conducted a 27-country survey focused on populism and nativism in 2019 (between March 22 and April 5). Three interconnected findings of the study indicate the sequence between the perception of disappointment in the system (broken system), the need for decisive leadership even at the expense of institutions (populism), and the protection against the foreign (nativism). Regarding the broken system, 70 percent agreed that the economy is rigged to favor the rich and powerful, and 66 percent agreed that traditional politics ignores people “like me.” When asked about hands-on leadership, 64 percent wanted a strong leader to “take the country back” from the rich, and 49 percent wanted a strong leader willing to break the rules to fix the country. Their findings indicate that the average global citizen (in the 27 countries) is ambivalent about immigration, leaning toward a natives-first view: 60 percent disagreed that their nation would be better off accepting all immigrants; 60 percent said employers should favor natives when jobs are scarce; and 43 percent agreed that immigrants take social services away from natives. The survey also indicates that nativism is most prevalent in Turkey, Malaysia, Serbia, and Russia, and in the USA, nativist views are far less prevalent among the young (IPSOS Global Advisor 2019). The problem that nativist practices produce in the twenty-first century is the dealignment with global normative practices institutionalized since World War II. Based on the lessons of recent history and in contrast to nativist perspectives, the still imperfect model of civic and liberal nationalism predicates a sense of shared values amongst its citizens, such as openness and inclusivity (Nau 2021). From the perspective of global institutions, nativism can be projected regionally or internationally. Nativism inherently entails an international dimension that embraces nostalgic and unrealistic promises of a world devoid of international organizations and international institutions. Historically, leading nativist voices have impacted the emergence and functioning of international institutions. Some examples include Henry Cabot Lodge’s crusade against Woodrow Wilson’s Treaty of Versailles and the Smoot–Hawley Tariff in 1930, which raised US tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods during the economic depression. Ever since, the international context has changed significantly. The regional and collective problems in multiple areas after two world wars demanded the creation of international organizations, which have produced numerous liberal norms, rules, and regulations in international relations. While the campaign of Cabot Lodge against the Treaty of Versailles took place in a nascent international society, the nativism of the administration of Donald Trump comes into the picture in a global community where states have internalized the role of IOs to coordinate collective action. In this regard, nativism in the 2020s finds normative and legal international constraints, and collisions between nativism and the liberal order often result in illiberal international practices. Geva and Santos (2021) argued that global

International organizations are more than states make of them  331 illiberalism departs from classical liberalism in two ways. First, it embraces a global order of strong nations, which reverses or weakens the relationship between IOs and countries. Second, global illiberalism insists on national sovereignty in cultural matters. In particular, it is related to family values, immigration, gender identity, and multiculturalism and partially rejects the liberal international order. One of the challenges in the analysis of nativism is the scope of action. The dividing lines between nativism and illiberalism are blurred. Following Diamond (2018), the analysis should consider a distinction. On the one hand, political parties or governments taking a reasoned stand in favor of stricter rules for immigration, which can be entirely liberal and democratic. Based on Pappas (2019), some nativist parties are not necessarily populist or illiberal because they are still fully committed to parliamentary democracy and constitutional legality (FN in France or FPO in Austria). On the other, some parties or governments combine opposition to immigration policies with illiberalism by demonizing others (Muslims, Africans, and other racial and religious minorities). While the distinction is complex and challenging to draw, nativism embraces exclusionary policies and tends to slide down the slippery slope of anti-pluralism (Diamond 2018) and illiberalism. Another critical characteristic of nativist forces is their link to right-wing political parties and movements. The general trend is that the global phenomenon of nativism is associated with right-wing political parties (Öniş and Kutlay 2020), paving the way to the neo-patriotic right, which is emblematic of a normative cleavage between communitarian and cosmopolitan worldviews (Sanahuja and López Burian 2020). The challenge that communitarian perspectives face is aligning the local and a globalized world. Sanahuja and López Burian (2020) argue that the new wave of right and far-right governments is markedly nationalist, anti-globalization, and contests the international order. Their foreign policies hold extreme nationalism, differentiating and rejecting globalism, the international liberal order, and multilateralism. Donald Trump in the United States, Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom, Vladimir Putin in the Russian Federation, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, and Narendra Modi in India, among others, represent variants of nativist-right-wing perspectives. In contrast with right-wing communitarian forces, the cosmopolitan liberal-conservative right-wing identifies with the Davos World Economic Forum’s neoliberal worldview, favors liberal democracy and free trade, and assumes globalism as an ideology and normative institutionalization (Slobodian 2018). They defend global economic integration and align themselves with the visions of the technocracy of multilateral financial organizations. The nostalgia of nativist illiberal voices is detrimental to an international agenda of inclusiveness. The main reason is that they appeal to protect the privileges of a sector of the nation and preserve the status quo (Posen 2021). The electoral triumph of Donald Trump, or Bolsonaro, Brexit, the rise of the extreme xenophobic right in the EU, the complex appearance of illiberal democracies that violate the rule of law in Poland or Hungary, and the capture and blockade of Spanish politics due to a confrontation in a nationalist key between the Catalan independence movement and the right, increasingly inclined towards radical nationalism. These tendencies extend to traditional parties, which often assume and normalize those positions to avoid losing votes or social support. The rise of these forces has been more intense and with more significant effects in advanced countries, but the phenomenon is not limited to them. Different forms of nationalism also take hold in Turkey, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines. In the case of Russia, nationalism, nativism and authoritarianism have been some of the variables that explain the decision of President Putin to invade Ukraine in 2022.

332  Handbook on governance in international organizations In China, nationalism seems to have replaced communism as the official ideology (Zhao 2021; Guo 2019). The classic liberal script decisively links growth and economic openness with the rise of the middle classes and the political shift towards democracy and pluralism. Nevertheless, the country seems to go in the opposite direction with the 2018 constitutional reforms which strengthened the power of Xi-Jinping, and the consolidation of a dystopian techno-police state based on strict social control (Sanahuja 2019). In Latin America, criticism against the liberal script gained traction with the elections in Mexico, Peru, and Chile. Still, the contestation to IOs and international cooperation was limited and rhetorical. In contrast, Venezuela and Nicaragua reinforced their contestations under their non-democratic regimes, while the democratic culture in Brazil implemented a narrative of nativism and contestation against IOs under the Bolsonaro administration. The past decade experienced the election of leaders who have been skeptical of IOs. From the perspective of this chapter, IOs are in a constant process of innovation and adaptation (Sanahuja 2019). The embedded liberalism of the IOs of the postwar order has produced predictability in the international society and also generated contradictions. Nonetheless, as advocated by nativist illiberalism, the nostalgia for an international order that does not exist anymore, if it ever did, is potentially detrimental to the performance of IOs in the twentieth-first century.

THE ENDURING ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS One of the critical inquiries in this chapter is to what extent illiberal nativist governments affect or derail the work of IOs. By observing and assessing two lines of analysis, their narratives and their policies, one may interpret some of the impacts of the nativist tide in the second decade of the 2010s. Regarding narratives, the first line of analysis, some governments attribute to globalization and international organizations the causes of domestic problems because this is profitable from the angle of electoral politics. The electoral narrative of Trump, Bolsonaro, and Orban criticized globalization and questioned the globalist elites in charge and their attempt to promote global governance through IOs. This type of speech has been prevalent in Viktor Orban and Donald Trump (Stack 2016) or Jair Bolsonaro and his mentor, Olavo de Carvalho (Casarões 2019). Their narratives often lead to conspiracy theories in which a world cosmopolitan elite threatens the people and the nation (Zimmer 2018). It is in line with the ideas of self-governance and state autonomy that have long defined mainly right-wing political parties (Rohac 2019; Sanahuja and López Burian 2020). Table 20.1 collects some illiberal elected executives’ statements against IOs and international institutions. The second line of reasoning observes that anti-IO statements from political parties in electoral campaigns do not necessarily become actions: easier said than done. Table 20.2 presents a list of illiberal leaders’ policies that convey the intention of eroding IOs. From the policy standpoint, IOs try to impose international norms that threaten national sovereignty and are contrary to each country’s traditions, values, and socio-cultural norms. As IOs are depicted as promoters of globalism, nativists question the legitimacy of specific policies: such as some areas of the 2030 Agenda; the fight against climate change and the Paris Agreement; gender equality and the recognition of gender identity; multiculturalism, the rights of immigrants, and, more broadly, human rights.

International organizations are more than states make of them  333 Table 20.1

Contesting statements against IOs and international institutions

Donald Trump (2017–21)

“We will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy” (Hennigan 2018). “The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots” (White House 2019).

Rodrigo Duterte (2016-22)

President Rodrigo Duterte has conveyed personal offensive declarations against UN officials regarding the extrajudicial killings in Philippines (Gavilan 2020). Regarding UN, President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to withdraw from UN (August 2016) and later declared that “the UN has no purpose” (January 2018) (Gavilan 2020).

Jair Bolsonaro (2019-22)

“I will leave (the U.N.) it’s no good, it’s a meeting place for communists and people who have no commitment to South America” (Telesur 2018).

Narendra Modi (since 2014)

“If the United Nations wants to remain relevant. It will need to improve its effectiveness and enhance its reliability” (BS Web Team 2021). “With regard to the origin of Covid-19 and the ease of doing business rankings, institutions of global governance have damaged the credibility they had built after decades of hard work” (BS Web Team 2021).

Viktor Orban (since 2010)

“We wanted to believe that the feverish dream of the communists to hew us into Homo Sovieticus rather than Hungarians could never return. And now we stand here and we see with astonishment that the forces of globalization are trying to pry open our door and they are working to mold us into Homo Brusselicus instead of Hungarians” (The Orange Files 2018).

Source: Compiled by the authors based on the references indicated in the table.

President Trump was active in withdrawing the US from some IOs and agreements, but the new Biden administration rapidly brought back the United States to the track of collaboration with IOs. More significant is the fact that IOs adapt to the pressures of illiberal globalists. IOs have developed different capacities to influence the international system, often setting norms and rules in various policy areas and coordinating collective efforts to deal with crises produced within and between states. More precisely, as Karns, Mingst, and Stiles (2015) have argued, the functions of intergovernmental organizations are the following: informational, forum, normative, rule creation, rule supervision, operational and idea generation (Karns, Mingst, and Stiles 2015). As a result of their actions, IOs have made significant contributions to global governance: developing new ideas, filling knowledge gaps, and gathering data; setting, promoting, and monitoring goals; agenda-setting international arenas; developing the ability to adapt and reform; and innovating new varieties of governance. From that angle, the actions of illiberal nativist governments limit the performance of existing international institutions. However, their narrowly defined interest is potentially a source of risk. Without shared expectations and norms, the danger of miscalculation and inter-state conflict increases (Rohac 2019). The enduring and often resilient performance of some IOs brings various actors as stakeholders in producing collective goods. Sustainable global governance is, among other things, participatory, transparent, and accountable. It also promotes the rule of law and ensures that political, social, and economic priorities seek broad consensus in societies (Beyond Smart Cities 2020). From this perspective, unsustainable practices will erode trust and collaboration to reduce problems: imperfect free markets and inequality erode social cohesion; exclusionary

334  Handbook on governance in international organizations Table 20.2

Contesting policy actions against IOs

Donald Trump (2017–21)

The US withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (November 2016). The United States withdrew from Paris Climate Deal (June 2017). The US announced decision to withdraw from UNESCO (October 2017). The US decided to leave the negotiations on the UN Global Compact for Migration (December 2017). The Trump administration decided to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran) (May 2018). The Trump administration withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) (June 2018). The Trump administration announced decision to fund the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) (August 2018). The US blocked the appointment of judges of the Appellate Body to the WTO (Shukla 2020).

Rodrigo Duterte (since 2016)

Philippines unilaterally cancelled its ICC membership (March 2018) (Shukla 2020).

Jair Bolsonaro (since 2019)

The Bolsonaro government indicated that it would no longer be a party to a United Nations migration accord signed in January 2019, arguing that “not just anyone can come into our home.” Also, Brazil gave up the hosting of the 2019 UN Climate Change Conference (which included the 25th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) due to “budget constraints” (Flemes 2019).

Narendra Modi (since 2014)

The Modi government cancelled the licenses of nearly 20,000 NGOs receiving foreign funds under the Foreign Contribution Regulatory Act (2018) (Kumar 2019).

Viktor Orban (since 2010)

Hungary’s government declared war on the UN Migration Compact, the government plans on using taxpayer’s money to fund a so called “information campaign” on the compact and blocked negotiations of the policy at the EU level (Human Rights Watch 2018). In 2017, Hungary adopted legislation forcing NGOs receiving foreign funding of more than 7.2 million forints ($24,200) a year to register with the courts and identify themselves as foreign funded in their publications (Cook and Spike 2021).

Source: Compiled by the authors based on the references indicated in the table.

policies will produce social grievances; and peace agreements without appropriate mechanisms to undermine deep-seated animosity among rival groups will likely reignite violence.

IOs BEYOND ILLIBERAL NATIVISM: ACCOMMODATING DIFFERENT WORLDVIEWS This chapter has advanced the argument that illiberal nativism understands globalization and IOs as the opponent of cherished values, sovereignty, and identities. However, IOs are resilient because they aim to produce collective goods despite the obstacles posed by the new wave of hyper-nationalist and illiberal governments. More importantly, the impact of the recent wave of illiberal nativism on IOs is limited, considering more general processes that shape the capacity of IOs to provide collective goods. The two central leading powers have been shaping more profoundly parallel international orders and hence the structure and functioning of IOs. The challenge is whether China, the United States, and their respective like-minded allies collide, compete, or collaborate to make IOs more efficient.

International organizations are more than states make of them  335 The wave of illiberal governments is relatively recent, and, in some cases, the undermining actions against IOs have been reversed. From Cabot Lodge to Donald Trump, social groups have endorsed localist and nativist policies. The followers of Donald Trump are part of the American society and will continue using their political rights to support leaders skeptical of the international order. Democracies face the predicament of reconciling the perspectives of competing liberal and illiberal voices without disrupting the rules and norms of the international order. The US Ambassadors to the UN under the Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump administrations adopted different nativist policies that undermined the UN system, particularly from the angle of US monetary contributions. In this regard, as Mastanduno (2019) argues, a large number of specialists would agree that the best allies of the normative international order are societies more than states and decision-makers. Well-informed societies will be more inclined to exert strategic restraint from their governments in international relations and favor cooperation. Ikenberry (2018) argues that strategic restraint is the “passport” away from imperial domination or balancing and towards more consensual or “constitutional” forms of order. While nativism is present in numerous political systems and embraced by some, its capacity to shape IOs is limited to a few countries: Hungary, Poland, the United States under Trump, Brazil, and the Philippines, among others. Due to their political and economic influence on the international system, the United States and China have played a significant role in shaping the policies of IOs for the past two decades. Based on Owen (2021), the global projects of both great powers have been consistent over time, shaping two orders: The first is the LIO which encompasses similar foreign policies and multilateral institutions within a geographical area. The second is led by China, which Owen terms ACIO, emphasizing authoritarian government, state-led development (but also trade and investment), and state sovereignty (Owen 2021). The countries embracing the LIO have been crucial in building IOs since 1945. Industrial democracies in Europe, North America, and Japan, among other like-minded countries, have implemented LIO policies based on democracy promotion, intra-democratic alliances, and multilateralism (Owen 2021). IOs have set global normative standards, whose implementation has faced multiple complications. As Huntington indicated in the early 1990s, the world community became a euphemism of the global order reflecting the United States’ interests and the Western powers (Huntington 1997). In 2021, the world system of the “Western one-size fits all” model has become more unfeasible. The goal of building an international society is predicated on the challenge of developing gravitational forces, which entails the power of persuasion that sets basic norms acknowledged by the most critical stakeholders. The Obama administration tried to keep China away from the center of the LIO through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which excluded China, and the pressure to other nations not to join the China-centered AIIB. President Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP, but President Biden may try to put it back into the rump group, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for a TPP (CPTPP). The ACIO, led by China, has gained more diplomatic leverage within IOs. As the Trump administration stepped back from many parts of IOs, China reinforced a long-term strategy in several areas of the UN. From the Chinese narrative, President Xi Jinping has reiterated in several IOs the central role of China in global governance. The participation of China in UN agencies has increased significantly. In the sensitive area of human rights, Beijing has a seat on a five-member panel that selects UN rapporteurs on human rights abuses. On the other hand, some 30 UN agencies and institutions have signed memorandums supporting China’s Belt and

336  Handbook on governance in international organizations Road infrastructure project. As a result, China can present its state-run Belt and Road projects, which mainly employ Chinese firms and often leave less developed nations in debt, as benign UN-approved assistance (Trofimov, Hinsshaw, and O’Keeffe 2020). Beyond the rise and fall of illiberal nativist governments, IOs face more enduring challenges: the accommodation and competition of worldviews of critical players in the world arena to reform, adapt, and improve mechanisms for managing global or regional problems by IOs. Regardless of future in-depth reforms of international institutions, more effective actions are needed to establish pragmatic incentives for practices that make the planet safer (Unger 2012). The effectiveness of global institutional architecture varies significantly not only from issue area to issue area but also from region to region. Competitive or alternative orders vis-à-vis adversarial orders influence the capacity of IOs to respond to global challenges. Institutional innovation and accommodation of competitive orders, such as the idea of clubs, provide a means to advance an agenda to deal with collective problems at different speeds of commitment. Like-minded countries can promote further collaboration to reduce issues at the regional level. T. V. Paul (2016) develops a typology of various degrees and accommodations. Accommodation can include the transfer of territory, as in the classic appeasement model, and normative, institutional, and economic accommodation. Territorial accommodation could refer to the transfer of legitimate territorial rights (such as the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997) and acceptance of a rising power’s sphere of influence. Normative/ideological accommodation entails mutual acceptance by the established and rising powers of some elements of the normative order preferred by each side (competing models of development). Institutional accommodation involves giving rising powers increased rights and authority in international institutions (UN peacekeeping missions). Economic capacity entails integrating potential challengers into the global economic order (voting rights in IMF) (Paul 2016). The main challenge of IOs is to continue developing a gravitational force in which competing views of the international order can find a common ground of collaboration for addressing coming problems. Beyond illiberal nativism, IOs face more the challenge of the restraint from liberal democracies to make them more effective and more efficient. From the reform to the UN Security Council to the voting rights in the IMF or the defunct Doha Round, IOs face the problem of adapting to the new challenges that the international order poses. From this chapter's perspective, open, transnational, and collaborative societies reinforce stability and legitimacy. The goal of IOs for providing sustainable mechanisms for the provision of collective goods finds obstacles beyond the most recent wave of illiberal nativism.

IOs ARE MORE THAN WHAT STATES MAKE OF THEM As indicated in a previous section, beyond the limited impact of the recent wave of illiberal nativism, the main long-term forces shaping the role of IOs have been the contending worldviews led by countries embracing the LIO or the ACIO. Overall, both models are theoretically different, but they may overlap and eventually collaborate in some specific areas, while finding confrontation and competition in others. Events such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine can increase the contestation and tensions between the LIO and the ACIO in the performance of IOs. In other areas, some type of collaboration and competition can occur. The case of international economic organizations, which have experienced essential transformations in

International organizations are more than states make of them  337 the past decade, is an excellent example of competitive order within international financial organizations (IMF, WB, and WTO) and a potential alternative order (AIIB). From the perspective of the LIO, the United States has been a crucial player that has kept a stable policy toward international economic organizations. The Trump administration was the exception to a general trend. His administration criticized the Bretton Woods institutions but remained collaborative with the WB and the IMF. In the case of the WTO, the Trump administration tried to undermine the appellate body, the WTO’s mechanism for enforcing its rules. Once the Biden administration was inaugurated, the United States unblocked the objections within the WTO. To some extent, the change of administrations marked a significant difference in the approach to international economic organizations. Within the LIO, some pressures have emerged from individual countries. A more complex problem for IOs is the deep-seated skepticism of US society beyond the narrative of right-wing groups. The ideas behind the Trump administration’s contestation will remain part of the US agenda and have been in the making for a long time. The dilemma for the United States and other liberal democracies is how to lead open markets without detriment to the domestic economy. Posen (2021) argues that one of the new consensuses in American politics is that the pursuit of international economic openness has been at the expense of workers, resulting in economic inequality and political strife. Both Democrats and Republicans are now advocating a trade policy for the middle class. The renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was part of the electoral messages of Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. Some tariffs and “Buy American” programs to save jobs from unfair foreign competition can produce some tensions with international trade. Following Posen’s argument, the paradox is that even as trade barriers have accumulated and immigration has more than halved, inequality and nativism have risen (Posen 2021). Skeptical administrations and shared negative views in large segments of the USA against globalization can delay or put obstacles to the work of IOs. In different forms, economic powers use their influence over international institutions to provide favorable lending to their allies, thereby reinforcing their existing political and economic ties. The role of the United States and the IMF has presented some continuities and changes. Democrats and Republicans have agreed on keeping the dominant position of the United States, in particular concerning voting rights. Voting rights are proportionate to shareholding, which roughly reflects the size of national economies: the largest in the United States, with 16.5 percent of the voting rights, which gives Washington a veto over many critical decisions (Tooze 2020). In the early 2000s, the IMF was an institution in trouble. The IMF’s interventions from Argentina to Indonesia during the financial crises of the late 1990s were widely seen as illegitimately intruding on national sovereignty. After the 2008 financial crisis, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, with solid support from the Obama administration, pushed through an increase in the fund’s budget to one trillion USD. A decade after that financial crisis, the next global challenge arrived in the form of the coronavirus pandemic. The relationship between the Trump administration and the IMF was cooperative. However, considering the pandemic, the crucial question was always how the Trump administration would react to proposals to either expand the IMF’s firepower or expand the stock of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). At the end of March 2020, the US Congress approved a renewal of the New Arrangements to Borrow, a fundraising facility essential to maintaining the IMF’s firepower. However, the attitude of the Trump administration hardened, and the US Treasury made clear that it would not join the SDR bandwagon (Tooze 2020). When the 24-member International

338  Handbook on governance in international organizations Monetary and Financial Committee of the IMF met to review the response to the pandemic and the general SDR allocation, the United States and India were the two members that expressed reservations (Shalal 2020). At the end of the negotiations, the IMF approved the most significant resource injection in its history, $650 billion, to boost global liquidity and help emerging and low-income nations deal with mounting debt and Covid-19 (Cherry and Martin 2021). In the case of China and the ACIO, Dollar (2020) argues that China has generally lived up to its commitments in the WTO, IMF, and WB but has been reluctant to take on the more robust responsibilities that fall on developed countries. China’s insistence on being treated as a developing country is the primary source of tension in its economic relations with advanced economies. A further area of tension is that China’s bilateral economic ties with other developing countries do not always meet global standards and norms. China can behave differently from the advanced economies by not being a member of the Government Procurement Arrangement within the WTO, the Paris Club of official creditors, or the Development Assistance Committee. In the case of the WTO, China has become a very active member since joining in 2001. Between 2006 and 2015, more than a quarter of the WTO caseload has involved China as a complainant or respondent. In general, when China has lost cases, it has changed the necessary laws and regulations and complied with the ruling, though not always as expeditiously as complainants had hoped. Since that time, the China–IMF relationship has evolved into a close partnership. As attention shifted away from the exchange rate, starting around 2009, the IMF focused its China program more on financial supervision with a series of welcome technical interventions and policy advice. Quota reform in the IMF, pushed by the United States, shifted shares toward emerging markets, especially China, primarily at the expense of Europe. In 2016, the IMF made a forward-looking decision to include China’s yuan in its basket currency, the Special Drawing Right, but it is odd to have a reserve currency that is not freely convertible (Dollar 2020). The concept of alternative or competitive order works for explaining the creation of the AIIB. There is extensive literature indicating the dominant role of the United States in the WB and the IMF and, more recently, about China in AIIB. Kaya, Kilby, and Kay (2021) have argued that one of the nuances is that the AIIB appears to be filling in gaps in China’s connections by making overtures to countries that are not already close partners. As of mid-2021, India, for instance, has been one of the largest recipients of AIIB funding – the bank approved a $750 million loan to India in 2020 even as the two countries were fighting a heated border skirmish. In their analysis, analyzing about 60 loans, they found that AIIB lending does appear to be related to Chinese interests. Nevertheless, rather than rewarding countries with more robust political and economic connections to China, the bank’s lending favors countries with fewer existing financial connections to China (Kaya, Kilby, and Kay 2021). At the same time, through its Belt and Road initiative, it is lending $40–$50 billion per year to developing countries for transport and power infrastructure projects. While the financing amount is large, the terms are primarily commercial. The effort lacks transparency in selecting contractors, amounts lent, detailed terms, and environmental and social sustainability (Dollar 2020).

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS This chapter analyzed the impact of the recent wave of illiberal governments eroding the performance of IOs. The evaluation of the five sections put in perspective the limited influence of

International organizations are more than states make of them  339 illiberal nativist government on IOs. Three main concerns are derived from the analysis. The first is that large segments of societies in the United States, Philippines, and Brazil, among many others, endorse skeptical and contesting views about an international society based on common grounds for ameliorating global or regional problems. The nativist and illiberal moment of the Trump administration is a reminder that international skepticism of center-right and right-wing forces has been present in the political scene of the United States and will continue for the years to come. From the perspective of international cooperation and IOs, as indicated in this chapter, well-informed societies will be more inclined to exert strategic restraint on their governments in international relations, becoming key allies of IOs. The second concern is that the recent wave of illiberal nativism is contingent on the capacity of governments to deliver public goods in two nodes of multi-thematic problems: the erosion of liberal political practices; and economic and social exclusion. The combination of solid democratic practices and inclusive economic models is the best formula to put the negative effects of illiberal nativism in perspective. The opposite potentially can spread the inclination of societies in full-fledged or flawed democracies to nativist political parties and governments that undermine the role of IOs. In the United States, the Biden administration reversed many of the policies of the Trump administration. In contrast, the illiberalism in Hungary and Poland seems to be more consolidated in government. Both countries have kept a narrative of contestation against IOs and the EU but have been more cautious in limiting their anti-liberal actions. The future of illiberal nativist governments is more uncertain and contingent on a combination of factors. As a noticeable case, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 seems to have been a brake on Euroscepticism and the Polish government has suddenly assumed a more Europeanist position due to imperatives of security and attention to refugees. The third concern highlighted in this chapter focuses on the structural models shaping the international order and the capacity to act on IOs. The LIO and the ACIO simplify a more complex network of actors and areas of the global agenda. Within the LIO, disputes arise recurrently in the EU–US relationship, but both work with the rules of the liberal order. Regarding the ACIO, some differences remain between China and Vietnam or between China and Russia, but overarching worldviews make them mind-alike in prioritizing economic transformations under authoritarian rules. In this regard, the US–China relationship has become an obligated reference in analyzing international relations and IOs. The strategies of both countries to shape IOs have been implemented for the past two decades. While the LI or ACIO orders are analytical types, Beijing and Washington calculate their competing strategies with a complex combination of tools to increase their leverage. China has become proactive within the Bretton Woods institutions and gained a significant presence. At the same time, China has led initiatives that are alternatives to traditional IOs, such as the AIIB or the Belt and Road initiative. The United States has been more reactive to the Chinese initiatives. In the case of the temporary international vacuum left by the Trump administration, China rapidly moved to increase its presence in IOs. Have IOs had their day? Despite the nativist narratives against IOs, the best days for IOs are still to come. IOs are the most recent mechanisms to ameliorate global and regional problems. More globalization and interdependence require more transborder and international bodies of regulation. Rather than rigid models of organization, IOs can adapt and innovate in a great variety of decision-making mechanisms and levels of autonomy. They can provide the capacity to enforce decisions; react to crises; manage large and long-term projects on behalf of broad goals; and coordinate the activities of various agencies. More often than not, the level

340  Handbook on governance in international organizations of autonomy of IOs struggles to deal with the dark side within states and the dilemmas of legitimacy, accountability, effectiveness, and leadership (Karns, Mingst, and Stiles 2015). In this regard, IOs are critical to facilitating globalization but remain anchored in the state system because IOs are more than what states make of them.

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342  Handbook on governance in international organizations Stack, Liam. 2016. “Globalism: a far-right conspiracy theory buoyed by Trump.” The New York Times, November 14. Steger, Manfred B., and Paul James. 2010. “Ideologies of globalisms: a critical introduction.” In Paul James (ed.), Globalization and Culture, pp. ix–xxiii. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Telesur. 2018. “Bolsonaro vows to leave UN: it’s where communists meet.” Telesur, October 28. The Orange Files. 2018. “Notable quotes: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.” The Orange Files, June 25. Tooze, Adam. 2020. “A global pandemic bailout was coming – until America stopped it.” Foreign Policy, April 17. https://​foreignpolicy​.com/​2020/​04/​17/​global​-pandemic​-bailout​-imf​-world​-bank​ -meetings​-america​-sdrs/​. Trofimov, Yaroslav, Drew Hinsshaw, and Kate O’Keeffe. 2020. “How China is taking over international organizations, one vote at a time.” The Wall Street Journal, September 29. https://​www​.wsj​.com/​ articles/​how​-china​-is​-taking​-over​-international​-organizations​-one​-vote​-at​-a​-time​-11601397208. Unger, David C. 2012. “A better internationalism.” World Policy Journal 29 (1): pp. 101–10. White House. 2019. “Remarks by President Trump to the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.” White House, September 25. https://​trumpwhitehouse​.archives​.gov/​briefings​-statements/​ remarks​-president​-trump​-74th​-session​-united​-nations​-general​-assembly/​. Young, Oran. 1989. International Cooperation: Building Regimes for Natural Resources and the Environment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Zhao, Suisheng. 2021. “From affirmative to assertive patriots: nationalism in Xi Jinping’s China.” The Washington Quarterly 44 (4): pp. 141–61. Zimmer, Ben. 2018. “The origins of the globalist slur.” The Atlantic, March 14.

21. A reflection on the future of international organizations: have they had their day or can we make them fit for purpose? Lorraine Elliott

INTRODUCTION Any exploration of the future of international organizations (IOs) and whether they have had their day – and my strong inclination is to say that they have not – should start with some reflection on why such questions warrant attention, what it is we can reasonably expect international organizations to do, and what challenges they might face as they fulfil existing tasks and functions and any others that might accrue in the future. Predicting what IOs should or will look like is a precarious enterprise. Commentators have attempted to frame a variety of future scenarios for international organizations. Dupont (2020), for example, talks about growth, constraint, collapse and transformation possibilities. Cohen (2018) posits a life-cycle approach and Narlikar (2021) offers competing narratives around strategies to resuscitate, reinforce, and restructure contemporary multilateralism and (by extension) the IOs that are both form and function of that multilateralism. The discussion in this chapter takes a less predictive or typological approach in favour of an analysis that draws on how IOs are already positioned in a global governance context. It is structured as follows. It begins with a brief contextual overview of claims about the current state of the multilateral system within which IOs are embedded and, indeed, that they help to constitute and reinforce. It then moves beyond generalized observations to define IOs and their purposes – if we want to know what the future might be for IOs, then it helps to have some clarity on what an IO is, what they are expected to do and how they are expected to function. As I explain later in this chapter, any discussion of the future of IOs should take account of the diversity of such organizations and the extensive number of IOs that are not publicly well known yet make important contributions to global governance in a range of policy areas. The third section of the chapter examines three closely related, overlapping factors to which contemporary IOs are already responding and that, I argue, will continue to shape the conditions for global governance in the foreseeable future: wicked problems and knowledge demands, institutional fragmentation and complexity, and demands for enhanced legitimacy and accountability. A couple of caveats are warranted. Constraints of space mean that this discussion is grounded in an analysis of IOs that have global or non-regional membership or reach. Nevertheless, many of the observations made and issues raised here are relevant to IOs that function in a regional context to address regional concerns and reflect the interests of regional actors. Indeed, the expansion of regional IOs has been an important feature of contemporary multilateralism over the last several decades. The second caveat is that while I speak of IOs in institutional terms, we should not forget that these institutions are also ‘peopled’. Globally, 343

344  Handbook on governance in international organizations hundreds of thousands of individuals work for IOs, commit to their mandates and tasks, function as global public servants, and respond to a range of material, institutional and normative constraints. If, as I suggest in this chapter, IOs have been and will need to continue to be nimble and flexible, it is the people who gather and assess information, organize meetings, write reports, propose standards, and go into the field to implement programmes who are crucial to that future.

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM? One of the strongest themes in the literature on the future of international organizations reflects concerns about the future of a liberal international order (LIO) in the face of illiberal forces and so-called anti-globalist challenges, particularly those from populist-nationalist actors. Such actors include governments with a more authoritarian bent, and groups within societies and countries who take a political stance for the protection of rather narrow versions of sovereignty and national identity from allegedly outside interference. In a structuralist narrative, the LIO represents a rules-based, liberal-democratic order that both reflects and protects the interests of liberal democracies, particularly the United States, and is assumed to deliver the best institutional and normative framework to address a growing complex of transnational and global problems. As well as challenges from within the state, or from governments that reflect and encourage self-regarding nationalist sentiments, the institutional future of the LIO as a site of and device for intergovernmental cooperation is also argued to be threatened by growing multi-polarity, strategic rivalry between major powers, and the non-liberal credentials of ‘rising’ or ‘emerging’ powers.1 Thus, we find arguments that the liberal order is under pressure (Philipps and Braun 2020), that the kind of rules-based multilateralism and cooperation that was fundamental to the ‘liberal world order created at the end of the World War II … [is] now under threat’ (Kharas and Snower 2020, 79) and, indeed, that we might be witnessing the end of the ‘golden age of liberal multilateralism’ (Ikenberry 2015, 404). Some of this commentary focuses specifically on what this might mean for the claimed liberal preferences of the USA and other Western industrialized countries although this runs the risk of ‘conflat[ing] universalism with hegemonic stability’ (Acharya and Plesch 2020, 222). The more dystopian analyses argue that the ‘alternative to liberal internationalism is not a new type of order [but] disorder’ (Ikenberry 2015, 401). This rather overlooks the ‘ever present hand of violence and coercion, … colonialism and Cold War era interventions’ (Acharya 2017, 3) that characterized the ‘liberal’ global order for many in what we now refer to as the global South. At very least, the ‘new global governance’ is characterized as ‘strongly contested, less universal, less liberal, and more fragmented’ (Stephen 2017, 484). The assumption tends to be that governments are turning against multilateral cooperation – and therefore by extension the IOs that are embedded in it – either because of their anti-liberal sentiments and/or because in a multipolar world they are pursuing a form of international order that reflects their own preferences and global leadership ambitions. Some of this evidence relies on a changing geopolitics of IOs as countries withdraw from specific multilateral arrangements or establish new ones that are intended to have some global reach. Countries such as Russia, Burundi, and the Philippines, for example, have withdrawn from the International Criminal Court but so too has the liberal and apparently multilateralist United States. The USA, along with like-minded countries such as Australia and Canada, has also had erratic relationships

A reflection on the future of international organizations  345 with multilateral arrangements such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, at various times refusing to sign or ratify specific subsidiary multilateral agreements such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol or the 2015 Paris Agreement, or later taking steps to withdraw (and then sometimes rejoin) as a Party to those agreements. Fears about the impact of strategic rivalry and efforts of ‘new’ powers to recalibrate the landscape of international organizations have paid specific attention to the liberal international economic order represented in the Bretton Woods institutions of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and, post-GATT, the World Trade Organization. Stephen argues that ‘emerging powers are rendering parts of global governance dysfunctional, layering onto it, [and] complicating it’ although, he continues, they are ‘not overthrowing it’ (2017, 483). China in particular is accused of pursuing a competitive multilateralism by ‘establishing its own parallel institutions’ (Philipps and Braun 2020, 21). These include the Asian Development and Infrastructure Bank, which nevertheless also includes Australia and New Zealand as members; the New Development Bank established by the BRICS countries in 2014 (which has entered into an agreement with the World Bank among others); and the Contingent Reserve Arrangements, established in 2014 ‘purportedly to compensate for the BRICS’ frustration over the non-materialization of reforms in the IMF that had long been promised but blocked by the United States’ (Würdemann 2018, 570). While Pisani-Ferry (among others) argues that this ‘heterogeneity of preferences is an obstacle to collective action’ (2019, 4), others suggest that it has been the homogeneity of Western preferences (though that in itself has been as much in the theory as in the reality) that has become out of step with a changing world. As Acharya points out, these kinds of new arrangements should be analysed not simply as the product of strategic repositioning but also ‘dissatisfaction with the slow pace of reform of existing institutions’ in an international order that, despite claims to be based on liberal values, reflected an ‘outdated system of privilege enjoyed by the Western countries’ (2017, 13; see also Tallberg and Verhaegen 2020, 116). As noted above, some of the contestation against the supposedly ‘golden age’ of multilateralism and contemporary IOs came by way of distrust of what was mistakenly argued to be some new form of institutional supranationalism and, therefore, loss of sovereign authority to unaccountable technocratic elites. However, growing patterns of winners and losers in a globalized world economy motivated an equally strong bottom-up opposition to the LIO on the grounds that it, and its key institutions, had not delivered equitable and fair global public welfare goods (such as overcoming poverty) and was, in this line of argument, unable to do so. Liberal multilateralism had not fulfilled the expectation, as Kwakwa puts it, that it would ‘enhance the global compact’ (2018, 341) between states and between peoples. The ‘globalizing logic of capitalism and liberal ascendancy’ that Ikenberry praises as core to the ‘interests and constituencies for liberal internationalism’ (2015, 400) is therefore potentially part of the problem rather than the solution. As a result, the multilateral system, and the IOs at its core, is argued to require ‘a major overhaul … to become more inclusive, more transparent, more accountable, and better able to accommodate alternative goals’ (Narlikar 2021). For some, this means inclusivity and equity for states. For others, and I return to this below, it means that international organizations and the practices of multilateralism within which they are embedded must be able to address an increasingly complex agenda of global and transnational challenges, to do so in a way that creates spaces for non-state (and non-statist) views and voices, and deliver for those who are most disadvantaged.

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THE DIVERSITY OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS Stephen argues that the ‘new global governance is likely to be more institutionally diverse and polycentric’ (2017, 498; emphasis added). Yet this diversity is not new. As the InterAction Council pointed out almost 30 years ago, ‘the institutional underbrush of international cooperation is littered with organizations’ (1994, para. 8; emphasis added). While many commentators focus on a rules-based multilateralism as a product of a post-Second World War order, Sluga reminds us of the ‘multiverse of institutional spaces … populated by flows of delegates, bureaucrats, NGOs, and subject to constant reinvention’ that characterized world order in the early twentieth century following the First World War (2019, 25). A recent search of the online version of The Yearbook of International Organizations, produced by the Union of International Associations, counts 5,677 intergovernmental organizations although this includes those that have state-based agencies as their members (perhaps more properly transgovernmental organizations) and bodies of independent experts that are established for monitoring and advice purposes under the auspices of international treaties.2 Commentary on disruptions to or pressures on multilateralism and international cooperation tends to focus on a very small and select number of IOs such as those within the United Nations System, specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization which has attracted attention in a Covid-context, or the Bretton Woods IOs such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Very little of this literature defines an international organization. Perhaps that is not surprising. IOs are not often the specific focus of concern. Rather they stand as a function of or proxy for liberal multilateralism or international/intergovernmental cooperation in conditions of global governance. Yet we know that IOs can take on a wide range of constitutive and institutional forms. Some of the definitions we find in the literature are primarily descriptive, some are purposive, most are a mix of the two. Pevehouse and von Borzyskowski adopt a very narrow and nominal approach to international organizations as ‘formal organizations with a permanent secretariat, and three or more member states’ (2016, 4). In their analysis of the legitimacy of international organizations, Tallberg and Zürn define them as ‘formal, multilateral, and bureaucratic arrangements established to further cooperation among states’ (2019, 583). Pisani-Ferry also characterizes IOs rather narrowly as ‘universal treaty-based institutions tasked with the organization of international cooperation and the enforcement of binding rules in major fields of interdependence’ (2019, 2). Others focus less on the bureaucratic and formal dimensions and more on the idea that IOs constitute an arena for political action. Fischer-Bollin defines them as ‘venues where common rules can be agreed upon and enforced’ (2020, 9) and Sluga sees them as ‘instruments of an international public sphere’ (2019, 41) that, as noted above, dates at least to the early twentieth century. In contrast to definitions that perceive IOs primarily as the agents of state-principals, other approaches recognize IOs as having some degree of independent agency. Kharas and Snower suggest that IOs are ‘representative and accountable arbiter institutions’ that impartially administer widely agreed on general rules (2020, 80). Barnett and Finnemore are clear that international organizations ‘can become autonomous sites of authority, independent from the state “principals” who may have created them’ (1999, 707; see also Piiparinen 2016). These assumptions about agency and independence are also reflected in approaches within international law that conceptualize IOs as ‘independent creatures with an identity of their own, often (though not invariably) symbolized in the possession of international legal personality’ (Klabbers 2016, 139). Nevertheless, the core of such IOs is

A reflection on the future of international organizations  347 still that they come into being through agreement between states on the basis of a treaty, and that they have at least one ‘organ’ (Klabbers 2016, 140).3 In practice, these various definitions would still exclude institutional arrangements that we would generally think of having some kind of ‘international organization-ness’ because they involve (i) some level of state-based leadership or authority and (ii) contributions to the rule-making and steering mechanisms that are at the core of multilateral global governance. As a survey of the terrain of global governance indicates, there are any number of IO models. IOs differ ‘in terms of their mandate, the size of their secretariat, the resources they can mobilise, their level of autonomy from governments and their modi operandi’ (de Senarclens 2001, 511). The diverse institutional landscape of international organizations includes IOs that would be much less familiar, including to those who write extensively on the future of liberal multilateralism and intergovernmental cooperation. A random survey of the Yearbook of International Organizations identifies IOs such as the International Committee of Military Medicine (founded in 1921), the International Organization of Legal Metrology (1955), the Intergovernmental Organisation for International Carriage by Rail (1999), and the International Sugar Organization (1968). Not all treaty arrangements result in the establishment of an international organization. The Consultative Parties to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, for example, are at the core of Antarctic governance, sometimes referred to as the Antarctic Treaty System, but there is no Antarctic Treaty Organization. While the Parties meet in regular Consultative Meetings, thus fulfilling Klabbers’ requirement that there is at least one ‘organ’, a permanent secretariat was not established until 2004, more than 40 years after the Treaty came into effect.4 The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change establishes a range of administrative organs including a secretariat, headquartered in Bonn, that acts as a proto-organization. Indeed, this is the model common to many intergovernmental environmental treaties, for example, in which secretariats become the institutional face in the absence of a constitutionally established IO.5 Even secretariat arrangements come in different formats. The secretariat functions for the 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat were, in its early days (until 1988 in fact), provided by an NGO, the International Wildfowl Research Bureau (IWRB, now known as Wetlands International).6 Other IOs also have had their genesis outside an intergovernmental space. The Global Green Growth Institute was established as a think tank in South Korea before being ‘converted’ into an intergovernmental treaty body in 2012. The South Centre, an intergovernmental organization of developing countries, was established in 1995 on the back of the efforts of the independent South Commission (see Jain 2016). Not all IOs are established by intergovernmental treaty. INTERPOL, the International Criminal Police Organization, functions under a Constitution and has its organizational genesis in agreement among police officials not governments. The United Nations Development Programme, which describes itself as an intergovernmental organization, is more formally a UN programme established under the guidance of, and reporting to, the General Assembly via the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). So too is the United Nations Environment Programme which, until 2004, was governed by a non-universal Governing Council of 58 member states of the UN.7 Finally, the global governance institutional landscape includes a range of authoritative standard-setting bodies with IO-like status that are the product of agreement between other intergovernmental bodies, such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission (established to implement the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme), or

348  Handbook on governance in international organizations that function transgovernmentally, such as the International Organization for Standardization which describes itself as an independent non-governmental international organization and whose members are national standards bodies rather than governments per se. Some global governance arrangements are not institutionally global at all. The history of global Internet governance, as Carr points out, is really ‘the history of US Internet governance’ (2018, 745). ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is a non-profit, multi-stakeholder organization registered in California that was, for the first 18 years of its life (until 2016), accountable to the US Department of Commerce (see Carr 2018).

FUNCTIONAL FUTURES FOR IOs From a global governance perspective, the strengths and weakness of contemporary IOs can be adjudged not in terms of the general state of multilateralism but in terms of whether they do, or can do, what is expected of them. Multilateralism, and by extension the IOs that are a product of it as well as being embedded in it, is therefore not to be ‘viewed against a yardstick of numbers’ (that is, how many states are willing to engage) ‘but also in terms of legitimacy, effectiveness, and [the] impact of activities and output’ (Kwakwa 2018, 339). This brings us a little closer to the collective functional rather than order-based purposes of IOs as global governance actors, embedded in and reflective of ‘systems of [authoritative] rule-making, political coordination and problem-solving’ (Held and McGrew 2002, 8). As Philipps and Braun point out, institutions do have to be ‘judged by their results’ but it is also ‘important to have realistic expectations of multilateral processes’ (2020, 17). Judging IOs by their results is a difficult task and requires either very generalized evaluations about the state of global public goods, or in-depth case studies that assess either individual IOs or specific issue areas. Indeed, that has been the task of several of the chapters in this volume. Nevertheless, the counter-factual seems intuitive: without IOs, much less would have been achieved in managing a whole range of global public policy challenges, even if we also acknowledge that what has been achieved in many issue areas lags what might be considered as optimal outcomes. One of the prominent arguments about the functional future of IOs in a contemporary world is that they are no longer fit for purpose. Jean-Marc Coicaud, for example, has argued that ‘what international institutions have built so far is less a thick multidirectional web or matrix than a thin network with a relatively meagre normative, operational and political grip’ (2001, 527). International organizations are described as having ‘weakened precisely at a time when global interdependence has increased’ (Mahbub ul Haq et al. cited in Weiss 2000, 809) and therefore as being ‘inadequate to the tasks of the 21st century’ (Bradford and Linn 2007, 1). What, then, are the tasks for IOs in the 21st century? In the context of multilateralism, international cooperation, and global governance, IOs are an important component of ‘efforts to provide global public goods, manage global commons, and protect fundamental values’ (Cohen 2018, 47). As Fischer-Bollin reminds us, ‘multilateral cooperation is thus not a good in itself, but serves to solve specific problems that cannot otherwise be solved’ (2020, 9). In contrast to the structuralist accounts explored above – that IOs and contemporary multilateralism reflect the interests of the most powerful – functionalist accounts focus on IOs to manage coordination and collaboration problems, to minimize transaction and information costs, and to help to resolve uncertainty about the benefits of action. IOs function as sites and agents of cooperation, rather than isolated entities. These functions and roles are also variously

A reflection on the future of international organizations  349 expressed in utilitarian terms about managing negative externalities and spillovers (see Derviş 2020) and ensuring ‘higher payoffs’ for governments and other actors (Sandler 2010) based on specific and diffuse reciprocities that limit incentives for free-riding. Individual IOs are committed to specific issue-related expectations under their constitutive arrangements (whether that is a treaty, resolution, constitution, or some other founding document), tasks that will almost certainly have expanded in response to changing knowledge, technical expertise, and political demands. Those tasks are pursued through regulation, compliance, and monitoring, generating new issue-specific knowledge, technical guidance, operational assistance, and capacity-building. Many IOs function as an arena for negotiation, for regime formation, and for norm promotion (see Thakur and Weiss 2009). International organizations have ‘convening capacity and mobilizing power’ that enables them to ‘funnel knowledge from outside and … ensure its discussion and dissemination among governments’ (Weiss 2009, 6). In this regard, they contribute to global governance through legitimating and institutionalizing new ideas, and through helping to prioritize choices and preferences (Coicaud 2001, 528). Indeed, Barnett and Finnemore go so far as to argue that IOs can exercise power in the ways that they ‘constitute and construct the social world’ through creating social knowledge, defining new categories of actors, and giving governance tasks meaning and normative value (1999, 699–700).

AN IO FUTURE FIT FOR PURPOSE? The future of IOs lies in making them more effectively fit for purpose in situations where they are not, or where they are not as ‘fit’ as they could be. The whole question of political support from governments and from other key policy actors, some of which has been touched on above, is one factor in the constraints that IOs face. Addressing these kinds of governance gaps also rests on overcoming more measurable material and institutional limitations. Many IOs suffer from a ‘lack of proportionality between [their] charters and the means at their disposal to accomplish the mandates and goals specified in [those] charters’ (Coicaud 2001, 527). Many IOs have quite complex budgetary and funding arrangements that include relying on and mobilizing a range of sources to ensure those ‘means at their disposal’. IOs will usually have core funding, paid by way of assessed contributions, from member states and agencies, though non-payment of such dues can impose constraints on what IOs can do in administrative and functional terms. This kind of funding is most likely to be directed to administrative costs and to key programme activities. Despite populist assumptions that governments are ‘paying’ for IOs, for many this kind of core funding constitutes a significantly small and even declining proportion of income. Many IOs rely on extra-budgetary or ‘soft’ funding for voluntary programmes and projects, funding that can come from individual Parties or members but also from other entities that might include well-resourced NGOs or philanthropic bodies or even private, corporate actors.8 Wicked Problems and Knowledge Demands IOs have addressed, and will continue to be expected to address, ‘wicked’ problems, a concept first introduced to global public policy to describe problems that defy easy scientific understanding or for which there are no ‘solutions in the sense of definitive and objective answers’

350  Handbook on governance in international organizations (Rittel and Webber 1973, 155). This concept of ‘wickedness’ speaks not just to the complexity of global and transnational flows and policy challenges, including those driven by new and changing technologies, but the challenges of finding solutions when knowledge is either contested or incomplete (and unlikely ever to be otherwise), when there are divergent and often incommensurable views on causes and consequences, and/or where there are high levels of uncertainty about the longer-term impacts of short-term solutions. But these are not new challenges for many IOs that have long functioned as producers and brokers of knowledge in response to complex problems. Some have been specifically established to ensure that the best scientific evidence is at the core of global governance efforts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established by the World Meteorological Organization and UNEP, and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, established as an ‘independent’ intergovernmental organization through a series of plenary meetings of interested (consenting) governments, are two such examples. The IPCC’s mandate is to ‘provide internationally co-ordinated scientific assessments of the magnitude, timing and potential environmental and socio-economic impact of climate change and realistic response strategies’ (UNGA 1988, para. 5). IPBES has a similarly generic purpose, to ‘strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development’ (UNEP 2012, 10).9 The use of subsidiary expert bodies for scientific and technical expertise has become a common practice in many treaty-based IO secretariats dealing with obvious ‘wicked’ problems in areas such as the environment and health but also in policy spaces such as intellectual property that are equally challenging but publicly less well known.10 The future for many IOs will be bound up in the continuing challenges of managing the kind of technical and scientific knowledge required to address an increasing complexity and ‘wickedness’ of transnational and global policy concerns. The broader IO landscape, and the agenda of individual IOs, has long reflected more knowledge nimbleness than many critics would allow. In the effort to ensure that new rules ‘keep pace with the changing world’ (as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) describes it),11 IOs have often taken up new issue areas that were not part of their original mandates. In the interests of space, a few examples will have to suffice. In 2003, WIPO (established in 1967) formally took up the issue of genetic resources, traditional knowledge, and folklore, partly in response to debate in other policy arena such as the Convention on Biological Diversity. The International Labour Organization, established in 1919, has an interesting history of addressing issues that might seem appropriate to a more contemporary world – it first addressed maternity protection for women workers in 1919 for example. The ILO agenda now includes decent work and just transitions in the context of climate change, digital labour platforms, domestic work, and disability rights. INTERPOL has developed a detailed programme on environmental crime that has in turn expanded from an initial focus on wildlife and pollution crimes to include forest crimes and fisheries crimes. New IOs have been established in both intergovernmental and networked form to respond to a changing global agenda. The International Renewable Energy Agency, for example, formally met for the first time in January 2009, although a body of this kind had been mooted as early as 1981.

A reflection on the future of international organizations  351 Regime Complexity and Institutional Fragmentation The expanding global agenda of wicked and non-wicked problems means that IOs, however nimble in their knowledge responses, will likely continue to be embedded in complex policy arrangements in which, to remain relevant, they are increasingly required to work with many other organizational arrangements. In what Acharya refers to as a multiplex world (2017), global governance is ‘practiced [as] a negotiated process’ (Jordan 2005, 5–6) between public and voluntary spheres of authority. The global governance frameworks within which IOs function are polycentric and fragmented, characterized by a multiplicity of rules and rule-making venues, and defined by what scholars of international cooperation refer to as regime complexes. Raustiala and Victor describe a regime complex in legal terms, as ‘an array of partially overlapping and nonhierarchical institutions [that is, without a single source of legal authority] governing a particular issue-area … marked by the existence of several legal agreements that are created and maintained in distinct fora with participation of different sets of actors’ (2004, 279).12 From a global governance perspective, the definition of regime complex stretches beyond legal authority and agreements to include the range of actors and the relationships between them. It encapsulates forms and vectors of international cooperation that embed IOs in ‘temporary partnerships, informal cooperation and coordination mechanisms’ and acknowledge the ‘importance of non-state actors such as private foundations, businesses, non-governmental organizations, … transnational networks [and] … cities or sub-state entities’ (Philipps and Braun 2020, 24). This complexity is a characteristic of multi-level governance – an increasing density of decision-making that is, at the same time, dispersed across multiple jurisdictions and spheres of authority. The interplay demands on IOs can take the form of formal agreements, strategies for operational cooperation and arrangements for knowledge transfer. It can involve what Orsini et al. refer to as ‘liaison diplomacy’ among the secretariats of relevant treaty and intergovernmental arrangements, which functions alongside the ‘traditional diplomacy of member states’ (2013, 28). This liaison diplomacy can also encompass interactions across public, voluntary, scientific, and private spheres of authority. These links can arise through informal meetings, passing references in conference decisions and resolutions and other less well documented overlaps and interplay. Quack calls these ‘regulatory conversations’ – ‘communicative interactions that occur between all involved in the regulatory space’ (2013, 656). Scholars of international cooperation have argued that the kind of institutional fragmentation and complexity that is characteristic of a growing number of inter-related but non-hierarchical agreements will result in institutional dissonance, legal indeterminacy, normative ambiguity, and regulatory uncertainty. The worry is that more complex arrangements will result in a proliferation of veto points, encourage forum-shopping (between IOs) and forum-shifting (creating new ones), and make effective cooperation more difficult. Yet fragmentation and complexity are not necessarily dysfunctional when it comes to cooperation or to the future of international organizations. Biermann and colleagues suggest that fragmentation has the potential to take cooperative and even synergistic forms. The former is marked by ‘different institutions and decision-making procedures that are loosely integrated’, by an ambiguous relationship ‘between norms and principles of different institutions’, and by core institutions that do not ‘comprise all countries that are important in the issue area’ (Biermann et al. 2009, 20). The latter – synergistic fragmentation – on the other hand can provide for ‘effective and detailed general principles that regulate … policies in distinct yet substantially integrated insti-

352  Handbook on governance in international organizations tutional arrangements’ (Biermann et al. 2009, 20).13 In this view, competition and complexity in a regime can offer ‘significant advantages such as flexibility and adaptability’ (Keohane and Victor 2011, 7) in the pursuit of effective cooperative outcomes by ‘reduc[ing] the risks of groupthink, favour[ing] out-of-the-box thinking [and] prevent[ing] policy capture by a single interest group’ (Morin and Orsini 2013, 49).14 This is not such a bad thing. As Kharas and Snower point out, ‘there is no one way to satisfy human needs and aspirations, [and] diverse policy approaches are desirable to address diverse … challenges’ (2020, 80). The Normative Challenge: Legitimacy, Accountability and Representation Pisani-Ferry argues that ‘for existing institutions to be effective, it is essential to preserve their legitimacy’ (2019, 7). There is an extensive global governance literature on what legitimacy means in normative and sociological terms that takes account of both input and output factors. The demands of input legitimacy – and how IOs are governed – mean that IOs should be accountable, transparent, equitable and consent-based in their practices. Accountability requires that actors, in this case IOs, are ‘answerable for their actions and the consequences that follow from them’ (Korach 2006, 196). But as Ebrahim points out, ‘accountability is a complex and dynamic concept’ (2003, 815).15 In some measure, accountability is a function of organizational reliability, sometimes expressed as a demand for ‘efficiency of operations and working within legal confines in a transparent manner’ (Jordan and van Tuijl 2006, 2). Legitimacy also rests on outcomes, or external accountability. This is about being ‘answerable for performance to key stakeholders’ (Brown et al. cited in Nelson 2007, 17). At a minimal level, these are questions that ‘usually have to do with the quality and quantity of services offered’ (Jordan 2005, 7) and underpin judgements about whether responsibilities have been fulfilled, issues that have been addressed in specific terms by other chapters in this volume. IOs reflect a range of governance models that, in some cases, formalize differential and, some would argue, non-democratic or inequitable authority over decision-making practices and outcomes. The IMF and the constitutive organs of the World Bank system are often cited in this regard, where voting power is directly correlated to financial contributions and commitments. IOs are increasingly expected to be more open to multiple voices in a way that acknowledges the heterogeneity of preferences on the part of rule-makers and rule-followers. Indeed, as Dingwerth et al. (2020) explain, IOs themselves have increasingly come to ‘speak the language of democracy’. For some, this demand for voice is predominantly about states, arising from contestation about ‘arrangements that deny [some states] due voice in decision-making’ (Tallberg and Verhaegen 2020, 115).16 As evidenced elsewhere in this volume, IOs already come with a range of membership models that are intended to accommodate a variety of state and non-state stakeholders. For others, the demand for legitimacy relates to how IOs are perceived by ‘democratic publics’, in part because IOs have the potential to ‘affect the welfare of people everywhere’ (Buchanan and Keohane 2006, 407, 416).17 Many IOs have adopted strategies for creating space for non-state and public views to be expressed during deliberations, through side-events at negotiating and plenary events, through invitations to experts to contribute to and participate in working groups, and through enabling NGOs and civil society groups to be more than observers but to submit proposals and to have their views heard in formal debate.18 The factors that make any individual IO legitimate, or that speak to the ways that IO practices contribute to the legitimacy of multilateralism and global governance, should also

A reflection on the future of international organizations  353 not lose sight of what Stephen refers to as the ‘aspiration to deliver on cosmopolitan notions of universal justice’ (2017, 485). In this regard, legitimacy comes also from a recognition of those disparate voices that have so often been silenced and marginalized in global governance. The supposedly open, rules-based international order has not, as Kharas and Snower argue that it should, ‘work[ed] in the service of all nations and people’ (2020, 79). Their proposition, one shared by many others, is that to be legitimate global governance requires a ‘process of transnational deliberation’ that ‘moves toward a bottom-up, multi-channel multilateralism’ (2020, 80, 81). This suggests that the future of and for IOs should be a future for solidarity. Quite what this means for individual IOs will differ from institution to institution although IOs are generally not known for adopting more broadly deliberative or communicative processes and procedures.19

A FEW CONCLUDING THOUGHTS Although it has not been the specific focus of this chapter, there is no doubt that global governance outcomes have been insufficiently effective on a whole range of challenges – health, environment, poverty alleviation, disaster risk reduction, refugee protection, human rights, peace building (to name a few) – even if there have been some successes in specific issue areas. Yet IOs constitute only one component of the much broader range of actors and sites of agency and authority that contribute to the making and implementing of global rule systems and steering mechanisms. In some respects, I agree with Ikenberry that ‘multilateral organization of the global system remains important because, in the final analysis, there are not really any good alternative options’ (2015, 412). But I disagree that this involves little more than an ‘updat[ing] and refresh[ing] of the old liberal international order’ (Ikenberry 2015, 412) – this chapter has touched on some of the problems for IOs and for global governance of that supposedly ‘liberal’ order. Nor am I convinced, contra Pisani-Ferry, that the authority of ‘global rules and institutions … is fast diminishing’ (2019, 3) though I accept that this observation might apply to some individual IOs. Given the demands for adaptiveness and nimbleness that are examined in this chapter, it would also seem foolish to follow the (admittedly now dated) advice of the InterAction Council that ‘under no circumstances should … new organisations be created without abolishing existing ones’ (1994, para. 8). As a reflection on the future of IOs – individually and as a mode of governance – this chapter has sought to disentangle them from assumptions based on concerns about the future of a hegemonic and sometimes dysfunctional liberal international order in favour of a global governance approach. This reminds us of the diversity of IOs in terms of their constitutive foundations, their membership models and their decision-making practices. It directs us to pay more attention to the institutional ecosystem within which such IOs will have to function and to which they (and those who manage them and work in them) will have to adapt. It points to the importance of continuing nimble and flexible adjustments to new and changing knowledge in complex issue-areas and to an often moving ‘arc of interpretation’ in which the normative framework and the idea of ‘what is right’ tends to shift (Coicaud 2001, 531). While it confirms the importance of rules-based governance, a global governance approach to the future of IOs places greater emphasis on how those rules are made and implemented, and points to the

354  Handbook on governance in international organizations value of greater transparency and accountability, and to the need for much better attention to marginalized and disadvantaged voices.

NOTES 1. Such emerging powers are normally assumed to be ‘outside’ the West. In contrast, Acharya and Plesch provide a more granular account of the influence of ‘non-Western diplomats, leaders, [and] scholars’ in the founding of the UN system and contemporary multilateral order (2020, 223). 2. See https://​uia​.org/​. Even confining the count to IOs that have the word ‘international’ in their title generates a list of 1,060 organizations. Only 86 include the word ‘intergovernmental’ in their titles, but even this is unhelpful in determining the boundaries of what counts as an IO as it includes several formally titled but subsidiary ‘Intergovernmental Groups’ (such as those on citrus fruit and rice) established by the Food and Agricultural Organization’s Committee on Commodity Problems. 3. An ‘organ’ in this context can take non-bureaucratic forms – regular plenary meetings and conferences of the parties also meet this requirement (see Klabbers 2016, 145). 4. There is also a Committee for Environmental Protection, established under the 1991 Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, which first met in 1998. 5. Even then, secretariats can be flexible organizational arrangements. The 1989 Basel Convention controlling the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, the 1998 Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, and the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, adopted independently, have since joined forces under the so-called ‘synergies decisions’ to have a single secretariat, known as the BRS Secretariat (which is, in turn, managed by UNEP) and a single Executive Director. 6. Even now, the Ramsar Secretariat is hosted by IUCN in Gland, Switzerland: IUCN is itself a hybrid international organization with state and non-state actors as its members. 7. The Governing Council has since been replaced by a universal-membership United Nations Environment Assembly. 8. The World Health Organization, for example, receives only about 20 per cent of its budget from assessed contributions, and relies on voluntary sources of funding for the rest of its programme activities (see https://​www​.who​.int/​about/​funding/​assessed​-contributions). 9. While the IPCC and IPBES are formally intergovernmental, both rely on the input of hundreds of scientists and experts from academe, research bodies, government agencies, and nongovernmental organizations to undertake their assessment reports. 10. Examples in global environmental governance would include the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, the CITES Plant and Animal Committees, and the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice of the Convention on Biological Diversity. In the global health sector, the World Health Organization relies on various modalities to gather scientific expertise through programmes designated to focus on specific health challenges (see https://​www​.who​.int/​about/​structure). A glance at the website of the World Intellectual Property Organization reveals a complex array of subsidiary bodies with policy and decision-making authority (see https://​www​.wipo​.int/​policy/​en/​index​.html​#bodies). 11. See https://​www​.wipo​.int/​policy/​en/​index​.html​#bodies, accessed 13 September 2021. 12. Examples of the visual mapping of regime complexes can be found in Hoffman and Cole (2018) on global health governance, Nye (2014) on cyber activities, Widerberg and Pattberg (2017) on climate change, and Rodríguez Fernández-Blanco et al., (2019) on the international forest regime. 13. Biermann et al. (2009) explore the regime for the protection of the ozone layer as an exemplar of synergistic fragmentation. 14. The regime complex for responding to the challenges of illegal wildlife trade provides an example of transition from cooperative to synergistic fragmentation as public and private actors, including IOs, NGOs, national and transnational agencies, corporate sectors and their peak bodies, become accustomed to working more closely together over time on environmental, conservation, border protection and law enforcement components (see Elliott 2017).

A reflection on the future of international organizations  355 15. For a detailed overview of the challenges and practices of accountability in global governance, see Kramarz and Park (2016). 16. The issues of openness also arise in the context of employment practices. Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter, Parizek and Stephen (2021) have undertaken an interesting study into ways in which the employment practices of international secretariats ‘have become increasingly representative of the global population’ (p. 207). 17. It is worth noting, however, that Buchanan and Keohane (2006) are generally cautious about any standard of legitimacy that relies on assumptions about global democracy. 18. See Schroeder and Lovell (2012) on non-state participation and side events in the climate regime; Polejack (2021) on the ways in which science diplomacy is integrated into oceans negotiations, and Nasiritousi et al. (2017) on the normative arguments for non-state actor participation in international negotiations. Some IOs have gone further than this. Under the Ramsar Convention, for example, six NGOs have the status of formal International Organization Partners. CITES involves the wildlife monitoring NGO TRAFFIC in the analyses of proposals to amend the CITES Appendices, technical support for national-level scientific authorities, and training for what is known as the ‘Non-Detriment Finding’ process. 19. See Dryzek et al. (2019) for a discussion of how IOs can adopt deliberative and reconstructive learning strategies.

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356  Handbook on governance in international organizations Dupont, Cédric (2020), The Future of International Organisations, Executive Education Newsletter, 20 February, Geneva: The Graduate Institute of Geneva. Available at https://​www​.graduateinstitute​.ch/​ communications/​news/​future​-international​-organisations (accessed 30 July 2021). Ebrahim, Alnoor (2003), ‘Accountability in practice: mechanisms for NGOs,’ World Development, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 813–29. Elliott, Lorraine (2017), ‘Cooperation on transnational environmental crime: institutional complexity matters,’ Review of European Community and International Environmental Law, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 107–17. Fischer-Bollin, Peter (2020), ‘Tackling global challenges: why we still need rules- and values-based international cooperation,’ in Multilateralism: Is the International Order Hanging by a Thread?, International Reports 3/2020, Berlin: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, pp. 6–14. Held, David and Anthony McGrew (2002), ‘Introduction,’ in D. Held and A. McGrew (eds), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance, Cambridge: Polity, pp. 1–24. Hoffman, Steven J. and Clarke B. Cole (2018), ‘Defining the global health system and systematically mapping its network of actors,’ Globalization and Health, vol. 14, no. 1. https://​doi​.org/​10​.1186/​ s12992​-018​-0340​-2. Ikenberry, G. John (2015), ‘The future of multilateralism: governing the world in a post-hegemonic era,’ Japanese Journal of Political Science, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 399–413. InterAction Council, The (1994), ‘The future role of global multilateral organizations,’ Report of a High-Level Expert Group Meeting, 7–8 May, The Hague: Netherlands. Available at https://​www​ .interactioncouncil​.org/​publications/​future​-role​-global​-multilateral​-organizations (accessed 30 July 2021). Jain, Devaik (2016), ‘Looking back at the South Commission,’ Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 51, no. 9. Available at https://​www​.epw​.in/​journal/​2016/​9/​perspectives/​looking​-back​-south​-commission​ .html​-0 (accessed 13 September 2021). Jordan, Lisa (2005), Mechanisms for NGO accountability, GPPi Research Paper Series no. 3, Berlin: Global Public Policy Institute. Jordan, Lisa and Peter van Tuijl (2006), ‘Rights and responsibilities in the political landscape of NGO accountability: introduction and overview,’ in Lisa Jordan and Peter van Tuijl (eds), NGO Accountability: Politics, Principles and Innovation, London: Earthscan, pp. 3–20. Keohane, Robert O. and David G. Victor (2011), ‘The regime complex for climate change,’ Perspectives on Politics, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 7–23. Kharas, Homi and Dennis J. Snower (2020), ‘The future of multilateralism: global governance in a changing world,’ Global Solutions Journal, no. 5, pp. 78–83. Klabbers, Jan (2016), ‘Formal international organizations,’ in Jacob Katz Cogan, Ian Hurd and Ian Johnstone (eds), The Oxford Handbook of International Organizations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 133–51. Korach, Hetty (2006), ‘Addressing accountability at the global level: the challenges facing international NGOs,’ in Lisa Jordan and Peter van Tuijl (eds), NGO Accountability: Politics, Principles and Innovation, London: Earthscan, pp. 195–210. Kramarz, Teresa and Susan Park (2016), ‘Accountability in global environmental governance: a meaningful tool for action?,’ Global Environmental Politics, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 1–21. Kwakwa, Edward (2018), ‘The future of multilateralism,’ Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, vol. 112, pp. 339–41. Morin, Jean-Frédéric and Amandine Orsini (2013), ‘Regime complexity and policy coherency: introducing a co-adjustments model,’ Global Governance, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 41–51. Narlikar, Amrita (2021), ‘Emerging narratives and the future of multilateralism,’ Global Policy Journal, 22 April. Available at https://​www​.globalpolicyjournal​.com/​blog/​22/​04/​2021/​emerging​-narratives​ -and​-future​-multilateralism (accessed 30 July 2021). Nasiritousi, Naghmeh, Matthias Hjerpe and Karin Bäckstrand (2017), ‘Normative arguments for non-state actor participation in international policymaking processes: functionalism, neocorporatism or democratic pluralism?,’ European Journal of International Relations, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 920–43. Nelson, Jane (2007), The Operation of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOS) in a World of Corporate and Other Codes of Conduct, Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government.

A reflection on the future of international organizations  357 Nye, Joseph S. (2014), The Regime Complex for Managing Global Cyber Activities, Global Commission on Internet Governance: Paper Series No. 1, Waterloo, ON: The Centre for International Governance Innovation. Orsini, Amandine, Jean-Frédéric Morin and Oran Young (2013), ‘Regime Complexes: A Buzz, a Boom or a Boost for Global Governance,’ Global Governance, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 27–39. Parizek, Michal and Matthew D. Stephen (2021), ‘The increasing representativeness of international organizations secretariats: evidence from the United Nations System, 1997–2015,’ International Studies Quarterly, vol. 65, no. 1, pp. 197–209. Pevehouse, Jon C. W. and Inken von Borzyskowski (2016), ‘International organizations in world politics,’ in Jacob Katz Cogan, Ian Hurd and Ian Johnstone (eds), The Oxford Handbook of International Organizations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–32. Philipps, Laura and Daniela Braun (2020), ‘The future of multilateralism: the liberal order under pressure,’ in Multilateralism: Is Tthe International Order Hanging by a Thread?, International Reports 3/2020, Berlin: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, pp. 15–27. Piiparinen, Touko (2016), ‘Secretariats,’ in Jacob Katz Cogan, Ian Hurd and Ian Johnstone (eds), The Oxford Handbook of International Organizations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 839–58. Pisani-Ferry, Jean (2019), Collective Action in a Fragmented World, Bruegel Policy Brief no. 5, Brussels: Bruegel. Polejack, Andrei (2021), ‘The importance of ocean science diplomacy for ocean affairs, global sustainability, and the UN decade of ocean science,’ Frontiers in Marine Science, vol. 8, pp. 1–16. https://​doi​ .org/​10​.3389/​fmars​.2021​.664066. Quack, Sigrid (2013), ‘Regime complexity and expertise in transnational governance: strategizing in the face of regulatory uncertainty,’ Oñati Socio-legal Series, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 647–78. Raustiala, Kal and D. G. Victor (2004), ‘The regime complex for plant genetic resources,’ International Organization, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 277–309. Rittel, Horst W. J. and Melvin M. Webber (1973), ‘Dilemmas in a general theory of planning,’ Policy Sciences, vol. 4, pp. 155–69. Rodríguez Fernández-Blanco, Carmen, Sarah L. Burns and Lukas Giessen (2019), ‘Mapping the fragmentation of the international forest regime complex: institutional elements, conflicts and synergies,’ International Environmental Agreements, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 187–205. Sandler, Todd (2010), ‘Overcoming global and regional collective action impediments,’ Global Policy, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 40–50. Schroeder, Heike and Heather Lovell (2012), ‘The role of non-nation-state actors and side events in the international climate negotiations,’ Climate Policy, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 23–37. Sluga, Glenda (2019), ‘Remembering 1919: international organizations and the future of international order,’ International Affairs, vol. 95, no. 1, pp. 25–43. Stephen, Matthew D. (2017), ‘Emerging powers and emerging trends in global governance,’ Global Governance, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 483–502. Tallberg, Jonas and Soetkin Verhaegen (2020), ‘The legitimacy of international institutions among rising and established powers,’ Global Policy, vol. 11, supplement 3, pp. 115–26. Tallberg, Jonas and Michael Zürn (2019), ‘The legitimacy and legitimation of international organizations: introduction and framework,’ Review of International Organizations, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 581–606. Thakur, Ramesh and Thomas G. Weiss (2009), ‘United Nations “policy”: an argument with three illustrations,’ International Studies Perspectives, vol. 10, pp. 18–35. UNEP (2012), Report of the second session of the plenary meeting to determine modalities and institutional arrangements for an intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services, UNEP/IPBES​.MI/​2/​9, 18 May. UNGA (1988), Protection of global climate for present and future generations of mankind, Res 43/53, 6 December. Weiss, Thomas G. (2000), ‘Governance, good governance and global governance: conceptual and actual challenges,’ Third World Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 5, pp. 795–814. Weiss, Thomas G. (2009), The UN’s role in global governance, Briefing Note no. 15, UN Intellectual History Project, New York, Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, The City University of New York.

358  Handbook on governance in international organizations Widerberg, Oscar and Philipp Pattberg (2017), ‘Accountability challenges in the transnational regime complex for climate change,’ Review of Policy Research, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 68–87. Würdemann, Aike (2018), ‘The BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement: a subversive power against the IMF’s conditionality,’ The Journal of World Investment and Trade, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 570–93.

Index

2006 Delivering as One Report  311 2006 High-level Panel on UN System-wide Coherence 309 2021 Democracy Index  328 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda  249 Aalberts, Tanja  118 Academic Council on the United Nations System (ACUNS) 43 access  177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192 accommodation 336 institutional 336 normative/ideological 336 territorial 336 accountability  232, 233, 236, 237, 239, 244, 249, 250, 252, 305 culture of  260 impact of technology  253 lack of  257 mechanism  262, 263 nature of  250 organizational 253 participatory model of  251 purpose of  253 social 250 staff 253 Acharya, Amitav  345, 351, 354 ACHPR 113 ACIO 339 actors  18, 27, 124, 164 affected persons  161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173 Affected Persons Organizations (APOs)  161 African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR)  112 African Union  112 agency 4 agenda-setting process  32 agents 177 agricultural investment  64 agriculture  65, 68, 69, 70, 71 AIDS 224 AIDS crisis  168 AIIB 338 Alger, C.  56 algorithmic decision-making  261

Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS)  294 Almond, G.  55 Alston, Philip  33 Altan-Olcay, Ö.  67 Álvarez, Luis Echeverría  82 Alves, Damares  102 American-style liberal ideology  49 Áñez, Jeanine  101 Angel, Eduardo Zuleta  217 Annan, Kofi  55, 56, 234 anomic groupings  56 Antarctic Treaty System  347 anti-communism 94 anti-prostitution efforts  166 anti-statism 93 anti-trafficking efforts  166 APOs  161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173 application programming interface (API)  276 Araújo, Ernesto  98 arc of interpretation  353 Argentina 100 Arora-Jonsson, S.  66 art 56 artificial intelligence (AI)  249 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)  35, 327, 338, 345 Atherton 216 Attlee, Clement  217 authoritarian–capitalist international order (ACIO) 335 authoritarian freedom  94 authoritarianism  93, 329 Bachelet, Michelle  31 Baile, S. D.  216 Ban Ki-moon  144, 207, 223, 293 Barnett, Michael N.  346, 349 Beckwith, K.  144 Beech, Hannah  36 behaviour 2 Beijing  32, 33, 34, 36, 140 Beijing Declaration  63 Belarus 32 Belt and Road Initiative  338 Benvenisti, E.  261 Bernstorff, Jochen  161

359

360  Handbook on governance in international organizations Bertrand, Maurice  317 Bertrand Report (1985)  311, 314 Betts, A.  259 Biden, Joe  99 bidirectional communication  255 Biermann, Frank  351, 354 ‘Big Three’  306 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation  37 Biometric Identity Management System (BIMS) 261 Bisexual Steering Committee  169 Bjola, C.  255, 270 Black, Eugene  132 Blackmon, P.  145 Board of Inquiry (BoI)  236, 237, 245 Bob, Clifford  171 Boerma, A. H.  133 Bolsonaro, Eduardo  95 Bolsonaro, Jair  93, 94, 98–103, 332 Borges, Jorge Luis  313 Bornstorff, Jochen  161 Botham-Edighoffer, A.  320 Bouchard, C.  255 BoutrosGhali, Boutros  56 Bouwen, P.  182 Bovens, M.  256 Braun, Daniela  348 Brazil  93, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102 Brazilian Association of Lawyers for Democracy (ABJD) 103 Brazilian democracy  95 Brazilian dictatorship  94 Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB)  103 Bretton Woods Agreements  78, 81, 87, 90 Bretton Woods Conference  78, 79, 80, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, 200 Bretton Woods institutions  27, 201 Bretton Woods system  78, 86 BRI  34, 35 BRICS  28, 31, 35 Bristol, Gillian M. S.  301 Broome, A.  108 Brown, Wendy  93, 94 Brühl, T.  182 Brundtland, Gro Harlem  131 Buchanan, Allen  355 Budabin, A.  145 bureaucratic functionaries  12 Burton, J.  51, 53 Bush, George W.  335 Butler, Harold  130 BWIs 201 Cabot Lodge, Henry   330

Camdessus, Michel  132 Cárdenas, Enrique  83 career development  255, 321 Catalan independence movement  331 Catholic Church  177 CCPR 115 CEB 314 Center of Global Governance  299 centralization 320 centralization process  319 changeability 250 Chediek, Jorge  34 China  25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 327 China Daily 33 Chinese NGOs  34 Chisholm, Brock  131 Choo, C. W.  250 civil society  8, 55, 177, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 318 civil society actors  18, 19 civil society groups  65 civil society organizations (CSOs)  19, 30, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191 Claude, Inis L. Jr.  216 Clausen, A. W. (Tom)  132 Claver-Carone, Mauricio   100 climate change  12, 101 Coate, R.  43, 50 Cohen, Antonin  118 Cohen, Harlan Grant  343 Coicaud, Jean-Marc  348 Cold War  28, 82, 201 colonialism 62 Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)  145 Committee for Environmental Protection  354 committees 12 Commonwealth Secretariat  292 communication technologies  258 compartmentalization 200 competitive orders  336 complex multilateralism  178 compliance mechanisms  8 compliance review mechanisms  13 Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for a TPP (CPTPP)  335 Concert of Europe  306 conduct and discipline  237, 244 Conduct and Discipline Services (CDS)  234, 235, 240 Conduct and Discipline Teams (CDTs)  237, 240 Conduct and Discipline Unit (CDU)  234, 237 Conference of the Parties (CoP)  14, 16, 19 conference system  306

Index  361 Congress of Vienna  306 Connors, Jane  239 conservativism 93 constitution 291 constitutional design  252 Contingent Reserve Arrangements  345 continuity 306 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)  60 Convention on the Rights of the Child  15 CoP see Conference of the Parties (CoP) corporate actors  70 counterterrorism 28 COVID-19 pandemic  7, 17, 35, 43, 44, 53, 72, 273, 277, 283, 284 craft 56 crimes 232 Cruz, Salvador González  82 CSOs  see civil society organizations (CSOs) cultural Marxism  94 culture  107, 109, 117 culture of accountability  260 cyber-humanitarianism 257 Dalai Lama  33 Darwinist concept  94 David, Peter  299 Davies, David Arthur  133 Davies, M.  51, 52 Daws, S.  44 debt diplomacy  36 decision-makers 250 decision-making  9, 10, 14, 115, 181, 352 Delivering as One Report  313, 314 democracies 26 democracy 186 democracy erosion  328 democratic publics  352 democratization  95, 187, 189 Denskus, T.  275 dependence 52 De Pinies, Jaime  291 development 34 development agencies  200 Diamond, L.  331 Dickas, J.  330 dictatorship 93 Dietrichson, E.  143 digital transformation  249, 250 Dingwerth, K.  352 Displacement Tracking Matrix  261 dispute resolution  97, 256 dispute settlement  14 Dollar, David  338 Dubnick, M.  250

Dumbarton Oaks Conference  307 Dupont, Cédric  343 East Africa  64 Ebrahim, A.  352 Echeverría 83 Eckes, Alfred E. Jr.  80 Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)  12, 18, 168, 177, 306 economic development  78, 79, 86, 87, 199 economic inequalities  49 Economist 30 ECOSOC  see Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) elite bodies  10, 11 Elmandjra, Mahdi  43, 47, 48, 49, 56 Elmhirst, R.  68 Elvebakken, Rokke  144 emotional tweets  277 empowerment 258 English civil service  305 Enloe, Cynthia  144 Entry Exam  320 epistemic blind spots  250 epistemic communities  111 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip  331 essentiality 52 Esser, D. E.  275 Etienne, Carissa F.  274 EUI Democracy Index  328 European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO)  322 European Union (EU)  140 Evans, Luther  131 executive head  122, 124, 125, 127, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135 expert bodies  107, 110, 111, 112, 117 expert committees  107, 110, 111, 112 expert governance  110 family groups  250 Faulk, Lewis  163 federations  161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 170, 171, 172, 173 Feltman, Jeffrey  315 femininity 62 feminism 66 feminist advocacy  71 Feminist International Relations (IR)  62 feminist scholarship  61, 65, 71 femocrats 67 Fernández, Alberto  100 Field Administration Book of 1974  236 Figueres, Christiana  144 Finland 32 Finnemore, Martha  346, 349 Fischer-Bollin, Peter  346, 348

362  Handbook on governance in international organizations Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)  251 foreign policy  96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 103, 104 Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods  81 formal instruments  8 Forum of Small States (FOSS)  293 foundational treaty  14 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 60 fragmentation 42 France 96 ‘Frankenstein problem’  315 G8 NAFSN Partnership Frameworks  71 gatekeeper 171 gay rights movement  168 gender balance  148 gender-based analysis  68 gender-based language  64 gender discrimination  72 gendered language  62 gender equality  63, 64, 69, 71, 140, 143, 144, 146, 147, 150, 151, 152 gender expertise  65, 66, 67, 68 gender experts  60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72 gender inequality  63, 65, 70 gender mainstreaming  60, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68, 71 Gender Parity Strategy  146, 150 General Assembly  292 generalized anxiety disorder  316 Geneva 34 ‘Geneva salary cut cases’  313 ‘gentleman’s agreement’  292 geospatial technology  257 Geva, D.  330 glass ceilings  146, 147, 149, 152 glass walls  146, 147, 148, 149, 152 global asymmetrical dependencies  53 global commons  308 Global Compact  55, 56, 101 global democracy  187, 188 global economic recession  43 global economy  61, 81 global environmental governance  354 global governance  3, 7, 42, 44, 45, 46, 51, 55, 61, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 81, 91, 102, 103, 140, 142, 179, 215, 305, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353 global illiberalism  331 Globalised. Climatised. Stigmatised (Gonsalves) 297 globalism  98, 327 globalization  308, 328, 339 global leadership  329

Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP)  162, 167 Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence  263 global policies  56 global political issues  130 global public policy  57 Global South  63, 78, 96, 141, 143, 202 global stakeholder democracy  188, 189 gold standard game  79 gold standard system  79 Goldstone Report (2020)  312 Gonsalves, Camillo  295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300 Gonsalves, Ralph  293, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300 ‘good governance’  53, 202 good management  319 ‘Goodwill Mission’  220 Gould, Carol  161 governance  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 14, 53, 152, 203, 204, 206, 307 governance bodies  14 Governing Council  354 Great Britain  34, 96 Great Powers  307 Greece 31 Green, J. F.  180, 181, 182 Group of Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC) 296 Guterres, Antόnio  34, 140, 143, 146, 147, 239, 240, 244, 315 Haack, K.  146, 149 Haas, Peter M.  111 Haass, R.  329 Hackett, Christopher  293 Hague paradigms  96 Halliday, Terence C.  111 Halm, George  79 Hammarskjöld, Dag  304, 307, 321 Hansen, J.  301 Hansenne, Michel  131 Hasenclever, Andreas  161 Helleiner, Eric  81, 87 High-Level Committee on Management (HLCM) 314 ‘Hillary Doctrine’  143, 144 Hiscocks, R.  300 Hopkins, R.  54 HRBA  205, 208 HR sensu stricto 319 Hudson, N. F.  145 humanitarian 257 humanitarian tech  259 human needs theory  51 human resources (HR)  304

Index  363 policies  309, 319 human rights  1, 107, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 260 human rights abuses  33 Human Rights-Based Approach  204 Human Rights Committee (CCPR)  114 human rights organizations  10 Human Rights Up Front (HRUF)  207 human rights violations  31 Hungary  31, 100 Hunter, Albert  163 Hurd, I.  270 Huxley, Julian  131 IACHR  see Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) IAEA 148 ICAO  see International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) ICCPR 115 ICJ  see International Court of Justice (ICJ) ICTs  see Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) IGLA 170 IGO autonomy  27 IGOs  see intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) Ikenberry, G. John  335, 345, 353 ILGA  see International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer + Association (ILGA) illiberal governments  335 illiberalism 339 illiberal nativism  326, 334, 336, 339 illiberal nativist governments  326 IMF  see International Monetary Fund (IMF) immunity 318 impact  178, 179, 184, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192 India 29 individual liberty  93 informal governance approaches  18 Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)  249, 255 information asymmetry  294 innovation  249, 250, 251, 257, 258, 260 institutional accommodation  336 institutional fragmentation  351 institutional frame  250 institutional groups  56 institutional relationships  251 InterAction Council  346 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)  114, 115 interdependence  42, 45, 48, 49, 52, 56

‘Intergovernmental Groups’  354 intergovernmental institutions  49 Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN)  225 intergovernmental organization (IGO)  leadership 122 intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)  25, 27, 44, 124, 125, 177 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  350 intergovernmental relations  54 internal justice system mechanisms  319 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)  78 international bureaucracies  54, 64 International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)  122, 148 International Civil Service Advisory Board (ICSAB) 312 International Civil Service Commission (ICSC)  312, 313 International Competition Network (ICN)  328 international cooperation  53 International Court of Justice (ICJ)  12, 13, 14 International Criminal Court (ICC)  97, 312 International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL)  347, 350 international economic system  47 international financial crisis  91 International Fund for Agriculture and Development (IFAD)  123 International Gay Association  168 international institutions  290, 329 International Labour Organization (ILO)  123, 350 international law  8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19 International Law Association (ILA)  258 international legal regime  15 International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer + Association (ILGA)  162, 163, 169 International Liberal Order  329 International Monetary Fund (IMF)  78, 81, 87, 88, 89, 90, 110, 124, 125, 132, 140, 181, 201, 202, 337, 352 international order  28 international organizations (IOs)  1, 5, 7–19, 25, 27, 45, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 67, 68, 107, 108, 111, 112, 115, 117, 140, 142, 177, 180, 183, 185, 186, 189, 191, 209, 249, 326, 332–335, 339, 343, 348, 349, 352 accountability 251 bodies  112, 181 challenges of  327, 336 culture  107, 109, 110, 117 decision-making 190

364  Handbook on governance in international organizations digital transformation of  249, 258 diversity of  346, 353 functional futures for  348 relationship 252 role of   327 transformation of  249 International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 141 international organization-ness  347 International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)  163, 166 international police force  307 international political system  47 international politics  50, 62 international regimes  54 international relations  51, 66 international socio-cultural system  47 international system  43, 47, 48, 49 Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)  348 internet of things  328 INTERPOL  see International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) Intersex Steering Committee  169 interstate multilateralism  177 intra-institutional relationships  251, 253 intranational system  47 IOM 260 IOs see international organizations (IOs) IPBES 350 IPPF  see International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) IPSOS Global Advisor  330 Iran 32 Israel 32 Israeli-Palestinian conflict  99 Jackson Report  311, 322 Jacob, P. E.  216 Jacobsen, K. L.  260 Jacobson, Harold  45 Jamaica 293 Japan 29 Jewish-Christian civilization  98 Johnson, Boris  331 Joint Inspection Unit’s 2019 report  317 Jurisdicism 104 jurisdicismo 96 jurisdictions 245 Kaiser, K.  50 Kaplan, M.  48 Karpik, L.  111 Kasai, Takeshi  274 Kaya, Ayse  338 Kay, Jonathan  338

Kennedy, Paul  215, 305 Keohane, Robert O.  45, 50, 54, 355 Keshavaraz 259 Keynes, John M.  89 Khan, Muhammad Zafrulla  217 Kharas, Homi  346, 353 Khor Yu Leng  36 Kilby, Christopher  338 Kissinger, Henry  82 Kissling, C.  183, 191 Kleinfeld, R.  330 Klobuchar, Amy  329 Kluge, Hans  274 knowledge 12 knowledge demands  349 Korean conflict  221 Koskenniemi, M.  111 Krasner, S.  54 Kunz, R.  66 Kwakwa, Edward  345 Larosière, Jacques de  132 Lasswell, H.  50, 52 Latin America  89, 96, 332 Laves, Walter  219 leadership  140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154 League of Nations (LoN)  305, 306 Leander, Anna  118 Ledo, Muñoz  82 legitimacy  53, 178, 179, 183, 187, 190, 191, 192, 270, 352 LGBT 169 LGBTIQ+ groups  165 LGBTIQ+ rights  170 LGBTQs 94 liaison diplomacy  351 liberal international order (LIO)  335, 337, 339, 344 liberalism 93 liberal multilateralism  344, 345, 346, 347 Liberia 35 Liese, A.  182 LIO  see liberal international order (LIO) Lodge, Cabot  335 López Burian, Camilo  331 Lovell, Heather  355 Lovenduski, J.  152 Lute, Jane Hull  239 Lykketoft, Mogens  215, 221, 223, 224 Macdonald, Terry  187 Maheu, René  131 Mahler, Halfdan  131 Malaysia 36 Maldives 225

Index  365 management  254, 304, 305, 308, 315, 316 Mansbach, R.  50 marginalization  43, 56 Marriott Corporation  33 masculinity 62 Mashaw, J.  250, 252 Mastanduno, Michael  335 Mathiason, J.  54 Mayer, P.  182 Mayor, Spaniard Federico  132 Mazower, M.  87, 88 M’Bow, Amadou Mahtar  132 McNamara, Robert  132 Meeting of the Parties (MoP)  14 Menon, V. G.  293 Menon, V. K. Krishna  221 mental health issues  316 Mexican Delegation  81, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90 Mexican Revolution  82, 83 Mexico  78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91 Meyer, Eugene Isaac  132 military 245 military dictatorship  95 military leadership  95, 103 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)  18, 60 MIs  see multilateral institutions (MIs) misconduct 232 Mitrany, D.  54 Moeti, Matshidiso Rebecca  274 MoP  see Meeting of the Parties (MoP) Morales, Evo  101 Morelos y Pavón, José María  84 Morris, J.  306 Morse, David Abner  130, 134 Mottley, Mia Amor  299 Mourão, Hamilton  103 Mukhopadhyay, M.  63 ‘multilateralcraft’ 56 multilateral institutions (MIs)  43, 49, 51, 52, 55, 56 multilateralism  25, 42, 43, 72, 90, 96, 100, 101, 299, 348 concept of  290 evolution of  290 golden age of  345 growth of  290 liberal 345 theoretical perspectives  290 value of  299 multiple multilateralisms  177 multi-stakeholderism 72 Murphy, Craig  141 Murray, Jean-Pierre  153

NAFSN  see New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN) Nahon, K.  269 Nahory, C.  300 Nakajima, Hiroshi  131 Nanz, Patrizia  188, 191 Narlikar, Amrita  343 Nasiritousi, Naghmeh  355 National Basketball Association  33 National Investigation Officers (NIOs)  238 nationalism 332 nation state system  47 nativism  329, 330, 331, 335 nativist illiberalism  332 nativist illiberal voices  331 needs-based framework  51 negative rights  204 negative tweets  278 neoliberalism 328 neoliberal spaces  69 neo-patriotic right  331 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN) 70 New Development Bank  25, 35 New International Economic Order (NIEO)  90 new multilateralism  178 new reform proposal  316 NGOs  see non-governmental organizations (NGOs) Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)  223 non-associational groups  56 non-governmental actors  17 non-governmental organizations (NGOs)  117, 141, 161, 169, 170, 171, 172 non-state actors  8, 14, 26 normative/ideological accommodation  336 normative legitimacy  190 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)  36, 337 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)  181 Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP)  167, 168, 170, 171 nuclear option  32 Nussbaum, Martha  205 Nye, J.  45, 50, 54, 327 OAS 114 Obama, Barack  337 O’Brien, R.  183 Oestreich, Joel  216 Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS)  319 Office of the President of the General Assembly (OPGA)  215, 222, 223, 225 official development assistance (ODA)  55 ‘one child’ policy  206

366  Handbook on governance in international organizations OPGA see Office of the President of the General Assembly (OPGA) Orban, Viktor  332 ‘organ’ 354 organizational culture  107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 114, 115, 117 organizational goals  51, 52, 56 organizational leadership  151 organizational reforms  322 organizational reliability  352 organizational systems  16 Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons 18 Organization of African Unity (OAU)  113 organizations 256 Orr, John Boyd  133 Orsini, Amandine  351 other international governmental organization (IGO) 161 Owen, John M.  326, 335 Pan Africa ILGA  169 pandemic politics  279 Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi  215, 219, 220, 224 Pappas, T.  331 Paris Agreement on Climate Change  15, 144 Paris Agreement on Climate Change system  16 Parizek, Michal  355 Parpart, J.  63 Parsons, T.  48 participation  177, 178, 179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 188, 189, 191, 192, 258 partnerships 55 Paul, J.  300 Paul, T. V.  336 Peace Operations  233, 236, 241 Pearson, Lester B.  220 Pease, Kelly-Kate  216 Perestroika 305 ‘Permanent Five’  126 Peterson, M. J.  215 Petrie, Charles  314 Pevehouse, Jon C. W.  346 PGA  see President of the General Assembly (PGA) Philipps, Laura  348 Piketty, Thomas  328 Pisani-Ferry, Jean  345, 346, 352, 353 placemen 321 Platform for Action  60 plenary body  9, 10, 11 plenary organs  9 Plesch, Dan  354 polarization 328 Polejack, Andrei  355

policy decision making  50 policy-maker 307 policy making  45 policy-sciences approach  45 political decision-making  64 political economy  69 political leadership  125, 134 political process  111 political relations  45 political resources  186 polylateralism 178 populism  42, 329 Portillo, José Lopez  83 Posen, Adam S.  337 poststructural feminist scholarship  62 power  7, 8, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 36, 37, 61, 62, 96, 124 Power and Interdependence 45 power relations  27 PPPs  see public-private partnerships (PPPs) President of the General Assembly (PGA)  215, 216, 217, 220, 222, 224, 225 Principal-Agent theory  209 private actors  43, 70, 72 private sector actors  8 problem-solving  45, 49, 51, 53, 54, 56 problem-solving policies  51 professional communities  110 professional homogeneity  115 professions 109 progressivism 328 promotion 321 Prügl, E.  69 public diplomacy  270 public goods  339 public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) 275 public-private partnerships (PPPs)  55, 68, 69, 71, 179 Puchala, D.  43, 44, 54 Putin, Vladimir  331 Putnam, R.  328 Quack, Sigrid  351 quantitative indicators  63 quiet evolution  56 quiet revolution  55 racial hierarchies  62 rapporteurships 11 Raustiala, Kal  181, 351 Razavi, S.  63 RBA 206 Reagan, Ronald  335 realists 290 rectitude 50

Index  367 reform  304, 305 proposals 309 refugee status determinations (RSD)  261 regime complexity  351 representative democracy  93 Resident Coordinator (RC)  314 resource 53 resource dependence  52, 53 resource dependency  53 resources 52 Reston, James B.  217, 218 Resurreccion, B. P.  68 revitalization  215, 216, 221, 222, 223 Revolution in Development  81, 84 rightful rule  26 Rights-Based Approach  205, 209 Roberts, A.  69 Robles, Alfonso García  82 Rodley, Nigel  118 Romulo, Carlos P.  220 Roosevelt, Franklin  88 Rosati, J.  50 Rosenau, James  42 Rosert, E.  182 Rousseff, Dilma  95, 98, 101 Ruggie, John  54, 56 rupture 306 Russia 28 safety 257 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG)  293, 295, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301 conceptualization of  295 Salomons, Dirk  306 Sanahuja, José Antonio  331 Sanders, Bernie  337 Sandig, Jan  161 Santos, F. G.  330 Saouma, Edouard  133 Sarney, José  97, 100 Sator, F.  143 Saurugger, S.  182 scholarship 189 Scholte, Jan Aart  178 Schroeder, Heike  355 SDGs  see Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) SEA  see sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) Seabrooke, L.  108 Second Peace Conference  96 Second World War  see World War II Secretariat 308 security 257 Security Council (SC)  10, 11, 306 Security Council reform  1, 225

security humanitarian tech  257 self-legitimation  270, 284 Sen, Amartya  205, 328 sense of identity of self  51 service delivery  1 sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA)  233, 235, 239, 240, 242 sexual harassment  33 sex work  165, 166, 167, 168, 170 Sijapati, Basnett  66 Sluga, Glenda  346 Small Island Developing States (SIDS)  10, 294, 298 small states  299 active participation  293 capacity 294 originator of  292 value of multilateralism to  299 value of United Nations to  299 Small States’ Toolbox  301 smart economics  64 Smith, Courtney  216 Smoot–Hawley Tariff  330 Snower, Dennis J.  346, 353 social accountability  250 social aggregation  44 social control theory  51 social disruption  51 social ‘identity’  53 socialization processes  51, 96 social media  269, 270, 271, 272 social movements  62, 71, 72 social organization  55 social process  45, 50, 51, 52, 56 social-process model  45 social process model framework  46 social relations  53 social systems  251 sociological legitimacy  191 soft law  16, 17, 19 soft law instruments  8, 17 Sokolova, Maria V.  151 Sommerer, T.  183 sovereign entities  17 sovereigns 7 sovereignty  26, 199, 200, 203, 207, 208, 209, 318 sovereignty costs  183 Soviet Union  96 Spaak, Paul-Henri  215, 217, 218, 219, 225 Spanish politics  331 specialized agencies  122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 133, 134, 135, 199, 200, 319 specialized agency executive heads  128 staff accountability  253

368  Handbook on governance in international organizations staff resistance  317 staff wellbeing  316 state bureaucracies  93 Steering Committee  86 Steffek, Jens  180, 182, 183, 188, 191 Stephen, Matthew D.  345, 346, 353, 355 stock of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)  337 Strange, S.  54 strategic interdependence  48 structural inequalities  65 structural interdependence  48 St. Vincent and the Grenadines  see Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) Suárez, Eduardo  79, 87, 88 subgroupism 42 substitutability  52, 53 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)  30, 43, 50, 60, 207 sustainable global governance  333 Swart, Lydia  216 Sweden 32 Swords into Plowshares  216 synergies decisions  354 Syria 31 systemic change  63 systemic discrimination  72 systems thinking  48 System-wide Action Plans  147 Szijjartó, Péter  100 Taiwan 35 Talhouk, R.  259 Tallberg, Jonas  180, 181, 183, 346 Tanzania 64 Tarp, M.  301 technical skills  12 technology  249, 253, 254, 258, 260 territorial accommodation  336 The Power of Human Needs in World Society 50 The United Nations System: An Analysis 47 The Yearbook of International Organizations 346 Third UN  49 Third World  88 Thomas, Albert  130 Thornton, Christy  81, 84, 85 Timor-Leste 294 training 254 transnational actors  190 transnational business feminism  69 transnational demos  187 transnational PPPs  70 transnational relations  50 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)  335 transparency 258 Trans Steering Committee  169

Treaty of Versailles  330 treaty regimes  13 True, J.  69 Truman, D.  50 Trump, Donald  275, 326, 330, 331, 332, 335, 337 trust 53 trust deficit disorder  42, 53, 57 Tryggestad 144 Turner, Ted  55 tweets 277 discussion 280 negative 278 ‘positivity rate’ of COVID  286 WHO 278 tweet selection  275 Twitter 273 twittersphere  273, 280, 283 Ukraine 32 UN administration  309 UN Administrative Tribunals  322 UN bureaucracy  28 UN Charter  291, 318 UN Charter-Article 71  49 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)  50 UN-DESA 34 UN development agencies  204 UNDP  35, 262 UNDRIP  see United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) UNDT 256 UNFCCC see United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) UN Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA)  206 UN goals  304, 305, 317 UNHCR  254, 261 UN Human Rights Council  102 UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee 152 UNICEF  35, 202, 205, 208 UNIDO 148 UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute 262 United Kingdom (UK)  79, 127 United Nations  1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 14, 25, 27, 43, 86, 112, 145, 161, 162, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 172, 173, 177, 199, 216, 220, 221, 291, 305 common system  313 developing countries in  292 human resources policies  309 inefficiency of  311

Index  369 United Nations Charter  10, 11 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 293 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)  9, 17 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)  12, 16, 347 United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP)  55 United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF) 313 United Nations Organization  306 United Nations peace operations  97 United Nations system  9, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 96, 122, 123, 125, 129, 140, 210, 321 United Nations Trusteeship Council  12 United States (US)  25, 32, 35, 36, 80, 84, 96, 125, 200, 327, 329 Universal Periodic Review (UPR)  164, 165, 208 Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process  208 UN mission  299 UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS)  237, 238, 242 UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)  308 UN Offices and Agencies  236 UN peace operations  96, 234 UN politics  28 UN Security Council (UNSC)  11, 97, 291, 292 campaign  295, 297 reform 301 status quo  300 UN Security Council Reform  300 UN Staff Well-Being Survey Data Report  316 UN Sustainable Development Group (UNSDG) 203 UN system  see United Nations system UPR  see Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Urquidi, Victor  89 US Supreme Court  322 value allocation  50 values 50 variability 250 Vasquez, J.  50 Velázquez, Rafael  82 Victor, D.G.  351 Vienna Declaration  203 virtual reality (VR)  255 von Borzyskowski, Inken  346 Wallenstein, A. M.  216 Weiss, T.  44, 49 Western Judeo-Christian civilization  98 Westphalian interstate order  44 Westphalian interstate subsystem  48 Westphalian interstate system  47

Westphalian system  44 whistleblower protection  241 WHO  see World Health Organization (WHO) WHO Twittersphere  281, 284 wickedness 350 wicked problems  343, 349, 351 Wilcox, Francis  219 Winant, John  130 women leaders  140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 149, 151, 152 women’s empowerment  64 Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs)  69 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)  147 Women’s Steering Committee  169 Wong, Wendy  162 Woods, George  132 World Anti-Doping Association (WADA)  252 World Bank  64, 87, 89, 124, 125, 132, 200, 202, 203, 205, 206, 210 World Economic Conference  88 World Food Program (WFP)  255 World Food Security  65 World Health Assembly  275 World Health Organization (WHO)  18, 34, 48, 101, 123, 131, 167, 206, 269, 273, 277, 280, 283, 354 tweets 278 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) 350 World Meteorological Organization (WMO)  123 world order  25, 42, 43, 49 World Trade Organization (WTO)  17, 36, 186, 337, 338 World War I  19 World War II  11, 19, 80, 81, 90, 164, 199, 330 wrongdoing  232, 235 challenges 241 types of  234 WTO see World Trade Organization (WTO) WTO treaty language  36 Wu Hongbo  29 Xi Jinping  335 Yates, JoAnne  141 Yearbook of International Organizations 347 Young, Dennis  163 Young, O.  54 Youth Steering Committee  169 Zaiotti, R.  255, 270 Zarubin, Georgi N.  221 Zeid Report  237, 244 Zürn, Michael  191, 346