The Authority of International Organizations: The Effects of Scope and Scale

Liesbet Hooghe UNC Chapel Hill and VU University Amsterdam.

Gary Marks

UNC Chapel Hill and VU University Amsterdam

ABSTRACT

We conceive authority of an international organization as latent in two independent dimensions: delegation by states to international agents and pooling in collective decision making bodies. We theorize that delegation and pooling are empirically as well as conceptually different. Delegation is an effort to deal with the transaction costs of cooperation which are greater in larger, broader, and correspondingly more complex organizations. Pooling reflects the tension between protecting or surrendering the national veto. This paper theorizes that delegation and pooling are constrained by two basic design features: a) the breadth of IO's policy portfolio and b) the scale of its membership. We test these hypotheses with a new cross-sectional dataset that provides detailed and reliable information on IO decision making. Our major finding is that the design of international organizations is framed by stark and intelligible choices, but in surprising ways. Large membership organizations tend to have both more delegation and more pooling. The broader the policy scope of an IO, the more willing are its members to delegate, but the less willing they are to pool authority.

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To what extent and why do international organizations exert authority independent of their

member states? In this paper we propose that the authority of an international organization is

conditioned by two basic facts of its existence: the scale of its membership and the scope of its

policy portfolio.

International organizations are contracts among formally sovereign actors. This

produces an enormous range of choice in design (Abbott and Snidal 1998, 2000; Keohane

1982). IOs range from small clubs like Mercosur or the Central Commission for the Navigation

of the Rhine with a handful of members, to organizations like the British Commonwealth of

Nations or the African Union with scores of members, to globe-spanning organizations such as

the World Health Organization or the International Monetary Fund. Some IOs are concerned

with a single problem, such as protecting a river or lake, whereas others, like the United

Nations or the Andean Community, tackle a host of social or economic issues.

International organizations are the principal vehicles for producing public goods beyond

the national state and their design is a core area of inquiry in political science. Prior

explanations have focused on the heterogeneity of preferences among member states, the

extent of democratic norms, the relative power of the member states, and the type of

cooperation problem. These are plausible sources of variation, but they take as given two

fundamental features that frame the structure of the organization:

• The scale of the IO's membership. Is the IO designed to encompass a small handful of states,

or does it encompass as many as 200?

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• The scope of the IO's policy portfolio. Is the IO designed around a particular task or does it

have a broad policy portfolio?

The puzzle we wish to probe is why and how scale and scope constrain authoritative

design, and we draw on the principal/agent, multilevel governance, and institutional design

literatures to theorize this.

Our approach is innovative in several respects. We conceive authority as two-sided.

States delegate authority when they empower a third party to fill in the details of an

incomplete contract, provide expert information, select or prioritize proposals that are on the

table, and at the authoritative extreme, propose policy initiatives. States pool authority when

they relinquish the national veto in collective decision making. In contrast to prior theory, we

do not assume that these dimensions are associated – in fact we find that they are orthogonal.

The distinction provides the basis for our theory and empirics.

Delegation is an effort to deal with the transaction costs of cooperation which are

greater in larger, broader, and correspondingly more complex organizations. Pooling reflects

the tension between protecting or surrendering the national veto. The national veto is a

blessing and a bane for member states. It is a blessing to the extent it protects governments

from adverse international policies. It is a bane leading to deadlock in a large member

organization.

We disaggregate delegation and pooling into dimensions that can be reliably estimated.

Lack of appropriate data has stymied systematic testing in this field. In this paper we introduce

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a new dataset on delegation and pooling in 72 international organizations which allows a

rigorous examination of the effects we theorize.

Our core claims are that the scale of an IO’s membership is a powerful predictor of IO

authority, but that the breadth of its policy portfolio has a contradictory effect: it encourages

delegation but deters pooling.

Our theory has some interesting implications for an understanding of international

organization. We conceive of IOs as contracts among well-informed actors who have the

resources to consider their options and negotiate. However, choice does not imply voluntarism.

The institutional choices that member states make regarding authority appear to be structured

by the basic character of the organization.

We first conceptualize IO authority and set out our expectations concerning scope and

scale. We then explain how we measure the variables of interest before introducing a series of

models that exert statistical controls, match cases, and test for endogeneity. In a final step we

examine outliers to diagnose some limitations of the model. We conclude by summarizing our

findings and considering ways forward in the study of international organization.

CONCEPTUALIZING INTERNATIONAL AUTHORITY

Political authority—the capacity to make legitimate and binding decisions for a collectivity—is a

core concern of political science, some would argue the core concern (Eckstein 1973; Lake

2010; Parsons 1963; Weber 1968).

The concept of authority has been deployed chiefly to justify the state, but authority,

abstractly conceived, is not bound to the state. Lake (2010: 587) defines authority as a "social

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contract in which a governor provides a political order of value to a community in exchange for

compliance by the governed with the rules necessary to produce that order." This can take

place in the international arena as well as within states. Barnett and Finnemore (2004) conceive

international bureaucracies as exerting authority derived from their impersonal procedures and

rules, their role as delegated agents of states, their claim to represent the international

community, and their expertise. The fact that states do not always comply does not invalidate

the wide application of the concept: speed limits on roads are also broken. What matters then

is a general acceptance of the rules concerning non-compliance (Lake 2010: 592).

Our focus is on legal authority which is distinguished from charismatic and traditional

authority in being a) institutionalized, i.e. codified in a set of formal rules; b) circumscribed, i.e.

specified with respect to who has authority over whom for what; and c) impersonal, i.e. it

applies to roles, not persons.

We specify this abstract concept by distinguishing between delegation and pooling

(Keohane and Hoffmann 1991; Lake 1996, 2007; Rittberger and Zangl 2006; Snidal and Vabulas

2013). We conceive delegation as a grant of authority by member states to an independent

body.1 Delegation is designed to overcome issue cycling, sustain credible commitments, provide

information that states might not otherwise share and, in general, reduce the transaction costs

of decision making (Lake 2007: 231; Brown 2010; Hawkins et al 2006; Koremenos 2008; Pollack

2003; Tallberg 2002). The IO secretariat is the body that is tasked with delegation in decision

making, and its competencies are almost always limited to facilitating and perhaps framing the

agenda (Pollack 1997:104).

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We define pooling as joint decision making among the principals themselves (Keohane

and Hoffmann 1991: 7; Lake 2007: 220; Moravcsik 1998). It consists of three elements: the rules

under which member states make decisions, the procedure by which those decisions are

ratified, and the extent to which they are binding.

Delegation and pooling are empirically as well as conceptually distinct. Figure 1 maps 72

IOs on pooling and delegation in 2010 using summated rating scales for indicators described

below. These variables are orthogonal (r = 0.02). Interestingly, the most studied IOs are the

exceptional ones—the European Union which has the most delegation and the International

Monetary Fund and the World Bank (IBRD) which have the most pooling. One advantage of a

larger-N approach is that the selection of cases is divorced from their values on the dependent

variable.

[Figure 1 about here]

Let us take a closer look at three less exceptional IOs to illustrate that pooling and

delegation can vary independently.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has extensive pooling and weak

delegation. It was established in 1958 as a UN special agency for maritime safety and following

the Torrey Canyon disaster of 1967 was tasked also with marine environmental standard

setting (Nordquist and Moore 1999). Its main purpose is to provide a venue for negotiating

conventions and international regulations (Van Leeuwen and Kern 2013). These become

binding once two-thirds of the members have ratified.2 Simple non-weighted majority voting is

the decision rule in its intergovernmental Assembly and Council for regulations and

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conventions, the budget, and suspension of nonpaying members. This places the IMO in the top

ten percent of our sample on pooling. However, delegation to independent non-state bodies is

minimal. Aside from co-drafting the budget as a junior partner to the Council, the IMO’s 300

strong staff provides secretarial support for the organization’s technical intergovernmental

committees.

By contrast, the Andean Community has extensive delegation, but little pooling. The

Community was created in 1968 by five Latin American countries (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia,

Ecuador, and Peru) to promote a common market, and has since diversified in related policy

fields, including social policy and the environment (Adkisson 2003). The general secretariat of

the organization is constitutionally designated as its sole executive body (Art. 29, Trujillo

Protocol). It is chiefly responsible for drafting legislation and is entirely responsible for

preparing the annual budget. It handles relations with the Andean Parliament and Andean

Advisory councils for labor, business, local government, and indigenous peoples. Not least, the

General Secretariat can take member states to the Andean Court (Alter and Helfer 2010, 2011).

However, the member states have preserved the national veto in final decision making. The

state-dominated Andean Summit and Coordinating Council operate by consensus with a heavy

emphasis on ratification (Prada and Espinoza 2008). The Andean Community is located in the

top-quartile of our sample on delegation and the bottom quartile on pooling.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) scores zero on delegation

and pooling. SAARC was founded in 1985 by Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan and four

neighboring countries to promote trust and cooperation in some technical areas, and in 2006

was tasked with trade liberalization (Tavares 2008). All decisions are taken by consensus,

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usually by the intergovernmental Council of Ministers or its Standing Committee. Common

projects are not binding and conventions signed by SAARC members bind only those that

subsequently ratify. The SAARC Secretariat has no formal agenda setting role in any of the areas

we monitor. As one commentator observes, the Secretariat “hardly exercises even the modest

role assigned to it by the Charter. It has only occasionally been involved in the preparation of

documentation for important meetings” (Ashan 2006: 146).

These organizations make the point that delegation and pooling cannot be rolled

seamlessly into an overarching concept. Our theory, which we set out in the next section, is

that delegation and pooling are constrained by the scope and scale of an IO, but in contrasting

ways.

SCOPE AND SCALE

Policy scope and scale of membership are fundamental characteristics of an international

organization and have been seen as such (Shanks, Jacobson, and Kaplan 1996; Hasenclever et

al. 1997). However, the connection between the scope of an IO's policy portfolio and its

authority has played second fiddle to hypotheses that link particular kinds of policy to

institutional outcomes. Exceptions are Shanks et al. (1996) who examine whether the policy

scope of an IO affects its survival rate and Haftel (2007) who hypothesizes that the broader the

scope of a regional international organization the less will its member states engage in conflict

with each other.

There are fairly strong expectations about the effects of scale on the incidence of

international organization stemming from cooperation theory, which concludes that large

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numbers impede cooperation (Keohane and Ostrom 1995). The notion that "the larger the

group, the farther it will fall short of providing an optimal amount of a collective good"

underpins discussion of the obstacles arising from multilateralism (Olson 1968: 4; Kahler 1992).

However, the effect of scale for IO authority has rarely been theorized. One exception, the

rational design project (2001), hypotheses that a large number of members encourages

centralization and reduces individual control over voting, but this finds little confirmation in the

project's empirical chapters.3

Policy Scope

An international organization can specialize in a single task, such as maritime safety or

regulating navigation in the Rhine, or it can take on a plethora of tasks, such as the Andean

Community, or it may do something in-between, like SAARC. An IO with a broad policy portfolio

is the international approximation to a general purpose government, a government that

handles an unspecified range of policies for a given population (Hooghe and Marks 2003). On

the one hand, this produces complexity because there are likely to be many possible ways to

frame policies and many possible bargains that can be made among the member states. The

complexity of decision making in general purpose government provides a functional rationale

for delegation to independent bodies. But a broad policy portfolio has starkly political

implications as well for it extends the interface between international and domestic politics,

making states more, not less, intent on sustaining the national veto.

There are strong functional reasons for states to delegate in organizations that handle a

swath of policies. The broader the scope, the greater the likelihood that an IO contract does not

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specify “the full array of responsibilities and obligations of the contracting parties, as well as

anticipate every possible future contingency” (Cooley and Spruyt 2009: 8). Agenda setting is

particularly complex, and so there is a correspondingly greater benefit for principals in

establishing independent bodies to fill in the details of incomplete contracts, generate expert

policy-relevant information, or monitor compliance (Pollack 2003: 378; see Bradley and Kelley

2008). A general secretariat with the authority to sequence votes can also limit the

opportunities for states to defect from a winning coalition by making a more attractive offer

centered on a different proposal (Tallberg 2010). This, in a nutshell, is the notion that

incomplete contracting induces states to delegate authority to non-state actors to reduce

uncertainty and limit issue-cycling (Hawkins et al. 2006; Mueller 2003; Pollack 2003).

It is one thing for states to facilitate agenda setting by empowering international agents,

but it is quite another to give up individual control over an IO with broad-ranging policy

competences. The concerns that induce states to delegate agenda setting under incomplete

contracting are unlikely to lead them to relinquish the veto in the final decision. The broader

the policy portfolio of an IO, the greater the concern of its member states to maintain the

capacity to block decisions that could hurt them domestically (Hooghe and Marks 2009; Zürn,

Binder and Ecker-Ehrhardt 2012).4

Number of member states

Multilateralism after World War II involved as many as 200 states, each of which gained

sovereign status. The problems this generates for collective decision making have a major

impact on the design of IOs (Downs, Barsoom and Rocke 1998; Kahler 1992; Osieke 1984;

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Riches 1940; Zamora 1980). The expected direction of the effect is the same for delegation and

pooling—the more members of an IO, the greater delegation and pooling—but the reasons

vary.

The benefits of delegation depend on informational asymmetry between bureaucrats

and principals which is expected to be particularly large in IOs with many members (Hawkins,

Lake, Nielson, and Tierney 2006; Pollack 2003). The number of possible connections in a

network is an exponential function of the number of participants. Delegation of agenda setting

offsets the complexity of gaining full information about the preferences and strategies in a large

member organization.

The effect of numbers on pooling is even sharper. Multilateralism among formally

sovereign states is a recipe for deadlock (Kahler 1992; Martin 1995: 91; Snidal 1995: 57). The

larger the number of veto players, holding their ideological distance constant, the smaller the

size of the winset and the more difficult it is to depart from the status quo (Tsebelis 2002). In

designing an international organization, states have to balance the benefits of scale in the

provision of public goods against decisional blockage that arises in a large-N organization with

sovereign actors. The severity of the trade-off is eased if states are willing to pool authority in

majoritarian decision making (Ostrom 1990: 188-9, 212; Snidal 1995: 57).

Among large-N studies, Blake and Lockwood Payton (2009: 23) find that majority voting

is more likely as membership grows. For a sample of 30 regional IOs, Haftel and Thompson

(2006: 269) find no support for the hypothesis that large-scale IOs are more independent.

However, the history of voting rules in the European Union suggests that increasing the number

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of member states produces pressure for majoritarian voting (Schneider 2002). Carrubba and

Volden (2001: 23) note that “as the size of the EU increases, voting rules must be made less

inclusive to sustain vote trades.”

A DATASET FOR INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

The political structure of international organizations is perceived to affect the outcomes of

intergovernmental coordination for trade negotiation, environmental regulation, conflict

resolution, and peacekeeping missions. Most empirical studies use sophisticated, usually direct,

measures of the phenomena that are said to be affected by IO design, but rudimentary

measures of IO design itself.

Two challenges confront the researcher who wishes to estimate delegation and pooling

of IO authority. The first is to navigate from the abstract to the particular. Delegation and

pooling cannot be observed directly. We seek to specify these concepts so that their variation

can be reliably evaluated while preserving their meaning. A second, related, challenge is to

“seek a middle ground between a universalizing tendency, which is inattentive to contextual

differences, and a particularizing approach, which is skeptical about the feasibility of

constructing measures that transcend specific contexts” (Adcock and Collier 2001: 530). Each IO

is, in certain respects, unique, yet our purpose is to evaluate them on a common conceptual

frame (Weber 1949; Sartori 1970). Hence, our challenge is to specify institutional possibilities

that have similar connotations across diverse organizations.

Several datasets estimate IO authority (Table 1). Boehmer, Gartzke and Nordstrom

(2004) evaluate the authority exercised by an IO across three categories that tap the degree to

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

and Lockwood Payton (2009) examine the voting rule in the IO body that they judge to be the

most consequential in setting policy. Haftel and Thompson’s independence measure (2006)

combines voting and decision power in an interstate body with measures on the role of a

permanent secretariat. Goertz and Powers (2012) encompass estimates of the central

interstate body, the general secretariat, dispute settlement, emanations, parliamentary

organization, and whether the IO has international legal personality.

[Table 1 about here]

These data have been used to good effect, but they have fairly basic limitations. A more

refined measure would seek to a) disentangle delegation and pooling; b) distinguish agenda

setting from final decision making; c) differentiate across the decision domains in which

delegation and pooling can be observed; d) distinguish simple majority, supermajority, and

consensual voting; e) ascertain whether IO decisions require ratification; and f) assess whether

IO decisions formally bind member states.

Our focus is on formal rules that can be observed in treaties, constitutions, conventions,

special statutes, protocols, and rules of procedure. Formal rules have the distinct advantage

that they can be specified independently of behavior. Moreover, although states can exert

influence through informal as well as formal channels (McKeown 2009; Pollack and Shaffer

2012; Stone 2010), examining formal rules presents a hard case for the argument that

international organizations have authority. Formal pooling and delegation impose explicit,

public, commitments on states. Changing or eliding a formal international commitment can be

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costly (Johnson 2013). If formal international authority mattered only marginally or not at all,

then one would not expect to find systematic, intelligible, variation. Nor would one expect

states to negotiate intensely about their content.

Yet rules in international forums have been subject to sharp contestation. For example,

Brazil and China have long protested that voting weights in the World Bank and the

International Monetary Fund are biased against developing countries. In 2010, the quotas and

seats set aside for European countries were reduced, but the United States retained 17 percent

of the votes at the Fund, enough to veto all major decisions, and it held on to its veto over

amendments to the Articles of Agreement of the World Bank. Developing countries still fall

short of the necessary votes to endorse or block loan decisions in the World Bank (Vestergaard

and Wade 2012). These particular reforms became domestic issues, but even when this is not

the case, the decisional rules of organizations such as the International Criminal Court, the

United Nations Security Council, or the Andean Community are of serious concern for their

members and potential members.

Delegation is a grant of authority to a third party. Our focus in this paper is on the

general secretariat because it is recognized to be the principal agent of delegation in IO decision

making (Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Bradley and Kelley 2008; Brown 2010; Hawkins et al.

2006; Johnson 2010, 2013; Pollack 2003).5 Every IO in our dataset has a secretariat with

infrastructural functions such as running the IO’s headquarters, organizing meetings, and

maintaining records, but the extent to which the secretariat carries out executive functions,

monitors compliance, and facilitates member state bargaining varies considerably. In the

domain of accession, for example, a secretariat may be charged with soliciting or vetting

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candidates, evaluating whether a prospective member meets accession criteria, or negotiating

the conditions of accession. We assess whether a general secretariat can take the initiative in

nine domains: executive functions, executive monopoly, policy initiation, monopoly of policy

initiative, budget drafting, financial non-compliance, member state accession, suspension of a

member state, and constitutional revision.

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

IO member state body in which individual states cede their capacity to block decisions

(Keohane and Hoffmann 1991; Moravcsik 1998; Snidal and Vabulas 2013). We evaluate pooling

at the most consequential stage—final decision making. The extent of pooling in an IO depends

on three conditions: whether the decision rule departs from unanimity to some form of

majoritarianism; whether the decision requires ratification; whether the decision is binding

rather than voluntary. We assess the extent to which member states pool authority across six

domains: policy making, budgetary allocation, financial non-compliance, member state

accession, suspension, and constitutional revision.

Delegation and Pooling can be estimated as latent factors or as summated rating scales.

Factor analysis uses the available information more efficiently by weighting each indicator

according to its contribution to the score for a given IO, whereas summated rating scores are

not affected by the composition of the sample. Scores from these methods are strongly

associated for both delegation (r = 0.97) and pooling (r = 0.96). All analyses in this paper use

summated rating scales, but using latent factor scores produces the same results. Appendix A

details case selection and measurement.

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OPERATIONALIZING INDEPENDENT VARIABLES

We estimate Policy scope as the number of policies for which an IO is responsible. This is

assessed by two independent coders employing a list of 25 non-exclusive policies (Appendix B).

The Krippendorff’s alpha is 0.70, which indicates reasonably high intercoder reliability.

We measure Members as the log of the number of member states on the intuition that

the marginal effect of an additional member declines as the absolute number of members

increases. To test for endogeneity we calculate the average number of member states in an IO

in the 2006-2010 period and at an earlier period: 1950-54 or, if the IO is established later, over

the first five years of its existence. We calculate all independent variables in a similar way.

We include three controls in our baseline model. Democracies are hypothesized to be

less reluctant than autocracies to establish authoritative IOs because they can make more

credible commitments, because democratic transparency makes cheating more costly, or more

generally, because they are more attuned to the rule of law (Acharya and Johnston 2007;

Kahler 2000; Mansfield, Milner, and Rosendorff 2000; Martin 2000). Democracy is the mean

score for the member states of an IO on the Freedom House index (2006-2010) with high values

for more democratic countries. A measure drawn from the Polity IV dataset is highly correlated

at the IO level (r=0.95) and produces similar results.

IOs dominated by a single member state are expected to be less authoritative because

hegemons suffer the greatest loss of freedom of action under rule-based cooperation, and

consequently prefer loose informal arrangements (Drezner 2007; Grieco 1990; Krasner 1976,

1991).6 Small states may also oppose delegation if they fear big power influence within the

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organization (Urpelainen 2012). Power asymmetry is operationalized as the ratio in material

capabilities of the largest member state to the average of all members in the organization. We

use the Composite Index of National Material Capabilities (CINC) version 4.0 which summarizes

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

population, and total population, averaged for the 2003-2007 period (Singer et al. 1972; Singer

1987).

Reserved seats on executive bodies and weighted voting are expected to increase the

incidence of pooling because they accommodate powerful players (Abbott and Snidal 1998;

Lockwood Payton 2010; Solingen 2008; Viola 2008). Aggregation technology facilitates decision

making in large-N settings (Sandler 2004). Weighted voting is a dichotomous measure where an

IO receives a value of unity a) if there is weighted voting in a legislative or executive interstate

body or b) if a subset of member states have reserved seats in an executive body.7

ESTIMATION

The observational data reveal clearly that IOs are not randomly located on the variables of

interest. Several associations, including that between Policy scope and Members, exceed 0.50

(Appendix C). This makes it difficult to disentangle true effects and suggests a multi-pronged

strategy. In this section, we discuss econometric models for evaluating the effects of policy

scope and membership scale on pooling and delegation. We begin by estimating a baseline

model in cross-sectional ordinary least squares regression. OLS regression allows us to use

information about all 72 cases. We then pair down the information by matching the sample on

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key covariates. Finally, we address endogeneity and explore additional specifications before

discussing outliers.

The theorized effects of scope and scale for IO authority are robust across these tests.

Unweighted OLS regression confirms that delegation and pooling are constrained by scope and

scale. The more members an IO has, the greater on average its level of delegation and pooling.

The broader the IO's policy portfolio, the greater its expected level of delegation but the lower

its pooling. The willingness of member states to delegate to IOs that have a broad policy

portfolio is mirrored by their unwillingness to let go of the national veto in final decision

making.8

[Table 2 about here]

Figure 2 illustrates the substantive effects of Policy scope on Delegation and Pooling.

Holding all other variables at their means, an IO such as the Universal Postal Union which

specializes in a single policy will typically have a permanent secretariat with agenda setting

powers. But that secretariat will have authority in just one or two of the nine domains of

delegation. By contrast, the permanent secretariat of an IO, such as the Andean Community,

with a broad portfolio covering 20 policies, typically has agenda setting powers in four to five

domains. The effect of Policy scope on pooling is also considerable, but has the opposite sign. A

task-specific IO typically departs from unanimity in three or four of six domains, whereas an IO

with a broad portfolio covering 20 policies will typically have unanimity in all but one domain.

[Figure 2 about here]

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The scale of an IO's membership has a strong and positive effect on delegation and

pooling. The indicator we use is logged, but nothing noteworthy changes if the absolute

number of members is used instead. Figure 3 depicts the standardized marginal effects and 95

percent confidence bands for the independent variables and controls. The scale of an IO's

membership has by far the greatest marginal effect on pooling of authority and a sizeable effect

on delegation. All else equal, an IO with three to six member states typically imposes the

decision rule of unanimity across the board. By contrast, an IO with a global membership breaks

with this in at least two or three domains.

[Figure 3 about here]

We find no evidence that the average level of democracy of the members of an IO

makes a difference in the authority invested in an IO, but we do note that Power asymmetry

depresses delegation.9

Matching Weighted Propensities

Imbalance in our data complicates the task of assessing the independent effects of scope and

scale. We now prune the cases by excluding observations for which we cannot compare

treatment and control groups and by weighting the remaining cases to achieve better balance

between treated and control groups.10

Matching, which is commonly used in medical science and psychology, comes at the

cost of efficiency for it discards cases that are not similar in all respects except for the variable

of interest, the treatment variable. Generalized matching on all independent variables is

impractical when the number of cases in the dataset is just 72. Instead of matching on all

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independent variables simultaneously, we match sequentially for each independent variable

and then use this weighted sample to assess the covariate of interest under OLS controls. This

mixed approach allows us to considerably reduce imbalance while retaining a sufficient number

of cases for analysis.

[Tables 3A and 3B about here]

The results in Tables 3A and 3B are in line with those reported above. The treatment

variable in Table 3A is Policy scope, and the first row displays results for a fully specified OLS

model with matching weighted propensities for Members. Matching on Members produces a

weighted sample where Members is quite well balanced between a control group of IOs that

have narrow policy portfolios and a treatment group having broad policy portfolios. The λ

(lambda) for this sample is 0.10 which is a considerable improvement on the global λ of 0.55 for

an unmatched sample with policy scope as treatment.

The estimate in the first row of the first column is the coefficient for Policy scope where

Delegation is the dependent variable using this weighted sample in OLS under full controls. The

estimate in the first row, third column, is the coefficient for Policy scope with Pooling as

dependent variable for the same weighted sample. Policy scope is significant and carries the

anticipated sign: positive on Delegation and negative on Pooling.

The treatment in Table 3B is the membership scale of an IO. The first and third columns

of each row display again the slope coefficient for the treatment variable where the sample is

matched for the variable shown on the left of the row. The Lambdas compare favorably with an

unmatched sample with Members as treatment which has a global λ of 0.86.

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Matching is a severe test given the limited number of units in our dataset. By pruning

unmatched IOs to control for confounding influences we err on the side of avoiding type-1

error, and the results for both scope and scale are strongly consistent with expectations.

Endogeneity and Regional International Organizations

We hypothesize that the authority of an IO is affected by its scope and scale. However, we need

to engage the possibility that scope and scale are endogenous to its authority. Our theory is

consistent with the idea that state preferences over delegation and pooling constrain the kinds

of IOs that states are willing to establish. But there is also the possibility that the scope and

scale of an IO could adjust over time to prior decisions that states make on delegation and

pooling.

To test this possibility we introduce models for delegation and pooling where the

predictors are observed at the time of the IO’s founding (Table 4). As before, we find that policy

scope has a positive and negative association with delegation and pooling whereas members

has a consistently positive association.

[Table 4 about here]

To what extent do our findings add to an understanding of IO design beyond the

contrast between regional and global IOs? Table 5 introduces dichotomous terms for regional

and non-regional IOs using two alternative measures.11 The key estimates retain their

significance, revealing that the associations we find are not produced by dividing the sample

into regional and non-regional IOs.

[Table 5 about here]

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Trade and Security

Does information about the policy problem provide additional leverage in explaining IO

authority? The core expectation is that the willingness of states to convey authority to an IO is

curbed by the sovereignty costs of collaboration and is promoted by expected gains (Haftel

2012; Simmons and Danner 2010). We introduce dichotomous variables for security and trade,

two policy fields which are often used as examples for this reasoning. Security issues raise

sovereignty concerns which are expected to deter states from surrendering control (Kono 2007;

Stein 1983; Snidal 1985). Trade represents the quintessential collaboration problem where

potential gains are significant and where an impartial agent can help frame focal points, expose

non-compliance, and punish shirking (Hasenclever, Mayer and Rittberger 1997; Keohane 1982;

Zürn 1992).

We use data from Boehmer and Nordstrom's (2008) classification of IOs by policy

problem and our own coding to test these conjectures. Security IO and Security IO (Boehmer-

Nordstrom) are dichotomous variables that take on a value of 1 if an IO's core activity is

concerned with military defense or mutual non-aggression. Trade IO is a dichotomous variable

that takes on the value of 1 if an IO's core activity concerns trade liberalization. Economic IO is a

dummy for each IO that falls into one of three economic categories defined by Boehmer and

Nordstrom.

The models in Table 6 confirm the dampening effect of security. This is in tune with

expectations, but it is the only policy effect we pick up. Notably, we do not confirm the

expectation that IOs concerned with trade and economic regulation have higher than average

Page | 22

delegation or pooling. The reasons for this are far from obvious, and require analysis that would

take us beyond this article. The answer may be that in order to pick up the effect of policy

variation we need more finely grained measures.12

[Table 6 about here]

Outliers

Cases that are mis-predicted can be more revealing than those which are accurately predicted.

Two IOs stand out as being mispredicted by at least 2.5 standard deviations. Delegation is

underpredicted in the Nordic Council (s.d. = −2.79). Pooling is overpredicted in OTIF (s.d. =

2.73). Both cases reveal the limits of the model set out here and suggest possible lines for

future inquiry.

The Nordic Council is an interesting and unusual example of dense international

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

where an inter-parliamentary body, the Nordic Council Plenary Assembly, sets the agenda and

does many of the things that are usually handled by a secretariat (Qvortrup and Hazell 1998).

The Nordic Council is exceptional in other ways that help explain its institutional character and

the limits of our analysis. It is composed of a small number of small democratic countries with

extensive similarities, including deeply embedded norms of democratic participation (Marks,

Lenz, and Ceka 2013). When IOs introduce parliamentary agenda setters this is usually at the

expense of technocratic secretariats, a phenomenon well documented in the European Union

(Ringe 2010; Rittberger 2005).

Page | 23

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

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

amendments and member state suspension, by supermajority. Decisions are partially binding.

OTIF is unusually majoritarian given its relatively small membership (47 in 2012). It is a technical

organization where the typical problem is one of coordinating standards for passenger and

freight carriage on international rail traffic. OTIF is the quintessential IO designed to solve a

coordination problem where the cost of non-cooperation is high but the sovereignty risks of

ceding control are minor. Here is an example, then, in which refined information about the

particular policy competences of an IO appears to have considerable leverage in explaining its

authority.

CONCLUSION

International organizations raise fundamental questions about governance in the grey zone

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

contracts among independent states which bind themselves in limited respects to achieve

collective goals. Our prior is that states have more than one dimension of choice when it comes

to IO authority in decision making: they can set up independent bodies to reduce transaction

costs; they can collectivize decision making in majoritarian voting. We follow a small but

influential stream of IR literature in describing the former as delegation and the latter as

pooling.

Page | 24

Delegation and pooling are as empirically distinct as they are conceptually distinct.

Whereas delegation is diffuse, pooling is compact. Whereas delegation has diverse causes,

pooling can be explained with few. Whereas the scope and scale of an international

organization have a weak effect on its level of delegation, they have a massive effect on its

pooling.

Delegation to an independent body can be considered soft authority. It is a response to

the transaction costs of decision making, which, we hypothesize, increase with the breadth of

an organization's policy scope and the scale of its organization. No general secretariat in any of

the 72 organizations we survey takes the final decision on policy, the budget, or appointments,

let alone constitutional reform, suspension, or accession. Delegation involves information

gathering and monitoring, selecting and prioritizing alternative proposals, drafting the budget,

and implementing policies. These are diverse activities, and it is not unreasonable to believe

that they have diverse causes. We find that scope and scale are significantly and robustly

associated with delegation, but none of the variables that we introduce here explains the bulk

of variation.

The pooling of authority in collective decision making is more predictable. Pooling exists

at the sharp end of national sovereignty and it is subject to a powerful functional logic arising

from the scale of an organization and a powerful political logic arising from its scope.

The functional logic is one of numbers. As the number of veto players rises, so does the

potential for stalemate. The tiger in the room is national sovereignty, and the whip is the law of

numbers. The principle of national sovereignty—the entitlement of a state to veto decisions to

Page | 25

which it is opposed—is a barrier to the production of joint public goods. Unanimity can be a

cold shower on decision making, as will be obvious to anyone who sat around a table with a

dozen or more veto players. The national veto, the symbol of national sovereignty, is the curse

of impotence in an organization with scores of members.

The political logic points in precisely the opposite direction. Pooling authority involves

loss of control which can be dangerous for a government if it leads to decisions that hurt

strategic constituencies. The broader the interface of the IO with domestic politics, the greater

the risk. We propose that this varies with the policy portfolio of an international organization.

Our theory and findings suggest several ways forward. Rather than offer a general

theory of international organization, we probe the effects of two clearly specified variables for

IO decision making. This does not rule out other constraints hypothesized in the literature and

which have not yet been adequately measured, including the character of the policy problem

faced by an IO, the political, economic, or cultural diversity of its member states, or the

heterogeneity of their preferences. The principal challenge that we face is not that we must use

observational data because classical experimentation is infeasible, but that several key

variables have not been carefully observed across a large enough sample of units.

The data that we have gathered are useful because they provides detailed information

about decision making on up to 70 parameters for each international organization. We use this

information to reject a holistic conceptualization of IO decision making. Our finding that the

effects of an IO's policy portfolio are double-edged does not show up at all if the authority,

independence, control, or power of an IO is conceived as uni-dimensional. Researchers may use

Page | 26

these data both to reassess our conception of dimensionality and re-aggregate IO decision

making according to their own specifications.

Our focus is on formal rules of decision making that can be observed in treaties,

constitutions, conventions, special statutes, protocols, and rules of procedure. These rules

establish the IO's decision making bodies, their composition, their voting rules and their

powers. These are plainly of real concern to member states, but there are many ways in which

IOs and their members informally adjust to rules, both within the framework of an IO and by

creating alternative forums. There is a widespread recognition that formal and informal norms

are sensibly regarded as complementary in the study of international relations, yet there is

much to do in tying them together (Pollack and Shaffer 2012).

Finally, the information that we have brought to bear on the effects of scale and scope

covers many units at a single point in time. The estimation throws into sharp relief the need to

develop temporal indicators. Until one can track units through time, quantitative analysis must

use cross-sectional methods despite their intrinsic limitations in controlling for unit effects.

Endnotes

1 We omit the term conditional in defining IO delegation on the ground that all authority exercised by an

IO is conditional.

2 Even ratification has been made less restrictive. Since 1972 the IMO routinely uses the tacit consent

procedure whereby a member state is presumed to have ratified unless it objects within a set time

Page | 27

period. The new rule was introduced because reaching the two-thirds hurdle became increasingly

difficult as membership expanded beyond the initial group of shipping nations (Rosenne 1999).

3 Two case studies speak to the issue. Pahre (2004: 128) finds that the more players involved in trade

negotiation, the more they cluster in groups, and interprets this as support for the hypothesis that larger

membership leads to centralization. However, clustering, defined as “a state’s simultaneous

negotiations with two or more countries on the same issue” (Pahre 2004: 101), is at best a weak form of

centralization and one would be hard-pressed to conceive it as a form of delegation. Richards’ study of

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

centralization and more “unanimity voting rules govern[ing] annual IATA fare conferences” (Richards

2004: 235, 240-1, 255-6).”

4 Bargaining theory suggests that multidimensionality of the policy space works in the same direction to

reduce pooling. The idea is that multidimensionality increases cross-policy linkages, and this makes it

possible to fashion consensual multi-issue deals among member states that would veto a

unidimensional bargain (Davis 2004). So there is less incentive for states to pool authority to avoid

blockage when the policy field is large.

5 As distinct from delegation in dispute settlement, which requires separate treatment (Hooghe,

Bezuijen, Derderyan, Coman 2013).

6 A counterargument focuses on major powers as suppliers of international institutions (Hancock 2009;

Mattli 1999; Mearsheimer 1994).

7 Examples of the former are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.

Examples of the latter are the International Atomic Energy Agency (where the ten largest nuclear

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

Page | 28

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

interests).

8 The results in Table 2 are robust using bootstrapping and jackknife tests (Appendix D).

9 Controlling for preference heterogeneity among member states has no effect. The only published data

source covering the IOs discussed here is the Affinity Index which extracts similarity scores from voting

in the United Nations. This is a topic on which valid hypothesis testing must await improved

measurement (Voeten 2013).

10 We use coarsened exact matching developed by Blackwell, Iacus, King, and Porro (2009).

11 We test whether our results are driven by a distinctive category of IO, namely “multifunctional,

multipurpose regional economic institutions” (Powers and Goertz 2011: 2388; de Lombaerde and Schulz

2009; Mattli 1999; Mansfield and Solingen 2010; Pevehouse 2005). Goertz-Powers (2012) caterorize

regional IOs as having non-overlapping memberships, multi-functional scope, and as composed primarily

of contiguous states. There are 22 such IOs in our dataset. A less restrictive definition which allows

overlapping membership extends the list to 33 IOs (Marks et al. 2013).

12 This motivates Mitchell’s work (2006) on environmental agreements, Sandler (2004) on global

collective action, and Koremenos (2012) on uncertainty and international agreements.

Page | 29

Table 1: Measures of International Authority

Boehmer, Gartzke, Nordstrom (2004): Institutionalization One trichotomous dimension for international organizations: (1) minimal: plenary meetings, secretariat (2) structured: bodies to implement (3) interventionist: mechanisms to enforce

Blake & Lockwood Payton (2009): Decision making One trichotomous dimension for international organizations: (1) majoritarian voting rule in chief policy making body (2) unanimity voting rule in chief policy making body (3) weighted voting rule in chief policy making body

Haftel & Thompson (2006): Independence Four dichotomous dimensions for regional integration arrangements (RIA): (1) decision-making - voting: majority/ unanimity (2) decision-making – decision power of council (3) supranational bureaucracy -- existence (4) supranational bureaucracy – initiation

Goertz and Powers (2012): Regional governance Six dichotomous dimensions for regional economic institutions (REI): (1) rule & policy system resembling council of ministers (2) dispute settlement mechanism (3) international legal personality

(4) secretariat-headquarters (5) at least one organizational emanation (6) parliamentary organization

Hooghe and Marks (2013): Delegation and Pooling Fifteen dimensions for international organizations: Delegation: nine dichotomous dimensions to evaluate the role of the general secretariat in agenda setting on: (1) membership accession (2) suspension of a member state (3) constitutional revision (4) drafting the budget (5) financial non-compliance (6) policy making (7) monopoly of policy initiation (trichotomous) (8) executive functions (9) monopoly of executive functions

Pooling: six ordinal dimensions to evaluate the extent to which individual member states control the decision on: (1) membership accession (2) suspension of a member state (3) constitutional revision (4) budgetary allocation (5) financial non-compliance (6) policy making Control = 𝑓(voting rule, bindingness, ratification)

Page | 30

Table 2: Delegation and Pooling

Delegation Pooling

Policy scope .077*** (.024)

–.046** (.023)

Members .145*** (.045)

.165*** (.041)

Democracy −.001 (.020)

.016 (.019)

Power asymmetry –.120*** (.045)

–.015 (.041)

Weighted voting .018 (.022)

.037* (.020)

Constant .311 (.020)

.282 (.018)

R2

(Adjusted R2) .235

(.177) .633

(.605)

Note: N=72. OLS regression with two-tailed significance for estimates: *** sign <.01 ** sign <.05 *sign <.10. Standardized coefficients with standard errors in brackets.

Page | 31

Table 3A: The Effect of Policy Scope on Delegation and Pooling after Matching

Successive models with matching on:

Delegation Pooling N

Lambda 𝝀 𝟏(𝒇,𝒈)

slope estimate for Policy

scope

s.e. slope estimate for Policy

scope

s.e.

Members .066*** .023 −.039* .022 70 .10 Democracy .095*** .023 −.053** .022 65 .07 Power asymmetry .080*** .026 −.042* .022 52 .04 Weighted voting .079*** .024 −.037*** .022 72 .00

Table 3B: The Effect of Membership on Delegation and Pooling after Matching

Successive models with matching on:

Delegation Pooling N

Lambda 𝝀 𝟏(𝒇,𝒈)

slope estimate for Members

s.e. slope estimate for Members

s.e.

Policy scope .180*** .042 .192*** .042 66 .19 Democracy .131*** .059 .160** .058 64 .11 Power asymmetry .127*** .043 .158*** .048 43 .08 Weighted voting .213*** .050 .209*** .041 72 .00

Note: Each row represents a full OLS model (omitting matched covariate) but reports only the estimates of the variable of interest, Policy scope or Members. We use the CEM stata algorithm developed by Blackwell, Iacus, King, Porro (2009) to obtain a matched data set. This method applies automatic coarsened exact matching. N reports the number of observations retained and matched after treatment. Lambda is a measure of global imbalance, which varies between 0 (perfectly balanced) and 1 (perfectly imbalanced or complete separation).

Page | 32

Table 4: Delegation and Pooling with Covariates at the IO’s Founding

Delegation

Pooling

Policy scope .070*** (.024)

–.075*** (.024)

Members .078** (.034)

.062** (.030)

Democracy –.001 (.004)

–.000 (.004)

Power asymmetry –.007 (.005)

–.226* (.132)

Weighted voting .031 (.053)

.160*** (.054)

Constant .381 (.074)

.359 (.079)

R2

(Adjusted R2) .176

(.113) .515

(.478)

Note: N=72. OLS regression with two-tailed significance for estimates: *** sign <.01 **sign <.05 *sign <.10. Standardized coefficients with standard errors in brackets. Estimates of the covariates take on values in 1950, or in the year of IO creation, whichever is later.

Page | 33

Table 5: Exploring the Regional vs. Global Contrast

Delegation Pooling

Policy scope .102*** (.029)

.072** (.030)

–.056** (.027)

–.046* (.028)

Members .110** (.050)

.1154** (.059)

.180*** (.047)

.166*** (.054)

Democracy .004 (.021)

−.002 (.021)

.013 (.019)

.016 (.019)

Power asymmetry –.116** (.044)

–.125** (.048)

–.017 (.041)

–.016 (.045)

Weighted voting .015 (.021)

.018 (.022)

.018* (.020)

.036 (.020)

Regional IO

–.118 (.078)

.052 (.073)

Regional IO (Goertz-Powers) .021 (.086)

.003 (.079)

Constant .365 (.041)

.304 (.035)

.259 (.038)

.281 (.0321)

R2

(Adjusted R2) .261

(.193) .236

(.165) .636

(.602) .633

(.599)

Note: N=72. OLS regression with two-tailed significance for estimates: *** sign <.01 ** sign <.05 * sign <.10 Standardized coefficients with standard errors in brackets.

Page | 34

Table 6: Policy Scope vs. Policy Problem

Delegation Pooling

Policy scope .064** (.026)

.102*** (.028)

–.039* (.023)

–.054** (.023)

Members .166*** (.047)

.147*** (.047)

.146*** (.042)

.157*** (.040)

Democracy .001 (.020)

−.002 (.021)

.015 (.018)

.007 (.018)

Power asymmetry −.132*** (.045)

−.121*** (.045)

−.007 (.041)

−.0129 (.039)

Weighted voting .024 (.022)

.017 (.022)

.034* (.020)

.031 (.019)

Security IO −.013 (.087) –.168**

(.079)

Security IO (Boehmer-Nordstrom) –.002 (.125) –.325***

(.108) Trade IO .078

(.053) –.060 (.048)

Economic IO (Boehmer-Nordstrom) .010 (.046) –.036

(.040) Constant .283

(.028) .308

(.026) .313

(.026) .303

(.022) R2

(Adjusted R2) .263

(.182) .236

(.152) .661

(.624) .680

(.645)

Note: N=72. Two-tailed significance: *** sign <.01 ** sign <.05 *sign <.10 OLS regressions with standardized coefficients and standard errors in brackets.

Page | 35

Figure 1: Delegation and Pooling in International Organizations

Note: Some IOs are not visible because they are clustered at a single location (.28 on Delegation and 0 on Pooling). They are ASEAN, Benelux, Central American Integration System (SICA), Commonwealth of States (CIS), Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), NATO, Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU).

Nordic Council NAFTA

APEC

CABI

CCNR

SAARC

OAPEC

IMO

WMOIwhale

Mercosur

ISA

UPU

SCO

COEITU

WCO

ICAO

OPEC

EFTA

UNIDOWTO

ICC

NATO

WHO

FAO

OSCE

PCA

LAIA

UNWTO

OAS

UNESCO

SA CU

UN

GCC

BIS

Be ne lux

ASEANSICACIS

LOAS

World Bank

IAEA

SELA

OECS

ILO

GEF

OECD

Comesa

CaricomIGAD

PIF

OTIF

INTERPOLIOM

SADCEccas

WIPO

OIC

Andean

CERN

AU

SPC

Cemac

IMF

EEA

Francophonie

ESAEAC

CommonwealthEcowas

EU

0.2

.4.6

.81

.PO

OLIN

G

0 .2 .4 .6 .8.DELEGATION

Page | 36

Figure 2: Scope and Delegation vs. Scope and Pooling

0.2

.4.6

Deleg

ation

0 5 10 15 20 25Policy scope

Predictive Margins with 95% CIs

0.1

.2.3

.4Po

oling

0 5 10 15 20 25Policy scope

Predictive Margins with 95% CIs

Page | 37

Figure 3: Marginal Effects for Delegation and Pooling

(A) DELEGATION

(B) POOLING

-.2

-.1

0

.1

.2

-.3

.3

Effec

ts on

Line

ar P

redic

tion

Policy s

cope

Member

s

Democr

acy

Power a

symmetry

Weighte

d votin

g

Average Marginal Effects with 95% CIs

-.10

.1.2

.3Ef

fects

on Li

near

Pre

dictio

n

Policy s

cope

Member

s

Democr

acy

Power a

symmetry

Weighte

d votin

g

Average marginal effects with 95% confidence intervals

Page | 38

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