Who gets to live forever? Toward an Institutional Theory on the Decline and Death of International Organisations

Project Information

NestIOr

Grant agreement ID: 802568

DOI

10.3030/802568

Project closed

EC signature date 29 November 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 31 July 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 977,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 977,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT MAASTRICHT
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - NestIOr (Who gets to live forever? Toward an Institutional Theory on the Decline and Death of International Organisations)

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2024-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Almost 40% of all international organizations (IOs) created since 1815 no longer exist. Many IOs today are under mounting pressure. Examples include the UK’s decision to leave the EU, the mooted exodus of African states from the International Criminal Court and the decision of the United States to leave UNESCO. Building on existing research about how IOs are designed and develop, the NestIOr project investigates the decline and death of IOs. Specifically, it studies whether larger and more flexible IOs are more likely to live longer because they can adjust, be more responsive to external pressures, and are more difficult to replace.

Getting a better understanding of the survival of IOs is important, since IOs are central to addressing many of the societal challenges we are facing. Whether it concerns the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, digitalization, conflict, or migration and human rights, there is typically a cross-border dimension to our most pressing problems. To address such societal challenges we need international cooperation and IOs. This ranges from the World Health Organization to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Yet what if such IOs are gridlocked or do not provide us with efficient answers? What if key states such as the US walk away from established IOs or emerging countries such as China establish their own rival IOs? What if domestic publics demand IOs to be held accountable and become more democratic?

Whether IOs can be responsive to such pressures, we need to know when IOs may fail, how we can replace them, and what the effect of rival institutions on IOs are. Through the study of decline and death, we can ultimately better assess what type of institutions we need, how IOs should be designed, but also how we make IOs more robust to fend off external pressures. Indeed, this helps us to put in place a better and more durable system of global governance.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

To address the overall objectives, this EU-funded NestIOr project combines statistical research on many IOs with in-depth case studies of how IOs address existential challenges. Much research effort has gone into expanding existing datasets on IOs with relevant institutional design features to study whether the institutional design affects the survival of IOs. By manually going through the treaties of 150 different IOs since 1815, we have uncovered original data on how flexible IOs are. For instance, whether the treaties of IOs allow for the withdrawal of member states, whether member states vote on policies or take decisions by consensus, and to what degree the mandates of IOs are fixed. We have furthermore uncovered new data on the bureaucratic capacities of IOs, such as how many staff members are working for the different 150 IOs. These unique new data have allowed us to statistically analyse the effects of institutional design on whether IO are repeatedly criticized, face withdrawals by member states, and survive longer.

We have combined this statistical analysis of many IOs with in-depth case studies of individual IOs. Case studies are helpful as they allow us to zoom in on the specific context in which IOs operate. We have studied, in this respect, a number of challenges to IOs in depth. For instance, how the European Commission has responded to the UK withdrawal negotiations since 2016. We have also looked at how NATO, the World Trade Organization, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have differently reacted to challenges by President Donald Trump. And we have studied the effect of competing IOs, such as the competition of the EU and NATO in the area of security, the International Energy Agency and the International Renewable Energy Agency, and the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The focus for the case studies has been the institutional design features that have helped IOs to respond to external challenges. What makes the case study research unique is that we have conducted around 140 interviews with key policy makers in various IOs. As such, the project offers a behind-the-scenes perspective of the decline and survival of IOs.

We have published the results in a large number of journals articles, a research monograph as well as three PhD dissertations. Throughout these publications, which deal with individual IOs as case studies or compare processes across different IOs or present the results of large quantitative comparisons, we find that the institutional features of IOs greatly matter for their survival. In particular, their administrative resources in terms of staff are important. If IOs have sufficient staff resources, they are better at responding to large societal challenges. At the same time, our detailed case studies also show that IOs need sufficient leadership to address crises, a clear organizational structure, and IOs should be embedded in larger societal networks which also includes elites across the member states, NGOs, multinational companies, experts and other civil society actors. IO staff members cannot operate any more alone if they want their organizations to prosper.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project has made substantial progress beyond the state of the art. The hypothesis that the bureaucratic capacities of IOs, such as the staff size, matter for the ability of IOs to response to challenges has been confirmed. This is not just the case in the large quantitative analysis, but also in the more detailed case studies. Furthermore, we have shown that IOs with substantial staff levels have responded well to the COVID-19 pandemic, whereas understaffed IOs have responded less well. The project has furthermore clarified under which conditions the presence of bureaucratic staff in IOs is important and has pointed at IO leadership, a clear organizational structure and embedding in an external network.

These findings around the significance of bureaucratic capacity go beyond the state of the art. In general, it is often assumed that the survival of IOs and their decline and death is often caused by reasons external to the IOs. For instance, if major member states have a conflict, the IO might not survive. The League of Nations is, in this respect, the standard example: it declined and then died when the Second World War broke out. Our research challenges such established accounts and shows actually that the internal institutional structures of IOs are critical for understanding their survival. We therefore need to pay much closer attention to IOs as actors in their own right. These findings also have the societal implication that we can actually strengthen IOs by providing IOs with sufficiently strong institutions. Indeed we can revise the institutional design of weaker IOs and protect the design of stronger IOs. Such findings can help states, including European countries, as we move further into the 21st century with more contested global governance.

We have surprisingly not find much evidence yet for whether institutional flexibility and adaptation capacity allows IOs to survive. This presents a challenge to the academic literature which strongly suggests that organizations and institutions need to adapt and adjust to their environments. This highlight even more the emphasis that needs to be placed in the literature on the administrative capacities of IOs.

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