The Consequences of Bureaucratic Autonomy for International Administrative Influence

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There is general consensus that international public administrations (IPAs) wield independent influence on the adoption and application of the policies of international organizations (IOs). While the impact of organizational structures on policy-making is regularly studied in national political systems, such research questions have only recently been posed at the level above the nation state. When studying the influence of IPAs in IOs, scholars have identified several functional, power-related, and structural factors that might be relevant for influence to occur. However, a more integrative approach that allows for the systematic analysis of several explanatory factors under a common analytical framework has not emerged. In view of this research gap, this project builds on the insights concerning differences in the dimensions of structural bureaucratic autonomy gained during the first phase of the project in order to evaluate whether, under which conditions, and how IPAs are able to use their structural autonomy to influence the output of IOs´ policy-making. To this end, the project will proceed in three steps. First, we aim to assess whether IPAs can influence specific policy outputs of IOs. We thus collect information on 32 cases of policy output (of both a substantive and an institutional nature) in four IOs in order to assess the influence exercised by the respective IPA in each policy case. The degree of IPA influence is the central phenomenon to be explained by the project. Second, the conditions under which structural autonomy leads to IPA influence will be identified by means of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). This will allow us to assess if autonomous IPAs are particularly influential and help us to identify the (functional and power-related) context conditions that mediate this relationship. Third, we use the results of this analysis to select those cases for in-depth analysis that are particularly informative for identifying the causal mechanisms leading to the occurrence of IPA influence (so-called typical cases and deviant cases). In this last step, the project will use process tracing to examine the causal mechanisms behind successful IPA influence. In order to study these mechanisms, we focus on the administrative toolkit for policy-related action available to IPAs and identify strategies of successful administrative influence. In sum, the project can be expected to substantially advance our knowledge about the impact of international administrative features on policy-making processes in IOs. Beyond the relevance of the results for the particular policy cases covered here, the project further substantiates the contours of an emerging administrative governance perspective on IOs and may, in particular, advance a more consistent theory of the influence of IPAs.