The International Organization of National Energy Policy: Great Britain and Western Germany in the International Energy Agency (IEA), 1974-1993

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The research project scrutinizes the relevance of international organizations for national policy making since the 1970s using the example of energy policy. The historiographical and political science literature has registered a considerable quantitative increase in international organizations for this period. The research that takes an international perspective infers from this fact a growing influence of these organizations on its member states. In contrast to this, the literature that focuses from a national perspective on certain policy fields ignored international effects. On the basis of this striking discrepancy the project asks if and how the way of governing changed since the 1970s by the increase of international organizations. Energy policy is a very significant case for analyzing the impact of international organizations because it is shaped by divergent national economic structures that are often inconsistent with international demands. In the spotlight of the project stands the International Energy Agency (IEA), which was founded in 1974 as a reaction of the Western industrialized countries to the oil crisis. The IEA was and is a body were national energy officers and members of the secretariat negotiated common energy political goals, which were intended to reduce the dependence on OPEC-oil in the long run. The project evaluates the archival material of the IEA and the papers of its first executive director Ulf Lantzke for the first time. Based on this international material and sources of national archives the project analyzes how the common work in the IEA functioned. How did the member countries and the secretariat determine common energy political goals and the means to reach them? Which general principles became accepted, why did others fall through? To what extent did the national governments try to exploit the IEA to achieve certain national objectives and what was the significance of the IEA from the national point of view? In a second step the project asks how the IEA tried to ensure the compliance of the member states with its policy guidelines. The main tool for this was the regular peer-review of its members' energy policy. With a comparison of two of its main member states, Great Britain and West Germany, the project tries to evaluate in what way the common views and transferred ideas, harmonized by discussions and procedures in the IEA, influenced a policy field dominated by national economic interests. The results of the project will be published as a monography and in articles.