International Bureaucracies as Runaway Agents? How Organizational Structure Affects Agency Slack

国际官僚机构是逃跑的特工？

• 批准号: 370183851
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Eugénia da Conceição-Heldt
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für European and Global Governance
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/370183851?language=en
• 关键词: International; Bureaucracies; Runaway; Agents; How

Over the past decades states have delegated extensive decision-making authority to the administrative bodies of international organizations. These international bureaucracies are setting agendas, participate in decision-making processes, implement policy programs, represent states in international organizations, create new regulatory agencies, and even settle disputes among states. Their gradual process of empowerment has been accompanied by an increase in oversight mechanisms, as member states, in some cases, considered that international bureaucracies had undertaken actions contrary to their intentions and overstepped their mandates (agency slack). Accordingly, international bureaucracies are sometimes portrayed as runaway agents that escaped the control of their principals (member states). This prompts a key question for research on international bureaucracies in global governance: under what conditions do secretariats of international organizations engage in agency slack, deviating from their mandate and acting in a way unintended by their principals?To address this question, this project takes a Multi-Method Research approach that is suited to test and further develop principal-agent theory. We employ fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis and fuzzy-set ideal type analysis for a systematic cross-case comparison and, subsequently, process-tracing for an in-depth study of selected international bureaucracies, each of which are analyzed for specific policies. We test our theoretical expectations on 27 international bureaucracies, where we gather data on four organizational characteristics: fragmentation, staffing rules, buffering, and permeability. The chosen approach will allow us to investigate necessary and sufficient conditions for the occurrence of agency slack, to identify underlying causal mechanisms, and to assess the plausibility of alternative explanations. The insights gained from the project will enable us to map different patterns of agency slack and explain under which organizational structures international bureaucracies act against their principals preferences. Showing how organizational structure matters by comparing different international bureaucracies will enrich principal-agent theory and help us bridge the gap between theoretical considerations and empirical work in the field.

过去几十年来，各国已将广泛的决策权授予国际组织的行政机构。这些国际官僚机构正在制定议程、参与决策过程、实施政策计划、在国际组织中代表国家、创建新的监管机构，甚至解决国家之间的争端。它们的逐渐赋权过程伴随着监督机制的增加，因为在某些情况下，成员国认为国际官僚机构采取了与其意图相反的行动，并超越了其授权（机构松弛）。因此，国际官僚机构有时被描述为逃脱其委托人（成员国）控制的失控特工。这就提出了全球治理中国际官僚机构研究的一个关键问题：国际组织秘书处在什么条件下会出现机构松弛、偏离职责、以委托人无意的方式行事？为了解决这个问题，本项目采用了适合检验和进一步发展委托代理理论的多方法研究方法。我们采用模糊集定性比较分析和模糊集理想类型分析进行系统的跨案例比较，随后采用过程追踪对选定的国际官僚机构进行深入研究，并对每个官僚机构的具体政策进行分析。我们在 27 个国际官僚机构中测试了我们的理论预期，收集了四个组织特征的数据：碎片化、人员配置规则、缓冲和渗透性。所选择的方法将使我们能够调查发生机构松弛的必要和充分条件，确定潜在的因果机制，并评估替代解释的合理性。从该项目中获得的见解将使我们能够绘制不同的机构冗余模式，并解释国际官僚机构在何种组织结构下会违背其委托人的偏好。通过比较不同的国际官僚机构来展示组织结构的重要性将丰富委托代理理论，并帮助我们弥合理论考虑与该领域的实证工作之间的差距。