Open or closed international organizations: Conditions for policy change by contestation

当这些政策的假定受益者对这些政策提出异议时，国际组织在什么情况下改变其政策？一个普遍的假设是，国际组织是官僚主义的容器。外部影响被等级文化和僵化的组织结构过滤掉。民间社会的抗议经常导致国际组织在口头上和程序上发生变化，但很少出现实质性的政策变化--国际组织是“封闭的组织”。这一假设在多大程度上仍然成立？目前的研究将国际组织描述为“开放组织”。组织文化和结构越来越不稳定，正式的组织边界发挥的作用越来越小，这主要是由于新的公共管理改革。我们观察到跨国专业网络在某些问题领域争夺控制权。这些网络塑造了国际组织的行为。在这一框架下，公民社会的抗议不会因为僵化的IO文化和病态而失败。相反，竞争团体可以利用对专业网络的访问来影响IO政策。该项目将建构主义IO研究的这两种截然不同的变体结合在一个研究设计中：开放的组织文化和结构应该促进IO政策的变化，以应对假定受益者的竞争；封闭的组织文化和结构应该阻碍变化。该项目还分析了其他条件的影响：强国和不同抗议策略的影响。我们比较了劳工组织、联合国儿童基金会、联合国毒品和犯罪问题办公室和世卫组织对假定受益人在不同问题领域的争辩的反应：毒品使用和贩运、童工、人口贩运和女性生殖器切割。该项目将假设测试用例比较与过程跟踪相结合。采用专家访谈、定性内容分析以及网络分析等方法。

Under what conditions do international organizations change their policies when these are contested by the assumed beneficiaries of those policies?One widespread assumption is that international organizations are bureaucratic containers. External influences are filtered by a hierarchical culture and a rigid organizational structure. Civil society protest often leads to rhetorical and procedural changes in international organizations but seldom to substantial policy change – international organizations are "closed organizations".To what extent does this assumption still hold true? Current research describes international organizations as "open organizations". Organizational cultures and structures are increasingly fluid and formal organizational boundaries play less of a role, largely due to New Public Management reforms. We observe transnational professional networks which fight over control over certain issue areas. These networks shape the behavior of international organizations. In this framework, civil society protest does not fail because of rigid IO cultures and pathologies. Instead, contesting groups can use access to professional networks, which are assumed to be more open to innovation, to affect IO policies.The project combines these two contrasting variations of constructivist IO studies in one research design: an open organizational culture and structure should promote policy change in IOs as reaction to contestation by assumed beneficiaries; a closed organizational culture and structure should hinder change. The project also analyzes the effects of alternative conditions: of powerful states and of different protest strategies. We compare reactions of ILO, UNICEF, UNODC and WHO to contestation by assumed beneficiaries in different issue areas: drug use and trafficking, child labor, human trafficking and female genital mutilation. The project combines a hypothesis-testing case comparison with process tracing. It uses expert interview, qualitative content analysis as well as network analysis.