When Do International Organizations Engage in Agency Slack? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of United Nations Institutions

Eugenia C. Heldt; Patrick A. Mello; Anna Novoselova; Omar Ramon Serrano Oswald

doi:10.1093/isagsq/ksac035

When Do International Organizations Engage in Agency Slack? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of United Nations Institutions

Eugenia C. Heldt^*, Patrick A. Mello, Anna Novoselova, Omar Ramon Serrano Oswald

^*Corresponding author for this work

Political Science and Public Administration

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

The extensive delegation of power to international organizations (IOs) has been accompanied by occasional agency slack. While prior studies suggest that IOs’ propensity for agency slack may be rooted in their organizational characteristics, this has rarely been explored empirically. To address this lacuna, in this article we propose a conceptualization and measurement of agency slack and develop a framework of organizational characteristics. Our empirical analysis applies qualitative comparative analysis to assess the conditions under which agency slack occurs across sixteen United Nations institutions. We complement the cross-case analysis with two case illustrations. Our results document the empirical existence of two paths to agency slack, providing confirmatory evidence for our theoretical expectations. Path 1 combines staffing rules that are favorable for the agent with wide access to third parties. Path 2 entails the combination of favorable staffing rules with extensive delegation of authority and a vague organizational mandate.

Original language	English
Article number	ksac035
Pages (from-to)	1-15
Number of pages	15
Journal	Global Studies Quarterly
Volume	2
Issue number	3
Early online date	7 Jul 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksac035
Publication status	Published - Jul 2022

Funding

We would like to express our gratitude to the following col-leagues for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this paper: Kenneth Abbott, Maria Debre, Hylke Dijkstra, Thomas D\u00F6rfler, Steffen Eckhard, Benjamin Faude, Orfeo Fioretos, Thomas Gehring, Tamar Gutner, Tana Johnson, Ronny Patz, Mark Pollack, Henning Schmidtke, Duncan Snidal, Jonas Tallberg, Alexandros Tokhi, and Catherine Weaver. For research assistance during the early phases of this project, we thank Tamara Nauhardt. We would also like to thank audiences at a workshop at the Hochschule f\u00F6r Politik M\u00F6nchen 2017, the ECPR Joint Sessions 2019, the ECPR General Conference 2020, the APSA Annual Meeting 2020, and the ISA Annual Convention 2021. This research was made possible by the generous support of the German Research Foundation under DFG project num-ber 370183851 \"International Bureaucracies as 'Runaway Agents'? How Organizational Structure Affects Agency Slack.\"All errors and fallacies remain our own. This Research was supported by a grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG)-grant number 370183851.

Funders	Funder number
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft	370183851

Keywords

International organizations
United Nations
Qualitative Comparative Analysis
agency slack
Principal agent
international bureaucracies

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1093/isagsq/ksac035Licence: CC BY

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International Bureaucracies as ‘Runaway Agents’? How Organizational Structure Affects Agency Slack
C. Heldt, E. (Principal Investigator), Mello, P. A. (Principal Investigator), Serrano Oswald, O. R. (Project Researcher) & Novoselova, A. (PhD candidate)
1/10/17 → 31/08/22
Project: Research

Cite this

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abstract = "The extensive delegation of power to international organizations (IOs) has been accompanied by occasional agency slack. While prior studies suggest that IOs{\textquoteright} propensity for agency slack may be rooted in their organizational characteristics, this has rarely been explored empirically. To address this lacuna, in this article we propose a conceptualization and measurement of agency slack and develop a framework of organizational characteristics. Our empirical analysis applies qualitative comparative analysis to assess the conditions under which agency slack occurs across sixteen United Nations institutions. We complement the cross-case analysis with two case illustrations. Our results document the empirical existence of two paths to agency slack, providing confirmatory evidence for our theoretical expectations. Path 1 combines staffing rules that are favorable for the agent with wide access to third parties. Path 2 entails the combination of favorable staffing rules with extensive delegation of authority and a vague organizational mandate.",

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When Do International Organizations Engage in Agency Slack? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of United Nations Institutions

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UN SDGs

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

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