A Theory of International Organization

Why do international organizations (IOs) look so different, yet so similar? The possibilities are diverse. Some international organizations have just a few member states, while others span the globe. Some are targeted at a specific problem, while others have policy portfolios as broad as national states. Some are run almost entirely by their member states, while others have independent courts, secretariats, and parliaments. Variation among international organizations appears as wide as that among states. This book explains the design and development of international organization in the postwar period. It theorizes that the basic set up of an IO responds to two forces: the functional impetus to tackle problems that spill beyond national borders and a desire for self-rule that can dampen cooperation where transnational community is thin. The book reveals both the causal power of functionalist pressures and the extent to which nationalism constrains the willingness of member states to engage in incomplete contracting. The implications of postfunctionalist theory for an IO's membership, policy portfolio, contractual specificity, and authoritative competences are tested using annual data for 76 IOs for 1950-2010.

Transformations in Governance is a major academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states up to supranational institutions, down to subnational governments, and side-ways to public-private networks. It brings together work that significantly advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars.

The series targets mainly single-authored or co-authored work, but it is pluralistic in terms of disciplinary specialization, research design, method, and geographical scope. Case studies as well as comparative studies, historical as well as contemporary studies, and studies with a national, regional, or international focus are all central to its aims. Authors use qualitative, quantitative, formal modeling, or mixed methods. A trade mark of the books is that they combine scholarly rigour with readable prose and an attractive production style.

The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the VU Amsterdam, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

Liesbet Hooghe, W.R. Kenan Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Robert Schuman Fellow, UNC-Chapel Hill and European University Institute, Florence,Tobias Lenz, Assistant Professor of Global Governance and Comparative Regionalism, University of Goettingen, and the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg,Gary Marks, Burton Craige Professor of Political Science and Robert Schuman Fellow, UNC-Chapel Hill and European University Institute, Florence

Liesbet Hooghe is the W.R. Kenan Distinguished Professor of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill and Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. In 2017 she received the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award of the APSA. Born and educated in Belgium with a PhD. from the KU Leuven, she was a Fulbright fellow at Cornell University and a postdoctoral fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. She joined the University of Toronto in 1994 and moved to UNC-Chapel Hill in 2000. Between 2004 and 2016, she also held the Chair in Multilevel Governance at the VU Amsterdam. Hooghe is the former chair of the European Politics Society section of the APSA and of the European Union Studies Association. Her chief focus is multilevel governance, European integration, political behavior, and international organization.


Tobias Lenz is Assistant Professor of Global Governance and Comparative Regionalism at the University of Goettingen, and the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg. During the academic year 2015/16, he was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence. Previously, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow in a research project on the authority of international organizations, directed by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, at the Free University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Lenz holds a PhD in International Relations from Oxford University and has held visiting fellowships at the Free University of Berlin, UNC Chapel Hill, and the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research deals chiefly with global and regional organizations, institutional design and change, legitimacy and diffusion.


Gary Marks is Burton Craige Professor of Political Science at UNC-Chapel Hill, and a Robert Schuman Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. He was educated in England and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. He was a recipient of the Humboldt Forschungspreis (Humboldt Research Prize) in 2010 and of a $e2.5 million Advanced European Research Council grant (2010-2015). In 2017 he received the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Federalism Scholar Award of the APSA. He co-founded the UNC Center for European Studies and EU Center of Excellence in 1994 and 1998, respectively. Marks has had fellowships at the Free University of Berlin, the Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg, Pompeu Fabra, the Institute for Advanced Studies Vienna, Sciences Po, Konstanz University, McMaster University, the University of Twente, and was National Fellow at the Hoover Institution. His research and teaching are chiefly in comparative politics, multilevel governance, and measurement.

1. Introduction
2. Philosophical Foundations of a Postfunctionalist Theory of International Governance
3. Measuring International Authority
4. The Basic Set-Up: How International Organizations Vary
5. Why do some IOs expand their policy portfolio?
6. The Resistible Rise of International Authority
7. Why States Pool Authority
8. Five Theses on International Governance
Appendix
Part I: Operationalization
Part II: Variables