Agenda Setting and Legislative Politics in International Organizations

• In Event: Legislative Politics of the United Nations

Abstract

I develop a theory of legislative politics in international organizations (IOs), shedding light on the puzzle of why some traditionally less powerful states are more active and effective in advancing policy goals than power-based theories of international politics would expect. I argue that small and medium states -- as opposed to large states -- shape the set of policy outcomes by employing legislative politics, choosing from a menu of lobbying strategies. I propose that variation in the success of lobbying strategies depends not on the distribution of hard power, but the expenditure of interstate social capital, a dynamic form of soft power that is cultivated through state level and diplomat level features. I empirically test this theory in the case of the United Nations (UN), constructing a novel dataset of lobbying strategies over from 1945-2019 for all member states. I measure agenda-setting, electioneering, and information provision, and predict activity and success in these activities in a two-stage model. I show that traditional measures of economic, demographic, and military power are insufficient to explain variation in lobbying, and that interstate social capital, which I measure with qualitative and quantitative approaches, better predicts activity and success.

Author

• Sabrina Beth Arias, University of Pennsylvania