International Organizations in Decline? Evidence from Staff Perceptions

• In Event: Democracy and Administration: Accountability, Representation, Capacity and Power

Abstract

Recent global governance scholarship identifies a certain fragility to international order, argueing that many international organizations are struggling to keep up with the growing complexity in many areas of global governance. Some see these complexities and challenges originating from – inter alia – the rise in the number of actors involved in global policy. Others attribute them to the more diverse and salient nature of emerging and evolving global policy problems that IOs need to deal with.
To inform these discussions, we conducted a survey of staff members (N=1,011) from a sample of international organizations distributed across six key areas of global governance (trade, development, migration, finance, security and climate change). In the questionnaire, we ask the interviewees about their views on the present and future of global governance and the increasingly complex environments they are involved in. In addition, we survey views regarding the future of their own organizations. We examine mainly how these perceptions are shaping staff concerns about the legitimacy and effectiveness of their organization’s activity, and the problems associated with internal organizational dynamics. From the responses obtained, we scrutinize the differences in their perceptions existing across the areas included in our study.
Overall, our findings suggest that the diverse configurations of global actors in the regime complexes (and governance superclusters) is affecting the views of IO´s staff members considering the potential for the action of their organizations and considering the dynamics of the global governance areas under scrutiny. In detail, we find that staff members are sensitive to the constraints and challenges their organization face in steering the global governance domains they are involved in, but also maintain some confidence about the future capacities for action.

Authors

• Jacint Jordana, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

• Adam Holesch, Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals IBEI

• Lewin Schmitt, IBEI