Decision making within international organizations

Abstract:

This collection of essays ranges over the major elements of decision making in international organisations - leadership, consensus building, organisational dynamics, conflicts of loyalty, policy windows and learning processes, and the work is organised into sections based on these elements.

Following an introduction and overview, chapter two addresses successful leadership in the European Union with particular emphasis on multilateral trade negotiations. Chapter three examines the leadership possibilities of a highly intergovernmental organisation, the Council of Europe. The fourth chapter looks at consensus building with the aim of reaching a decision within the World Meteorological Organisation and the World Trade Organisation. Chapter five explores this aspect of decision making between an international organisation (the OECD) and a member state regarding implementation of internationally accepted policy. Chapter six explores a crisis situation to study the organisational dynamics within an international bureaucracy, and in chapter seven the pressures from internal subunits and the tensions arising from external pressures are studied.

Chapter eight examines the impact of conflicts of loyalty experienced by national civil servants repeatedly involved in multilateral decision making, while chapter nine examines such conflicts of loyalty at various administrative levels within the European Union. Chapter ten focuses on the conditions under which non-state actors influence EU reactions to human rights violations to illustrate the opportunity and use of policy windows by international organisations. This theme is further illustrated in chapter eleven which looks at the role of NGOs operating within the United Nations, specifically the Women's Alliance and the issues of reproductive rights and health. Learning processes feature in the next two chapters; chapter twelve explores social learning by an international organisation after a first round of decision making, while chapter thirteen considers the learning process as one of small incremental steps on related issues having influence on the decision making structures.

The editors close the work with a concluding chapter which urges a re-examination and renewal of interest in decision making within international organisations.

The work will interest scholars students and researchers involved in bureaucratic politics and organisational decision making structures.

Bob Reinalda is Senior Lecturer in International Relations, and Bertjan Verbeek is Associate Professor of International Relations, at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.