Charles Roger

States have increasingly relied on informal international organizations (IOs) to govern cross‐border problems. Frequently, however, their accountability has been questioned because they have been created to evade political control and strengthen the hands of executives and bureaucrats vis‐à‐vis legislative actors. This has led some to propose solutions that might address their accountability gaps. In this article, I discuss the role that institutional inter‐linkages may play. Many informal IOs lack capabilities and accountability mechanisms that raise questions about their desirability as standalone institutions. Yet, in practice, by creating links with states and formal IOs, their capabilities and accountability have been augmented. With respect to their accountability, specifically, I argue such linkages can promote reflexivity, policy filtering, and the institutionalization of new procedural norms. While these dynamics cannot fully reduce accountability gaps, recognition of them provides a more balanced picture of the issues at stake and an added rationale for expanding such linkages in the future.

The study of informal international institutions has advanced considerably over the past decade. Much of this work, including our own, has approached this phenomenon from the perspective of rationalist institutionalism. Yet, existing work has also been criticized from several conceptual, theoretical, and empirical angles. The recent special issue of International Politics on the “cascading dynamics” of informality by Cooper et al. (Int Politics, 2022,https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-022-00399-4) offers an important example of such critiques. It builds on earlier work in the field, advancing our understanding of a number of processes and institutions, but also partly casts itself as a reaction to the approach we have adopted. We argue that key aspects of this critique are misguided and that Cooper et al. exaggerate the differences that divide us. Our aim in this article is to respond to their criticisms, clarify the key research issues at stake, emphasize the complementarities among approaches, and outline ways of moving forward.

La gobernanza global se ha aceptado ampliamente como objeto de estudio y como forma de “ver” la política mundial. Sin embargo, todavía sabemos poco acerca de cómo ha evolucionado la publicación en lo que concierne a tal materia. Este artículo ofrece la primera exploración sistemática de estos patrones. Utiliza un conjunto de datos original de investigación sobre gobernanza global para responder tres preguntas de primer orden: ¿cómo ha variado la publicación a lo largo del tiempo?; ¿en qué temas se han centrado los estudiosos?; ¿y quiénes han estado publicando en este ámbito de estudios? Los autores descubrieron que la investigación ha aumentado y se ha vuelto cada vez más diversa, pero de manera selectiva. Algunos temas marginados ocupan un lugar más destacado que en el resto de las relaciones internacionales, pero también hay omisiones importantes. Por lo demás, si bien la investigación ya no procede tanto de la región estadounidense, y las mujeres han sido comparativamente más activas en relación con otras áreas, la diversidad geográfica sigue siendo por demás limitada. Los académicos con sede en el Sur Global se perfilan como los primeros artífices de menos del 14 por ciento de todas las publicaciones. Para concluir, el artículo promueve la reflexión sobre las implicaciones que todo ello tiene para el campo de estudio referido.

Global governance has been widely embraced as an object of analysis and as a way of “seeing” world politics. Yet we still know little about how publishing has evolved. This article presents the first systematic exploration of these patterns. It uses an original dataset of global governance research to answer three first-order questions: How has publishing varied over time? What issues have scholars focused on? And who has been publishing in the field? The authors found that research has grown and become increasingly diverse—but selectively so. Some marginalized issues feature more prominently than in the rest of international relations, but there are blind spots too. Further, while research is less American and women have been comparatively more active relative to other areas, geographical diversity remains extremely limited. Scholars based in the Global South have been the first authors of less than 14 percent of all publications. To conclude, the article reflects on implications for the field.

We present a new dataset of membership in informal international organizations—IOs founded with non-binding instruments—which constitute one-third of operating IOs. We introduce state-IO-year–level membership data for 195 countries that complements the dataset on formal IOs from the Correlates of War Project. We explain our conceptualization of an informal IO, contrast it with other approaches, and detail the data collection process. We illustrate similarities and differences across formal and informal IOs, and across states and regions. We explain how our data validate or challenge conjectures about informal cooperation that have been inaccessible for lack of data. We demonstrate that while formal and informal IOs are similar in size, the composition of informal memberships in informal IOs is more fragmented. While informal IOs are a growing part of the governance portfolios of most states, some countries and regions participate more. We conclude by outlining elements of the research program our dataset unlocks.

Why have states increasingly relied on informal IOs as instruments of cooperation? Most research on this question has focused on identifying incentives that lead states to establish informal bodies. But attention is turning to ‘supply-side’ factors – those making it easier for informal IOs to operate. I advance this strand of research by explaining how formal IOs make informality work. Specifically, I theorize how the presence of formal institutions in a region or issue area – particularly, those capable of providing key resources and services to informal IOs – changes calculations about their viability and leads policymakers to embrace informality more readily. Support for this argument is provided through an analysis of formal IO assistance to informal bodies, and case studies of the EU’s impact on two organizations – COST and EUREKA – to unpack the mechanisms at work. Overall, the article offers insights into the drivers of informality, presents original data on inter-institutional interactions, and speaks to broader arguments about the EU, organizational ecology, and regime complexity.

After a decade-long search, countries finally agreed on a new climate treaty in 2015. The Paris Agreement has attracted attention both for overcoming years of gridlock and for its novel features. Here, we build on accounts explaining why states reached agreement, arguing that a deeper understanding requires a focus on institutional design. Ultimately, it was this agreement, with its specific provisions, that proved acceptable to states rather than other possible outcomes. Our account is multi-causal and draws methodological inspiration from the public policy and causes of war literatures. Specifically, we distinguish between background, intermediate, and proximate conditions and identify how they relate to one another, jointly producing the ultimate outcome we observe. Our analysis focuses especially on the role of scientific knowledge, non-state actor mobilization, institutional legacies, bargaining, and coalition-building in the final push for agreement. This case-based approach helps to understand the origins of Paris, but also offers a unique, historically grounded way to examine questions of institutional design.