IOs & Global Governance

Liberal Institutionalism

IOs create rules, transparency, and lower transaction costs which promote cooperation and mitigate effects of anarchy.

Democratic deficit

IOs are lack accountability as they are ran by unelected powerful bureaucrats and are therefore not democratic.

Neoliberal Institutionalism (Core Theory)

States create IOs to establish relationships because cooperation is rational, which makes conflicts costly.

Neoliberal Institutionalism (Scholars)

Robert Keohane

Realist Skepticism (Core)

IOs have no power as when their rules clash with a state’s, the state will ignore the IOs in pursuit of national security goals.

Realist skepticism (Scholars)

John Mearshimer

Principal-Agent theory (core)

IOs are powerful but can develop cultures away from what the state who created them originally intended.

Principal-Agent theory (Scholars)

Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore

Global Governance by Goal-Setting

A Liberal governance structure whereby IOs don’t have lawmaking or physical power, but steer politics by constructing shared moral goals that states adopt in policy

IO Goal Setting (Scholars)

Frank Biermann and Susan Park