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The Review of International Organizations

Erschienen in:

30.05.2018

A bird in the hand: Temporal focal points and change in international institutions

verfasst von: Michael W. Manulak

Erschienen in: The Review of International Organizations | Ausgabe 1/2020

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Abstract

This article develops a theoretical explanation for the timing of change in international institutions. It provides a rational choice response to key insights of historical institutionalist scholarship. Many existing theories—such as rational choice and sociological institutionalisms—explain the timing of change mainly by listing its causes. An analysis of the timing of change in many realms of institutional activity, however, demonstrates that incentives to alter institutions frequently accumulate, unaddressed for extended periods of time. The result is persistent institutional suboptimality, punctuated intermittently by phases of transformation. To account for divergence from the expectations of existing theories, I test two hypotheses concerning the role of transaction costs and temporal coordination dilemmas in hindering change. Introducing the concept of Temporal Focal Points, the article explains why temporal landmarks, such as international crises and prominent anniversaries, are frequently associated with non-linear, transformative change. To assess the explanatory potential of this framework, I analyze the record of change in United Nations environmental institutions. The case study supports the hypotheses advanced, leading to the conclusion that the when of institutional change can tell us a lot about the why of change.

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See: Capoccia and Kelemen 2007; Collier and Collier 2002; Desai 2010; Jones and Baumgartner 2005; Kingdon 2003; Welch 2005

The following investigation will focus on large discontinuous change, rather than the more incremental adjustments highlighted by Oran Young, James Mahoney, and Kathleen Thelen. See: Mahoney and Thelen 2010. Young 2010. Rixen and Viola (2016: 18–20) define the nature of institutional development through an analysis of the speed, scope, and depth of change. This useful differentiation will be employed in the empirical section of this article.

The list of environmental treaties used here is derived from the UN’s “InforMEA” page on Multilateral Environmental Agreements: https://www.informea.org/treaties#Global Last Accessed: 13 October 2016. Many of the multilateral environmental agreements forged in this period, notes Ken Conca (2015: 62–63), had a global, regulatory focus.

This matches the findings of Baumgartner et al. (2009) in the policy realm, who note a lack of proportion between social change and policy responses.

For a discussion of gradual parametric change, see Grief and Laitin 2004.

For similar findings in the policy realm, see Baumgartner et al. 2009.

This does not mean that all actors must be onside. It does, however, mean that actors’ decision-making depends on a certain threshold number of actors engaging in cooperative behavior simultaneously. This is conceptually similar to Schelling’s concept of “k-groups.” See: Schelling 1973. As has been observed by Capoccia (2016) and others, furthermore, existing structures can influence the dynamics of coalition building in support or opposition to change. Relative sequencing may, furthermore, create powerful regulatory capabilities in specific countries that shape institutional development (Newman 2017). These actors may be particularly relevant to the formation of k-groups.

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The distinction between institutional bargaining and institutional change is not developed in the framework. The TFP model conflates the decision to launch negotiations with the decision to alter institutional arrangements. It does so for two reasons. First, I adopt the rationalist baseline assumption that, when joint gains are on the table, states will act to realize them. This choice allows us to foreground analytically coordination issues, rather than bargaining issues. Second, the model recognizes that timing is also at the core of institutional bargaining problems. The “negotiator’s dilemma,” the fundamental problem of determining whether to negotiate in an integrative manner, has an important, if implicit, temporal dimension. Thus, the line between purposeful institutional bargaining and institutional change may be starker in theory than in reality. Indeed, bargaining issues related to temporal coordination feature prominently in the case studies developed in this article.

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Gersick’s experiments on the pace of task completion provide some clues for how temporal pacing can be measured in a lab setting (Gersick 1988, 1989).

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IUCN’s “islands for science” proposal was regarded as complementary to the World Heritage concept and was in part subsumed by it.

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Titel: A bird in the hand: Temporal focal points and change in international institutions
verfasst von: Michael W. Manulak
Publikationsdatum: 30.05.2018
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: The Review of International Organizations / Ausgabe 1/2020
Print ISSN: 1559-7431
Elektronische ISSN: 1559-744X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-018-9315-6

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