Liesbet Hooghe, Tobias Lenz, and Gary Marks. 2019. A Theory of International Organization. (Oxford: Oxford University Pr
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Liesbet Hooghe, Tobias Lenz, and Gary Marks. 2019. A Theory of International Organization. (Oxford: Oxford University Press) Charles B. Roger 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
International organizations (IOs) are among of the central instruments that states rely on to solve cross-border problems. Over the past 200 years—and especially since the end of World War II—they have grown tremendously in number, and, like the problems they are asked to address, they exhibit remarkable diversity. Organizations vary in terms of the number of issues they govern and the number of members they have; their voting rules, their regulatory capabilities, and their independence from states are often different. A wide range of empirical studies has, naturally, aimed to account for this puzzling institutional variation and the determinants of international authority. This is the focus of A Theory of International Organization as well. Yet, unlike many past efforts, it advances a unified theory that reveals the hidden interconnections between different elements of design. In doing so, it offers critical insights into some of the most fundamental and enduring questions asked by those studying IOs. The book is, in fact, the fourth installment in a series of increasingly sophisticated studies that develop systematic measures of authority and institutional design, both above and below the state, and which collectively advance a “postfunctional” theory of governance. The first two books measure (Volume I) and account for (Volume II) different institutional designs within states, mainly looking at the growing authority of regional governments. Volume III adapts the concepts and techniques used in Volume I to the international level, measuring the rise of authority beyond the state. Two principal components are conceptualized as being at the core of this phenomenon: delegation (the degree to which a secretariat is empowered to make policies and decisions on the behalf of member states) and pooling (mainly, the degree to which decisions are made through majority rule). The dataset developed by Hooghe, Lenz and Marks reveals that, overall, delegation and pooling have risen steadily between 1950 and 2010, although there is considerable variation across institutions as well.
* Charles B. Roger [email protected]
1
Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals, Campus de la Ciutadella, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Carrer de Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27 (Rm. 24.205), 08008 Barcelona, Spain
Roger C.B.
In A Theory of International Organization, the final book in the series, the postfunctional theory developed in Volume II is extended to make sense of these patterns. The central contention is that the rise of international authority is a product of both functional and social drivers. Many IOs, the authors claim, are created for purely functional reasons, as a large literature already suggests. Institutions like the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (
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