Speaker:
Julia Gray, Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania

As international organizations endure, they often must adjust to changing circumstances. Yet when organizations expand their scope or change their mandates, is this evidence of useful adaptation or of overextension? Furthermore, is the motivation for those changes coming from the needs of member states, or is it simply an effort on the part of the institutional bureaucracy to survive? This paper demonstrates, as some have suggested, that many international economic organizations have expanded their scope and increased their institutionalization in the past several years. But many have done so in a bid to attract external financing from organizations such as the European Union and the international financial institutions, thereby prolonging the life of organizations that are sometimes inefficient. These expansions are often infrequently implemented, and they may be more reflective of donor interests than of member-state initiatives. This implies that organizational design, as it evolves, may stem less from the needs of member states and more from the survival instincts of bureaucracies – thereby challenging the predominant view that international organizations center on member-state bargains, and offer insight as to why some organizations persist despite poor records of implementation.

PS 595 Credit