Institutional Design and Bureaucrats’ Impact on Political Control

Why do governmental institutions look as they do, and who controls them? International relations scholars often point to states. However, two-thirds of today’s intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) were created not by states alone, but with participation by international bureaucrats working in preexisting IGOs. International bureaucrats’ design activities can be modest or proactive. Meanwhile, their interests differ from states’ interests: insulating their organizational family from state intervention facilitates international bureaucrats’ pursuit of material security, legitimacy, and policy advancement. The more proactive the design activities of international bureaucrats, I argue, the more insulated the resulting institution will be from mechanisms of state control (e.g., financial monopolization or veto power). Statistical analyses of an original dataset support the prediction and are robust to alternative specifications as well as approaches to control for endogeneity. The implications—concerning institutional design, principal-agent relationships, bureaucratic autonomy, and democratic deficits—go far beyond international relations.