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Measuring the Empowerment of International Organizations: The Evolution of Financial and Staff Capabilities
Author(s) -
Heldt Eugénia,
Schmidtke Henning
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
global policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.602
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1758-5899
pISSN - 1758-5880
DOI - 10.1111/1758-5899.12449
Subject(s) - scope (computer science) , delegation , extant taxon , principal (computer security) , corporate governance , power (physics) , empowerment , computer science , knowledge management , process management , business , finance , political science , economics , management , computer security , quantum mechanics , evolutionary biology , law , physics , biology , programming language
International organizations’ ( IOs ) power in shaping global governance outcomes is not only determined by the formal delegation of tasks and issue areas but also by the necessary capabilities to fulfill these tasks. Yet, extant research on the delegation of power to IO s gives few insights into the financial and staff capabilities of IO s and focuses mainly on the formal rules that specify IO s’ tasks and issue scope. To address these limitations, this paper makes three contributions. First, we propose a more encompassing concept of IO power which incorporates three principal components: tasks, issue scope, and capabilities. Second, we introduce a new concept – IO empowerment ( IOE ) – which encapsulates formal and informal changes in IO power over time. Third, we introduce a novel dataset on IO capabilities, which measures the formal rules governing IO staff and financial resources as well as the actual capabilities available to six well‐known IO s over 65 years. These original data show that capabilities vary not only across IO s but also over time.