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Cross‐level coordination among international organizations: Dilemmas and practices
Author(s) -
Mele Valentina,
Cappellaro Giulia
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.313
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-9299
pISSN - 0033-3298
DOI - 10.1111/padm.12525
Subject(s) - dilemma , agency (philosophy) , government (linguistics) , perception , elite , public relations , field (mathematics) , set (abstract data type) , business , political science , sociology , psychology , politics , social science , philosophy , linguistics , mathematics , epistemology , neuroscience , pure mathematics , law , computer science , programming language
This article contributes to the understanding of inter‐agency coordination among international organizations, conceived as international public administrations (IPAs). We adopt a practice‐based approach to study the dilemmas of coordination across levels of government in the empirical setting of United Nations agencies involved in field‐level development activities. Based on elite interviews in both pilot countries and agency headquarters, complemented by extensive archival analysis, we track the emergence of a specific type of coordination dilemma that has been understudied, that is, the dilemma of inter‐ and intra‐agency coordination. We identify two sets of coordinating practices that aided in balancing the dilemma, that is, ‘systemic thinking’ and ‘jointly mobilizing resources and consensus’, and we discuss the organizational factors mediating the perception of each set of practices.