This Text Deals with the Systematic Failure of International Organization and Its Consequences

Sonia COVA Fiche de lecture 29/04/04

The limites of International Organizations: Sytematic Failure in the Management of International Relations By Giulio M.Gallarotti

This text, written by Giulio M.Gallarotti, is an article taken from “International Organizations” by Lisa Martin and Beth Simmons. It deals with the systematic failure of international organization and its consequences on the international system. By using and analysing the different literature about this subject, the author tries to prove that, most of the time, failure is due to poor management of international relations. The article is divided in three parts. First, a discussion of the managerial approach to Io and the recent revisionist scolarship is given. Second, the author presents a critique of managerialism explaining the four ways an IO can fail. Finally, limited IO is presented as a solution to their systematic failure. I am going to resume the contents of the article, and then, I am going to criticize it.

According to the text, the traditional IO scholars have a too restricted view of the multilateral management process and it is not enough critical toward IO failure. The functionalists, his first example, think that the growth of IO is consistent with the ongoing evolution and the greater centralization of functions in human society. Indeed, the growth of interdependancy and interests between nations justified the existence of IO. The neofunctionalists have a quite similar view of IO: as the pressures for integration spread laterally and vertically, the level and scope of international management must be expanded. Authors like Ernsy Haas and Ruggie, who are at the origin of this theory, call for a “collective response” to the impact of economic development and technological and scientific interdependance. They argue, like Edwar Morse, that the attainment of basic domestic policy goals can no longer be realized through independant actions. The same argument are used by the literature about international relations in general. Indeed, authors like Seyom Brown, Larry Fabian or Stanley Hoffman and others argue

1 Sonia COVA Fiche de lecture 29/04/04 that IO must grow to integrate inherent conflictual interests and to subordonate market forces. Some also call for a “new Bretton Woods”. The author of the article, in his way of presenting these thesis seems very critical becaus the cause of the IO systematic failure is not even mentionned in this kind of litterature. The more recent visionary scholars have been more critical towards IO and their actions, especially towards the UN, which is considered as a destabilizing force in international politics.This litterature generally agrees that supranational management is often a source of inefficiencies between nations by interfering with the national management ( especially in the economic place). Thus, a more decentralized approach is recommanded.

The second part of the article is a critique of the managerialism literrature analyzed above. The author explains that the systematic failure of IO, in contrary with unsystematic failure, is considered as inherent in or endemic to IO. He explains the fours different ways in which IO can generally fail. First, IO can be destabilizing when it attempts to manage complex, tightly coupled systems. International relations are complicated and their issues often unpredictable because of the numerous connections between many variables they make. Thus, according to Charles Perrow, period crises are normal and they are the rule rather than the exception. He argues that IO can not avoid these crises and that they often exacerbates these problems by offering solutions with unpredictable effects. This phenomenon is known as the “interdependance” and has its own litterature with authors like Robert Keohane, Joseph Nye, Richard Cooper and James Rosenau, who are cited as references in the article. According to this litterature, the international political economy is the best illustration of the scheme described above. Thus, the author takes the U.S. deficit with Japan in 1985 as an example to show that attempts at managing the complex, tightly coupled system of political economic relations have not made the situation better, if it is not even worst. The reason of a bad outcome due to IO action, according to the author, is that IO often offer linear solutions to a tightly couped problem. Paul Streeten argues that, with respect to the problems of economic development and poverty, several

2 Sonia COVA Fiche de lecture 29/04/04 actions must be taken together, in the right order. Has he says, “ scientists may have a solution for every problem, but development has a problem for every solution”.

Second, IO can provide adverse substitution for nations. Indeed, by taking in charge nation problems and social and economic costs, IO often discourage nations from seeking more substantive and long-term resolutions to their problem. As the author argues, “ the problem of substitution is sytematic because it is the nature of IO to solve international and domestic problems”. To illustrate his argument, the author analyzes the effects of the U.N action in conflict resolutions. He shows that such actions can make nations postpon crucial security decisions . Moreover, within the U.N, it is shown that one superpower is always favored over the other, especially during the Cold War. IO funds are also very criticized, citing the food aid parograms as example. He says that these types of programs has served to reduce agricultural self-sufficiency in the long run and disrupted local system of food production and distributions in many countries. As Jan Tumlir argued, IO should have as principal goal to limit this substitution and enhance responsible policies at home because domestic problems have a tendency to spill over and become international problems.

Third, IO can intensify disputes because nations often use them as a mean to further their own goals what create confrontational behaviors. The UN, for example, has often be used to promote conflicts and has served as a forum to embarrass nations. Indeed, this is a place where insults are common, verbal agression being the favorite weapon used by the Soviet Union dilpomates toward the U.S. This is why the U.N is known to have been used as an instrument during the cold war because the goal of these nations was to control and obtain superpower within the oganization. Some authors even considered that the U.N. became a “threat to peace”. In consequences, today, more and more nations are reluctant to bring disputes or conflicts to IO that are known to be easily manipulated by some superpowerful nation. Another side effect is that IO can sometimes takes sides in a dispute, because of political or economical pressures, as the U.N. was often criticized to do so.

3 Sonia COVA Fiche de lecture 29/04/04

Fourth, the author introduced the concept of moral hazard defined as “ situations in which a nation is relieved of the obligations of incurring the full costs of its social, economic or political actions because some protective scheme allows it to impose the costs onto other nations through risk sharing”. According to him, moral hazard discourages individually responsible behavior on the nations part. Many Ios are given as exemple, such as the International Energy Agency, the GATT, the OECD, the IMF..., for providing insurance to nations that create negative effects in encouraging them to be reckless in the management of their domestic economies and politicies.

Finally, the author is giving us a better approach of the problem by offering the solution of more limited internation organizations in cases of systematic failure, as described above. Historically, IO has not used extensive management while today, with the growth of decentralization, many managerialists like Irving Friedman are calling for a more regulated system with more institutional structure, as a New Breton Woods. They fear a less centralized management because they oversetimate the losses it can generate and they see disorder where it may not exist. As an example, the author talks about tariffs that can have adverse effects on social welfare and on nation’s capital balance. Then, based on the work of Kehoane and Nye, the author gives us the different form of limited IO that are suggested by the critical literature. First, IO’s princpal function should be to reduce the organization costs (asymmetric information, deception, irresponsability...) so stable relations and exchanges become easier. Second, the litterature on regimes suggest substitutes for control schemes by implementing stronger norms and principles that could reduce the need for extensive management and facilitate the convergence of expectations about international behavior. Third, an institutionally assisted market solution is preferable to an extensive managerial scheme because thus, government can adopt new rules and decision according to the international law without the intervention of IO. Fourth, the functionalist concept of “ technical self-determination” is introduced. According to this concept, this is the nature of technological problems that will dictate

4 Sonia COVA Fiche de lecture 29/04/04 the scope and level of supranational regulation. Neofunctionalists argue that with more technology, less management is necessary. Another idea, brought up by the literrature on collective action, suggests that IO must be limited because IO with limited membership are more effective than large IO in both eleminating bads and procuring goods. After argumenting in favor of limited IO, the author askes himself what are the conditions for limited IO to be effective. He argues that management will most likely be effective where it is least likely to emerge (such as cooperation in security relations that is less visible than in economic relations) and when it encourages substantive and long- term solutions to problems and when it is not a vehicle of international competition.

In his conclusion, the author makes a strong critic toward the traditional literature about IO, arguing that it does not recognize enough the adverse effects that IO can have. According to him, even if the revisionary scholars have underlied the organizational failur, they do not bring any solutions and their view is still too restrictive. He criticizes the method and the scope of their analyze that are too narrow to view that the cause of systematic IO failure is management. He thinks that the problems of IO should be considered in conjunction with the effects generated by the managerial schemes: “the specific roles, functions, and goals of IO should be dictated both by the nature or underlying strategic structures of the international problems and by the potential positive and negative effects of possible managed solutions”.

This article is very complete in its theorical contents and in its development. However, I found it hard to read and to understand at the first time. I think that the author, even if his plan is clear, can be a little bit confusing by citing so many different authors and type of literature. May be my misunderstood sometimes was due to a lack of knowledge about the subject. Once I get over the text and read it three more times, I found the contents very interesting. By developping first the traditional litterature about IO, the author gives a large scope of the different theories and visions about the role and effects of IO. Since the beginning we can see that the author does not agree with these different schemes because he is not

5 Sonia COVA Fiche de lecture 29/04/04 always very objective in his analyze and description. Even if I consider the firts part to be too dense in information, I learn many things. The critique of managerialism is much more understanble because the fours ways of failure are very detailled and illustrated with good examples. I discovered some new explainations for disputes or economical problems that I had never analyzed this way. This part gave me new tools of analyze that enlarged my scope, even if I do not always agree with the different theories. Concerning the examples, I found them very interesting except the one about the economic crisis of the U.S. and Japan. I think that the author begins a too complex explanation that necessitates many knowledges that only specialists have. Thus the discussion becomes, one more time, confusing and losses its main interest. The last part, in which the author pretends to give a solution to IO systematic failure is clear and very easy to understand. However, I found it a little bit easy for the author of the article to make such a strong critique of the traditional Io litterature and pretend that limited maagement is the best answer. Thus, all the article is made of other author works that he gathered and criticized. If at least he would have gave us, in the last part, his own theorical apport and proposal, that would have give him some credits. But even here he just lists the different litterature as an illustration to his argument.