Locating the Proper Authorities

In this era of democratization and globalization, heads of state compete with parliamentarians, bureaucrats, international secretariats, regional governors, and nongovernmental organizations for authority over government policy. How do these policy entrepreneurs bargain with one another to govern? How do they use international organizations as a means of bypassing or overcoming opposition to policy change?

International relations theorists have traditionally focused on the ways that leaders' domestic constraints affect their bargaining positions internationally. In Locating the Proper Authorities, some of the most promising theorists attack these questions from a new perspective, analyzing how foreign policy leaders use international institutions to contract, coerce, or persuade domestic opposition groups into acquiescence. Using constructivist, game-theoretic, statistical, and case-study models, the contributors eschew state-centrism by dividing the relevant actors into policy initiators and policy ratifiers. By examining the effects of different institutional design features, this volume clarifies the ways in which international organizations shape the negotiations between the initiators and ratifiers of international policies.

Locating the Proper Authorities addresses a broad array of issues, including humanitarian intervention, trade dispute settlement, economic development, democratic transition, and security cooperation. The empirical essays are diverse in terms of both subject matter and methodological approach. The broad case selection in this volume also incorporates developing countries, which are too often ignored in international relations and less well-known in international organizations. This helps correct a potential bias in the literature, leading to conclusions that more accurately represent the full universe of countries and institutions.

Daniel W. Drezner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Praise / Awards

• "This excellent scholarly treatment covers an aspect of international relations that will only become more central. . . . This volume treads an as-yet lightly traveled path, looking at the interplay between international institutions and domestic actors making and implementing policy. Thus, the volume contributes important new insight, backed by rigorous theoretical modeling and empirical material in the form of case studies."
  —Choice
  
• ". . . a significant development in the two-level game literature. It reestablishes the importance of the interaction of domestic and international actors in world politics, and it produces highly suggestive arguments and evidence that IOs can change domestic policy choices."
  —Perspectives on Politics