Compensating for limitations in domestic output performance? Member state delegation of policy competencies to regional international organizations
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117820970320 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820970320
International Relations
2021, Vol. 35(1) 90 –125
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117820970320
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Compensating for limitations
in domestic output
performance? Member
state delegation of policy
competencies to regional
international organizations
Diana Panke
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
Abstract
Cooperation in regional international organizations (RIOs) can help member states to work
toward and perhaps achieve policy goals that would not be feasible unilaterally. Thus, RIOs might
be used as a means of states to compensate for domestic shortcomings in output performance.
Do states equip RIOs with policy competencies in order to compensate corresponding domestic
performance shortcomings? The analysis of a novel database on policy competencies of 76 RIOs
between 1945 and 2015 reveals that usually RIOs are not usually used as window-dressing devices
by which states disguise limited domestic output performance. Instead, governments tend to
equip RIOs with policy competencies in order to further strengthen their already good output
performance in most policy areas. However, in the policy area, ‘energy’ states tend to confer
more competencies to their respective RIOs, the worse they perform domestically, indicating
that output-related compensation dynamics might be at play in this field.
Keywords
comparative analysis, comparative regionalism, legitimacy, member states, output performance,
policy areas, policy competencies, regional cooperation, regional international organizations
1. Introduction
Cooperation in regional international organizations (RIOs)1 allows member states to
work toward and perhaps achieve policy goals that would not be feasible unilaterally.
Corresponding author:
Diana Panke, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Belfortstr. 20, 79085 Freiburg, D-Germany.
Email: Diana.Panke@politik.uni-freiburg.de
892040IRE0010.1177/0047117820970320International RelationsPanke
research-article2020
Article
Panke 91
Thus, it is not surprising that institutionalized cooperation between three or more states
on the basis of regional proximity is neither a recent, nor a European phenomenon.2
Regional cooperation took place in two waves: after the end of WWII and again after the
end of the Cold War,3 resulting in 76 RIOs.4 Member states initially equipped many of
these RIOs with policy competencies in only few policy areas (e.g. economy and trade
as prominent choices), but used treaty changes, annexes, appendices, and protocols as
means to broaden the policy competencies over the course of time.
This article investigates one potential incentive for the delegation of policy competen-
cies from member states to RIOs, namely whether states broaden policy mandates of
RIOs in order to compensate limited domestic output performance. The comparative
regionalism literature makes the argument that states that underperform with respect to
the domestic provision of basic services have incentives to join RIOs and delegate policy
competencies to them in order to compensate for their limited domestic output legiti-
macy.5 This compensation can take different forms: first, collectively states might
achieve policy results that they cannot realize on their own; second, states might receive
support through their RIOs that helps to boost their domestic output performance, for
instance through horizontal learning, best practices, or funds; third, states might get
external recognition from third states and boost their domestic legitimacy in this manner;
fourth, states might delegate policy competencies to RIOs in order to be able to engage
in blame-shifting afterward – should RIO policies or activities meet domestic opposition;
and fifth, states might delegate policy competencies to RIOs – even if these do not act on
this basis – in order to showcase activity vis-à-vis their domestic constituencies and
thereby window-dress their limited domestic performance.6 Accordingly, the research
question is, ‘Do states delegate policy competencies to RIOs in order to compensate for
shortcoming in their own domestic output performance?’
This question is approached in four steps: first, the argument is explicated and poten-
tial alternative explanations are discussed in section ‘Theoretical accounts of states’
incentives to delegate policy competencies to RIOs ’. The subsequent section draws on
a novel and comprehensive database, the Regional Organization Competencies (ROCO)
database. It introduces the dependent variable of this article, member state delegation of
policy mandates to RIOs, and presents the patterns of how states differ concerning how
extensively they equip their RIOs with policy competencies in section ‘Equipping RIOs
with policy competencies’. The hypotheses on state incentives to broaden policy man-
dates of their respective RIOs are subjected to an empirical plausibility probe in the
subsequent section ‘Analysis and discussion ’. This reveals that incentives of states to
furnish their respective RIOs with policy competencies vary. Concerning energy policy,
states are generally the more willing to equip their RIOs with competencies the more
domestic difficulties concerning output performance they face. Yet, in other policy
fields, such as ‘development’ or ‘economy’, countries are more likely to cover corre-
sponding policy competencies through their RIO, the better their domestic performance
already is. This suggests that equipping RIOs with policy competencies is not a win-
dow-dressing exercise per se, used by states to compensate limitations of domestic out-
put performance. The analysis also shows that democratic states are generally more
likely to cover higher numbers of different policy competencies in their RIOs than
autocratic states. This effect is even bigger the less output performance democracies
92 International Relations 35(1)
achieve in agricultural or energy policies. Yet, in the majority of policy areas, democra-
cies do not delegate competencies to RIOs to balance difficulties in domestic policy
performance, but rather to further enhance the latter. A similar conclusion can be drawn
for autocratic states. They equip their RIOs with more competencies when their output
performance is limited in the environmental, energy, and finance realm. In all other
policy areas, autocracies tend to delegate more competencies where their domestic per-
formance is already better.
2. Theoretical accounts of states’ incentives to delegate
policy competencies to RIOs
This article is x-centered in nature;7 its research question seeks to uncover whether states
delegate policy competencies to RIOs in order to compensate for problems in the domes-
tic provision of public goods. RIO policy competencies are laid down in their primary
law (e.g. Treaties, cf. section ‘Analysis and discussion’), which is created and changed in
Conferences of the Parties (CoPs). In CoPs, every RIO member state has one vote and
decisions are taken unanimously. Hence, RIOs can only be equipped with (additional)
policy competencies, if each of the member states agrees to do so. Thus, the core hypoth-
eses focus on conditions under which a state might be inclined to equip RIOs with policy
competencies.8 In a second step, it draws on state-of-the-art approaches on regional
cooperation in order to identify control factors against which the core hypothesis will be
empirically examined in section ‘Equipping RIOs with policy competencies’.
States can generate compliance with their laws on the basis of force, self-interest, or
legitimacy.9 While self-interest is volatile since not every citizen might consider each
law as being in her own interest, and since governance by force would require unlimited
enforcement resources and capacities, legitimacy is usually regarded as the most impor-
tant driving force for state stability in the long run.10 There is much literature on sources
of legitimacy, defined as the generalized willingness of citizens to accept and comply
with political decisions – irrespective of their content,11 many of which differentiate
between input and output legitimacy.12 The former refers to the acceptance of the institu-
tional design or the political system as appropriate in general,13 and the ability of the citi-
zens living in a political system to exert influence through democratic decision-making
structures in particular.14 Output legitimacy is the perception that a state performs well in
generating and delivering public goods.15 As data on output performance are available
for a large number of states, over a long period of time, and for different policy areas,
while this is not the case for output legitimacy (see section ‘Analysis and discussion’),
the analytical and empirical focus of this article is on output performance, defined as the
performance of states with respect to the provision of public goods.
Empirically, the performance of states varies when it comes to the provision of public
goods, such as infrastructure, health care, or education, to name but a few.16 Some states
perform well across a broad array of policy areas and are likely to succeed to create out-
put legitimacy on this basis. Others struggle to govern effectively in the domestic realm.17
They have difficulties to provide public goods or might even be unable to do so at all, and
are therefore unlikely to achieve high levels of output legitimacy.
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