Review: International Organizations: The International Civil Service
| Published date | 01 June 1992 |
| Date | 01 June 1992 |
| Author | Robert I. McLaren |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209204700210 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
Reviews
INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS
THE
INTERNATIONAL
CIVIL
SERVICE
A
study of
bureaucracy:
international
organizations
Hans
Mouritzen
Brookfield
VT:
Dartmouth,
1990,
xiv,
148pp,
US$
52.9 5
In
this
journal
in
1982,
at
the
end
of
his
review
of
my
book,
Civil
Servants
and
Public
Policy,
Leon
Gordenker called
for
more empirical
studies
of
the secretariats
of
international
organizations
(ios).
Mouritz-
en's
is
one such book
and
it
builds
nicely
on
my
research
findings.
Mouritzen
goes
far
beyond
anything
that
I
attempted
ten
years
ago.
His
purpose
is
to
'establish
the
foundation
for
general
theory
pertaining
to
the
conditions, influence
and
creativity
of
the
[international
civil
service]'
(p
4).
In
accordance
with this
aim,
his
focus
is
the
'individual
issue
area not
the
io'
(p
5).
After
two
chapters
outlining,
first,
the
environment,
values,
and
roles
of
the
international
civil
service,
and,
second,
the
problem
of
internationalism
for
this body,
he
moves
to
the
heart
of
his
model
and
the
hypotheses
concerning
the
influence
of
these
people.
Mouritzen's
major
initiative
is
to insert
'the height
of
politics'
(pp
69
ff)
as
a
significant
variable.
Whether
an
issue-area
is
one
of
high
or
low
politics
is
hypothesized
to
create
a
high,
medium,
or
low
influ-
ence
for
the
international
civil
service,
depending
upon
whether
the
needs'
location
of
the
issue-area
is
between
or
within
countries.
(High/
low
and
within/between
create
a
fourfold
table,
but
Mouritzen
rightly
dismisses
the
high-within
issue-area category
as
irrelevant
to
Ios
since
it
will
be
pursued
domestically
not
internationally.)
To
keep
his
research
as
pure
as
possible,
Mouritzen
then
uses
a
single
io,
the
North
Atlantic
Treaty
Organization
(NATO),
to
investi-
gate
secretariat
influence
in
the
three
remaining
issue-areas,
and
he
finds
evidence
to
confirm
his
hypotheses.
Mouritzen
has
used
a
political
science
approach
where
I
used
that
of
administrative
theory,
and
he
used
one
io
for
his
empirical
evidence
where
I
used
five.
For
all
that,
the
two
studies
are
quite
complemen-
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