The long march through the institutions: Emerging powers and the staffing of international organizations

Published date01 June 2021
DOI10.1177/0010836720966017
AuthorMatthew D Stephen,Michal Parizek
Date01 June 2021
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836720966017
Cooperation and Conflict
2021, Vol. 56(2) 204 –223
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0010836720966017
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The long march through the
institutions: Emerging powers
and the staffing of international
organizations
Michal Parizek and Matthew D Stephen
Abstract
How successful have emerging powers been at increasing their representation within the
secretariats of international organizations (IOs)? We examine the representation of the BRIC
countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World
Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations (UN) System, including the UN Secretariat,
over the last two decades. The analysis reveals four major findings. First, some redistribution of
staff positions from established to emerging powers has taken place, but it has been relatively
minor. Second, nationals from emerging powers are still strongly under-represented in
international secretariats in comparison with those from established powers. Third, emerging
powers’ representation at the IMF and WTO increased more than in the UN, where it actually
declined. Fourth, there is strong variation between emerging powers: India appears to be the
most successful emerging power in sending its nationals to the secretariats of IOs, Brazil’s and
China’s records are mixed, and Russia has fared poorly. We interpret our findings in light of
international relations theories and theories of institutional path dependence. The results suggest
that staffing patterns are only loosely related to shifts in economic size and are subject to strong
independent institutional dynamics.
Keywords
Emerging powers, international organizations, path dependency, secretariats, staff
Introduction
A key challenge facing international organizations (IOs) today is to adapt to rapid
changes in the distribution of power amongst states. The dimension of this challenge that
has attracted the most attention—both from scholars and others—is the redistribution of
formal institutional privileges, such as voting shares at the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and World Bank or permanent seats on the UN Security Council (Ikenberry and
Corresponding author:
Matthew D Stephen, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Reichpietschufer 50, 10785 Berlin, Germany.
Email: matthew.stephen@wzb.eu
966017CAC0010.1177/0010836720966017Cooperation and ConflictParizek and Stephen
research-article2020
Article
Parizek and Stephen 205
Wright, 2008; Lipscy, 2016; Stephen, 2012; Vestergaard and Wade, 2015; Zangl et al.,
2016). Countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) have made it a foreign
policy priority to secure greater control over key international institutions, and this can
only come at the expense of established powers such as the United States (US) and coun-
tries of the European Union.
Yet states exercise control, gain prestige and secure resources not only through formal
institutional privileges but also informally via the placement of their own nationals on
IOs’ professional staffs.1 In light of the traditional predominance of the nationals of
developed countries within international secretariats (Novosad and Werker, 2019;
Parizek, 2017), it is not surprising that emerging powers such as China have sought to
increase their representation in the staffs of various international institutions (Liu, 2018).
The BRICS countries (including South Africa) annually repeat their calls to make IOs
such as the UN, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the IMF ‘more inclusive,
democratic and representative, including through greater participation of emerging mar-
kets and developing countries in international decision-making’ (BRICS, 2019: 2). They
have also called for a break from the Euro-American duopoly over the heads of the IMF
and World Bank (BRICS, 2012), and at the WTO, a group of countries including Brazil,
China and India have made improved representation of developing countries a major
staffing policy agenda.2
In light of the importance that emerging power governments have attached to person-
nel changes in IOs, it is surprising that we know so little about the degree of success (or
failure) of emerging powers in improving their positions in the secretariats of IOs. This
is doubly regrettable because secretariats can have important roles in shaping institu-
tions’ output and functioning (Eckhard, 2019; Eckhard and Ege, 2016; Hawkins et al.,
2006) and because, while not all international institutions contain formal institutional
hierarchies such as a limited number of permanent seats or weighted voting shares, all
have only a limited number of staff positions to distribute amongst their members.
In this article we examine to what extent emerging powers have increased their repre-
sentation on the staffs of the IMF, WTO and the UN over the last two decades. We rely
on quantitative data garnered from the IOs’ annual staffing reports, but also draw on
qualitative insights from 25 interviews with permanent representatives, their deputies
and other senior diplomats of the members’ permanent missions to the UN and the WTO
in Geneva in 2017 and 2018. Due to our interest in the position of emerging powers rela-
tive to established powers, we focus on the BRIC and G7 countries.3 The data reveals a
persistent chasm between the representation of emerging and established powers in inter-
national secretariats, although the chasm has narrowed somewhat over time.
The article proceeds as follows. First, we theorize emerging power representation in
IO secretariats from two international relations perspectives, a realist-inspired power-
oriented institutionalism, and a Gramsci-inspired perspective on co-optation. Although
differing in their explanatory logics, both perspectives would expect the staffs of IOs to
closely reflect changes in the global economy. We contrast this expectation with an insti-
tutional path dependency perspective, which emphasizes the roles of high barriers to
entry and network effects in shaping IO staffing. Second, we present our empirical find-
ings on the changing national composition of the secretariats of the IMF, the WTO and
more than 30 bodies of the UN System.4 Third, we interpret our results in light of our

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