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Analyzing international organizations: How the concepts we use affect the answers we get

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Abstract

We explore how “international organizations” have been conceptualized and operationalized in the field of International Relations (IR), identify an important gap between the two, and demonstrate how this shapes our understanding of world politics. Traditionally, we show, IR has embraced a broad conception of international organizations (IOs) that appreciates variation in design. However, the literature has largely coalesced around a measurement standard that reflects the characteristics of major postwar IOs. Prevailing measures, therefore, mainly count formal IOs—bodies founded with legally binding agreements—and omit informal IOs, which are founded with non-binding instruments. We argue that this produces a disconnect between theory and empirical evidence used in the field, since scholars frequently make arguments about IOs in general but draw inferences from formal IOs only. After reviewing how this disconnect has emerged, we use an original dataset on state membership in 260 informal IOs to reanalyze a number of important studies, showing heterogeneous effects for subtypes of IOs that conflict with existing theories to varying degrees. These differences imply that formal and informal IOs have different effects and that existing findings in the field are partly artifacts of the specific way IO variables have been operationalized by scholars. Based on this, we offer recommendations for how to improve research practices moving forward.

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Notes

  1. According to Google Scholar, the dataset has been cited in over 500 papers, making it by far the most widely cited dataset of IOs.

  2. The COW dataset was recently extended from 2005 to 2014 (Pevehouse et al., 2020).

  3. Readers who are interested in the conceptualization of IOs will find more information in section 1 of the online appendix of our article. There, we walk through three important cases, and explain how IOs are related to other frequently discussed varieties of cross-border governance.

  4. Sometimes the term “international organization” is applied to international non-governmental organizations. See Wallace and Singer’s extensive discussion of international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in relation to COW (Wallace & Singer, 1970, 247, 240–241). In this article, we are only concerned with public international organizations that involve agreements among states.

  5. Ironically, all are included in the COW dataset, despite violating the third criterion for inclusion. In total, we find that over 30 institutions are “miscoded” as formal IOs in a similar manner.

  6. Note that, as such, the definition used to generate the underlying dataset is somewhat wider than the one employed by Vabulas and Snidal (2013). In their work, for instance, the absence of an independent secretariat is regarded as a defining feature of informal IOs. In this dataset, by contrast, greater emphasis is placed on an institution’s legal nature under international public law. As a result, IOs may be regarded as informal even if they possess secretariats, provided their constitutive agreements are indeed non-binding. For further discussion of the basic dataset, see the appendix.

  7. For further details on the Yearbook, including its advantages and underlying biases, see Saunier (2019).

  8. A related situation is a study estimating the effect of IO membership that finds a null statistical result using the COW dataset, but where properly operationalizing IO membership to include informal IOs would actually recover the effect. Unfortunately, due to well-known bias against publication of null findings, it is not possible for us to explore this possibility systematically here, though the effect of omitting informal IOs may be theoretically important in such cases.

  9. Of course, it also possible that other venues, like public-private partnerships, may constitute such forums for socialization. If so, an even more expansive measure may be appropriate. However, our reanalysis is a relatively conservative one that hews closely to Greenhill’s original analysis by focusing on organizations that most plausibly fall within the scope conditions of his theory. We take the same approach in the other cases we examine. Future researchers may find it useful to relax this constraint.

  10. Regression tables in the main text have been abbreviated. Full tables that include coefficients for control variables are available in the appendix.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge helpful comments on earlier drafts from Sarah Bush, Mette Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Ezequiel Gonzales-Ocantos, Yoram Haftel, Thomas Hale, Ranjit Lall, Yonatan Lupu, Tyler Pratt, Duncan Snidal, Alexandra Zeitz, as well as audiences at IBEI’s research seminar, and the International Studies Association and Political Economy of International Organization annual conferences. Charles Roger would also like to acknowledge the generous support for this project received from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), Barcelona, Spain

    Charles B. Roger

  2. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada

    Sam S. Rowan

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Correspondence to Charles B. Roger.

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Author contributions to research design and conceptualization: C.R. (50%), S.R. (50%); statistical analysis: C.R. (50%), S.R. (50%); writing: C.R. (50%), S.R. (50%). The order of authors is chosen alphabetically.

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Roger, C.B., Rowan, S.S. Analyzing international organizations: How the concepts we use affect the answers we get. Rev Int Organ 17, 597–625 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-021-09432-2

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