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Outside and inside competition for international organizations—from analysis to innovations

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Abstract

The analysis of the competitive environment of international organizations has been neglected in scholarly research. Both the external and the internal type of competition in international organizations are rather weak and their performance is far from ideal. To strengthen both types of competition, several tentative proposals are advanced. They range from the introduction of an international competition agency, competition rules, a monitoring institute, voucher systems, matching contributions, popular participation rights by citizens to the use of prediction markets and institutionalized devil’s advocates. These proposals are put forward to stimulate discussion and to advance new ideas about the design of international organizations.

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Notes

  1. For an extensive, but incomplete list see “List of International Organizations” in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_international_organizations; Non-governmental organizations; International_organization) all accessed January 29th, 2008.

  2. For the extensive literature on the voluntary provision of international public goods see, e.g., Murdoch and Sandler (1997) and Barrett (2007).

  3. The term “competition” starts from the premise that international organizations are independent units, each seeking the best outcome for itself. In contrast, “inter-organizational networking” (Biermann 2008) implies that it is a beneficial “response to challenges of transnational character that single organizations (and states) cannot master on their own” (p. 173).

  4. An exception are large scandals, which decision makers of international organizations go through great trouble to avoid, and even more so, to suppress the surfacing of the respective information.

  5. For the institution of direct democracy see, e.g., Kriesi (2005), for econometric analyses of their consequences on production see Kirchgässner et al. (1999), and on happiness Frey and Stutzer (2002), Frey (2008).

  6. I owe this proposal to Felix Oberholzer-Gee.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstr. 30, 8006, Zurich, Switzerland

    Bruno S. Frey

  2. CREMA—Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Basel, Switzerland

    Bruno S. Frey

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  1. Bruno S. Frey
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Correspondence to Bruno S. Frey.

Additional information

I am grateful to Simon Luechinger, Susanne Neckermann, Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Dina Pomeranz for their helpful suggestions, and Isabel Ellenberger for improving the English.

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Frey, B.S. Outside and inside competition for international organizations—from analysis to innovations. Rev Int Organ 3, 335–350 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-008-9045-2

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