Magnus Lundgren

The performance of international organizations: a policy output approach

ABSTRACT Many problems confronting today’s societies are transnational in character, leading states to increasingly rely on international organizations (IOs) for policy solutions. Yet, the performance of IOs varies extensively. This contribution suggests that systematic, comparative research is required to advance our understanding of IO performance, and that a policy output approach offers particular advantages for that purpose. This approach privileges the results IOs produce in terms of policies, and is distinct from the main alternative approaches to IO performance, emphasizing either behavioural change by targets (policy outcome) or problem-solving effectiveness (policy impact). The contribution introduces a typology that captures five generic features of policy – volume, orientation, type, instrument and target – and explains how these dimensions may be used to map the output and assess the performance of IOs. The contribution concludes by discussing what methods and theories may be most useful in explaining policy output, as the research agenda on IO performance advances.

Conflict Management Capabilities of Peace-Brokering International Organizations, 1945-2010: A New Dataset

The expectation that international organizations (IOs) can play a role in the resolution of violent conflict has spawned a process of institutional growth in the post-Second World War period. IOs at all levels have expanded existing instruments of conflict management and have gradually established new ones, such as mediation support units, early warning systems and standby military forces. Empirical research on this process has suffered from a lack of systematic, cross-temporal data. Seeking to rectify this weakness, this article introduces an original dataset on the institutional design of 21 peace-brokering IOs, organizations endowed with standing capabilities for conflict management interventions. The dataset contains yearly observations on 14 institutional variables during the 1945–2010 period, centered around three instruments of IO conflict management: mediation, economic sanctions and peacekeeping. It also includes observations on IO membership characteristics, power polarity and a set of security-related institutional features. This dataset provides scholars with a new source of variables for the study of institutional evolution, institutional heterogeneity and the impact of institutional characteristics on IO performance. A preliminary descriptive analysis shows that IOs display significant variation in terms of mandates, capabilities and rates of change. Using the data, I also perform a re-appraisal of an earlier study on IO dispute resolution, demonstrating the analytic benefits of having disaggregated measures of institutional design.

Leanings and Dealings: Exploring Bias and Trade Leverage in Civil War Mediation by International Organizations

Two characteristics of mediators – bias and leverage – are discussed intensively in the research on international mediation. However, whereas bias and leverage have been examined in mediation by states, relatively little is known about their role in mediation by international organizations (ios). This study provides new ways of conceptualizing io bias and leverage and utilizes unique data to measure the impact of io bias and leverage on mediation outcomes. Exploring all cases of civil war mediation by ios in the period 1975–2004, we find that ios where member states provide support to both sides in a conflict outperform ios whose member states remain disinterested. ios with significant trade leverage also increase the likelihood of mediation success. The study demonstrates that ios rarely have a neutral relationship to civil war combatants, that mediation by ios is laden with member state interests, and that such interests shape outcomes.

Mediation in Syria: initiatives, strategies, and obstacles, 2011–2016

ABSTRACT This article investigates mediation efforts in Syria from the outbreak of the civil war in 2011 through the spring of 2016. It describes the principal initiatives, analyses differences and similarities across mediators, and identifies strategic obstacles that prevented substantive progress. Focusing on mediation initiatives undertaken by the Arab League and the United Nations, it finds that there is considerable path dependence across efforts and that most of the limited achievements, notably ceasefires in 2012 and 2016, resulted from the application of external leverage. Settlement in Syria was conditioned on overcoming significant commitment problems, aggravated by sectarian mistrust, the fractured nature of the opposition, and international disunity. The article contributes the first review of mediation in Syria that comprehends the conflict in its entirety, systematizes data for research on conflict management, and evaluates existing mediation policy in Syria with an eye to the future.

Backdoor Peacekeeping: Does Participation in UN Peacekeeping Reduce Coups at Home?

I advance and test a theoretical argument of how participation in UN peacekeeping affects the likelihood of coup attempts in troop-contributing countries (TCCs). The argument highlights the interplay between the economic incentives of militaries in poor TCCs and the UN’s preference for contributors with stable civil–military relations. Fearing the loss of UN reimbursement funds, militaries for which such funds are important will avoid visible acts of military insubordination, such as coup attempts, that would place their future participation in UN peacekeeping at risk. I test this proposition against time-series cross-sectional data on 157 countries in the 1991–2013 period using panel regression and matching. The data show that countries where the armed forces are more dependent on peacekeeping revenues experience fewer coup attempts than comparable peers, even when taking coup-proofing measures and other alternative explanations into account. I also find that the coup-restraining effect is only observed in periods where member states contribute enough troops to award the UN a real choice over alternative contributors. The study introduces a novel theoretic logic, presents empirical results at odds with the existing literature, and suggests important policy implications with regard to UN vetting and standards for troop-contributing countries.

Taking center stage: Decoding status hierarchies from group photos of European leaders:

I investigate whether group photos of international leaders can provide useful data on interstate status perceptions. I formulate a spatial model of social hierarchy and evaluate it against newly gathered data on the placement of leaders in 121 European Council group photos between 1975 and 2015. I find support for determinants of placement at the international, institutional, and individual levels. The results suggest that: (a) group photos provide a previously untapped source of data on international status; (b) data derived from group photos can supplement existing status proxies based on material capabilities or diplomatic connectivity; (c) group pictures can be particularly useful for discerning status hierarchies among sets of relatively homogenous countries, such as those of the European Union.