LIST OF PANELS

In recent years, scholars have started to increasingly study the role of international and transnational administration in global (public) policy (Stone & Ladi, 2015; Stone & Moloney, 2019). Today, it is an established finding, for instance, that International Public Administrations (IPAs), i.e., the secretariats of international organizations (IOs) that constitute the international counterparts to national administrative bodies, wield independent influence on the development and implementation of public policies (Biermann & Siebenhüner, 2009). Previous research has successfully identified different administrative, political and context-related factors that might enable bureaucratic influence on global policies to occur. However, an integrative approach that allows for the systematic empirical analysis of several explanatory factors under a common theoretical framework has not yet emerged (Eckhard & Ege, 2016). An important reason for this deficit is the dearth of comparative policy studies that would allow researchers to identify and explain variation in bureaucratic influence across policy cases.

Against this background, the panel aims to contribute to the current debates on transnational and international public administration as well as global policy, IO policy-making and policy implementation in order to advance the study of the policy impact of international bureaucracies. Starting from the assumption that policy-making is a result of (often strategic) interactions among multiple actors that vary substantially in terms of their policy-making capacities and goals, two major questions emerge that will be addressed in the panel:

How can we conceptualize and measure bureaucratic influence on IO policy-making and global public policy (especially across cases)?

What are relevant administrative tools and strategies and how are they used to exert policy influence?

References:

Biermann, F., & Siebenhüner, B. (Eds.). (2009). Managers of Global Change: The Influence of International Environmental Bureaucracies. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.

Eckhard, S., & Ege, J. (2016). International bureaucracies and their influence on policy-making: A review of empirical evidence. Journal of European Public Policy, 23, 960–978.

Stone, D., & Ladi, S. (2015). Global Policy and Transnational Administration. Public Administration, 4, 839–855.

Stone, D., & Moloney, K. (2019). The Rise of Global Policy and Transnational Administration. In D. Stone & K. Moloney (Eds.), Oxford Handbook on Global Policy and Transnational Administration (pp. 1–25). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Scholars have started to increasingly study the role of international and transnational administration in global (public) policy. Previous research has successfully identified different administrative, political and context-related factors that might enable bureaucratic influence to occur. However, an integrative approach that allows for the systematic empirical analysis of several explanatory factors under a common theoretical framework has not yet emerged. Thus, we still lack systematic knowledge of how international administrative bodies affect policy-making processes of IOs and global governance more generally. An important reason for this deficit is the dearth of comparative policy studies that would allow researchers to identify and explain variation in bureaucratic influence across policy cases.

Against this background, the panel aims to contribute to the current debates on transnational and international public administration as well as global policy, IO policy-making and policy implementation in order to advance the study of the policy impact of international bureaucracies. Based on this (broadly understood) perspective, the panel invites papers from different social science disciplines that study the administrative toolkit for policy-related action available to individual and collective administrative actors in order to conceptualize, describe and explain their policy impact.

The panel is especially interested in papers that aim to conceptualize and measure bureaucratic influence on IO policy-making and global public policy across cases. We also especially welcome papers that ask what are relevant administrative tools and strategies and how are they used to exert policy influence?

The panel invites conceptual and empirical research on bureaucratic influence in the provision of (global) public policy that may come from a variety of disciplines such as Policy Analysis, Public Administration, International Relations or Comparative Politics. Preferential treatment is given to papers that that a comparative perspective.