Chapter Six looks at the role of international law in the Trump administration State Department. Former policymakers gave their opinion on the extent of the effect of the Trump administration on State Department policymaking and discussed potential long-term effects. The Trump administration generally displayed a negative view toward international law, institutions, and agreements, as evidenced by its words and in its actions, a view at odds with the prevailing State Department culture. More significantly, the Trump administration took unusual steps to stifle dissent within the State Department. Former officials expressed a range of perceptions regarding the Trump administration’s effect on the State Department. A minority believed that the administration’s views and actions significantly affected attitudes and practices within the Department regarding international law and institutions. The majority believed that effects on attitudes were more likely to be felt at the policy-decision level, rather than at the lower, policy development level. That is, attitudes among rank-and-file and career State Department officials probably remained unchanged and were likely to “bounce back” after the 2020 election. Nevertheless, a reprise of the Trump administration, or a similar administration, could ultimately affect not only practices at the State Department but attitudes among officials as well.

In this chapter, I discuss in what sense and to what extent institutions have political authority. I take institutions with legitimate authority to be justified in wielding political power, where this political power is backed by the threat of coercion. Against the position that international institutions are not coercive, I claim that applying an adequate conception of coercion – which takes the concept of enforcement as paradigmatic for coercion, rather than the concept of pressure – enables us to understand some international institutions as coercive. It also lays open the assumption that a single conception of authority applied to all international institutions misconceives the diversity in aims and purposes of international institutions. Institutions that coordinate morally mandatory aims and institutions that coordinate mutual advantage can both be plausibly understood as coercive, even though their authority differs in scope and in what standards they must satisfy. Finally, I discuss whether the standard of state consent is appropriate for international institutions: while it is plausible for institutions that coordinate mutual advantage, it is implausible as a standard of legitimacy for institutions that coordinate morally mandatory aims – such as institutions of international criminal justice.

Since adopting its reform and opening-up policy in the 1970s, China has steadily expanded its relationship with international institutions and transformed its role from passive norm-follower to active norm-maker in the new international order. China’s move to international institutions is characterized by: (1) an economic-led approach to participation; (2) diverse forms of participation; (3) participation on the basis of sovereign equality and peaceful coexistence; and (4) the aim of a fair, transparent international order that considers the interests of developing countries. While China is maintaining its basic position of compliance with existing international rules, its norm-making efforts are demonstrated through its initiatives to establish new international institutional networks. This chapter further examines China’s norm-making role in three major international arenas: peace and security, economic development, and environment and sustainable development. It testifies vividly to China’s increase in soft power as it leads the transition from Western-led global governance to a global co-governance system in which all members of the international community participate.

Anti-globalist leaders form a distinct set of challengers to the global system because they share a common motivation: the desire to regain national sovereignty and reduce the power of international institutions. This chapter considers three different forms of anti-globalist resistance: (1) attempts to dismantle status quo regimes through unilateral action that challenges existing rules; (2) joining coalitions across states to transform existing multilateral institutions and reduce rules or obligations; (3) building new institutions or seeking alternative venues that favor state sovereignty over interconnectedness. Each strategy could transform the content of international rules, but with different implications for how we understand the nature of institutional authority. If international authority has moved beyond state consent and international institutions themselves now constitute a legitimate source of authority, anti-globalist leaders will find it difficult to escape the confines of institutional commitments through unilateral action. For strategic anti-globalists, then, the optimal way to undermine cooperation may be to work within the system itself, shaking the foundations of the post-1945 international order.

International environmental law (‘IEL’) began to emerge as a distinct subdiscipline of international law in the 1970s. Since then, it has assumed critical importance in helping to maintain the ecological systems upon which all life on planet Earth depends. It is continuing to develop and is relevant to all states and communities, affecting a wide range of human activities and concerns. This chapter briefly traces the history of IEL and sets out some recent institutional and policy developments, including the United Nations Environment Assembly and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It also looks at concerted attempts to fill gaps in the field. Given the vastness of the subject matter, the chapter does not purport to be a comprehensive or in-depth analysis. It addresses the main organising principles of IEL, both established and emerging. It provides an overview of treaties (also referred to as multilateral environmental agreements or ‘MEAs’) in several key subfields, including regimes addressing the atmosphere, transboundary pollution, chemicals and wastes, biodiversity, and land degradation. It also includes a case study on world heritage and its implementation in Australia.

Chapter 7 concludes Making International Institutions Work. It opens with a brief review of the main findings and the role of each stage of the empirical investigation in establishing them. I then discuss the book’s contributions to international relations, international political economy, and political science as well as other fields of social science. The third section draws out lessons for policy and practice. I identify a variety of stakeholder-specific strategies for safeguarding policy autonomy and promoting accountability reforms, contributing to a lively ongoing debate among academics and practitioners over how to achieve an effective and accountable global institutional architecture. Finally, I reflect on the book’s implications for some notable emerging issues in global governance – including responding to international crises and challenges to the modern liberal order – outlining promising avenues for further research.

Chapter 4 begins the qualitative portion of the empirical examination. I conduct an in-depth comparative case study of the three central pillars of global food security governance: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). I begin by detailing the matching strategy used to identify these institutions, documenting their similar levels of several possible determinants of performance and policy autonomy. The bulk of the chapter traces how differences in de facto – but not de jure – policy autonomy have set the institutions on divergent performance trajectories: The WFP and IFAD are autonomous and widely recognized as effective, whereas the FAO is state-dominated and notorious for performance problems. Rather than formal design features, I locate the origin of this variation in the institutions’ distinct governance tasks and patterns of operational collaboration with non-state actors. Interviews and archival data gathered during fieldwork at the institutions’ Rome headquarters adduce key pieces of evidence in this process-tracing exercise.

This chapter elaborates the book’s theoretical framework. It proceeds in three stages. First, based on a microfoundational analysis of the incentives facing states and international bureaucrats, I make the case that the former are more liable than the latter to engage in opportunistic behavior that imperils institutional performance. Second, I flesh out the concept of policy autonomy, explaining how its different components provide the basis for gains in performance and why it cannot be reliably established and maintained through institutional design. Third, I explore the true origins of policy autonomy, elaborating the causal mechanisms by which (certain types of) operational alliances and governance tasks insulate bureaucrats against state capture. The chapter concludes by summarizing the framework’s observable implications at the macro and micro levels.

Chapter 3 subjects the theory’s macro-level hypotheses to statistical tests based on a comprehensive new dataset: the Performance of International Institutions Project (PIIP). It begins by describing the PIIP’s scope, contents, and sources. The empirical analysis is divided into four sections. The first examines the relationship between performance and policy autonomy. I find a positive association when policy autonomy is measured using a survey of international bureaucrats, a proxy for de facto policy autonomy, but no relationship when it is measured using formal rules, a proxy for de jure policy autonomy. The second section turns to the determinants of de facto policy autonomy, showing that the survey-based measure is positively predicted both by the quantity, depth, and breadth of operational alliances and by the exercise of governance tasks with high monitoring costs for states. In the third section, I employ a simultaneous equations strategy to isolate the effect of performance and de facto policy autonomy on one another. The fourth section summarizes a battery of robustness checks.

This chapter considers the theory’s implications for the significant issue of accountability in global governance. My reasoning may appear to suggest a fundamental tension between performance and accountability: If avoiding the thorniest obstacle to performance requires curtailing state influence in the policy process, international institutions presumably cannot be both effective and accountable. I argue, however, that if we embrace a more expansive understanding of how accountability may be institutionalized, no such tradeoff arises. This is because the same factors that nurture policy autonomy make institutions more likely to adopt a variety of modern accountability structures – what I call second-wave accountability (SWA) mechanisms – that primarily benefit and empower non-state actors. Once in place, moreover, SWA mechanisms can themselves deliver performance gains by revealing operational problems, improving the quality of decision-making, and boosting policy compliance. I provide two forms of empirical support for these claims: (1) statistical evidence based on novel data on the spread and strength of SWA mechanisms; and (2) a qualitative plausibility probe focusing on institutions in the issue area of economic development, where many SWA mechanisms were pioneered.

Chapter 5 presents the book’s second comparative case study, which examines four major global health agencies: the World Health Organization (WHO); the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS); Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM). The structure of the examination is analogous to Chapter 4’s. After enumerating the characteristics on which the four institutions are matched, I chronicle how differences in their de facto policy autonomy have given rise to disparate performance outcomes: The WHO and UNAIDS have been characterized by relentlessly declining autonomy and performance over their life cycles, Gavi and GFATM by the opposite trends. I then delve into the operational origins of these differences, which, once again, defy a purely design-based explanation. Like Chapter 4, the case study draws on extensive interviews and archival material.

Why do some international institutions succeed and others fail? This opening chapter introduces the subject of Making International Institutions Work. It begins by describing the motivation behind the book, presenting striking examples of differences in the performance of international institutions, explaining why such variation is puzzling for conventional theories of international cooperation, and highlighting its growing substantive importance. I then define the book’s two central concepts – international institutions and institutional performance – clarifying the precise scope of my analysis. This is followed by a brief review and critique of relevant literature. The last three sections provide an overview of the book’s argument, research design, and structure.