Barnett, Michael N., & Finnemore, Martha. (1999). "The Politics, Power, and Pathologies of International Organizations ". International Organization, 53(04), 699-732.
“…IOs stray from the efficiency goals these theories impute [Pareto efficiency, etc.] and that many IOs exercise power autonomously in ways unintended and unanticipated by states at their creation” (699).
They use a constructivist approach that is highly influenced by sociological institutionalism. “…we argue that the rational-legal authority that IOs embody gives them power independent of the states that created them and channels that power in particular directions. Bureaucracies, by definition, make rules, but in so doing they also create social knowledge” (699).
They claim that their approach to IOs offers a different view of power in IOs, that it provides a base for treating IOs as autonomous actors, and then that they then can assess the desirability of IOs.
They firstly explore theoretical approaches to understanding organizations. They contrast an econometric approach with a sociological approach. In the economic approach, there is little social interaction. In the sociological approach, this is reversed. “Our point is simply that when we choose a theoretical framework, we should choose one whose assumptions approximate the empirical conditions of the IO we are analyzing, and that we should be aware of the biases created by those assumptions” (704).
They then look at whether or not IOs can be seen as being autonomous. For a realist, an IO can be reduced to the interests of the nation that was formative in its creation. However, they claim that there is a rupture in the principle-agent problem: what the principle wants is not necessarily what the agent will give them. They use Weber.
They claim that IOs are autonomous sites of authority. To make this claim, they rely heavily on Weber’s study of bureaucracies. IOs do the following: they classify, they fix meaning, they distribute norms.
The authors then make the claim that IOs can be pathological. IOs are prone to dysfunctional behavior, “…but international relations scholars have rarely investigated this…” (715). “…we elaborate how the same sources of bureaucratic power, sketched earlier, can cause dysfunctional behavior. We term this particular type of dysfunction pathology” (716). The source of the dysfunction is then pursued: is it inside or outside the IO and whether it is material or cultural (716).
World polity model would posit that there are two reasons for IO dysfunction: they seek legitimacy in place of efficiency and that they live in a world of contradictions (717-8). They explore five mechanisms by which pathologies can arise in IOs: “irrationality of rationalization, universalisms, normatization of deviance, organizational insulation, and cultural contestation” (719). “Our claim, therefore, is that the very nature of bureaucracy-the ‘social stuff’ of which it is made—creates behavioral predispositions that make bureaucracy prone to these kinds of behaviors” (719).
They conclude that this approach can be useful for IR scholars for three reasons: 1.) IOs are treated as actors; 2.) IOs can have independent effects on the world; and 3.) IOs can be normatively evaluated (726).
