Global governance organizations (GGOs) create rules and regulations in a diverse array of policy domains from accounting to health to communications. This paper is part of a broader project considering the design and administration of such organizations. Specifically, the focus is on the structure of GGOs with attention to the scheme for representation of organization members and the bureaucracy charged with carrying out the organization’s activities. The relationship between key aspects of GGO structure and a set of independent variables (including the sector, funding, “technicality” and rule type) is explored.
Global governance organizations are at once captive to and free from a wildly diverse set of expectations. They are captive to sets of beliefs regarding the proper design of governmental systems with normative understanding of proper schemes of representation and bureaucratic process. Failure to comply with such norms will almost certainly bring scolds of disapproval (or worse).
And yet, in a perverse way, this may be liberating because it is clear that any global governance organization facing the world’s expectations will almost certainly disappoint the vast majority of people. This paper explores the structural choices made by global governance organizations (GGOs) in two senses. First, the political-representational structure is considered. Second, the bureaucratic- administrative structure is examined.
Many global governance organizations resemble self-contained narrow-purpose governments; they include a legislative (representational) and executive (bureaucratic) function within the overall organization. In considering the design of GGOs, therefore, it makes sense to consider both the “political” and “bureaucratic” elements of the organization. In other entities, these functions are not clearly distinguished; participants are represented within the apparatus of the organization itself and it is harder to make a sharp distinction between the bureaucracy and representative elements of the entity.
