Columbia International Affairs Online

CIAO DATE: 2/08

Journal of International Relations and Development

Volume 8, Issue 2 (June 2005)

Articles

• Norm diffusion within international organizations: a case study of the World Bank

  Susan Par

  Constructivists often argue that International Organizations (IOs) diffuse norms throughout the international system. This article asks the question: if IOs promote and diffuse specific norms within world politics, where do these norms come from? In particular, this analysis seeks to formulate how IOs' identities emerge in issue areas where rationalist theories give limited explanation, such as the environment. This article posits that IOs interact with and consume norms from non-state actors such as transnational advocacy networks, a process overlooked by the constructivist analysis of institutions. This is examined through a case study of the World Bank's environmental identity where transnational advocacy networks played an important role in the Bank's shift towards sustainable development, through processes characterized here as direct and indirect socialization. This article demonstrates that the Bank's shift was more than instrumental as a result of this interaction, and that constructivists therefore need to examine the role of IOs as norm consumers as well as norm diffusers.

• Limits on streamlining Fund conditionality: the International Monetary Fund's organizational culture

  Bessma Momani

  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently started addressing its 'runaway agency' image by instituting top-down directives to streamline, or limit the scope and breadth of, conditionality. Under the leadership of a new Managing Director in 2000, the IMF attempted to change its guidelines on conditionality to address members' concerns that Fund staff had encroached on members' economic sovereignty. After some internally proposed steps to change conditionality, the new guidelines that were ideally designed to allow flexibility in designing conditionality — explicitly for member-states and implicitly for Fund staff — resembled the existing means of formulating conditionality. The reason for the continued status quo is that the Fund's organizational culture, qualified as technocratic, resisted policy changes and instead invited a continued mission creep. Based on published internal Fund studies and personal interviews with Fund staff, this article suggests that internal efforts to change conditionality have had a minimal effect on changing the status quo due to the Fund's entrenched organizational culture.

• The ESDP-building process and conflict prevention: intergovernmental policy-making and institutional expertise

  Jan Karlas

  Most of the proposals that emerged in the process of building the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) of the European Union (EU) in the 1999–2001 period did not contain any ideas with regard to conflict prevention. At the same time, only weak commitments to conflict prevention were initially made in this process. However, the EU ultimately made substantial conflict prevention commitments in the ESDP-building process and decided to carry out the reform of conflict prevention as one of its policy fields. This article seeks to identify those factors that determined the final outcome of the negotiations on conflict prevention in the ESDP-building process. To this end, it puts forward and evaluates two competing explanations of the analyzed case based on theoretical approaches to European integration, namely liberal intergovernmentalism and rationalist institutionalism. The article argues that the outcome is best explained by a synthesis of the liberal intergovernmentalist null explanation claiming that state interests constitute the most decisive variable and the institutionalist explanation underlining the agenda-setting power of the European Commission and the Secretary General/High Representative (SG/HR).

• New divisions in Europe? East–East divergence and the influence of European Union enlargement

  Verena Fritz

  This article considers the issue of political and economic divergence which has emerged in Eastern Europe between the Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Baltic countries on one hand and the Western Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries (Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine) on the other. Particular attention is devoted to the questions of whether and to what extent European Union (EU) enlargement deepens the divergence and whether developments in the various arenas are mutually reinforcing or mitigating. The key argument is that divergence may be less severe and less permanent than is often assumed. The Western CIS countries have the potential to 'catch up' with economic and political development in CEE and the Baltic states. This is most obviously true for Ukraine, which took a recent and decisive step towards greater democratization after having recovered from its severe transition recession in the last few years. Among the other three countries, Belarus appears as another eventual candidate for change, given its geographical proximity to Central and Eastern Europe and its relatively strong economic base — even though it is currently the most autocratic of the group. For Moldova, the key problems of economic weakness and a very weak state affected by quasi-secession make it more difficult to overcome the divide with the CEE countries; however, it has a considerable degree of political pluralism. Russia is relatively the most 'protected' from the diffusion of democracy and a rule-governed economy by its resource wealth and greater geographical distance. EU enlargement and the discussion about the borders of Europe (or rather, of the EU) gives the issue of divergence important policy relevance. So far, the EU has paid far greater attention to South-east Europe than to the Western CIS (with the partial exception of Russia). The EU's inattention has probably contributed to losing the initial 'democratic momentum' in its new Eastern neighbours. However, renewed attempts at democratization are likely to occur and are already occurring in Ukraine; and the EU could have a positive impact on advancing this if it provides greater engagement and a clearer policy.

Book Reviews

• The Myth of 1648

  Ray Kiely

  Verso, London, 2003, 308pp.
  ISBN: 1 85984 693 9. Benno Teschke

• War and Modernity

  Saša Podlogara

  Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003, 248pp.
  ISBN: 0 7456 2645 9. Hans Joas

• Limits to Globalization: Welfare States and the World Economy

  Barbara Jermol

  Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003, 416pp.
  ISBN: 0 7456 2850 8. Elmar Rieger and Stephan Leibfried