Locating the Proper Authorities: The Interaction of Domestic and International Institutions by Daniel William Drezner

From the Publisher

In an era of democratization and globalization, the number of decision makers has multiplied exponentially. Parliamentarians, bureaucrats, international secretariats, regional governors, and nongovernmental organizations have all gained influence at the expense of heads of state. How do these competing layers of authority bargain with each other to govern? International relations theorists have traditionally focused on how leaders' domestic constraints affect their bargaining position internationally. However, there has been much less work on the flip side of this question--how foreign policy leaders can use international institutions as a means of circumventing or co-opting domestic opposition. Locating the Proper Authorities offers some preliminary answers, drawn from a number of theoretical perspectives by the contributors to this volume.

Written by some of the most promising theorists in the field of international relations, the essays in Locating the Proper Authorities address a broad array of substantive issue areas, including humanitarian intervention, trade dispute settlement, economic development, democratic transition, and security cooperation. This broad case selection has the virtue of incorporating developing countries, which are too often ignored in international relations, as well as less well-known international organizations. Each chapter examines the mechanisms and strategies through which policy entrepreneurs use international organizations as a means of bypassing or overcoming opposition to policy change. By examining the effects of different institutional design features, Locating the Proper Authorities helps us understand the varietyof influence mechanisms through which international institutions shape the interaction of policy initiators and ratifiers.

Daniel W. Drezner is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago.

Foreign Affairs

Government leaders frequently find their efforts at international collaboration blocked by domestic politics. But sometimes they turn the tables and use international organizations to resist interest groups and parliamentary opponents at home. This volume explores the ways that such institutions become useful domestic tools. John Pevenhouse, for example, shows how political leaders in newly democratizing countries use NATO or NAFTA to lock in political and economic reforms. Kenneth Schultz shows how the Clinton administration was able to use NATO to blunt congressional opposition to humanitarian intervention. Alastair Johnston offers a fascinating account of how China's membership in the Regional Forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the un has altered Beijing's views on security. The authors find some interesting patterns: democratic states tend to use international institutions to overcome domestic obstacles, whereas authoritarian states tend to use them to establish their credibility with other governments. Even as the institutional environment in which countries operate is getting denser, this book makes it clear that the distinction between domestic and international politics is becoming increasingly blurred.

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