Project Details
Projekt
Who has a say? Extent, Variation and Determinants of Expert Authority of International Public Administrations
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Andrea Liese
Subject Area
Political Science
Term
from 2014 to 2018
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 198360606
Scholars in International Relations (IR) increasingly observe that intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) enjoy expert authority and thus command a form of power. This observation raises the question to what extent international public administrations (IPAs), which are embedded in IGOs as distinct organizational entity and fulfil important functions, enjoy expert authority, too, and as result are able to orient the preferences, strategies, and policies of actors in international politics. Starting from this basic question, we direct the attention to the expert authority of IPAs, which is the author-ity that they are most likely to enjoy. Adopting an IR perspective, we therefore devote our research in the first phase of the research unit to the following questions:1. To what extent and under what conditions do IPAs enjoy expert authority?2. How does their expert authority vary and why?In so doing, we address a research gap in the study of IPAs, in which (expert) authority has been neglected so far, and aim to advance the research on IGOs and IPAs conceptually, theoretically, and methodologically. Conceptually, we do so by taking seriously the concept of authority that has so far dominated the study of IGOs, is rooted in political philosophy and sociology, and under-stands authority as a form of legitimate power, which is based on recognition. Hence, we define expert authority as a specific form of legitimate power, which manifests itself in a relationship, in which one actor claims expert authority by communicating knowledge-based policy claims and other actors recognize these and feel the need to consider and follow these as a basic premise for further actions and decisions specifically because they originate from that actor. Theoretically, we test explanations of expert authority from different strands in contemporary IR theories: rationalist, sociological, and critical constructivist strands. Methodologically, we seek to contribute to existing research by adopting a comparative and quantitative research strategy. On the one hand, we com-pare the expert authority of eleven IPAs within and across four issue areas in the policy field of “human security”: refugee protection, disaster risk reduction, pandemic threat prevention, and food security. On the other hand, we collect data on expert authority and some of its determinants by means of a survey of 320 officials in ministerial bureaucracies in 80 states and analyze this data using descriptive and inferential statistics. In sum, we thereby ultimately aim to improve the knowl-edge of IPAs’ expert authority and its determinants and to elucidate to what extent and under what conditions IPAs can exercise power in international politics.
DFG Programme
Research Units
Participating Person
Dr. Per-Olof Busch
