The third” united nationsc thomas g. weiss, tatiana cara

The “Third” United Nations
c
Thomas G. Weiss, Tatiana Carayannis,
and Richard Jolly
Analysts usually identify two United Nations, one composed of
member
states and a second composed of the secretariats. A third UN
should also
be recognized, composed of actors that are closely associated
with the
world organization but not formally part of it. This “outside-
insider” UN
includes nongovernmental organizations, academics,
consultants, experts,
independent commissions, and other groups of individuals.
These informal
networks often help to effect shifts in ideas, policies, priorities,
and prac-
tices that are initially seen as undesirable or problematic by
governments
and international secretariats. KEYWORDS: United Nations,
nongovernmen-
tal organizations, intellectual history, networks, international
secretariats.
R
esearch and oral histories from the United Nations Intellectual
History
Project (UNIHP) demonstrate that ideas, one of the UN’s most
im-

portant legacies, have made a substantial contribution to
international
society.1 This work also suggests that the concept of a “third
UN” should be
added to our analytical toolkit in order to move beyond Inis
Claude’s clas-
sic twofold distinction between the world organization as an
intergovern-
mental arena and as a secretariat.2
This “additional” UN consists of certain nongovernmental
organizations
(NGOs), external experts, scholars, consultants, and committed
citizens who
work closely with the UN’s intergovernmental machinery and
secretariats.
The third UN’s roles include advocacy, research, policy
analysis, and idea
mongering. Its elements often combine forces to put forward
new informa-
tion and ideas, push for new policies, and mobilize public
opinion around
UN deliberations and operations. Critics might disagree and
regard our per-
spective as quite orthodox.3 However, in our view, informed
scholars, prac-
titioners, and activists have a value-added and comparative
advantage within
intergovernmental contexts to push intellectual and policy
envelopes. These
circles—a third UN—are independent of and provide essential
inputs into
the other two UNs. Such “outside-insiders” are an integral part
of today’s
United Nations. What once seemed marginal for international

relations now
is central to multilateralism.
We begin by situating the notion of a third UN among broader
schol-
arly efforts to reconceptualize multilateralism before briefly
examining
Claude’s two traditional components. We then consider the
contributions of
the third UN concept by exploring key definitional questions
and parsing its
123
Global Governance 15 (2009), 123–142
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membership and interactive dynamics in the world organization.
Finally, we
spell out why the idea of a third UN is significant for the theory
and prac-
tice of international organization and propose an agenda for
future research.
New Multilateralisms and Public Policy Networks
The notion of a three-faceted UN is a contribution to the
challenge of the-
orizing contemporary global governance. It builds on a growing
body of
work that calls for a conception of “multiple multilateralisms.”4

Why bring forward this idea now? After all, networks of
diplomats and
professionals are hardly new. Although major governments have
resisted
the influence of nonstate actors and, particularly, civil society
organiza-
tions, parts of the UN system have long engaged them and
drawn on aca-
demic expertise located outside the system. The International
Labour Orga-
nization (ILO) has incorporated representatives of trade unions
and the
business sector into its tripartite structure since 1919. NGOs
have been sig-
nificant for advances in ideas, norms, and policies at the UN
beginning
with advocacy for the inclusion of human rights in the UN
Charter in 1945
and for the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights three
years later. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has
long had
close interactions with civil society groups for a wide range of
children’s is-
sues and for fund-raising and advocacy. The United Nations
Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United
Nations De-
velopment Fund for Women (UNIFEM) have interacted with
national com-
mittees consisting of academics and NGOs. Indeed, most parts
of the UN
have drawn on academic or professional expertise located
outside the system.
A growing number of authors have attempted to conceptualize

the phe-
nomenon of nonstate actors, especially NGOs, as they intersect
with the
United Nations.5 The number of nonofficial groups involved
has grown dra-
matically, while the density of globalization has meant that
communications
and technological developments have increased the reach of
their voices as
well as their decibel levels.
Adopting the notion of the third UN is a sharper way to depict
inter-
actions in and around the world organization than employing the
usual three-
fold vocabulary of state, market, and civil society. This
terminology res-
onates for students of international organization who were
raised on Claude’s
framework, including much of the Global Governance
readership. More-
over, beyond the United Nations there could also be a third
European Union
(EU), a third Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development
(OECD), and so on. However, the data and argument presented
here relate
more specifically to the UN.
Why have analysts relatively neglected—or often resisted
address-
ing—something that seems so obvious? Part of the answer lies
in difficult
124 The “Third” United Nations

definitional questions about an amorphous, fluid, and ill -defined
group of
actors who engage with the United Nations at various levels, at
various
times, and on various issues. Patterns are hard to grasp, and
many of the in-
teractions are ad hoc. Which groups should be included? Should
one exam-
ine all NGOs and all academics? Where does one draw the line?
Would it
make more sense to focus on policy orientations rather than on
sectors of
actors? Once in, are actors forever part of the third UN, or do
they move in
and out depending on the issue, their influence, or the calendar?
This arti-
cle is another step in conceptualizing global governance in
terms of free-
flowing networks rather than rigid formal structures.6
Most social scientists—development economists, students of
compara-
tive politics, sociologists, and anthropologists—have long
recognized the
empirical and theoretical importance of nonstate actors.
However, this in-
sight largely eluded international relations (IR) specialists who,
with their
preoccupation with issues of sovereignty and with the UN’s
being com-
posed of member states, tended to minimize or even ignore

interactions
with nonstate actors and their influence on decisionmaking.
Beginning in
the 1970s with Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye,7 the growing
presence and
activities of actors other than states have gradually forced many
main-
stream IR theorists to pry open the lid on the black box of state-
centric
theories of international organization. Realists remain
unreconstructed in
this regard. But with issues as varied as gender and climate
change mov-
ing into the limelight on the international agenda, largely as a
result of
efforts by nonstate actors, and despite the recalcitrance of many
states and
international civil servants, it is imperative to better understand
the impact
of the third UN.
The First and the Second UN
Unsurprisingly, the first UN and the second UN have long
provided the prin-
cipal grist for analytical mills about the world organization.
After all, mem-
ber states—51 in June 1945 and 192 today—establish the
priorities and pay
the bills, more or less, thus determining what the world body
does. Inter-
national civil servants would not exist without member states,
nor could a
permanent institution of member states operate without a
secretariat.
Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore distinguish five roles

for the
first UN: “as an agent of great powers doing their bidding; as a
mechanism
for interstate cooperation; as a governor of international society
of states; as
a constructor of the social world; and as a legitimation forum.”8
States pur-
sue national interests in this arena, which varies from “high
politics” in the
Security Council to “low politics” in the boards and governing
councils of
UN funds and specialized agencies. States caucus in regional
groups for the
General Assembly and in smaller groups for numerous issues.
Notions of
Thomas G. Weiss, Tatiana Carayannis, and Richard Jolly 125
the first UN find a home in virtually all IR theory: for a realist
emphasizing
self-interested states within an anarchical system; for a liberal
institutional-
ist looking for a stage where states pursue mutual interests and
reduce
transaction costs; for a proponent of the English School seeking
to foster
shared norms and values in an international society; for a
constructivist
looking for a creative agent for ideational change and identity
shaping; and
for a pragmatist seeking a place to legitimate specific values

and actions.
The second UN is also a distinct sphere, consisting of career
and long-
serving staff members who are paid through assessed and
voluntary con-
tributions. This international civil service is a legacy of the
League of
Nations. Article 101 of the UN Charter calls for a core of
officials to tackle
international problems. A leading advocate for the second UN
was Dag
Hammarskjöld. His May 1961 speech at Oxford does not ignore
the reality
that the international civil service exists to carry out decisions
made by
states; but it emphasizes that a UN official could and should
pledge alle-
giance to striving for a larger collective good, rather than
defending the
interests of the country that issues his or her passport.9 The
practice of
reserving senior UN positions for former high-level officials
approved by
their home governments undermines the integrity of
secretariats. Moreover,
a shadow today hangs over the UN Secretariat as a result of
corruption in the
Oil-for-Food Programme, sexual exploitation by peacekeepers,
and the Staff
Council’s vote of no-confidence in the secretary-general in May
2006.
Nonetheless, a basic idealism continues to animate the second
UN. The
likes of Ralph Bunche and Brian Urquhart indicate that

autonomy and in-
tegrity are realistic expectations of international civil
servants.10 Today’s pro-
fessional and support staff number approximately 55,000 in the
UN proper
and another 20,000 in the specialized agencies. This number
excludes tem-
porary staff in peace operations (about 100,000 in 2007) and the
staff of the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank Group
(another 15,000).
These figures represent substantial growth from the 500
employees in the
UN’s first year at Lake Success and the peak total of 700 staff
employed by
the League of Nations.11
The second UN does more than simply carry out marching
orders from
governments. UN officials also present ideas to tackle
problems, debate
them formally and informally with governments, take
initiatives, advocate
for change, turn general decisions into specific programs of
action, and work
for implementation. None of this should surprise. It would be a
strange and
impotent national civil service whose staff took no initiatives or
showed no
leadership, simply awaiting instructions from the government in
power. The
second UN is no different, except that the formal
decisionmakers are gov-
ernment representatives on boards meeting quarterly, annually,
or even bi-
ennially. With the exception of the Security Council,

decisionmaking and re-
sponsibility for implementation in most parts of the UN system,
especially
the development funds and specialized agencies, depend in large
part on the
executive head or a staff member of the second UN.
What Is the Third UN?
From the outset, nonstate actors have been active in UN
corridors and field
projects. The Charter’s 1945 Preamble opened with a clarion
call from “We
the Peoples of the United Nations,” when one might have
expected “We the
Representatives of Sovereign Member States.” Article 71
explicitly made
room for NGOs in UN debates. Nonetheless, the extent to which
nonstate
actors are now routinely part of what passes for “international”
relations by
“intergovernmental” organizations is striking.
Involvement of NGOs has been a routine part of all UN-
sponsored
global conferences since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the
Human
Environment, when the conference secretary-general, Maurice
Strong, in-

sisted on their presence. NGO parallel meetings, usually called
“forums,”
have become a prominent fixture of deliberations and have been
an impor-
tant force in pressing for more forward-looking policies. For the
Millennium
Summit and the 2005 World Summit, special hearings involving
NGOs were
organized in advance.
Although the terminology may sound odd, it is appropriate to
refer to
such networks as a “third United Nations.” Many individuals
who have
played an essential role in the world organization’s intellectual
and norm-
building activities were neither government officials nor
international civil
servants. Moreover, many key contributors to ideas as members
of the first
and the second UN had significant prior associations with a
university, a
policy think tank, or an NGO—or joined one after leaving
government or
UN service. Many individuals have served as members or chairs
of inde-
pendent panels and commissions that examined emerging
problems not yet
on the international radar screen. The Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate
Change is a prominent example. Many also served as staff or
board mem-
bers of NGOs, and most have attended ad hoc global
conferences that pull
together a range of actors on the international stage.

We define the third UN as comprising NGOs, academics,
consultants,
experts, independent commissions, and other groups of
individuals that rou-
tinely engage with the first and the second UN and thereby
influence UN
thinking, policies, priorities, and actions. The key characteristic
for this third
sphere is its independence from governments and UN
secretariats. Thus, leg-
islators in Parliamentarians for Global Action as well as local
governmental
officials in United Cities and Local Governments would be part
of the third
UN by virtue of their position outside the executive branch of
government.
Deciding who is in or out of the third UN depends on the issue
and the
period in question. But the third UN consists of “outsiders”—
that is, persons
who are not on the regular payroll of a government or a
secretariat—who
complement the “insiders” of the other two United Nations in
collective
efforts to generate, debate, implement, and disseminate ideas
and programs.
That said, the distinction between outsiders and insiders can

blur in the case
of many prominent individuals who move in and out of
institutions through
a “revolving door.”
At the same time, it is essential to distinguish persons who are
neither
government representatives nor international civil servants
when they make
certain contributions to the UN. Outsiders are often better
placed to be more
adventuresome and critical. Anyone who has attended a UN-
sponsored
global conference is quite aware that Secretariat staffers who
organize these
meetings are joined not only by representatives of governments
who make
decisions, but also by a legion of NGOs, think tanks, and
academics. The
Beijing conference on women in 1995 perhaps illustrated this
interaction
most visibly.12 The same is true of the board meetings of many
UN funds,
programs, and specialized agencies.
In spite of the Global Compact and other schemes for “corporate
social
responsibility,” we do not include the for-profit sector in the
third UN. The
primary focus of business is not on any larger community of
interests, but
on financial bottom lines. Companies also have relatively little
direct in-
teraction with the first and the second UN in the context of the
organiza-
tion’s policy formulation and project execution.13 Business

groups that pro-
mote fair trade or microcredit, for instance, are better
considered as NGOs.
The same holds for corporate-centered NGOs such as the World
Business
Council for Sustainable Development and the World Economic
Forum.
The mass media that follow UN activities often have an impact
on in-
ternational thinking and action. However, their primary role as a
category
of actors in global governance is to report on and not to alter
policy. For
this reason we do not include media organizations within the
third UN. On
the other hand, investigative journalists and columnists who are
in the opin-
ion business can be aptly considered part of the third UN as
influential in-
dividuals, like scholars and policy analysts.
In brief, then, three main groups of nonofficial actors compose
the third
UN: nongovernmental organizations; academics and expert
consultants; and
independent commissions of eminent persons. None of these
subgroupings
is monolithic. The importance of particular individuals and
organizations in
multiactor policymaking or project execution varies by issue
and over time.
Thus “membership” in the third UN is temporary and
contingent.
Eight roles played collectively by the first, second, and third

UNs can
be summarized as: providing a forum for debate; generating
ideas and poli-
cies; legitimating ideas and policies; advocating for ideas and
policies; im-
plementing or testing ideas and policies in the field; generating
resources to
pursue ideas and policies; monitoring progress in the march of
ideas and
the implementation of policies; and occasionally burying ideas
and policies.
As is elaborated in subsequent sections, the importance of each
role and the
importance of each of the three UNs in those roles varies
depending on how
new a particular policy approach is at a given moment, and how
much it
flies in the face of strong national or regional interests and
received wisdom.
Intellectual energies among the three UNs blend. Indeed, there
is often
synergy. A revolving door turns as academics and national
political actors
move inside to take staff positions in UN secretariats, or UN
staff members
leave to join NGOs, universities, or national office and
subsequently en-

gage from outside, but are informed by experience inside.
Primary loyalties
to, or location in, one of the three UNs provide strategic and
tactical ad-
vantages and disadvantages, which give these analytical
distinctions their
importance.
Nongovernmental Organizations
In the last six decades, there has been a dramatic growth in the
role and in-
fluence of NGOs in UN corridors as elsewhere. The result is a
qualitatively
different debate than would take place without their inputs. “I
think life
would be duller without the NGOs, and there would probably be
much less
point to it also,” said Viru Dayal, the former chef de cabinet of
two UN sec-
retaries-general. “Besides, civil society knows where the shoe
pinches.
They know when to laugh and they know when to cry.”14
Most UN global meetings attract NGO participants, and in large
num-
bers. Usually the scenario does not resemble the Seattle
Ministerial Con-
ference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in late 1999,
when tens of
thousands of protesters filled the streets. In fact, most
involvements by the
third UN are more peaceful and more supportive of the other
two UNs.
While estimates vary because of different ways that delegates
are counted,
the orders of magnitude are striking. The Earth Summit in Rio

in 1992 had
some 17,000 nongovernmental participants, the Fourth World
Conference
on Women in Beijing in 1995 drew some 32,000 (including
5,000 Chinese),
and UNICEF’s World Summit for Children in New York in 1990
stirred
over a million people worldwide to join in candlelight vigils.15
Commentators rightly emphasize the last few decades of NGO
growth,
but the phenomenon has been gaining momentum over two
centuries, begin-
ning with the antislavery movement late in the eighteenth
century.16 Before
and during the San Francisco conference in 1945, US-based
private actors
of the third UN were especially visible, including forty-two
consultants
officially recognized by Washington, plus some 160 other
observers from
diverse NGOs, including religious groups.17
The Cold War slowed the growth of nonstate actor participation
in the
UN. The communist bloc and many totalitarian developing
countries resisted
independent and dissident voices. NGOs in such places were
essentially an

extension of the state and its views, which prompted the ugly
acronym
GONGO (government-organized NGO). Indeed, there are still
so-called
NGOs in repressive countries that are anything but
nongovernmental. Purists
would also point to problems when democratic governments
provide sub-
stantial funding to NGOs, even if few visible strings are
attached. Moisés
Naím’s proposal for a credible rating agency to evaluate the
backers, inde-
pendence, goals, and track records of NGOs is intriguing,18 as
is the signa-
ture in 2006 of an Accountability Charter by eleven of the
world’s leading
international NGOs in the fields of human rights, environment,
and social
development.19 Since the thaw in East-West relations and the
changing bal-
ance between markets and states, human rights advocates,
gender activists,
development specialists, and groups of indigenous peoples have
become
more vocal, operational, and important in contexts that were
once thought to
be the exclusive prerogatives of states or international
secretariats.
Since the 1990s, the sheer growth in NGO numbers has
prompted Lester
Salamon to discern an “associational revolution” that has been
largely driven
by communications technology and funding availability.20 The
Union of In-
ternational Associations currently estimates international NGOs

(those operat-
ing in more than two countries) to number 25,000.21 Not all of
these organi-
zations are active in UN matters, but the size of the
phenomenon is clear.
Much NGO engagement with the first and second UNs occurs at
headquar-
ters, where some 2,870 NGOs now have “consultative status”
and are rou-
tinely joined by others without such status. In the field,
meanwhile, out-
sourcing and subcontracting to members of the third UN also
reflect the
changing balance between markets and states in global
governance. Execut-
ing predetermined activities as subcontractors is not the same as
shaping
policy, but many dual-purpose NGOs use field experience in
advocacy and
vice versa. In fact, NGOs had already become substantial
executors of projects
funded by the second UN by the time that the Economic and
Social Council
(ECOSOC) agreed to more flexible NGO accreditation standards
in 1996.
NGOs in the third UN are not always appealing bodies. Much
has been
made of the ugly elements of local civil society in the genocides
in Rwanda
and Sudan. NGOs with direct links to the UN also include
“nasty” social
movements,22 or what Cyril Ritchie has called “criminals,
charlatans and
narcissists.”23 For instance, the National Rifle Association
hardly pursues

a human security agenda that most NGOs with consultative
status at the UN
would support. In humanitarian emergencies, a number of mom-
and-pop
organizations as well as larger operations proselytize and/or
have agendas
that reflect the biases of government funders—especially
evident in Afghan-
istan and Iraq—that are anathema to most NGOs in the third
UN. But despite
such shortcomings in some cases, NGOs have become integral
to UN pro-
cesses and to global governance more generally.
Academics, Consultants, and Think Tanks
The bulk of scholarship about the United Nations and the main
substantive
issues on the world organization’s agenda emanates from
universities, spe-
cialist research institutes, and learned societies in North
America and West-
ern Europe.24 During World War II, the notion that the UN
would be a
major instrument of Washington’s foreign policy attracted
support from US
foundations. For example, the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace
actively followed and promoted research on the new

organization by schol-
ars and by officials from the League of Nations. Such support
has contin-
ued in fits and starts since then, including the $1 billion gift
from the busi-
ness leader Ted Turner in 1997 to create the UN Foundation and
Better
World Fund. Other external policy research organizations with
intimate
links to UN affairs include the Stanley Foundation, the
International Peace
Institute, the Center for International Cooperation, and the
Center for Hu-
manitarian Dialogue. Two professional associations, the Society
for Inter-
national Development (founded in 1967) and the Academic
Council on the
United Nations System (founded in 1987), emerged as part of
policy re-
search networks focused on the UN and the international
system.
“Knowledge networks”25 have become an analytical concern for
stu-
dents of global governance because they create and transfer
knowledge and
influence policymakers irrespective of location. These networks
often frame
debate on a particular issue, provide justificatio ns for
alternatives, and cat-
alyze national or international coalitions to support chosen
policies and ad-
vocate change. What Peter Haas called “epistemic communities”
influence
policy, especially during times of uncertainty and change when
the demand

for expertise increases.26 Much literature relates to scientific
elites with par-
ticular expertise in areas such as the HIV/AIDS pandemic and
the environ-
ment.27 A related approach to knowledge networks is Peter
Hall’s earlier
study of the cross-national dissemination of ideas among
experts in the
postwar period, when Keynesianism spread largely because it
“acquired in-
fluence over the economic policies of a major power and was
exported as
that nation acquired increasing hegemony around the world.”28
Three panels of experts in the late 1940s and early 1950s—not
then
called “knowledge networks”—produced pioneering reports for
the United
Nations that launched the world organization’s use of external
expertise:
National and International Measures for Full Employment;
Measures for
the Economic Development of Under-Developed Countries; and
Measures
for International Economic Stability.29 These groups permitted
the entry of
outside expertise—including prescient thinking by such later
Nobel laureates

as W. Arthur Lewis and Theodore W. Schultz—as parts of teams
of promi-
nent economists from different parts of the world, supported by
professionals
within the UN Secretariat.
In the 1960s, the Committee for Development Planning (since
1999,
“Policy” has replaced “Planning” in the acronym, CDP) was
created and
initially chaired by Jan Tinbergen, who later won the first Nobel
Prize in
Economic Sciences. The CDP usually comprised twenty-four
economists,
all unpaid and appointed in their personal capacities by the UN
secretary-
general, without nomination by governments. The CDP met a
few times a
year to bring external expertise into the UN regarding
development and in-
ternational economic policy.
A strong ethical dimension was present among such teams—
pursuing a
world of greater economic and social justice with less poverty
and a more
equitable income distribution. Nobel economics laureate
Lawrence Klein,
an eloquent member of the third UN on disarmament and
development, ob-
served, “I believe that it would be quite valuable if the UN had
a better
academic world contact.”30 Indeed, the import of new thinking,
approaches,
and policies from scholars in the third UN remains vital to the
world or-

ganization, as suggested by recent reports from Jeffrey Sachs
and the UN
Millennium Project.31
The UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD)
was the
first of a handful of United Nations think tanks, and the core
fourteen re-
search entities of the UN University (UNU) are now collectively
the largest.
While the staffs of these units have somewhat more autonomy
than most in-
ternational civil servants, UNRISD and …
Constructing International Politics
Author(s): Alexander Wendt
Source: International Security, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Summer, 1995),
pp. 71-81
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Constructing Alexander Wendt
biternational Politics
John J. Mearsheimer's
"The False Promise of International Institutions"1 is welcome
particularly in
two respects. First, it is the most systematic attempt to date by a
neorealist to
address critical international relations (IR) theory.2 Second, it
reminds neo-
liberals and critical theorists, normally locked in their own tug-
of-war, that they
have a common, non-realist interest in the institutional bases of
international
life.3 "False Promise" is likely, therefore, to spur productive
discussions on all
sides.

Unfortunately, it will be hard for most critical theorists to take
seriously a
discussion of their research program so full of conflations, half-
truths, and
misunderstandings. However, to some extent misunderstanding
is inevitable
when anthropologists from one culture first explore another. A
dialogue be-
tween these two cultures is overdue, and "False Promise" is a
good beginning.
Critical IR "theory," however, is not a single theory It is a
family of theo-
ries that includes postmodernists (Ashley, Walker),
constructivists (Adler,
Kratochwil, Ruggie, and now Katzenstein), neo-Marxists (Cox,
Gill), feminists
(Peterson, Sylvester), and others. What unites them is a concern
with how
world politics is "socially constructed,"4 which invol ves two
basic claims: that
the fundamental structures of international politics are social
rather than
strictly material (a claim that opposes materialism), and that
these structures
Alexander Wendt is Associate Professor of Political Science at
Yale University.
For their exceptionally detailed and helpful comments I am
grateful to Mike Barnett, Mlada
Bukovansky, Bud Duvall, Peter Katzenstein, Mark Laffey,
David Lumsdaine, Sylvia Maxfield, Nina
Tannenwald, Jutta Weldes, and the members of the Yale IR
Reading Group.

1. John J. Mearsheimer, "The False Promise of International
Institutions," International Security, Vol.
19, No. 3 (Winter 1994/95). Subsequent references appear in
parentheses in the text.
2. Other efforts include Robert Gilpin, "The Richness of the
Tradition of Political Realism,"
International Organization, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Spring 1984), pp.
287-304, and Markus Fischer, "Feudal
Europe, 800-1300," International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2
(Spring 1992), pp. 427-466.
3. On neoliberalism and critical theory, see Robert Keohane,
"International institutions: Two ap-
proaches," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 4
(December 1988), pp. 379-396, and Wendt,
"Collective Identity Formation and the International State,"
American Political Science Review, Vol.
88, No. 2 (June 1994), pp. 384-396. Mearsheimer treats
collective security as a third form of
institutionalism, but this is unwarranted. Collective security is
an approach to international order,
arguable on either neoliberal or critical grounds, not a form of
institutional analysis.
4. This makes them all "constructivist" in a broad sense, but as
the critical literature has evolved,
this term has become applied to one particular school.
International Security, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Summer 1995), pp. 71-81
( 1995 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
71
2015 09:27:09 AM

International Security 20:1 | 72
shape actors' identities and interests, rather than just their
behavior (a claim
that opposes rationalism). However, having these two claims in
common no
more makes critical theory a single theory than does the fact
that neorealism
and neoliberalism both use game theory makes them a single
theory. Some
critical theorists are statists and some are not; some believe in
science and some
do not; some are optimists and some pessimists; some stress
process and some
structure.5 Thus, in my reply I speak only for myself as a
"constructivist,"
hoping that other critical theorists may agree with much of what
I say I address
four issues: assumptions, objective knowledge, explaining war
and peace, and
policymakers' responsibilities.
Assumptions
I share all five of Mearsheimer's "realist" assumptions (p. 10):
that interna-
tional politics is anarchic, and that states have offensive
capabilities, cannot be
100 percent certain about others' intentions, wish to survive,
and are rational.
We even share two more: a commitment to states as units of
analysis, and to

the importance of systemic or "third image" theorizing.
The last bears emphasis, for in juxtaposing "structure" to
"discourse" and in
emphasizing the role of individuals in "critical theory" (p. 40),
Mearsheimer
obscures the fact that constructivists are structuralists. Indeed,
one of our main
objections to neorealism is that it is not structural enough: that
adopting the
individualistic metaphors of micro-economics restricts the
effects of structures
to state behavior, ignoring how they might also constitute state
identities and
interests.6 Constructivists think that state interests are in
important part con-
5. These are far more than differences of "emphasis," as
suggested by Mearsheimer's disclaimer,
note 127.
6. "Constitute" is an important term in critical theory, with a
special meaning that is not captured
by related terms like "comprise," "consist of," or "cause." To
say that "X [for example, a social
structure] constitutes Y [for example, an agent]," is to say that
the properties of those agents are
made possible by, and would not exist in the absence of, the
structure by which they are "consti-
tuted." A constitutive relationship establishes a conceptually
necessary or logical connection be-
tween X and Y, in contrast to the contingent connection
between independently existing entities
that is established by causal relationships.
The identity-behavior distinction is partly captured by Robert
Powell's distinction between

preferences over outcomes and preferences over strategies;
Robert Powell, "Anarchy in Interna-
tional Relations Theory," International Organization, Vol. 48,
No. 2 (Spring 1994), pp. 313-344. The
main exception to the mainstream neglect of structural effects
on state identity is Kenneth Waltz's
argument that anarchy produces "like units"; Kenneth Waltz,
Theory of International Politics (Read-
ing, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), pp. 74-77. Constructivists
think there are more possibilities than
this; see Alexander Wendt, "Anarchy is What States Make of It:
The Social Construction of Power
Politics," International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Spring
1992), pp. 391-425.
2015 09:27:09 AM
Constructing International Politics | 73
structed by systemic structures, not exogenous to them; this
leads to a socio-
logical rather than micro-economic structuralism.
Where neorealist and constructivist structuralisms really differ,
however, is
in their assumptions about what structure is made of.
Neorealists think it is
made only of a distribution of material capabilities, whereas
constructivists
think it is also made of social relationships. Social structures
have three ele-

ments: shared knowledge, material resources, and practices.7
First, social structures are defined, in part, by shared
understandings, expec-
tations, or knowledge. These constitute the actors in a situation
and the nature
of their relationships, whether cooperative or conflictual. A
security dilemma, for
example, is a social structure composed of intersubjective
understandings in
which states are so distrustful that they make worst-case
assumptions about
each others' intentions, and as a result define their interests in
self-help terms.
A security community is a different social structure, one
composed of shared
knowledge in which states trust one another to resolve disputes
without war.8
This dependence of social structure on ideas is the sense in
which constructiv-
ism has an idealist (or "idea-ist") view of structure. What makes
these ideas
(and thus structure) "social," however, is their intersubjective
quality In other
words, sociality (in contrast to "materiality," in the sense of
brute physical
capabilities), is about shared knowledge.
Second, social structures include material resources like gold
and tanks. In
contrast to neorealists' desocialized view of such capabilities,
constructivists
argue that material resources only acquire meaning for human
action through
the structure of shared knowledge in which they are embedded.9
For example,

500 British nuclear weapons are less threatening to the United
States than 5
North Korean nuclear weapons, because the British are friends
of the United
States and the North Koreans are not, and amity or enmity is a
function of
shared understandings. As students of world politics, neorealists
would prob-
ably not disagree, but as theorists the example poses a big
problem, since it
completely eludes their materialist definition of structure.
Material capabilities
as such explain nothing; their effects presuppose structures of
shared knowl-
edge, which vary and which are not reducible to capabilities.
Constructivism
is therefore compatible with changes in material power
affecting social relations
7. What follows could also serve as a rough definition of
"discourse."
8. See Karl Deutsch, et al., Political Community and the North
Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1957).
9. For a good general discussion of this point, see Douglas
Porpora, "Cultural Rules and Material
Relations," Sociological Theory, Vol. 11, No. 2 (July 1993), pp.
212-229.
2015 09:27:09 AM
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/ terms.jsp

(cf. Mearsheimer, p. 43), as long as those effects can be shown
to presuppose
still deeper social relations.
Third, social structures exist, not in actors' heads nor in
material capabilities,
but in practices. Social structure exists only in process. The
Cold War was a
structure of shared knowledge that governed great power
relations for forty
years, but once they stopped acting on this basis, it was "over."
In sum, social structures are real and objective, not "just talk."
But this
objectivity depends on shared knowledge, and in that sense
social life is "ideas
all the way down" (until you get to biology and natural
resources). Thus, to
ask "when do ideas, as opposed to power and interest, matter?"
is to ask the
wrong question. Ideas always matter, since power and interest
do not have
effects apart from the shared knowledge that constitutes them as
such.10 The
real question, as Mearsheimer notes (p. 42), is why does one
social structure
exist, like self-help (in which power and self-interest determine
behavior),
rather than another, like collective security (in which they do
not).
The explanatory as opposed to normative character of this
question bears
emphasis. Constructivists have a normative interest in

promoting social
change, but they pursue this by trying to explain how seemingly
natural social
structures, like self-help or the Cold War, are effects of practice
(this is the
"critical" side of critical theory). This makes me wonder about
Mearsheimer's
repeated references (I count fourteen) to critical theorists'
"goals," "aims," and
"hopes" to make peace and love prevail on Earth. Even if we all
had such
hopes (which I doubt), and even if these were ethically wrong
(though Mear-
sheimer seems to endorse them; p. 40), they are beside the point
in evaluating
critical theories of world politics. If critical theories fail, this
will be because
they do not explain how the world works, not because of their
values. Empha-
sizing the latter recalls the old realist tactic of portraying
opponents as utopians
more concerned with how the world ought to be than how it is.
Critical
theorists have normative commitments, just as neorealists do,
but we are also
simply trying to explain the world.
Objectivity
Mearsheimer suggests that critical theorists do not believe that
there is an
objective world out there about which we can have knowledge
(pp. 41ff). This
is not the case. There are two issues here, ontological and
epistemological.

10. On the social content of interests, see Roy D'Andrade and
Claudia Strauss, eds., Human Motives
and Cultural Models (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992).
2015 09:27:09 AM
The ontological issue is whether social structures have an
objective existence,
which I addressed above. Social structures are collective
phenomena that con-
front individuals as externally existing social facts. The Cold
War was just as
real for me as it was for Mearsheimer.
The epistemological issue is whether we can have objective
knowledge of
these structures. Here Mearsheimer ignores a key distinction
between modern
and postmodern critical theorists. The latter are indeed skeptical
about the
possibility of objective knowledge, although in their empirical
work even they
attend to evidence and inference. Constructivis ts, however, are
modernists who
fully endorse the scientific project of falsifying theories against
evidence. In an
article cited by Mearsheimer, I advocated a scientific-realist
approach to social

inquiry, which takes a very pro-science line.1" And despite his
claims, there is
now a substantial body of constructivist empirical work that
embodies a
wholly conventional epistemology.12
Mearsheimer is right, however, that critical theorists do not
think we can
make a clean distinction between subject and object. Then
again, almost all
philosophers of science today reject such a naive epistemology
All observation
is theory-laden in the sense that what we see is mediated by our
existing
theories, and to that extent knowledge is inherently problematic.
But this does
not mean that observation, let alone reality, is theory-
determined. The world is
still out there constraining our beliefs, and may punish us for
incorrect ones.
Montezuma had a theory that the Spanish were gods, but it was
wrong, with
disastrous consequences. We do not have unmediated access to
the world, but
this does not preclude understanding how it works.
Explaining War and Peace
Mearsheimer frames the debate between realists and critical
theorists as one
between a theory of war and a theory of peace. This is a
fundamental mistake.
11. See Alexander Wendt, "The Agent-Structure Problem in
International Relations Theory," Inter-
national Organization, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Summer 1987), pp. 335-

370; and, for fuller discussion, Ian
Shapiro and Alexander Wendt, "The Difference that Realism
Makes," Politics and Society, Vol. 20,
No. 2 (June 1992), pp. 197-223.
12. See, among others, Michael Barnett, "Institutions, Roles,
and Disorder," International Studies
Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 3 (September 1993), pp. 271-296; David
Lumsdaine, Moral Vision in Interna-
tional Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993);
Samuel Barkin and Bruce Cronin, "The
State and the Nation," International Organization, Vol. 48, No.
1 (Winter 1994), pp. 107-130; Rey
Koslowski and Friedrich Kratochwilj, "Understanding Change
in International Politics," Interna-
tional Organization, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Spring 1994), pp. 215-248;
Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber,
eds., State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, forthcoming);
and Peter Katzenstein, ed., Constructing National Security
(working title), forthcoming.
2015 09:27:09 AM
Social construction talk is like game theory talk: analytically
neutral between
conflict and cooperation."3 Critical theory does not predict
peace.14 War no
more disproves critical theory than peace disproves realism. The
confusion

stems from conflating description and explanation.
The descriptive issue is the extent to which states engage in
practices of
realpolitik (warfare, balancing, relative-gains seeking) versus
accepting the rule
of law and institutional constraints on their autonomy States
sometimes do
engage in power politics, but this hardly describes all of the
past 1300 years,
and even less today, when most states follow most international
law most of
the time,15 and when war and security dilemmas are the
exception rather than
the rule, Great Powers no longer tend to conquer small ones,
and free trade is
expanding rather than contracting.16 The relative frequency of
realpolitik, how-
ever, has nothing to do with "realism." Realism should be seen
as an explana-
tion of realpolitik, not a description of it. Conflating the two
makes it impossible
to tell how well the one explains the other, and leads to the
tautology that war
makes realism true. Realism does not have a monopoly on the
ugly and brutal
side of international life. Even if we agree on a realpolitik
description, we can
reject a realist explanation.
The explanatory issue is why states engage in war or peace.
Mearsheimer's
portrayal of constructivist "causal logic" on this issue is about
30 percent right.
The logic has two elements, structure and agency. On the one
hand, construc-

tivist theorizing tries to show how the social structure of a
system makes
actions possible by constituting actors with certain identities
and interests, and
material capabilities with certain meanings. Missing from
Mearsheimer's ac-
count is the constructivist emphasis on how agency and
interaction produce
and reproduce structures of shared knowledge over time. Since
it is not possi-
ble here to discuss the various dynamics through which this
process takes
place,17 let me illustrate instead. And since Mearsheimer does
not offer a
13. On the social basis of conflict, see Georg Simmel, Conflict
and the Web of Group Affiliations
(Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955). This is also why I prefer to
avoid the term "institutionalism," since
it associates sociality with peace and cooperation.
14. Fischer's suggestion that critical theory predicts cooperation
in feudal Europe is based on a
failure to understand the full implications of this point; see
Fischer, "Feudal Europe, 800-1300."
15. See Louis Henkin, How Nations Behave (New York:
Council on Foreign Relations, 1979), p. 47.
16. On the inadequacy of "realist" descriptions of international
politics, see Paul Schroeder, "His-
torical Reality vs. Neo-realist Theory," International Security,
Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp.
108-148.
17. For a start, see Alexander Wendt, "Collective Identity
Formation," and Emanuel Adler, "Cog-
nitive Evolution," in Emanuel Adler and Beverly Crawford,
eds., Progress in Postwar International
Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), pp.

43-88. The best introduction to proc-
esses of social construction remains Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann, The Social Construction
of Reality (New York: Anchor Books, 1966).
2015 09:27:09 AM
neorealist explanation for inter-state cooperation, conceding
that terrain to
institutionalists, let me focus on the "hard case" of why states
sometimes get
into security dilemmas and war, that is, why they sometimes
engage in real-
politik behavior.
In "Anarchy is What States Make of It" I argued that such
behavior is a
self-fulfilling prophecy,18 and that this is due to both agency
and social struc-
ture. Thus, on the agency side, what states do to each other
affects the social
structure in which they are embedded, by a logic of reciprocity
If they milita-
rize, others will be threatened and arm themselves, creating
security dilemmas
in terms of which they will define egoistic identities and
interests. But if they
engage in policies of reassurance, as the Soviets did in the late
1980s, this will

have a different effect on the structure of shared knowledge,
moving it toward
a security community. The depth of interdependence is a factor
here, as is the
role of revisionist states, whose actions are likely to be
especially threatening.
However, on the structural side, the ability of revisionist states
to create a war
of all against all depends on the structure of shared knowledge
into which they
enter. If past interactions have created a structure in which
status quo states
are divided or naive, revisionists will prosper and the system
will tend toward
a Hobbesian world in which power and self-interest rule. In
contrast, if past
interactions have created a structure in which status quo states
trust and
identify with each other, predators are more likely to face
collective security
responses like the Gulf War.19 History matters. Security
dilemmas are not acts
of God: they are effects of practice. This does not mean that
once created they
can necessarily be escaped (they are, after all, "dilemmas"), but
it puts the
causal locus in the right place.
Contrast this explanation of power politics with the "poverty of
neoreal-
ism."20 Mearsheimer thinks it significant that in anarchy, states
cannot be 100
percent certain that others will not attack. Yet even in domestic
society, I can-
not be certain that I will be safe walking to class. There are no
guarantees in

life, domestic or international, but the fact that in anarchy war
is possible does
not mean "it may at any moment occur.'"21 Indeed, it may be
quite unlikely, as
it is in most interactions today Possibility is not probability
Anarchy as such
18. A similar argument is developed in John Vasquez, The War
Puzzle (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).
19. On the role of collective identity in facilitating collective
security, see Wendt, "Collective
Identity Formation."
20. Richard Ashley, "The Poverty of Neorealism," International
Organization, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Spring
1984), pp. 225-286.
21. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1959), p. 232.
2015 09:27:09 AM
is not a structural cause of anything. What matters is its social
structure, which
varies across anarchies. An anarchy of friends differs from one
of enemies, one
of self-help from one of collective security, and these are all
constituted by
structures of shared knowledge. Mearsheimer does not provide
an argument

for why this is wrong; he simply asserts that it is.
Other realist explanations for power politics fare somewhat
better. Although
neorealists want to eschew arguments from human nature, even
they would
agree that to the extent human-beings-in-groups are prone to
fear and compe-
tition, it may predispose them to war.22 However, this factor
faces countervail-
ing dynamics of interdependence and collective identity
formation, which
sometimes overcome it. The distribution of material capabilities
also matters,
especially if offense is dominant, and military build-ups will of
course concern
other states. Again, however, the meaning of power depends on
the underlying
structure of shared knowledge. A British build-up will be less
threatening to
the United States than a North Korean one, and build-ups are
less likely to
occur in a security community than in a security dilemma.
In order to get from anarchy and material forces to power
politics and war,
therefore, neorealists have been forced to make additional, ad
hoc assumptions
about the social structure of the international system. We see
this in Mear-
sheimer's interest in "hyper-nationalism," Stephen Walt's
emphasis on ideol-
ogy in the "balance of threat," Randall Schweller's focus on the
status
quo-revisionist distinction and, as I argued in my "Anarchy"
piece, in Waltz's

assumption that anarchies are self-help systems.23
Incorporating these assump-
tions generates more explanatory power, but how? In these
cases the crucial
causal work is done by social, not material, factors. This is the
core of a
constructivist view of structure, not a neorealist one.
The problem becomes even more acute when neorealists try to
explain the
relative absence of inter-state war in today's world. If anarchy
is so determin-
ing, why are there not more Bosnias? Why are weak states not
getting killed
off left and right? It stretches credulity to think that the peace
between Norway
and Sweden, or the United States and Canada, or Nigeria and
Benin are all
due to material balancing. Mearsheimer says cooperation is
possible when core
interests are not threatened (p. 25), and that "some states are
especially friendly
22. For a good argument to this effect, see Jonathan Mercer,
"Anarchy and Identity," International
Organization, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring 1995).
23. John J. Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future," International
Security, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Summer 1990),
pp. 5-56; Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1987); Randall
Schweller, "Tripolarity and the Second World War,"
International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 1
(March 1993), pp. 73-103; and Wendt, "Anarchy is What States
Make of It."

2015 09:27:09 AM
for historical or ideological reasons" (p. 31). But this totally
begs the question
of why in an ostensibly "realist" world states do not find thei r
interests
continually threatened by others, and the question of how they
might become
friends. Perhaps Mearsheimer would say that most states today
are status quo
and sovereign.24 But again this begs the question. What is
sovereignty if not
an institution of mutual recognition and non-intervention? And
is not being
"status quo" related to the internalization of this institution in
state interests?
David Strang has argued that those states recognized as
sovereign have better
survival prospects in anarchy than those that are not.25 Far
from challenging
this argument, Mearsheimer presupposes it.
Neorealists' growing reliance on social factors to do their
explanatory work
suggests that if ever there were a candidate for a degenerating
research pro-
gram in IR theory, this is it.26 The progressive response (in the
Lakatosian sense)
would be to return to realism's materialist roots by showing that
the back-

ground understandings that give capabilities meaning are caused
by still
deeper material conditions, or that capabilities have intrinsic
meaning that
cannot be ignored. To show that the material base determines
international
superstructure, in other words, realists should be purging their
theory of social
content, not adding it as they are doing.27 And anti-realists, in
turn, should be
trying to show how the causal powers of material facts
presuppose social
content, not trying to show that institutions explain additional
…
Escobar 1Escobar 2Escobar 3
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IN
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G
Y This Time Is
Different
W h y U.S. Foreign Policy
W ill Never Recover
Daniel W. Drezner
I
t is a truth universally acknowledged
that a foreign policy community
in possession of great power must
be in want of peace of mind. Climate
change, the Middle East, terrorism,
trade, nonproliferation—there is never
a shortage of issues and areas for those
who work in international relations
to fret about. If you were to flip through

the back issues of Foreign Affairs, you
would find very few essays proclaiming
that policymakers had permanently
sorted out a problem. Even after the Cold
War ended peacefully, these pages
were full of heated debate about civili-
zations clashing.
It is therefore all too easy to dismiss
the current angst over U.S. President
Donald Trump as the latest hymn from
the Church of Perpetual Worry. This is
hardly the first time observers have
questioned the viability of a U.S.-led
global order. The peril to the West was
never greater than when the Soviet Union
launched Sputnik—until U.S. President
Richard Nixon ended the Bretton
Woods system. The oil shocks of the
1970s posed a grave threat to the liberal
international order—but then came the
DANIEL W. DREZNER is Professor o f In te rn a -
tio n a l P o litics a t th e F le tch e r School o f Law and
D ip lo m a cy and a re g u la r c o n trib u to r to The
W ashington Post.
explosion of the U.S. budget and trade
deficits in the 1980s. The perpetrators of
the 9/11 attacks seemed like an existential
threat to the system—until the 2008
financial crisis. Now there is Trump. It is
worth asking, then, whether the current
fretting is anything new. For decades, the
sky has refused to fall.

But this time really is different. Just
when many of the sources of American
power are ebbing, many of the guardrails
that have kept U.S. foreign policy on
track have been worn down. It is tempt-
ing to pin this degradation on Trump
and his retrograde foreign policy views,
but the erosion predated him by a good
long while. Shifts in the way Americans
debate and conduct foreign policy will
make it much more difficult to right the
ship in the near future. Foreign policy
discourse was the last preserve of
bipartisanship, but political polarization
has irradiated that marketplace of
ideas. Although future presidents will
try to restore the classical version of
U.S. foreign policy, in all likelihood, it
cannot be revived.
The American foundations undergird-
ing the liberal international order
are in grave danger, and it is no longer
possible to take the pillars of that order
for granted. Think of the current
moment as a game of Jenga in which
multiple pieces have been removed but
the tower still stands. As a result, some
observers have concluded that the
structure remains sturdy. But in fact, it
is lacking many important parts and,
on closer inspection, is teetering ever so
slightly. Like a Jenga tower, the order
will continue to stand upright—right
until the moment it collapses. Every effort
should be made to preserve the liberal

international order, but it is also time to
1 0 F O R E I G N A F F A I R S
P
E
T
E
M
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IC
H
/ T
H
E
N
E
W
Y

O
R
K
T
IM
E
S
/
R
E
D
U
X
This Time Is Different
Confidence man: Trump aboard A ir Force One in Maryland,
October 2018
start thinking about what might come
after its end.
The gravity of the problem is dawning
on some members of the foreign policy
community. Progressives are debating
among themselves whether and how they
should promote liberal values abroad if
they should return to power. Conserva-
tives are agonizing over whether the

populist moment represents a permanent
shift in the way they should think about
U.S. foreign policy. N either camp is
really grappling with the end of equilib-
rium, howrever. The question is not what
U.S. foreign policy can do after Trump.
The question is whether there is any viable
grand strategy that can endure past an
election cycle.
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
In foreign policy failures garner more
attention than successes. D uring the
Cold War, the “loss of China,” the rise of
the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War, the
energy crisis, and the Iran hostage crisis
all overshadowed the persistently effec-
tive grand strategy of containment.
Only once the Soviet Union broke up
peacefully was the U nited States’ Cold
War foreign policy viewed as an over-
arching success. Since then, the wars in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria,
along with the 2008 financial crisis and
the rise of populism, have dominated the
discussion. It is all too easy to conclude
that the United States’ recent foreign
policy has been an unmitigated disaster.
At the same time that all these
negative developments were taking place,
however, underlying trends were
moving in a more U.S.-friendly direction.
T he number of interstate wars and
civil wars was falling dramatically, as

was every other metric of international
violence. Democracy was spreading,
liberating masses of people from
May/June 2019 11
D a n ie l W. D re zn e r
tyranny. Globalization was accelerating,
slashing extreme poverty. The United
States could take a great deal of credit
for these gains, because the liberal order
it nurtured and expanded had laid
the foundations for decades of relative
peace and prosperity.
Washington made mistakes, of course,
such as invading Iraq and forcing
countries to remove restrictions on the
flow of capital across their borders.
As misguided as these errors were, and
as much as they alienated allies in the
moment, they did not permanently
weaken the United States’ position in
the world. U.S. soft power suffered in
the short term but recovered quickly
under the Obama administration. The
United States still managed to attract
allies, and in the case of the 2011
intervention in Libya, it was natq allies
begging Washington to use force, not
vice versa. Today, the United States has
more treaty allies than any other
country in the world—more, in fact,

than any country ever.
The United States was able to
weather the occasional misstep in large
part because its dominance rested on
such sturdy foundations. Its geographic
blessings are ample: bountiful natural
resources, two large oceans to the east
and the west, and two valued partners
to the north and the south. The country
has been so powerful for so long that
many of its capabilities seem to be
fundamental constants of the universe
rather than happenstance. The United
States has had the most powerful
military in the world since 1945, and its
economy, as measured by purchasing
power parity, became the biggest around
1870. Few people writing today about
international afFairs can remember a
time when the United States was not the
richest and most powerful country.
Long-term hegemony only further
embedded the United States’ advantage.
In constructing the liberal interna-
tional order, Washington created an array
of multilateral institutions, from the
un Security Council to the World Bank,
that privileged it and key allies. Having
global rules of the game benefits
everyone, but the content of those rules
benefited the United States in particu-
lar. The Internet began as an outgrowth
of a U.S. Department of Defense

initiative, providing to the United
States an outsize role in its governance.
American higher education attracts the
best of the best from across the world, as
do Silicon Valley and Hollywood, adding
billions of dollars to the U.S. economy.
An immigrant culture has constantly
replenished the country’s demographic
strength, helping the United States avoid
the aging problems that plague parts of
Europe and the Pacific Rim.
The United States has also benefited
greatly from its financial dominance.
The U.S. dollar replaced the British pound
sterling as the world’s reserve currency
75 years ago, giving the United States the
deepest and most liquid capital markets
on the globe and enhancing the reach
and efficacy of its economic statecraft.
In recent decades, Washington’s financial
might has only grown. Even though the
2008 financial crisis began in the Ameri-
can housing market, the end result was
that the United States became more,
rather than less, central to global capital
markets. U.S. capital markets proved
to be deeper, more liquid, and better
regulated than anyone else’s. And even
though many economists once lost
sleep over the country’s growing budget
12 F O R E I G N A F F A I R S

deficits, that has turned out to be a non-
crisis. Many now argue that the U.S.
economy has a higher tolerance for public
debt than previously thought.
Diplomatically, all these endowments
ensured that regardless of the issue at
hand, the United States was always
viewed as a reliable leader. Its dense and
enduring network of alliances and
partnerships signaled that the commit-
ments Washington made were seen as
credible. American hegemony bred
resentment in some parts of the globe,
but even great-power rivals trusted
what the United States said in interna-
tional negotiations.
At the same time as the international
system cemented the United States’
structural power, the country’s domestic
politics helped preserve a stable foreign
policy. A key dynamic was the push
and pull between different schools of
thought. An equilibrium was main-
tained—between those who wanted the
country to adopt a more interventionist
posture and those who wanted to
husband national power, between those
who preferred multilateral approaches
and those who preferred unilateral ones.
When one camp overreached, others
would seize on the mistake to call for a
course correction. Advocates of restraint

invoked the excesses of Iraq to push
for retrenchment. Supporters of inter-
vention pointed to the implosion of
Syria to argue for a more robust posture.
Thanks to the separation of powers
within the U.S. government, no one
foreign policy camp could accrue too
much influence. When the Nixon White
House pursued a strictly realpolitik
approach toward the Soviet Union,
Congress forced human rights concerns
onto the agenda. When the Obama
administration was leery of sanctioning
Iran’s central bank, congressional hawks
forced it to take more aggressive action.
Time and time again, U.S. foreign policy
reverted to the mean. Overreaching was
eventually followed by restraint.
Buck-passing led to leading. The results
of these crosscutting pressures were far
from perfect, but they ensured that U.S.
foreign policy did not deviate too far
from the status quo. Past commitments
remained credible into the future.
For decades, these dynamics, global
and domestic, kept crises from becoming
cataclysmic. U.S. foreign policy kept
swinging back into equilibrium. So what
has changed? Today, there is no more
equilibrium, and the structural pillars of
American power are starting to buckle.
THE NEW NORMAL

Despite the remarkable consistency
of U.S. foreign policy, behind the scenes,
some elements of American power
were starting to decline. As measured
by purchasing power parity, the United
States stopped being the largest econ-
omy in the world a few years ago.
Its command of the global commons has
weakened as China’s and Russia’s asym
metric capabilities have improved.
The accumulation of “forever wars” and
low-intensity conflicts has taxed the
United States’ armed forces.
Outward consistency also masked the
dysfunction that was afflicting the
domestic checks on U.S. foreign policy.
For starters, public opinion has ceased
to act as a real constraint on decision-
makers. Paradoxically, the very things that
have ensured U.S. national security—
geographic isolation and overwhelming
power—have also led most Americans
to not think about foreign policy, and
M a y/J u n e 2019 13
Daniel W. Drezner
rationally so. The trend began with the
switch to an all-volunteer military, in
1973, which allowed most of the public to
stop caring about vital questions of war
and peace. The apathy has only grown

since the end of the Cold War, and today,
poll after poll reveals that Americans
rarely, if ever, base their vote on foreign
policy considerations.
The marketplace of ideas has broken
down, too. The barriers to entry for
harebrained foreign policy schemes have
fallen away as Americans’ trust in
experts has eroded. Today, the United
States is in the midst of a debate about
whether a wall along its southern border
should be made of concrete, have see-
through slats, or be solar-powered.
The ability of experts to kill bad ideas
isn’t what it used to be. The cognoscenti
might believe that their informed opin-
ions can steady the hands of successive
administrations, but they are operating
in hostile territory.
To be fair, the hostility to foreign
policy experts is not without cause. The
interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
Libya were massive screwups. Despite
what the experts predicted, globalization
has not transformed China into a
Jeffersonian democracy. The supposedly
infallible advice enshrined in the Wash-
ington consensus ended up triggering
multiple financial crises. Economists and
foreign affairs advisers advocated
austerity, despite the pain it caused the
poor and the middle class, and consis-
tently cried wolf about an increase
in interest rates that has yet to come.

No wonder both Barack Obama and
Trump have taken such pleasure in
bashing the Washington establishment.
Institutional checks on the presi-
dent’s foreign policy prerogatives have
also deteriorated—primarily because
the other branches of government have
voluntarily surrendered them. The
passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act
of 1930, which exacerbated the Great
Depression, showed that Congress
could not responsibly execute its consti-
tutional responsibilities on trade. With
the 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements
Act, it delegated many of those powers
to the president, marking the beginning
of a sustained decline in congressional
oversight. More recently, political
polarization has rendered Congress a
dysfunctional, petulant mess, encour-
aging successive administrati ons to
enhance the powers of the executive
branch. Nor has the judicial branch acted
as much of an impediment. The Su-
preme Court has persistently deferred to
the president on matters of national
security, as it did in 2018 when it ruled
in favor of the Trump administration’s
travel ban.
Foreign policy analysts largely
celebrated this concentration of power
in the executive branch, and prior to
Trump, their logic seemed solid. They

pointed to the public’s ignorance of and
Congress’ lack of interest in interna-
tional relations. As political gridlock and
polarization took hold, elected Demo-
crats and Republicans viewed foreign
policy as merely a plaything for the next
election. And so most foreign policy
elites viewed the president as the last
adult in the room.
What they failed to plan for was the
election of a president who displays the
emotional and intellectual maturity of
a toddler. As a candidate, Trump gloried
in beating up on foreign policy experts,
asserting that he could get better results
by relying on his gut. As president, he
has governed mostly by tantrum. He has
insulted and bullied U.S. allies. He
has launched trade wars that have accom-
plished little beyond hurting the U.S.
economy. He has said that he trusts
Russian President Vladimir Putin more
than his own intelligence briefers. His
administration has withdrawn from an
array of multilateral agreements and bad-
mouthed the institutions that remain.
The repeated attacks on the eu and nato
represent a bigger strategic mistake
than the invasion of Iraq. In multiple
instances, his handpicked foreign policy

advisers have attempted to lock in
decisions before the president can sabo-
tage them with an impulsive tweet. Even
when his administration has had the
germ of a valid idea, Trump has executed
the resulting policy shifts in the most
ham-handed manner imaginable.
Most of these foreign policy moves
have been controversial, counterproduc-
tive, and perfectly legal. The same
steps that empowered the president to
create foreign policy have permitted
Trump to destroy what his predecessors
spent decades preserving. The other
branches of government endowed the
White House with the foreign policy
equivalent of a Ferrari; the current
occupant has acted like a child playing
with a toy car, convinced that he is
operating in a land of make-believe.
After Trump, a new president will no
doubt try to restore sanity to U.S. foreign
policy. Surely, he or she will reverse
the travel ban, halt the hostile rhetoric
toward long-standing allies, and end
the attacks on the world trading system.
These patches will miss the deeper
problem, however. Political polarization
has eroded the notion that presidents
need to govern from the center. Trump
K e n n e t h Y a m j g u c h i , P h . D .
Professor, C hem istry

J o in o u r g lo b a l c o m m u n i t y :
1 0 0 + c o u n t r ie s . 6 0 + la n g u a g e s .
NEW JERSEY
CITY U N IV E R S ITY
15
Daniel W. Drezner
has eviscerated that idea. The odds are
decent that a left-wing populist will
replace the current president, and then
an archconservative will replace that
president. The weak constraints on the
executive branch will only make things
worse. Congress has evinced little
interest in playing a constructive role
when it comes to foreign policy.
The public is still checked out on world
politics. The combination of worn-down
guardrails and presidents emerging
from the ends of the political spectrum
may well whipsaw U.S. foreign policy
between “America first” and a new
Second International. The very concept
of a consistent, durable grand strategy
will not be sustainable.
In that event, only the credulous will
consider U.S. commitments credible.
Alliances will fray, and other countries

will find it easier to flout global norms.
All the while, the scars of the Trump
administration will linger. The vagaries
of the current administration have
already forced a mass exodus of senior
diplomats from the State Department.
T hat human capital will be difficult to
replace. For the past two years, the
number of international students who
have enrolled in U.S. university degree
programs has fallen as nativism
has grown louder. It will take a while to
convince foreigners that this was a
tem porary spasm. After the Trum p
adm inistration withdrew from the Iran
nuclear deal, it forced s w i f t , the private-
sector network that facilitates interna-
tional financial transactions, to comply
with unilateral U.S. sanctions against
Iran, spurring China, France, Germany,
Russia, and the U nited Kingdom to
create an alternative payment system.
T hat means little right now, but in the
long run, both U.S. allies and U.S. rivals
will learn to avoid relying on the dollar.
Perhaps most im portant, the Trum p
administration has unilaterally surren-
dered the set of ideals that guided U.S.
policymakers for decades. It is entirely
proper to debate how much the U nited
States should prioritize the promotion
of human rights, democracy, and the rule
of law across the world. W hat should
be beyond debate, however, is that it is

worthwhile to promote those values
overseas and enshrine them at home.
Trum p’s ugly rhetoric makes a mockery
of those values. Although a future presi-
dent might sound better on these issues,
both allies and rivals will remember the
current moment. The seeds of doubt
have been planted, and they will one
day sprout.
T he factors that give the United
States an advantage in the international
system—deep capital markets, liberal
ideas, world-class higher education—have
winner-take-all dynamics. O ther actors
will be reluctant to switch away from
the dollar, Wall Street, democracy, and
the Ivy League. These sectors can
w ithstand a few hits. Excessive use of
financial statecraft, alliances with overseas
populists, or prolonged bouts of anti-
immigrant hysteria, however, will force
even close allies to start thinking about
alternatives. T he American advantage
in these areas will go bankrupt much like
Mike Campbell in The Sun Also Rises
did: “gradually and then suddenly.” Right
now, the United States’ Jenga tower is
still standing. Remove a few more
blocks, however, and the wobbling will
become noticeable to the unaided eye.
W hat would collapse look like? The
United States would remain a great
power, of course, but it would be an

ordinary and less rich one. On an increas-
ing number of issues, U.S. preferences
would carry minimal weight, as China
and Europe coordinated on a different
set of rules. Persistent domestic political
polarization would encourage Middle
Eastern allies, such as Israel and Saudi
Arabia, to line up with Republicans
and European allies, such as Germany and
the United Kingdom, to back Democrats.
The continued absence of any coherent
grand strategy would leave Latin America
vulnerable to a new Great Game as
other great powers vied for influence
there. Demographic pressures would tax
the United States, and the productivity
slowdown would make those pressures
even worse. Trade blocs would sap global
economic growth; reduced interdepen-
dence would increase the likelihood
of a great-power war. Climate change
would be mitigated nationally rather than
internationally, leaving almost everyone
worse off.
WHAT, ME WORRY?
It would be delightful if, ten years from
now, critics mocked this essay’s mis
placed doom and gloom. The state
of U.S. foreign policy seemed dire a

decade ago, during the depths of the
financial crisis and the war in Iraq. That
turned out to be more of a blip than a
trend. It remains quite possible now
that Trump’s successor can repair the
damage he has wreaked. And it is worth
remembering that for all the flaws in
the U.S. foreign policy machine, other
great powers are hardly omnipotent.
China’s and Russia’s foreign policy
successes have been accompanied by
blowback, from pushback against infra-
structure projects in Asia to a hostile
Ukraine, that will make it harder for
those great powers to achieve their
revisionist aims.
The trouble with “after Trump”
narratives, however, is that the 45th
president is as much a symptom of the ills
plaguing U.S. foreign policy as he is a
cause. Yes, Trump has made things much,
much worse. But he also inherited a
system stripped of the formal and infor-
mal checks on presidential power. T hat’s
why the next president will need to
do much more than superficial repairs.
He or she will need to take the politically
inconvenient step of encouraging greater
congressional participation in foreign
policy, even if the opposing party is in
charge. Not every foreign policy initia-
tive needs to be run through the De-
fense Department. The next president
could use the bully pulpit to encourage

and embrace more public debate about
the United States’ role in the world.
Restoring the norm of valuing expertise,
while still paying tribute to the wisdom
of crowds, would not hurt either. Nor
would respecting democracy at home
while promoting the rule of law abroad.
All these steps will make the political
life of the next president more difficult.
In most Foreign Affairs articles, this is
the moment when the writer calls for
a leader to exercise the necessary
political will to do the right thing. That
exhortation always sounded implausible,
but now it sounds laughable. One hopes
that the Church of Perpetual Worry
does not turn into an apocalyptic cult.
This time, however, the sky may really
be falling.®
M a y / J u n e 2019 17
The contents of Foreign Affairs are protected by copyright. ©
2004 Council on Foreign
Relations, Inc., all rights reserved. To request permission to
reproduce additional copies of the
article(s) you will retrieve, please contact the Permissions and
Licensing office of Foreign
Affairs.

The Agency and Authority of International
NGOs
Sarah S. Stroup and Wendy H. Wong
“Lost” Causes: Agenda Vetting in Global Issue Networks and
the Shaping of Human Security. By Charli Carpenter.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. 256p. $82.50 cloth,
$24.95 paper.
Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in
Global Environmental Governance. By Jessica Green.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. 232p. $75.00 cloth,
$24.95 paper.
Help or Harm: The Human Security Effects of International
NGOs. By Amanda Murdie. Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2014. 320p. $60.00.
T
he study of global politics today encompasses an
enormous array of actors, relationships, and processes
beyond the state. The growth in the study of one
nonstate actor, international nongovernmental organizations
(INGOs), is particularly noteworthy.1 We frequently hear
about INGOs because they claim to challenge the existing
social and political order on issues such as human rights
abuses, poverty, and environmental degradation, and they
appear to have had substantial victories in championing new
ideas and changing state policy.
Are INGOs powerful actors that are able to transform
global politics, noisy interest groups whose influence is
severely constrained by increasingly complex global
structures, or epiphenomenal representations of an
increasingly liberal world order? To answer this question

requires more research into the incredible variation
among the tens of thousands of INGOs active around
the world. Politics happens within and among INGOs,
and those processes directly affect both the way that
INGOs engage with their environment and their ability
to influence international policies and social practices.
A quarter century of serious scholarship on INGOs has
demonstrated the utility of a more expansive conception
of power in global politics.2 Research on INGOs brings
together foreign policy analysis, scholarship on interest
groups, a constructivist concern for social norms, and
network analysis, all in an attempt to explain politics
beyond the state. In showing how INGOs change policies,
create global rules, and advance new normative frame-
works, scholars have drawn upon a vast array of concepts
and methodological tools from political science and
beyond. The three recent books by Charli Carpenter,
Jessica Green, and Amanda Murdie are exemplary in the
creativity and care that they bring to the question of the
ways in which INGOs set policy agendas, improve human
security, and participate in global governance. All three
books treat INGOs as agents that have capabilities and
weaknesses that affect how they achieve their goals.
We suggest that a stronger focus on INGOs as agents
can help explain which INGOs are able to exercise
influence and under what conditions. Armed with greater
knowledge about individual INGOs and their practices,
we can then understand how these traits shape
their relationships with those they seek to influence.
Authority—by its nature a relational concept—exists for
certain INGOs in their relationships with particular audiences.
INGO authority is real, but it is also uneven and contested.
We are not the first to engage the question of INGO

power and authority, but the debate too often treats
INGOs as abstractions rather than as real-life, differen-
tiated actors. Just as the answer to the question of “how
powerful is the state” will vary depending on whether the
state in question is Japan or Jamaica, an understanding of
INGO power requires disaggregation of the category of
INGO. Groups like Oxfam, Human Rights First, and the
Environmental Defense Fund are wildly different, and
these differences shape their reception by the many and
varied audiences that they seek to reach. The agential study
of INGOs should complement, not replace, the more
structural and constructivist perspectives in international
relations, while offering insight into bigger questions
about power and authority.
Sarah S. Stroup ([email protected]) is Associate
Professor of Political Science at Middlebury College.
Wendy H. Wong ([email protected]) is Associate
Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto.
138 Perspectives on Politics
doi:10.1017/S153759271500328X
© American Political Science Association 2016
Review Essay
The State of the Nonstate?
Private transnational groups are not new, but a new and
intense focus on them emerged in the 1990s as part of the
growing attention to nonstate actors. The United Nations
defines an “NGO” as “a not-for-profit group, principally
independent from government, which is organized on

a local, national, or international level to address issues in
support of the public good.”3 International NGOs
(INGOs) work in more than three or more countries,
according to the Union of International Associations, and
over the past 20 years the number of INGOs has almost
tripled, reaching more than 55,000 in 2010.4
These definitions of INGOs are widely cited but also
problematic. First, they are overly inclusive. The afore-
mentioned definitions include such groups as the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC),
private actors that may be very influential but have
a different form of power than groups such as Doctors
without Borders and the World Conservation Union.5
Second, the definition emphasizes formal legal status,
when in fact many NGOs are not registered as nonprofits.
In fact, social recognition rather than legal status may be
much more important for an INGO’s authority: Amnesty
International, for example, is registered in Britain as
a company and a charity. The public benefit orientation
that supposedly distinguishes INGOs is a third area of
confusion. Many INGOs respond to a perceived need for
which there is often no direct demand; these groups decide
what to work on in accordance with their own agendas.
Finally, the definition places INGOs in opposition to
states; in fact, many INGOs work closely with or through
states and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). These
conceptual ambiguities are not merely academic. Scholars
who make claims about what INGOs really are often have
very different sorts of groups in mind.
Generally, we can organize INGO scholarship into
several waves. At the end of the Cold War, a first wave of
scholars focused on demonstrating that INGOs were

powerful actors in global politics, worthy of serious study.
Often depicted as nodes in transnational advocacy net-
works, INGOs could create external pressure to change
state policies, bring new issues like torture to the global
agenda, or change social practices around environmental
protection and sustainability.6 This early work was
sympathetic to, or explicitly part of, a constructivist re-
search program that sought to unpack the importance of
ideational forces and processes. As such, INGOs were
often portrayed as transmission belts for emergent norms,
and the emphasis was on the ideational structures that
INGOs create and recreate.7 The focus was on showing
that INGOs influenced political outcomes, but not in
a way that systematically evaluated differences in the
identities, tactics, or issue areas.
Since the late 1990s, two questions have dominated
a second wave of INGO research. First, what do INGOs
do and why? Challenging the idea that INGOs are
distinctive because of their principled orientation, a num-
ber of scholars have suggested that the demands of
organizational maintenance, rather than commitment to
lofty goals, best explains how INGOs choose to engage in
advocacy and service delivery. Second, what is the nature
of the relationship between INGOs and the states that
have been traditionally the focus of IR scholarship? In
fact, states and INGOs can collaborate, compete, or
complement one another; INGOs can be instruments of
state power at one point while later directly challenging
state authority. Outside of a narrow cohort of state-
centric realists, IR scholars seem open to the potential
power of INGOs in governance while demanding greater
specificity around the scope conditions enabling INGO
influence and how those opportunities have changed
over time.

Within this second wave, a strong structuralist
critique offers a challenge to the idea of examining
individual INGOs by locating the source of their power
in global social processes. In this perspective, the ability
of INGOs to make specific principled claims rests on
a broader liberal normative framework that legitimates
the right of individuals to speak for themselves. Only
those INGOs that conform to certain standards—
liberal, rationalist, acceptant of the basic legitimacy of
markets and states—are recognized as legitimate gover-
nors.8 In this Foucaultian view, INGOs lack agency within
a liberal governmental rationality. Real resistance is very
difficult.9 While we accept the point that liberal norms
facilitate the participation of civil society groups in global
political processes, this determinism ignores the fragmenta-
tion of the global social structure and the diversity of INGOs
within it. INGOs actively advance or resist this liberal
rationality: Some INGOs like Amnesty have been at the
forefront of the expansion of universal human rights and the
responsibility to protect, but others like Focus on the Global
South resist this liberalism as imperialistic. Proponents of
global civil society, in particular, see much more possibility
for change, as the issues promoted by INGOs directly address
problems of injustice that are created by sovereign states and
liberal free markets.10 At the more micro level, there is also
substantial variation in the way that INGOs respond to the
structural conditions that they face, as the works under review
here demonstrate.
Across these several strands of INGO research, one
unifying thread is the privileged attention that the
INGO—state relationship receives. This relationship is
doubtless a critical one, as states enable, constrain, and
respond to them.11 But INGOs engage all kinds of
political actors—IGOs, local communities, multinational
corporations, and other INGOs. As Green explains,

“governance is expanding: there are multiple loci of
March 2016 | Vol. 14/No. 1 139
authority rather than a single locus that rests with the state”
(Rethinking Private Authority, p. 164). Theoretically,
therefore, we need greater attention to the diversity of
INGOs and the choices that they make. How INGOs
define their missions, how they choose different audiences
to target, and which strategies they choose to employ help
define INGO agency. In turn, these agential qualities
shape the INGOs that are able to exercise influence.
INGOs as Agents
INGOs are often portrayed as an increasingly important
type of global actor: What type of actions, then, do
INGOs take? Both scholars and practitioners separate the
work of INGOs into advocacy and service delivery. In
actual practice, the divide between advocacy and service
delivery is blurred, and many organizations do both or
have changed the balance of their activities over time.12
Whether pushing for policy changes from states and IGOs,
providing ideas and goods to target populations, or some
mix of the two, INGOs see advocacy and service delivery
as tactics for advancing social change.
One central debate among INGO analysts is over
whether and how these practices are shaped by the moral
commitments of INGOs. While usually presented as
mutually exclusive, NGOs may be motivated by both
principles and self -interest.13 As Murdie argues, the fact
that some INGOs are not principled does not mean that
all INGOs are not principled (Help or Harm, p. 239). We

ultimately agree with Thomas Risse that INGOs that
neglect their principled orientation risk the attribute that
makes them distinctive and potentially powerful.14
INGOs must maintain their organizational capacity, but
their claims to serve others underpin their legitimacy in the
eyes of global audiences.
The three books under review offer valuable insight
into the various audiences affected by INGO work.
Carpenter’s “Lost” Causes concentrates on relationships
among INGOs and other members of issue advocacy
networks. Murdie’s Help or Harm focuses on the impact of
INGOs on populations in developing countries. Finally,
in Rethinking Private Authority, Green explores how
private actors create or enforce rules that shape the
environmental practices of firms and states.
The politics among INGOs were initially neglected, but
have been drawn into the spotlight through the works of
Carpenter and Clifford Bob.15 INGOs often work together
in advocacy coalitions to push for policy change, in more or
less formal versions of the many networks that connect
INGOs. These campaigns—perhaps most famously the
International Coalition to Ban Landmines—can be very
effective but are not always so.16 Precisely how do INGOs
interact with one another in these networks? Carpenter has
written the statement book on gatekeeping by advocacy
INGOs and their effects in “agenda vetting” within the
human security and human rights networks. Some INGOs
are able to decide the merit of certain issues for global
campaigns and eliminate others. These network hubs have
kept issues such as male circumcision, compensation for
victims of war, and autonomous weapons on the sidelines of
global INGO advocacy. The structure of networks directs

the way that ideas travel to achieve international support.
Perhaps most cogently, Carpenter’s focus groups and
network analysis demonstrate how INGOs work with other
INGOs: Smaller, less well-known actors can be stifled, and,
similarly, larger actors are courted by other INGOs and
policymakers. We can clearly observe how, as separate
agents interacting in issue-specific networks, some INGOs
exercise power over others, but Carpenter also shows how
INGOs serve different purposes and therefore bring value to
a coalition in distinct ways.17
Complementing Carpenter’s focus on advocacy
INGOs working on human security, Murdie explores
how both service delivery and advocacy INGOs can “help
or harm” populations in need. In her methodologically
sophisticated but accessible book, Murdie uses game
theory, regression analysis, and illustrative case studies to
show that INGOs can improve access to potable water and
increase the protection of physical integrity rights. Her
general finding is based on careful delineation among
different INGOs, both in terms of their varied motivations
and their practices. Murdie argues that INGO motivations
condition their ability to improve human security. Service
INGOs can signal their good intentions by joining
voluntary accountability programs, which then increase
the support they receive from donors and improve their
capacity to provide services. In a chapter on advocacy
INGOs, she also argues that they can be effective
promoters of some human rights, but finds that INGOs
are less likely to succeed when global and local norms are
at odds and INGO agendas are biased toward their
international donors (Help or Harm, p. 196). Her analysis
of the human impact of INGOs ably incorporates
structural factors and individual agency. Structural con-
ditions do matter—for example, in countries with high
levels of corruption, rent-seeking INGOs are more likely

to flourish (ibid., p. 163)—but INGOs also make choices
about whether to send costly signals about their motiva-
tions, as when they choose to go through the onerous
process of applying for consultative status at the United
Nations. They come to difficult situations armed with
their own interests, and “good” and “bad” INGOs will
respond to social and political conditions quite differently.
Beyond political activism and service delivery, INGOs
also attempt to create and enforce new rules for global
governance. Green’s book examines when and how private
actors have authority in the environmental sector. State
preferences are important determinants of environmental
governance, Green explains, but there can be structural
openings that allow INGOs to govern using private
authority. Where private actors wield delegated authority,
140 Perspectives on Politics
Review Essay | The Agency and Authority of International
NGOs
she argues, states must have collectively agreed to delegate
authority and agreed upon a specific agent; by contrast,
entrepreneurial authority is most likely to emerge when
state preferences are heterogeneous, leaving a regulatory
vacuum. Examining 152 multilateral environmental trea-
ties over a 150-year period, Green finds that states rarely
delegate to private actors. But entrepreneurial authority by
private actors has grown substantially; of the 119 envi -
ronmental civil regulations created between 1950 and
2009, almost 60% (69) were created in 2000 or later
(Rethinking Private Authority, p. 92). While Green does
not differentiate between firms and NGOs engaged in

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