Interests of international organizations: The exogenous-endogenous framework.

摘要

Intergovernmental organizations (IOs) are often capable of taking actions of their own volition -- whether through design, delegation, or interpretation -- so what are their interests and how do these direct their actions? This dissertation presents a framework to understand these interests and how they affect IOs' actions. The framework identifies that organizations have competing demands from their external and internal environments which evoke endogenous and exogenous interests, respectively, and that these interests interact with one another to direct the action of the organization. The external environment of IOs represents the outside actors, norms, and events the organization must interact with, and their internal environment represents the organizations' mandates, interpretation of charters, and political culture. This framework is applied to three cases of IO action under contentious circumstances where the IO is tasked with making difficult decisions. The cases include the World Trade Organization's Appellate Body's decision to allow unsolicited amicus briefs to be presented during Member-state trade disputes; UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali's innovative approach to peacekeeping and the ensuing tumu and the World Health Organization's widely criticized response to the Ebola epidemic of 2014. The application of the framework to these cases shows how interests affect the actions of the IOs. Endogenous and exogenous interests derived from the internal and external environments temper one another leading to the specific action of the IO.