International executives : transformative bureaucracies or Westphalian orders?

Abstract

Public Administration is in an era of change. This paper studies one under-researched part of public administration, the executive arms of International Governmental Organizations (IGOs). These are referred to as International Executives (IEs) and provide a conceptual mapping and empirical illustrations of three important dynamics of IEs – intergovernmental, supranational and transgovernmental dynamics. The paper offers a middle-range organization theory perspective that suggests five independent variables that affect the behavior and roles of IE civil servants. The variables are (i) the organizational properties of IEs, (ii) the degrees of institutionalization of IEs, (iii) the recruitment procedures of the IEs, (iv) characteristics of the relationships between IEs and external institutions, and finally (v) demographic characteristics of the IE civil servants. The empirical illustrations are drawn from the European Commission, the OECD Secretariat and the WTO Secretariat. The paper highlights that the IEs of the EU, the OECD and the WTO seem to share important behavioral dynamics due to organizational similarities.