When Knowledge is Power – Three Models of Change in International Organizations (Paper): 22 (Studies in International Political Economy) - Softcover

Haas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520074025 ISBN 13: 9780520074026

Publisher: University of California Press, 1992

Synopsis

Do governments seeking to collaborate in such international organizations as the United Nations and the World Bank ever learn to improve the performance of those organizations? Can international organizations be improved by a deliberate institutional design that reflects lessons learned in peacekeeping, the protection of human rights, and environmentally sound economic development? In this incisive work, Ernst Haas examines these and other issues to delineate the conditions under which organizations change their methods for defining problems.

Haas contends that international organizations change most effectively when they are able to redefine the causes underlying the problems to be addressed. He shows that such self-reflection is possible when the expert-generated knowledge about the problems can be made to mesh with the interests of hegemonic coalitions of member governments. But usually efforts to change organizations begin as adaptive practices that owe little to a systematic questioning of past behavior. Often organizations adapt and survive without fully satisfying most of their members, as has been the case with the United Nations since 1970.

When Knowledge Is Power is a wide-ranging work that will elicit interest from political scientists, organization theorists, bureaucrats, and students of management and international administration.

About this title

About the Author

Ernst B. Haas is Robson Research Professor of Government at the University of California, Berkeley and author of numerous books on international organizations.

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When Knowledge is Power: Three Models of Change in International Organizations

By Ernst B. Haas

University of California Press

Copyright 1991 Ernst B. Haas
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520074025
Multilateralism, Knowledge, and Power

Imagine historians in the twenty-third century busily interpreting the events and documents of international relations in the second half of the twentieth century. They would note, of course, that the world was organized into separate sovereign states and that their number had tripled over the previous half-century. But they would note another curious phenomenon: even though the people who ruled these states seemed to treasure their mutual independence as much as ever, they also built an imposing network of organizations that had the task of managing problems that these states experienced in common. Sometimes these international organizations had the task of transferring wealth from the richer to the poorer states. At other times they were asked to make and monitor rules by which all the states had agreed to live. At still other times the task of these organizations was the prevention of conflict among states. In short, rulers seemed to concede that without institutionalized cooperation among their states, life would be more difficult, dreary, and dangerous. Proof lies in the number and kind of such organizations, which increased at a stupendous rate after 1945.

Our historians would also note a second phenomenon, which gathered force around 1980. Everybody seemed to be disappointed with these organizations. Some of the most powerful states sought to disengage from them. Others demanded more benefits but received fewer. The very idea of moderating the logic of the cohabitation of 160 sovereign units on the same planet with institutionalized cooperation lost its appeal. Did international organizations disappear to give rise to alternative modes of collaboration? Did states examine the reasons for their disappointment and reform the network of international organizations? Did rulers question the very principle of a world order based on sovereign and competing states? Our historians know the eventual outcome. We do not. We can only speculate about the future of international cooperation and wonder whether it will make use of international organizations. I wish to construct concepts that might advance the enterprise of systematic speculation.

Since the speculation is to be systematic, my underlying assumptions require specification. They are as follows: All international organizations are deliberately designed by their founders to "solve problems" that require collaborative action for a solution. No collaboration is conceivable except on the basis of explicit articulated interests. What are the interests? Contrary to lay usage, interests are not the opposite of ideals or values. An actor's sense of self-interest includes the desire to hedge against uncertainty, to minimize risk. One cannot have a notion of risk without some experience with choices that turned out to be less than optimal; one's interests are shaped by one's experiences. But one's satisfaction with an experience is a function of what is ideally desired, a function of one's values. Interests cannot be articulated without values. Far from (ideal) values being pitted against (material) interests, interests are unintelligible without a sense of values-to-be-realized. The interests to be realized by collaborative action are an expression of the actors' values.

My speculations concern the future of international organizations, but my assumptions force me to consider the future as a function of the history of collaboration as that history is experienced in the minds

of collective actors: national and international bureaucracies. That history is the way "the problem to be solved" was seen at various times by the actors. What this book seeks to explain, then, is the change in the definition of the problem to be solved by a given organization . Let us take an example. In 1945 the problem the World Bank was to solve was how most speedily to rebuild war-ravaged Europe. By 1955 the problem the bank was to solve was how most effectively to spur industrial growth in the developing countries. By 1975 the problem to be solved had become the elimination of poverty in the Third World. The task of my book is to explain the change in problem definition, to make clear whether and how the implicit theories held by actors changed.

I shall argue that problems are redefined through one of two complicated processes that I call "adaptation" and "learning." These processes differ in their dependence on new knowledge that may be introduced into decision making:

Adaptation Learning Behavior changes as actors add new activities (or drop old ones) without examining the implicit theories underlying their programs. Underlying values are not questioned. Behavior changes as actors question original implicit theories underlying programs and examine their original values. The ultimate purpose of the organization is not questioned. The emphasis is on altering means of action, not ends. Technical rationality triumphs. The ultimate purpose is redefined, as means as well as ends are questioned. Subtantive rationality triumphs. New ends (purposes) are added without worrying about their coherence with existing ends. Change is incremental without any attempt at nesting purposes logically. New nested problem sets are constructed because new ends are devised on the basis of consensual knowledge that has become available, as provided by epistemic communities.

I return to the example of the World Bank. Suppose the bank had been asked to solve problems by simply adding new tasks to old ones,

without seeking to justify industrialization as a means toward the eradication of poverty, without explaining infrastructure development projects as a means toward industrial growth, which in turn was eventually seen as a means for eliminating poverty. There was no new theory of economic development, and no cohesive group of experts that "sold" that theory to the bank's management. I call this sequence "change by adaptation." If, conversely, these successive new purposes came about as the result of a systematic pattern of subsuming new means under new ends, legitimated by a new theory of economic development advocated by an epistemic community, then the pattern conforms to what I call "learning."

I argue that adaptation can take place in two different settings, each a distinct model of organizational development. One, labeled "incremental growth," features the successive augmentation of an organization's program as actors add new tasks to older ones without any change in the organization's decision-making dynamics or mode of choosing. The other, labeled "turbulent nongrowth," involves major changes in organizational decision making: ends no longer cohere; internal consensus on both ends and means disintegrates. In contrast, learning is associated with a model of organizational change I call "managed interdependence," in which the reexamination of purposes is brought about by knowledge-mediated decision-making dynamics.

The point of the book is to suggest when and where each model prevails, how a given organization can change from resembling one model to resembling one of the others, and how adaptation can give way to learning and learning to adaptation. Therefore, a set of descriptive variables is introduced to make possible the delineation of key conditions and attributes that vary from model to model. These descriptive variables include the setting in which international organizations operate, the power they have at their disposal, and the modes of behavior typical in their operations.

Description, however, is not enough to permit us to make the judgments we seek. A second set of variables is provided to make possible an evaluation of the variation disclosed by studying the descriptive variables. These evaluative concepts stress the types of knowledge used by the actors in making choices, their political objectives, and the manner in which issues being negotiated are linked into packages.

Further evaluations are made about the type of bargaining produced by issue linkage, whether these bargains result in agreement on new ways of conceptualizing the problems to be solved, and whether new problem sets imply institutional changes leading to gains (or losses) in the legitimacy and authority enjoyed by the organization.

I foreshadow some conclusions that will be demonstrated in greater detail later. The World Bank began life in conformity with the incremental-growth model and later developed into the managed-interdependence model. The United Nations' (U.N.) collective-security practices degenerated from incremental growth into the turbulent nongrowth pattern; the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) always functioned in conformity with the turbulent nongrowth model. In the World Bank no decline in organizational power occurred. In fact, the president's autonomous ability to lead has increased over the years; merit remains the principle for selecting staff; outside consultants always serve in their personal capacity. Over the years, issue linkage was increasingly informed by technical knowledge and by political objectives of a progressively more complex and interconnected type. As new and more elaborate institutional practices developed, these also became more authoritative in the eyes of the membership, even if they did not become more legitimate as well. The innovations summarized as "peacekeeping" and associated with the special crisis management leadership style of Dag Hammarskjld suggest that in 1956 U.N. activity relating to collective security conformed to the incremental-growth model, too. But unlike the bank, the United Nations thirty years later has become the victim of turbulent nongrowth. Earlier institutionalization and increases in authority were dissipated, no improvements in technical knowledge informed decision making, political goals became simpler and more immediacy oriented, and the leadership of the secretary-general was all but invisible. Possibly, however, the successes scored by Javier Prez de Cullar in 1988 will reverse this trend. UNESCO, finally, never enjoyed a coherent program informed by consensual knowledge and agreed political objectives; it suffered no decline in institutionalization and power because it had very little of these in the first place. Both authority and legitimacy declined to a nadir in 1986 after decades of internal controversy over the organization's basic mission.

So what? How does the mapping of movement from one model to another help us with the future of international organizations? I want to answer a question that not only incorporates my own uncertainty about that future but also seeks to generalize from the uncertainties against which political actors try to protect themselves. We assume that their attempts are informed by interests that are shaped by implicit theories. States acting on their perceived interests, not scholars writing books, are the architects that will design the international organizations of the future. These interests are informed by the values political leaders seek to defend, not by the ideals of observers. Actors carry in their heads the values that shape the issues contained in their briefing papers. My effort to conceptualize the process of coping with uncertainty is based on this given. Scholarly concern with the question of how we might approach the international organizations of the future relies on understanding how self-conscious actors can learn to design organizations that will give them more satisfaction than the generation of international organizations with which we are familiar. If my demonstration in this book is persuasive, it will give us the tools for saying, "If an organization of type A regularly produces certain outcomes, then this type will (or will not) serve the perceived needs of its members; therefore they will seek to design an organization of type B if they are dissatisfied or will retain type A if they are happy."

Only idealists would presume to prescribe for the future by using their personal values as the definer of suggestions. I am not an idealist. The suggestions for a particular type of organizational learning developed in the final chapter are consistent with the nonidealistic line of analysis pursued in the body of the book even though they also project my views as to what ought to be learned.

To avoid even the appearance of inflated claims, I maintain that the typological argument I offer falls short of constituting a theory. The demonstrations just made about the World Bank, UNESCO, and the United Nations are not full explanations of what happened to these organizations; nor do they display all the causes for these events. No pretense is made that these partial post hoc explanations provide all

the ingredients needed for an informed prediction. Why then offer a typology of models of change?

I want to inquire into only one aspect of organizational life: why and how actors change their explicit or implicit views about what they see as a problem requiring collaborative measures for a solution. The "problem" can be any item on the international agenda. My dependent variable is change in the explicit or implicit view of actors in international organizations about the nature of a "problem." My inquiry, however, depends on my being able (1) to specify the interests and values held by actors and (2) to show how actors redefine interests and perhaps values in response to earlier disappointments. Moreover, I want to determine whether the processes that take place inside international organizations can be credited with the redefinition of interests and values. The idealist takes for granted that such redefining is likely to occur; scholars who stress the predominance of bureaucracies and political forces at the national capitals place the locus of change elsewhere. Granting that important changes in perception are unlikely to occur primarily in Geneva and New York, we must nevertheless hold open the possibility that some of the influences experienced there have a role in the national decision-making process that produces the changes we seek to explore. If that is true, then it also makes sense to observe international organizations in their possible role as innovators. And if international organizations can innovate, then we can inquire whether and when governments look to them as mechanisms for delivering newly desired goods and services. If governments think of international organizations as innovators, finally, we are entitled to ask how they go about redesigning international organizations to improve the solution of a newly redefined set of problems.

In what follows, then, I shall not be testing a theory. I merely experiment with the explanatory power of ideal types of organizations that reflect my conviction that the knowledge actors carry in their heads and project in their international encounters significantly shapes their behavior and expectations. My perspective is more permissive of the workings of volition, of a kind of free will, than is allowed by many popular theories of international politics. If my stance is not "idealistic," it is not "structural" either.

The structuralist argues that international collaboration of the multilateral

kind is intended to provide a collective good for the parties that bilateral relations could not provide. The provision of that good, in turn, may result in a more harmonious worldthough the harmony is likely to be confined to expectations related solely to the good in question. It probably cannot be generalized into the utopia associated with idealism. As for international organizations, they are important in this causal chain only if they are necessary for providing the collective good. International organizations, therefore, are not given a privileged place in the causal chain of the structuralist.

I disagree with this stance because it tends to overstate the constraints on choice and to understate decision makers' continuing enmeshment in past experiences with collaboration mediated by international organizations. Structuralism seeks to discover various deep-seated constraints on the freedom of actors to choose. Although organizations, like any other institutions, can act as constraints, I want to look at them as fora for choosing innovations. Structural constraints may be implicit in the logic of situations, such as the condition of strategic interdependence in anarchic international systems. Belief in the power of such constraints depends on the assumption that actors respond only to present incentives and disincentives, that they never try to "climb out" of the system to reshape opportunities for gain. Strategic interdependence as a permanent constraint is compelling only as long as there is no evidence that somebody works actively toward changing the rules of the game. Modern international life is replete with such efforts. However, it is equally true that the kinds of constraints on choice that structuralists stress provide the most telling explanation as to why new international organizations are created in the first place. But if we stop our inquiry with this explanation, we never proceed to ask the questions that interest me, questions about the role of changing knowledge in the redefinition of interests.1

I call attention to the discovery on the part of Snyder and Diesing that even the situations of crisis they investigated under structuralist assumptions showed a wide variety of actual features with too much variation in behavior and outcome to permit the positing of a small number of structural constraints as determinants. See Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing, Conflict Among Nations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), chap. 7. Robert O. Keohane, in After Hegemony (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), concludes that even under microeconomic-structural assumptions the behavior of states in regimes is highly variable and not reliably determined by structuralist assumptions. The case for institutional constraints on behavior is explored and duly qualified by James G. March and Johan P. Olsen in "The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life," American Political Science Review 78 (1984): 734-49. My nonstructural epistemological stance is spelled out in greater detail in "Why Collaborate?" World Politics 32 (April 1980), and "Words Can Hurt You," International Organization 36 (Spring 1982). The present essay is an effort to extend and apply this view to the future of international organizations.

Theorists and metatheorists customarily differ on how a given writer is to be classified in a field of contending approaches. Even though I reject the labels "idealist" and "liberal" for my theoretical position because of the characteristics I associate with the schools of thought properly so described, I am quite comfortable with being called a "neoidealist," if we follow the description of that stance offered by Charles W. Kegley, Jr., in "Neo-Idealism," Ethics and International Affairs 2 (1988): 173-98, although I would be most uncomfortable being identified as a "neoliberal" as defined by Joseph S. Nye, Jr., in "Neorealism and Neoliberalism," World Politics 40 (January 1988): 235-51. I am most content, however, to be classed with the nonrationalistic (as he defines them) "reflective" writers elaborated in Robert O. Keohane, "International Institutions: Two Approaches," International Studies Quarterly 32 (December 1988).

Unlike structuralists, neorealists, game theorists, and theorists of regimes, I am not offering a theory; at best I am offering a probe that might lead to a theory. I am not testing my approach against rival explanations because other approaches are not rivals. Game theory or structural explanations do not "fit better" than explanations of change derived from the interplay of knowledge and political objectives, from cognitive and perceptual observations; they "fit differently." Nor is it

my purpose to subsume or colonize other theories, or to assert my hegemony over them. Other explanations, given the questions other scholars raise, may be as valid as mine. My effort should be understood as complementary to theirs, not as an approach with unique power. Cognitive explanations coexist, epistemologically speaking, with other approaches to the study of international organizations; they do not supplant them. If I persuade the reader that the history of an organization can be viewed in the context of cognitive variables, then the reader will interpret that history in a novel form, without rendering all other interpretations obsolete. But the success of my claim to novelty still falls short of a real theory.2

A complete theory would have to offer an explanation of what occurred in an international organization even if the emphasis on changes in the mixture of knowledge and political objective fails. An explanation that stresses changes in available knowledge ought to be able to offer an account of the origin of that knowledge. A claim that issue linkages and bargains that represent different mixtures of knowledge and political goals explain different modes of organizational development ought to be able to specify the kinds of knowledge and goals most prominent in that history. I am able to specify only that a certain mixture was or was not present, not why it was present. I am in a position to show only that knowledge was or was not available, not how or why the actors required it.

Nor do the three models around which my interpretations are built constitute a true theory. They remain Weberian ideal types; together they constitute a typology for conceptualizing organizational change, for summing up whether and how adaptation or learning occurs. Yet the models are not just heuristic; they are intended to be "real," albeit not exhaustive, representations of what took place. They seek to abstract selectively (but not arbitrarily) from a historical series of events. The crucial point is this: the notion of causation implicit in these models is as elusive and as nonlinear as in all of Weber's typologies. My approach differs sharply from the more direct ideas of causation embedded in behavioral and in rational-choice approaches to the phenomena studied here because it rejects simple notions of causality.

Basically, I anchor my approach on this bet: the knowledge available about "the problem" at issue influences the way decision makers define the interest at stake in the solution to the problem; political objectives and technical knowledge are combined to arrive at the conception of what constitutes one's interest. But since decision makers are sentient and self-reflective beings, the conceptualization cannot stop here because decision makers take available knowledge into account, including the memory of past efforts to define and solve "the problem." They know that their knowledge is approximate and incomplete. Being aware of the limits of one's knowledge also influences one's choices. Being critical about one's knowledge implies a readiness to reconsider the finality of what one knows and therefore to be willing to redefine the problem.

This point distinguishes my approach from that of theorists of rational

choice who are inspired by microeconomics. In the logic of game theory, for instance, what matters is not the history of a perceived preference or the way a utility (interest?) came into being, but the mere fact that at the crucial "choice points," interests are what they are because preferences are as they are stipulated in game theory. It makes sense to speak of shared interests if, at the choice point, the separate interests of the bargainers happen to be sufficiently similar to permit an agreement. In my approach the decision makers are thought to be concerned with causation, with the reasons why a particular definition of their interests matter, as compared with other possible definitions. My analysis must be concerned, therefore, with the question of why particular demands are linked into packages, why problems are conceived in relatively simple or in very complex ways. Implicit or explicit theories of causation in the actors' minds imply degrees of knowledge, not merely momentarily shared interests. My theory of causation must reflect and accommodate the notions of causation assumed to be in the minds of the decision makers, notions that are true to the insight that there is always another turn of the cognitive screw to be considered.

I reiterate: the typologies that result from this mode of analysis are not truly representative of all of reality. They capture types of behavior, clusters of traits, bundles of results from antecedent regularities in bureaucratic perception that are logically possible, but not necessarily encountered frequently. Many of Weber's typologies, although exhaustive in the sociological and cultural dimensions he wished to represent, nevertheless produced sparsely populated cells. We will find that the managed-interdependence model is rarely encountered in the real world and that learning is far less common than adaptation. But then so is charismatic leadership and the routinization of charisma into bureaucratic practice.

Therefore, we will not follow the mode of demonstration preferred by those who work in the behavioral tradition. We will not seek to cull from our large list of descriptive variables those clusters of traits that most frequently "predict" (or are associated with) either successful adaptation or successful learning. Many of the descriptive variables will be shown to be weakly associated with any pattern, any regularities; some will not vary from type to type. Nevertheless, such variables will

not be permitted to "drop out" even though they explain nothing behavioral. They are real because they describe international organizations. They matter in pinpointing what is unique about international organizations, and they may turn up as more powerful in some later analysis or some new set of historical circumstances. Remaining true to a typological commitment demands that the traditional canons of causal theorizing be sacrificed to a less economical procedure that forgoes the search for clusters or straight paths as unique explanations. I am, after all, using systematic speculation and historical reconstruction to anticipate events that have yet to occur.

My typological approach is anchored on an additional bet, similar to the first one but less moderate: change in human aspirations and human institutions over long periods is caused mostly by the way knowledge about nature and about society is married to political interests and objectives. I am not merely asserting that changes in scientific understanding trigger technological innovations, which are then seized upon by political actors, though this much is certainly true. I am also asserting that as scientific knowledge becomes common knowledge and as technological innovation is linked to institutional tinkering, the very mode of scientific inquiry infects the way political actors think. Science, in short, influences the way politics is done. Science becomes a component of politics because the scientific way of grasping reality is used to define the interests that political actors articulate and defend. The doings of actors can then be described by observers as an exercise of defining and realizing interests informed by changing scientific knowledge about man and nature.

Therefore, it is as unnecessary as it is misleading to juxtapose as rival explanations the following: science to politics, knowledge to power or interest, consensual knowledge to common interests. We do ourselves no good by pretending that scientists have the key for giving us peace and plenty; but we do no better in holding that politicians and capitalists, in defending their immediate interests with superior power, stop creative innovation dead in its tracks. We overestimate the resistance to innovation on the part of politicians and the commitment

to change on the part of the purveyors of knowledge if we associate science and knowledge with good, with reform, with disinterested behavior, while saddling political actors with the defense of vested interests. When knowledge becomes consensual, we ought to expect politicians to use it in helping them to define their interests; we should not suppose that knowledge is opposed to interest. Once this juxtaposition is abandoned, it becomes clear that a desire to defend some interests by invoking superior power by no means prevents the defense of others by means of institutional innovations. Superior power is even used to force innovations legitimated by new knowledge, while knowledge-legitimated interest can equally well be used to argue against innovation.

Economists prefer to explain events by stressing the interests that motivate actors: coalitions of actors are thought capable of action only if they succeed in defining their common interests . Political scientists like to explain events in terms of the power to impose preferences on allies and antagonists. Sociologists tend to put the emphasis on structured or institutionalized norms and to find the origin of such norms in the hegemonial power of some group or class. My claim is that these formulations are consistent with the use of knowledge in decision making. My argument is that we need not pit these divergent formulations against each other as explanations of human choice. We are entitled to hold that interests can be (but need not be) informed by available knowledge, and that power is normally used to translate knowledge-informed interests into policy and programs. My concern is to analyze those situations in which interests are so informed and the exercise of power is so motivated, not to deal with all instances of interests, norms, and power as triggers of choice.

I return to the case of the World Bank to illustrate the possible convergence of explanations combining knowledge with interest and power. In the late 1960s the bank changed its basic philosophy of development lending from supporting infrastructure projects that were relatively remote from the direct experiences of poor peoplehence the reliance on the theory of trickle-downto the policy of supporting the advancement of basic human needs, with its implication of much more direct and intrusive intervention in the borrowers' domestic affairs in order to gain access to their poor citizens. Was new knowledge

used in motivating the shift? The shift occurred because economists and other development specialists had serious doubts about the adequacy of trickle-down policies and claimed that new techniques were becoming available to help the poor more directly. Was this knowledge generally accepted? This knowledge was generally accepted only by the coalition of donors that dominates the bank; the borrowers frequently opposed the shift and argued that the basic-human-needs approach was not in their interest. Was the shift consistent with the interests of the dominant coalition? Indeed it was, because the coalition's common interest in supporting economic development appeared to be implemented more effectively by virtue of the new knowledge.

My account shows how interest informed by knowledge reinforces the explanation of what occurred. What about power? Let us keep in mind that there are at least three different ways of thinking about power in these situations. If the hegemonial power of the capitalist classas expressed in the instructions issued to the delegates of the donor countriesis considered, then the decision of the bank is an expression of the persuasiveness and influence of that class in foisting a realistic conception of the common interest on the dominant coalition, even though it may also be an instance of false consciousness. Suppose we ignore Gramsci and think of power as the straightforward imposition of the view of the strongest. Even though the United States is the single most powerful member of the bank, its position is not strong enough to enable it to dictate bank policy (in part because the U.S. presidents of the bank often entertained views at variance with opinions within the U.S. government). Power as direct imposition does not explain anything.3

The same lesson emerges from another episode in the history of the World Bank. During the 1980s the U.S. Congress sought to link the authorization of the United States' financial contribution to instructions that no loans should be made to governments that violated a number of congressional preferences in the field of economic policy and the status of human rights. U.S. representatives duly voted against such loans, but in most instances the bank's decision was made in disregard of congressional directives and U.S. votes because the other members of the bank's dominant coalition disagreed with the U.S. definition of interests; the United States' preference did not become the common interest of the coalition. Moreover, the European countries and Japan disputed the U.S. effort to "politicize" the bank's lending policy, arguing that a knowledge of economic development needs makes such efforts illegitimate. The United States' efforts to change the knowledge-informed interests failed.

That leaves a conception of power as the ability of a stable coalition to impose its will simply by virtue of its superior voting strength or as a result of its Gramscian ability to socialize and persuade its opponents into the position the coalition prefers. The new policy, then, is the common interest of the coalition, arrived at by negotiations utilizing knowledge and imposed by threat or verbal guile on the unwilling borrowers. Far from being a rival explanation of what occurred to explanations that rely on interest informed by knowledge, power simply enables us to give a more complete account without having to offer sacrifices at the jealous conceptual altars of any single social science profession.

I am arguing that some, not all, innovations in international life result from the experience of decision makers in international organizations. I am suggesting that we study multilateral processes as agents of change, not that they are the only, or even the most important, such agents. Multilateral processes provide one avenue for the transideological sharing of meanings in human discourse, not the only one. Much more may be going on in bilateral encounters and in informal contacts outside the organizational forum. But since my task is the study of international organizations, I need to stress the role of these entities in mounting innovations without denying the importance of other channels.

Experiences such as the World Bank's permit us to use the history of key international organizations as diagnostic devices for testing when and where knowledge infects multilateral decision making. I want to explore whether international organizations can provide, or have provided, a boundedly rational forum for the mounting of innovations, not a forum for furnishing a collective good determined on the basis of optimization. If we identify the manner of attaining the collective good with pure rational choice, we forget that the choice to be made is not "pure" because it is constrained by what the choosers have already experienced.4

James G. March, one of the theorists of decisions in organizations on whom I rely heavily, clearly explained why this approach is not considered to be in the tradition of pure rational-choice theories. Such theories "portray decision-making as intentional, consequential, and optimizing. That is, they assume that decisions are based on preferences (e.g., wants, needs, values, goals, interests, subjective utilities) and expectations about outcomes associated with different alternative actions. And they assume that the best possible alternative (in terms of its consequences for a decision maker's preferences) is chosen" (James G. March, Decisions and Organizations [London: Basil Blackwell, 1981], 1-2). The decision-making theory of direct concern to me is that which covers decision making "under ambiguity," the opposite of the conditions associated with rational-choice theories derived from microeconomics. The "correctness" of such decisions is always a matter of debate and can never be ascertained in the absence of considerable historical distance from the events. For a telling illustration of the kind of social rationality associated with decisions made in and by organizations, see Ronald Dore's discussion of "relational contracting" in "Goodwill and the Spirit of Market Capitalism," British Journal of Sociology 34 (December 1983): 459-82.

The game, for them, started some time ago. They are still enmeshed in its consequences and may seek to change the rules if they are unhappy with them. The fact is that the disappointments were, for the most part, associated with policies that were filtered through, and derived much of their legitimacy from, their place on a multilateral agenda. This is true even though such policies usually originated in the politics, the bureaucracies, and the think tanks of the member states. International organizations are part of everybody's experience because they are mediators of policies. They are a part of the international repertory of fora that talk about and authorize innovation. Hence we can study them as agents of innovation.

We can do more. We can also make observations about relative effectiveness in the performance of these organizations and offer suggestions on how to improve effectiveness. In other words, we can contribute

to effective innovation on the basis of critical typological study, a task I undertake in chapter 9.

My treatment takes for granted that the goals valued by the states that set up organizations are the single most important determinant of later events. Nevertheless, such things as the task environment in which the organization must operate, its choice of core technology to carry out its tasks, and the institutional structure imposed on the staff must influence and probably constrain the attainment of these goals. A concern with institutional innovation must therefore consider environment, structure, and technology along with changing or constant goals.5

Gayl D. Ness and Steven Brechin, "Bridging the Gap: International Organizations as Organizations," International Organization 42 (Winter 1988), offer a detailed list of suggestions along these lines, on which my treatment draws.

It is useful to think about the theoretical literature on organizations as being concerned primarily either with decision making or with seeking to explain the persistence of structural forms. The literature on which I rely is essentially the literature on decision making constrained by organizational forms and practices. I am only incidentally interested in the persistence of organizational forms and make no consistent use of the literature in that area, though this theme will make a rather prominent appearance in the final chapter.

Must organizations remain the tools their creators have in mind when they set them upmeans toward the attainment of some end valued by the creators? Or, alternatively, can international organizations become ends in their own right, become valued as institutions quite apart from the services they were initially expected to perform? If so, what kinds of innovations can or should be designed to bring about such a transition? One might also ask whether effectiveness is good for the survival and prospects of the organization as opposed to the welfare of the world in general; the two outcomes need not be mutually supportive. If they turn out to be contradictory, we might then think of design suggestions to mitigate the contradiction.

Some organizations are hierarchically structured; others are flat. Possibly, each form is optimal for the performance of some task, but not all tasks. Possibly, structure and effective performance are not well matched. If so, our comparative typological study may enable us to offer suggestions on how to adapt structure to effective performance. All organizations select a "core technology" to do their job, and the character of that technology interacts with institutional structure and task environment. It is possible, however, that the technology is not optimal for good performance, or not well integrated with the task environment or the structure. Innovations in design made apparent by historical study may then become appropriate. So can rearrangements in institutional structure, especially when it becomes apparent that better performance requires a different coordinate arrangement among several organizations active in the field. Our first step, then, is the application of organization theory to our study.

Continues...

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Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520074025
• ISBN 13: 9780520074026
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 278