This thesis depicts the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (1972), an international law for the protection of natural and cultural heritage sites, as an example of the multiple practices within international policy making. By analysing its transnational constitution, I show how the Convention is constructed in and between locales through bureaucratic and diplomatic procedures characterised by intersecting political and economic interests. Using neo-institutional theory, I argue that organisations such as UNESCO frame problems as global, provide solutions, and organise the actions of states, organizations, and individuals; furthermore, my research not only illustrates how this occurs but also explores the preconditions of international policy making. While adhering to its officially proclaimed aspirations, states, organisations, and individuals also use the Convention for other purposes such as international prestige, career advancement, publicity, identity, development, tourism – even war. Such contending interests raise the question of explaining the success of the Convention and thereby the preconditions of policy making at the international level. A conclusion reached by this study shows that growing interest in the Convention can be regarded to result only partially from the general acceptance of its global rhetoric and morally vested perspective or the need for states to gain legitimacy by engaging in international relations. My thesis proposes that rather than by its official aims and formal procedures, the Convention is constituted primarily through complex informal relations, concurring contexts, and external structures. Data for this ethnographic study consists of field notes from participant observations during UNESCO meetings in France, Morocco, Australia, and at the Convention’s secretariat. A case study of the Agricultural Landscape of Southern Öland, a Swedish World Heritage site, is also included, along with interviews, documents, and media.

Present times are sometimes referred to as "the golden era of regulation", as more and more areas of social life are regulated. But regulation is not only increasing; it is also changing. New regulators are emerging, and they are issuing new kinds of rules. These new kinds of regulation are frequently not legally binding, and are therefore labelled soft regulation as opposed to hard law. It is not compulsory to follow soft rules but many actors - including sovereign states - still do, and the thesis asks the question why this is so. Why do even states, which are powerful regulators themselves, abide by soft regulation, and wherein lies the regulative power of soft rules? Through an in-depth study of the European Union's pre-accession instrument Twinning an answer to the question of the power of soft regulation has been arrived at. Treating Twinning as a critical case of soft regulation, and using theories of imitation to grasp the meaning and evolution of Twinning projects, makes it possible to define three regulative elements involved in soft regulation. These are the combinative, co-productive and constitutive elements of soft regulation, from which the thesis suggests that it derives its power. First of all, soft regulation combines different kinds of rules, the regulation of identity and the regulation of activity, and a variety of sources of legitimacy. Second, it depends on regulators and regulatees interacting to co-produce regulation. And third, as its main result, it constitutes the rule-followers as formal, rational, and modern organisations. Accordingly, soft regulation has rather impressive regulative capabilities, builds on complex, dynamic, and social interactions, and embodies as well as promotes some of Western society's most strongly institutionalised ideas. The thesis argues that it is through these characteristics that actors, including states, are compelled to follow soft rules.

Depuis ces vingt dernières années, la représentativité des organisations internationales est au cœur du débat politique sur la réforme des institutions de la gouvernance mondiale. Considérée comme un enjeu clé de leur légitimité, la représentativité apparaît à la fois comme une qualité liée au fait de « bien représenter » mais aussi comme un objet dont se saisissent les institutions pour permettre à certains acteurs d’en représenter d’autres. À partir d’une recherche menée dans le cadre de l’Organisation internationale du travail (OIT) sur une période s’étendant de 1919 à 2014, nous proposons de recourir à la notion de « valeur pratique » pour aborder cette notion polysémique et ambivalente qu’est la représentativité dans le cadre d’une organisation internationale à la fois particulière et emblématique des enjeux soulevés aujourd’hui par le problème de la représentativité. Créée en 1919, l’OIT est en effet, à la différence de toutes les autres organisations internationales du système des Nations unies et de Bretton Woods, la seule à être composée non seulement des représentants des gouvernements mais aussi des représentants des organisations syndicales de travailleurs et d’employeurs (représentation tripartite). L’OIT constitue donc un cas particulièrement intéressant pour étudier la représentativité sur le long terme à la fois au niveau des États et des acteurs non étatiques. Sur le plan méthodologique, nous défendons l’intérêt d’une démarche socio-historique qui accorde une place importante aux représentations des acteurs, sans pour autant faire l’économie de l’analyse des pratiques de représentation objectivables à travers le temps. / In the past two decades, the representativeness of international organisations has been at the heart of political debates on the reform of world governance institutions. Representativeness is key to the legitimacy of international organizations. It entails the fact of "representing well" but also constitutes a tool which the institutions use in order to make certain actors represent others. Building on empirical research on the International Labour Organisation (ILO) from 1919 to 2014, this work develops the concept of "practical value" to address the polysemous and ambivalent notion of representativeness. The case of the ILO is both particular and emblematic of the problems that representativeness poses today. Indeed, unlike the United Nations or Bretton Woods systems, the ILO, created in 1919, is the sole international organisation composed of government representatives and representatives from workers’ and employers’ unions (tripartite representation). Hence, the ILO is a particularly interesting case to study representativeness over the long term at the level of states and non-state actors. Methodologically, this work defends a socio-historical approach that gives a central place to actors’ conceptions about representativeness, while also analysing the way representational practices are objectivised through time.

This thesis examines the effects of cooperation within multilateral counter-terrorist fora on the process of preference formation of a selected group of Western countries: the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy. The analysis focuses on the global counter-terrorist regime, a set of complex and multifaceted institutional arrangements, which were developed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in order to harmonise state counter-terrorist responses worldwide. The study looks at three sets of formal international institutions within the regime: the United Nations, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the European Union. It also selects a sample of three issue areas in multilateral counter-terrorist cooperation: counter-radicalisation policies, the inclusion of human rights safeguards within the main counter-terrorist sanctions provisions, and counter-terrorist financing standards. The thesis identifies as the visible symptom of institutional effects the progressive convergence of policy outputs at member state level, and proceeds with an exploration of the processes of regime creation, evolution, reform, and participation on the part of the three country case studies. The analysis reveals that the instances of pro-institution behaviour displayed by state actors are occasioned by image-related group-pressures, triggered by considerations of the maximisation of status markers and social praise, and the related avoidance of shame and social devaluation. The thesis labels this process social influence. The study further outlines the specific conditions under which interaction within a group can activate the social influence phenomenon and identifies the main triggers of state actors’ particular sensitivity to image and shame.

Globalisation and the transfer of powers from state constitutional systems to international organisations (IOs) have led to several deficiencies, especially with regard to checks and balances in global governance. The need to inculcate the rule of law and constitutionalism in global governance has therefore gained currency in the 21st century. This has been exemplified by calls for the reform of the United Nations (UN) and the extensive reforms in regional IOs, such as the European Union (EU), with emphasis on institutional balance and the tempering of political power with institutional controls. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2010. / A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Law University of Pretoria, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Masters of Law (LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa). Prepared under the supervision of Dr. Jacqui Gallinetti Faculty of Law, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa. 2010. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/ / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

What kind of activity is global governance? What do all of the many sectoral forms of global governance – of the planetary environment, of global finance and global health – have in common? Moving beyond sector-specific studies, this book outlines the fundamentals of global governance in eight chapter-length propositions.

Responding to and preventing violent conflict continue to be a major concern on the international agenda. However, the results of peacebuilding projects are often mixed and some interventions have even proven harmful in the past. In the debates on aid effectiveness, evaluations have been advocated as being an effective instrument to better understand the results of development and peacebuilding projects and thereby ultimately to improve the practice. However, despite a long tradition of evaluation utilisation research dating back to the 1970s, the effects of peacebuilding evaluations are far from being understood. The concept of evaluation use is too narrow and does not take the diversity of potential positive and negative evaluation effects into account. There is little evidence concerning the organisational factors that influence the use and effects of evaluations. Using a comparative case study analysis in three organisations implementing peacebuilding activities (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, Saferworld and the World Bank), this study examines the roles and effects of peacebuilding evaluations within international organisations. The results show a wide range of positive and negative evaluation effects that are promoted or hindered by different attitudes and the process of the evaluation, in addition to organisational and other contextual factors. To improve our understanding of the interlinkages in this context, evaluation pathways causally linking different effects and factors are proposed.

What explains IMF behavior in Europe between 2008 and 2012? Harshly criticized in Greece, yet tentatively praised in Hungary, the institution found itself playing different roles as it responded to a string of financial crises. Its programs varied substantially in terms of conditionality, financing, and private sector involvement. This thesis explores why, highlighting the changing global financial safety net, which is both expanding and becoming more decentralized due to the spectacular rise of regional financing arrangements (RFAs). Existing theories of IMF behavior assume the Fund to be a stand-alone institution and analyse financial assistance as the outcome from the interplay between creditors, borrowers, and staff. By focusing on dynamics within the IMF, however, they miss how developments outside the institution are increasingly shaping its behavior. This thesis brings in the role of changes in the institutional environment by drawing on the literature on regime complexity. The proliferation of RFAs alters the outside options of all actors, which affects their bargaining power. This opens the way for new strategies, through which creditors can entangle institutions by creating overlaps, borrowers can engage in confrontation between alternative financing institutions, and the IMF can find means to co-work with RFAs. These in turn affect whose preferences shape program design. This argument is tested empirically through process-tracing and comparing three cases of IMF-RFA cooperation in Europe. In Hungary, the IMF led the way in shaping a surprisingly 'generous' program with little constraint from the EU. However, in Latvia, the Fund found itself a 'junior partner' in a program driven by local authorities with the support of an European RFA. In Greece, the interests of creditors were paramount, securing IMF acquiescence through the threat of exclusion. These findings point to significant challenges for the Fund going forward. As RFAs continue to proliferate around the world, the IMF needs to avoid the temptation of striking even more Faustian bargains that keep it at the table of financial assistance at the cost of becoming a junior partner.

The thesis analyses the systems, dynamics and conditions of international cooperation/non-cooperation in the international community that is embodied through international/regional institutions and organisations. As Robert Cooper describes, the international community consists of the three worlds in which the differences between them may be confrontational in international cooperation. While the post-modern civilisation and values are introduced into the institutions and organisations for international peace and security, the state actors from the pre-modern and modern civilisations and values are vigorously defending the traditional version of state sovereignty. Then, all these are equally the member of the international community and, as Robert Axelrod's Prisoner Dilemma game sets, neither state actors nor structural actors of international relations can escape from it. Therefore, it is hoped that, as Axelrod's theory suggests, the closed community, in the end, produces cooperation and a positive peace for a better future for all. In the case studies, the OSCE faces a number of non-cooperative state actors, like Russia. An anti-OSCE civilisation exists and is resisting the organisational values, while it is staying in the framework. Thus, the organisation is suffering from defectors and free-riders. Knowing the limitation of the organisation, it still has a space for improvement and a useful function which is to provide a long term process to make a non-cooperate actor cooperative.

A radical change of the socio-cultural order has brought about globalisation processes. Their consequences in the economic sphere include, mainly, growing interdependence, increasing mobility of the production factors and rising efficiency of the global economy. This brings important causes in the political dimension, were the anarchy at the global level translates into erosion of the role of state sovereignty and creation of world economy inefficiencies. Qualitatively new system of global governance, governance at multiple levels and a regulative sub-system emerge, which the World Trade Organisation is a main example of. To reach an effective solution, it is essential to introduce a reform. The central methodological bases are systems theory and neo-liberal internationalism of this analysis.