Professor Dr. Tobias Lenz leads research project on „The Authority of International Organizations and Institutional Overlap“ as part of the Vorab programme of Lower Saxony
Global and regional international organizations (IOs) have become key players in international politics, facilitating cooperation in every corner of the world and with respect to almost any issue area, from economics to security, to immigration, to the environment. This ubiquity of IOs is reflected in the enormous growth in the post-World War II era of both their institutional authority and the institutional overlap between them, that is, the growing number of IOs with similar (but not necessarily identical) membership that are active in similar issue areas. For example, the World Bank, the United Nations, and the recently established New Development Bank all seek to facilitate economic development. Even though these two developments in the institutional characteristics of IOs have evolved concurrently and there are good reasons to believe that they are related, existing research has examined them largely in isolation.Funded by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation as part of the “Research Cooperation Lower Saxony-Israel” programme, Prof. Dr. Tobias Lenz from the Institute of Political Science and Prof. Yoram Haftel from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem will be studying this poorly understood phenomenon. The project addresses two questions: firstly, what are the implications of differences in IO authority for institutional overlap? And secondly, given conditions of institutional overlap, which IO characteristics lead to more or less authority? These questions are approached through a mixed-methods research design that consists of a quantitative analysis of a large-N dataset on IO authority and overlap, a detailed analysis of the dense institutional complexes in Africa and Latin America, and comparative case studies of overlap among regional organizations in Africa. The project will last three years and involves, besides the two project leaders, a doctoral student in Göttingen.