Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals

About: Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals is a education organization based out in Barcelona, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: European union & Politics. The organization has 75 authors who have published 221 publications receiving 3101 citations. The organization is also known as: Inter-University Institute & Barcelona Institute of International Studies.

The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Agencies: Channels of Transfer and Stages of Diffusion

Abstract: The autonomous regulatory agency has recently become the “appropriate model” of governance across countries and sectors. The dynamics of this process are captured in the authors’ data set, which covers the establishment of agencies in 48 countries and 15 sectors for the period 1966-2007. Adopting a diffusion approach to explain this broad process of institutional change, the authors explore the role of countries and sectors as sources of institutional transfer at different stages of the diffusion process. They demonstrate how the restructuring of national bureaucracies unfolds via four different channels of institutional transfer. The results challenge theoretical approaches that overemphasize the national dimension in global diffusion and are insensitive to the stages of the diffusion process. Further advance in study of diffusion depends, the authors assert, on the ability to apply both cross-sectoral and cross-national analysis to the same research design and to incorporate channels of transfer with di...

Dealing with Tyranny: International Sanctions and the Survival of Authoritarian Rulers

Abstract: This paper examines whether economic sanctions destabilize authoritarian rulers. We argue that the effect of sanctions is mediated by the type of authoritarian regime against which sanctions are imposed. Because personalist regimes and monarchies are more sensitive to the loss of external sources of revenue (such as foreign aid and taxes on trade) to fund patronage, rulers in these regimes are more likely to be destabilized by sanctions than leaders in other types of regimes. In contrast, when dominant single-party and military regimes are subject to sanctions, they increase their tax revenues and reallocate their expenditures to increase their levels of cooptation and repression. Using data on sanction episodes and authoritarian regimes from 1960 to 1997 and selection-corrected survival models, we test whether sanctions destabilize authoritarian rulers in different types of regimes. We find that personalist dictators are more vulnerable to foreign pressure than other types of dictators. We also analyze the modes of authoritarian leader exit and find that sanctions increase the likelihood of a regular and an irregular change of ruler, such as a coup, in personalist regimes. In single-party and military regimes, however, sanctions have little effect on leadership stability. During his inaugural address in 2005, US President George W. Bush proclaimed that ‘‘it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.’’ 2 The general goal of ending tyranny has been shared by many of Western advanced democracies since the end of the Second World War. Yet there is little consensus over the most effective means to promote regime change and democratization.

The Emergence of Global Administrative Law

Abstract: This paper, a distillation of findings from the NYU Global Administrative Law Research Project, considers the emergence and the need for further development of administrative law mechanisms to promote greater accountability in decisionmaking and rulemaking in the rapidly proliferating variety of global regulatory structures. These include formal international organizations (such as the WTO, the Security Council, World Bank, the Climate Change regime, etc), informal intergovernmental networks of domestic regulatory officials (such as the Basel Committee of national bank regulators), domestic authorities implementing global regulatory law, hybrid public-private and purely private transnational regulatory regimes. The subjects of such global regulatory systems include individuals, firms and other economic actors, states, and occasionally NGOs. These regimes and subjects, we argue, are part of a single global administrative space distinct from the domains of international law and domestic administrative law. We define global administrative law as the principles, procedures, and review mechanisms that are emerging to govern decisionmaking and regulatory rulemaking by these bodies. We identify a number of structural mechanisms that have arisen to develop and apply global administrative law, including domestic courts and legislatures reviewing domestic implementation of global standards and national officials' participation in global administrative decisions, and new mechanisms developed at the global level for governance of international and transnational regulatory bodies. We examine the sources and content of the various doctrinal principles and requirements that have been developed and enforced by these mechanisms (such as transparency, participation, reasoned decisionmaking, review, and substantive standards such as proportionality), and their sources. We next consider the normative foundations of global administrative law, including intra-regime control, liberal notions of protection of the rights of individuals and of economic actors, protection of the rights of states, and securing democracy with respect to global regulation. We examine these normative foundations in relation to three conceptions of international ordering - pluralist, solidarist, and cosmopolitan - and in relation to North-South differences. We then consider different strategies for constructing global administrative law, including bottom-up approaches that seek to extend domestic administrative law to global regulatory decisions and top-down approaches that develop new administrative law mechanisms at the global level. We also examine the positive political theory of global administrative law. We conclude that the field of global administrative law is an important emerging phenomenon, distinct from international law and from domestic administrative law, that deserves systematic study and development.

International Law in Times of Hegemony: Unequal Power and the Shaping of the International Legal Order

Abstract: Hegemony and international law are often regarded as irreconcilable: international law is widely assumed to depend on a balance of power and to be eschewed by hegemons in favour of political tools. This corresponds to an often idealized contrast between international law and international politics, one reflecting reason and justice, the other brute power. Realists and critical legal scholars have long sought to counter this idealization, but often by merely reducing international law to power. This article seeks to go beyond these positions by analysing the multiple ways in which dominant states interact with international law. Drawing on international relations theory, it develops a model of this interaction and illustrates it with historical examples, taken mainly from Spanish, British and American phases of dominance. The typical pattern observed is one of instrumentalization and withdrawal, coupled with attempts at reshaping international law in a more hierarchical way and at replacing it with domestic legal tools that better accommodate formal hierarchies. The resulting picture should provide a starting point for critique and help us better understand why international law is simultaneously instrumental and resistant to the pursuit of power. International law is important for powerful states as a source of legitimacy, but in order to provide legitimacy, it needs to distance itself from power and has to resist its mere translation into law. International law then occupies an always precarious, but eventually secure position between the demands of the powerful and the ideals of justice held in international society.

The Pluralism of Global Administrative Law

Abstract: As public power is increasingly exercised in structures of global governance, principles of domestic law and politics are extended to the global level, with serious repercussions for the structure of international law. Yet, as this article seeks to show for the emerging global administrative law, this extension is often problematic. Using administrative law mechanisms to enhance the accountability of global regulation faces the problem of fundamental contestation over the question of to whom global governance should be accountable. National, international and cosmopolitan constituencies are competing for primacy, and this results in an often disorderly interplay of accountability mechanisms at different levels and in different regimes. This pluralist structure, based on pragmatic accommodation rather than clear decisions, strongly contrasts with the ideals of coherence and unity in modern constitutionalism and domestic administrative law. However, given the structure of global society, it is likely to endure and it is also normatively preferable to alternative, constitutionalist approaches. It helps avoid the friction that may result from a federal-type distribution of powers and the practical problems of a consociational order, and by denying all constituencies primacy it reflects the legitimacy deficits of each of them. Mirroring divergent views on the right scope of the political order, it also respects everybody`s equal right to political participation. A pluralist global administrative law thus presents an alternative to problematic domestic models for ensuring accountability in the circumstances of global governance.