Published in 2021
Overview: Despite post-Second World War aspirations to the contrary, the
State-dominated Westphalian system remains the key ingredient of the
global institutional architecture. Nevertheless, non-State entities have
entered en masse the space accorded to them by the “gatekeepers” and
have been able to exert some impact on policy outcomes across and
within national borders. Both quantitatively and qualitatively, the most
significant actors among the non-State players have been international
organizations. A proper grasp of their relationship with their State
“masters” is essential for students of international law and politics.
Agency theory has been invoked for this purpose and has proved to be
a source of valuable conceptual and practical insights. The World
Health Organization’s (WHO’s) underwhelming performance when
confronted with an epidemic/pandemic of enormous magnitude and
severity, however, suggests that there is considerable scope for placing
the principal-agent model in a much broader context and examining it
from an unconventional angle.
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