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Horizontal Accountability in Intergovernmental Organizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Alexandru Grigorescu
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Abstract

Many intergovernmental organizations (IOs) have recently established offices of internal oversight. Yet scandals such as the one surrounding the Oil-for-Food Program in the United Nations have revealed serious flaws in the design of these institutions, especially their lack of independence from top administrators of the bureaucracies that they are supposed to oversee. This study argues that this is due, in great part, to the initial use of an imperfect domestic model. It shows that, in addition to using a flawed model as a starting point for negotiations, states and IO officials intentionally weakened oversight offices even more. The study argues that member-states need to quickly give such offices increased independence in order to make them more effective and to avoid the continued erosion of the legitimacy of IOs.

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Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , Fall 2008 , pp. 285 - 308
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2008

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References

Notes

1 See, e.g., Allen Buchanan and Robert O. Keohane, “The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions,” Ethics & International Affairs 20, no. 4 (2006), pp. 405–37.

2 Paul A. Volcker, Richard J. Goldstone, and Mark Pieth, “The Management of the UN Oil-for-Food Programme,” September 7, 2005, p. 56; available at http:\\www.iic-offp.org; accessed November 30, 2007.

3 One must note that the problems of the Oil-for-Food Program are also considered to stem from the highly politicized process of oversight of member states themselves, especially the members of the U.N Security Council. For a more complete discussion, see, e.g., Joy Gordon, “Accountability and Global Governance: The Case of Iraq,” Ethics & International Affairs 20, no. 1 (2006), pp. 79–98.

4 Independent Inquiry Committee, “The Management of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Programme,” vol. I, September 7, 2005, pp. 85-88; available at http:\\www.iic-offp.org/Mgmt_report.htm; accessed April 22, 2008.

5 See, e.g., Perri 6 and Michael Sheridan, “A World Order of Scandal and Graft: What Is It About International Agencies That Invites Corruption?” Independent, May 11, 1995, p. 15.

6 Andreas Schedler, “Conceptualizing Accountability,” in Andreas Schedler, Larry Diamond, and Marc F. Plattner, eds., The Self-Restraining State: Power and Accountability in New Democracies(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1999), pp. 13–28, p. 17.

7 See, e.g., Guillermo O'Donnell, “Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies,” in Schedler, Diamond, and Plattner, eds. The Self-Restraining State, pp. 29–52.

8 See, e.g., Joseph Nye, “Globalization's Democratic Deficit: How to Make International Institutions More Accountable,” Foreign Affairs 80 (2001), pp. 2–6; Ngaire Woods, “Holding Intergovernmental Institutions to Account,” Ethics & International Affairs 17, no. 1 (2003), pp. 69–80; Ruth Grant and Robert Keohane, “Accountability and Abuses of Power in World Politics,” American Political Science Review 99 (2005), pp. 29–43; Alexandru Grigorescu, “Transparency of Intergovernmental Organizations: The Roles of Member-States, International Bureaucracies and Non-Governmental Organizations,” International Studies Quarterly 51, no. 3 (2007), pp. 625–48.

9 For exceptions, see Ngaire Woods, “Unelected Government: Making the IMF and the World Bank More Accountable,” Brookings Review 21, no. 2 (2003), pp. 9–12; also John Mathiason, Invisible Governance: International Secretariats in Global Politics(Bloomfield, Conn.: Kumarian Press, 2007), pp. 247–55.

10 For a well-known discussion of the concept, see O'Donnell, “Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies,” p. 17.

11 Emphasis added. Volcker et al., “The Management of the UN Oil-for-Food Programme,” p. 56.

12 House of Lords, “Strengthening OLAF, the European Anti-Fraud Office,” July 21, 2004 (HL 139), p. 23.

13 Government Accountability Project, “Review of the Department of Institutional Integrity at the World Bank,” September 6, 2007; available at http:\\www.whistleblower.org/doc/2007/INT%20Review%209.05.07.pdf; accessed November 30, 2007.

14 “Transcript of Press Conference by Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette at United Nations Headquarters,” February 15, 2005 (DSG/SM/246); available at http:\\www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2005/dsgsm246.doc.htm; accessed November 30, 2007.

15 United States Institute for Peace, American Interests and UN Reform(Washington, D.C.: United States Institute for Peace, 2005), p. 43.

16 “Management and Mismanagement at the United Nations: Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Security, International Organizations and Human Rights of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs,” 103d Cong., 1st sess., March 5, 1993 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1993), pp. 102–03.

17 Ibid., p. 17.

18 For a distinction between the two types of accountability, see, e.g., Mark H. Moore and Margaret Jane Gates, Inspectors General: Junkyard Dogs or Man's Best Friend?(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1986), p. 5; also Paul C. Light, Monitoring Government: Inspectors General and the Search for Accountability(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1993), pp. 12–16; for a similar distinction in the United Nations, see John R. Mathiason, “Who Controls the Machine, Revisited: Command and Control in the United Nations Reform Effort,” Public Administration and Development 17 (1997), pp. 387–97, p. 395.

19 See Irene Martinetti, “Reforming Oversight and Governance of the UN Encounters Hurdles,” Center for UN Reform Education, New York, December 1, 2006; available at http:\\www.centerforunreform.org; accessed November 2, 2007.

20 Personal interview with U.S. official involved in the establishment of OIOS, Washington, D.C., October 2007. As part of this study, I interviewed twenty-one national and IO officials involved in the adoption and functioning of IO oversight offices. In order to discuss freely about sensitive issues surrounding interstate negotiations leading to the emergence of oversight offices, the interviewees requested that their names not be made public.

21 See, e.g., United States General Accounting Office, “United Nations: Report of Internal Oversight Offices,” November 19, 1997 (GAO/NSIAD-98-9); available at http:\\bulk.resource.org/gpo.gov/gao/reports/ns98009.pdf; accessed November 30, 2007.

22 For example, Joint Inspection Unit, “Oversight Lacunae in the United Nations System,” 2006, p. 5; available at http:\\www.unjiu.org/data/reports/2006/en2006_2.pdf; accessed November 30, 2007.

23 The list is based on information from IO websites, from correspondence with IO information offices, and from John D. Fox, Wolfgang Munch, and Khalil Issa Othman, “Strengthening the Investigations Function in United Nations System Organizations,” 2000 (JIU/REP/2000/9); available at http:\\www.unjiu.org/data/reports/2000/en2000_9.pdf; accessed November 30, 2007; and Joint Inspection Unit, “Oversight Lacunae in the United Nations System.”

24 European Commission, “Evaluation of the Activities of the European Anti-Fraud Office,” COM (2003) 154, April 2, 2003, p. 31; available at ec.europa.eu/anti_fraud/reports/commission/2003/art15_en.pdf; accessed November 30, 2007.

25 Robert Gregory, “Accountability in Modern Government,” in B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre, eds. Handbook of Public Administration(London: Sage, 2003), pp. 557–68, p. 557.

26 For example, David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, “Introduction,” Government and Opposition 39, no. 2 (2004), pp. 125–31, p. 127; also Leif Wenar, “Accountability in International Development Aid,” Ethics & International Affairs 20, no. 1 (2006), p. 1–23.

27 Robert Behn, Rethinking Democratic Accountability(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2001), p. 3.

28 Adam Przeworski, Susan Stokes, and Bernard Manin, Democracy, Accountability, and Representation(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 20.

29 O'Donnell, “Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies,” p. 38; also Larry Diamond, M. Plattner, and A. Schedler, “Introduction,” in Schedler, Diamond, and Plattner, eds. The Self-Restraining State, pp. 1–12, p. 3.

30 See, e.g., Moore and Gates, Inspectors General; also Light, Monitoring Government.

31 Moore and Gates, Inspectors General, p. 5; also Light, Monitoring Government, pp. 12–16.

32 Light, Monitoring Government, pp. 43–45.

33 Ibid., pp. 27–35.

34 See CNN, “Congress Investigating Alleged Corruption in State Department,” September 18, 2007; available at http:\\www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/09/18/state.dept.fraud.ap/index.html; accessed November 30, 2007.

35 Fox et al., “Strengthening the Investigations Function in United Nations System Organizations,” p. 3.

36 See Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time(New York: Free Press, 1986).

37 See, e.g., Lori Udall, “The World Bank and Public Accountability: Has Anything Changed?” in Jonathan A. Fox and L. D. Brown, eds. The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs, and Grassroots Movements(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), pp. 391–436.

38 See “Management and Mismanagement,” p. 3; also “Leaked Report Details Corruption Allegations at UN Weather Agency,” Associated Press, January 26, 2007; available at http:\\www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/26/news/UN-GEN-UN-Weather-Agency-Corruption.php; accessed February 10, 2008.

39 The case of Iraq offers yet another example of the differences between OIOS and U.S. IGs. While OIOS was considered ineffective and was sometimes denied the opportunity to perform complete investigations of the Oil-for-Food Program, the U.S. Special IG for Iraq Reconstruction has been considered very thorough and effective in the more recent oversight of programs in that country. (See, e.g., Gordon, “Accountability and Global Governance”) I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this argument.

40 See Office of Government Accountability, “United Nations: Lessons Learned from Oil-for-food Program Indicate the Need to Strengthen UN Internal Controls and Oversight Activities,” April 2006 (GAO-06-330), pp. 13–14; available at http:\\www.gao.gov/new.items/d06330.pdf; accessed November 30, 2007.

41 See “Proposals for the Strengthening of the OIOS,” July 14, 2006 (A/60/901), pp. 20–21; available at daccessdds.http:\\un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/402/35/PDF/N0640235.pdf; accessed November 30, 2007.

42 United States General Accounting Office, “United Nations: Report of Internal Oversight Offices.”

43 “Implementation of Decisions Contained in the 2005 World Summit Outcome for Action by the Secretary-General; Comprehensive Review of Governance and Oversight within the United Nations and Its Funds, Programmes and Specialized Agencies,” August 28, 2006 (A/60/883/Add. 2), p. 17; available at daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N06/442/08/PDF/N0644208.pdf?OpenElement; accessed November 30, 2007.

44 See Michael Michalski, “Who's the Deadbeat? U.S. Efforts to Reform the UN Have Been Half-Hearted or Less,” National Review, May 5, 1997 (online edition).

45 Personal interview with member of United States Institute for Peace Task Force on the United Nations, February 2008.

46 Michalski, “Who's the Deadbeat?”

47 Personal interview with U.S. official involved in the establishment of OIOS, Washington, D.C., October 2007.

48 Personal interview with U.S. officials in Washington and New York in March 2006 and October 2007.

49 Personal interviews with UN official and member state representatives, New York, March 2006.

50 For a similar view regarding U.S. ambivalent position on UN reform, see, e.g., Beatrice Edwards, “Stabbing UN Reform in the Back,” Global Policy Forum, January 3, 2007; available at http:\\www.globalpolicy.org; accessed November 30, 2007.

51 Personal interview with member state representative, New York, August 2007; also personal interview with member of United States Institute for Peace Task Force on the United Nations, February 2008.

52 See, e.g., United States Institute for Peace, American Interests and UN Reform.

53 Personal interview with member state representative, New York, August 2007; also personal interview with member of U.S. Institute for Peace Task Force on the United Nations, February 2008.