This chapter investigates how formal autonomy and informal administrative working styles of international public administrations (IPAs) are interrelated empirically. Recent research on IPAs identified a paradoxical constellation. Some IPAs with low structural autonomy, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Secretariat, are able to compensate this restriction by developing an entrepreneurial administrative style with emphasis on initiating new policies and sound internal management (paradox of weakness). Other IPAs, such as the formally autonomous European Commission, were found to anticipate member state control and voluntarily restrict themselves to a more passive servant style (paradox of strength). This finding raises the question whether the two paradoxes are idiosyncratic features of the two cases or a more universal phenomenon of international bureaucracies. To answer this question, this chapter introduces the concepts of structural autonomy and administrative styles and lay out a strategy for their measurement. It compares the empirical pattern of autonomy and style in eight IPAs. It concludes with some propositions about potential consequence for international bureaucratic influence.

Today almost every country in the world has an investment promotion agency (IPA) to attract and retain foreign investment. In principle, IPAs could be an important tool in advancing the sustainable development agenda, as they provide a country-led, domestically legitimate means of catalyzing new foreign investments. We argue that IPAs’ governance structures condition their potential contribution to sustainable development, by leading them to privilege certain ideas and interests over others. Specifically, IPAs that are more autonomous from the government bureaucracy tend to prioritise activities to increase overall inflows of foreign investment, while IPAs that are more integrated into the government bureaucracy are more likely to structure their activities in ways that prioritise their countries’ industrial policy goals. Evidence from World Bank surveys of IPA officials and a case study of Costa Rica’s IPA demonstrate how agencies’ governance structures incentivise them to approach their mandates in different ways, which in turn influences their contribution to sustainable, inclusive development. This research enriches our understanding of investment promotion as a tool for sustainable development and contributes to ongoing debates on how states manage economic globalisation.