Using a dynamic version of the principal–agent model this chapter develops a theoretical framework for an international bureaucracy’s influence on the delegation of responsibilities by the organization’s member states. It argues that this influence is reinforced by external resource flows that both directly and indirectly strengthen the role of the bureaucracy. The chapter uses the case of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to test the hypotheses since its major resource flows have been driven solely by a private market for emissions credits, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Between 2006 and 2013 when CDM revenues formed a significant share of the secretariat’s budget, rule-setting was increasingly dominated by the secretariat. When the crash of prices for CDM credits from 2012 onward reduced the secretariat’s revenues and projects to assess, secretariat-led rule-setting intensified. This approach was used to “buy time” in which secretariat leaders were hoping for a recovery of the CDM market. But when this recovery did not materialize, the secretariat started to lay off support staff and implicitly tried to reorient CDM resources for support of the Paris Agreement negotiations and implementation of national mitigation action.

This chapter reviews the most recent advances in the scholarly literature on international environmental bureaucracies and relates it to the long and fruitful research agenda on international public administrations (IPAs). In the first section, IPAs are defined and distinguished from the wider international organizations or treaty systems that they are an integral part of. The next section addresses the question of whether and how IPAs should be expected to matter in global environmental governance. It then presents selected empirical studies that find IPAs to have had an autonomous, discernible influence on international policy processes and outputs. The last section identifies the most relevant determinants and causal mechanisms of IPA influence and shows how the chapters in the book contribute to this continuously evolving research agenda.