Policy recommendations of international bureaucracies: the importance of country-specificity

Abstract

Many international bureaucracies give policy advice to national administrative units. Why is the advice given by some international bureaucracies more influential than the recommendations of others? We argue that targeting advice to member states through national embeddedness and country-tailored research increases the influence of policy advice. Subsequently, we test how these characteristics shape the relative influence of 15 international bureaucracies’ advice in four financial policy areas through a global survey of national administrations from more than 80 countries. Our findings support arguments that global blueprints need to be adapted and translated to become meaningful for country-level work.

Points for practitioners

National administrations are advised by an increasing number of international bureaucracies, and they cannot listen to all of this advice. Whereas some international bureaucracies give ‘one-size-fits-all’ recommendations to rather diverse countries, others cater their recommendations to the national audience. Investigating financial policy recommendations, we find that national embeddedness and country-tailored advice render international bureaucracies more influential.

Keywords

financial policy international administration international organizations multi-level government regime complexity

Introduction¹

Many international bureaucracies give policy advice to national decision-makers. The influence of such advice has increasingly been recognized in academic debates on international organizations (IOs) (Edwards and Senger, 2015; Fang and Stone, 2012; Heinzel and Liese, 2021a; Kudrle, 2014; Momani, 2007). Scholarship has demonstrated that individual international bureaucracies’ advice can affect the decisions taken by national actors even in the absence of more coercive means of policy transfer, like conditionality. However, the literature lacks comparative analyses that explain why some international bureaucracies are more successful in transferring policies through their advice than others.

Yet, such comparative approaches are ever-more relevant because international bureaucracies are part of complex and overlapping international regimes (Gehring and Faude, 2014; Kreuder-Sonnen and Zürn, 2020; Zelli and van Asselt, 2013). Therefore, national decision-makers are often not faced with isolated advice by one international bureaucracy alone, but have to decide whose advice is worthy of consideration and whose they want to ignore. Therefore, we ask: why is the advice given by some international bureaucracies more influential than the advice of others?

To explain differential consideration of international bureaucracies’ policy advice, we develop an argument based on the literature on IO policy advice and institutional overlap. Many international bureaucracies succumb to bureaucratic universalism by relying on general solutions in diverse national contexts (Barnett and Finnemore, 1999). Increasing institutional overlap creates windows of opportunity for those international bureaucracies that can better cater their advice to specific country contexts. Therefore, we claim that international bureaucracies more embedded within national contexts that also produce more country-tailored research will be more influential through their policy advice.

Our empirical analysis focuses on 15 international bureaucracies’ policy advice in four financial policy areas that all countries deal with and where many international bureaucracies are active in advising national actors (banking regulation, debt management, monetary policy and tax policy). We utilize data on the country-specificity of their work. as well as data from a survey of high-level decision-makers working within finance ministries and central banks in more than 80 countries. These national bureaucrats play a crucial role as national interlocutors for international bureaucracies that affects the fortunes of their advice. The results demonstrate that country-specificity is indeed a crucial factor: it shapes the relative influence of different international bureaucracies’ policy advice.

The study contributes to three debates in academic research on international bureaucracies and policy transfer. First, we supplement the literature on international bureaucracies (Barnett and Finnemore, 2004; Bauer et al., 2019; Bayerlein et al., 2020; Benz et al., 2016; Ege et al., 2021; Fleischer and Reiners, 2021; Gray and Baturo, 2021; Saerbeck et al., 2020). This literature has extensively discussed the influence of international bureaucracies on both global and national policy. We extend this debate by developing an argument on the country-specificity of international bureaucracies’ advice and testing it across policy areas and international bureaucracies. Second, the study adds to research on policy transfer by systematically studying the ability of different international bureaucracies to affect policy transfers through their advice. While many studies have acknowledged that international bureaucracies may matter (Marsh and Sharman, 2009), comparative studies of their ability to transfer policy to national contexts remain scarce. Third, our findings speak to discussions on policy advisory systems within countries (Craft and Howlett, 2012; Halligan, 1995). The literature has mostly focused on national actors, and studies mostly focus on a small number of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (Howlett, 2019; Pattyn et al., 2019). Our global sample allows some inference as to how one group of actors’ policy advice is considered in more diverse contexts.

We establish and test the argument in five steps. First, we outline two ways in which the advice of international bureaucracies can reach national finance ministries and central banks. Second, we derive our two hypotheses on national embeddedness and tailored research from the literature. Third, we introduce our empirical strategy of combining a global survey we conducted in 2016 with the heads of administrative units from over 80 countries in four financial policy areas with data on the field offices and research focuses of international bureaucracies. Fourth, we assess the determinants of international bureaucracies’ relative influence using regression analysis. Finally, we conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the literature on international bureaucracies.

Policy recommendations in times of institutional overlap

We study the relative influence of international bureaucracies by giving policy advice to national stakeholders. Policy advice refers to international bureaucracies’ knowledge-based policy recommendations, which aim at impacting the policy decisions taken by national actors on particular matters. International bureaucracies give such advice through both regular programmes and as ad hoc reactions to changing national or global conditions. Many international bureaucracies regularly produce institutionalized advice. For example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the OECD both publish regular country surveillance reports in which they give concrete policy advice and follow up on the implementation records of past recommendations (Edwards and Senger, 2015; Momani, 2006). International bureaucracies also get involved in national debates outside of these regular programmes. For example, the World Bank gave policy advice during the COVID-19 pandemic (Van Hecke et al., 2021). Our concept of policy advice excludes more coercive means of influence by international bureaucracies. For example, the IMF and World Bank have long ascribed conditionality that seeks to alter borrowers’ policies and institutions in exchange for disbursement of funds (Babb and Carruthers, 2008). The degree to which conditionality influences national policies and socio-economic conditions has been extensively discussed (Babb and Carruthers, 2008; Kelley, 2004; Kentikelenis et al., 2016). However, many international bureaucracies cannot ascribe conditions and rely entirely on less coercive means of affecting national policies. Furthermore, recent research comparing the influence of policy advice and conditionality has pointed out that the World Bank’s knowledge services seem to influence recipients consistently. In contrast, the effect of conditionality through policy-based lending is more ambiguous (Knack et al., 2020). These findings are supported by a range of scholars who have demonstrated the potency of policy advice in case studies (Broome, 2010; Jakobi, 2012; Kudrle, 2014). Despite their essential contributions, these studies have not comparatively assessed factors that render policy advice more potent across policy areas and international bureaucracies.

However, increasing institutional overlap implies that such comparative analysis is needed. Recent years have seen impressive growth in the number of international bureaucracies and the policy scope they seek to address (Eckhard and Ege, 2016). The consequence is that international regimes are populated by ever-increasing numbers of international bureaucracies that advise national actors. This fact has been highlighted by scholars that conceive of IOs as part of regime complexes, which are made up of IOs ‘that overlap in their memberships and regulatory competence without being coordinated by a hierarchical instance’ (Faude and Groβe-Kreul, 2020: 1–2). Three consequences for international governance have been primarily highlighted. First, scholars have argued that these complex overlapping regulatory regimes can give rise to forum shopping by member states seeking the best venue to pursue their interests (Alter and Meunier, 2009; Busch, 2007; Drezner, 2009). Second, some have contended that regime complexity and overlapping institutions increase redundancy, competing authority claims and norm collisions (Abbott et al., 2015; Gholiagha et al., 2020; Kreuder-Sonnen and Zürn, 2020). Third, others claim that, over time, institutional adaption leads to a rational division of labour between IOs (Gehring and Faude, 2014). These studies have primarily focused on the long-run consequences of regime complexity for effective global governance. However, regime complexity also provides short-term problems for international bureaucracies that try to influence national policy. As Alter and Raustiala (2018: 340) argue: ‘regime complexity does make it harder for individuals to understand which actors, institutions, and rules apply; it is more difficult for any one institution to assert authority with respect to issues that fall under their domain’. This difficulty in asserting authority materializes in the domain of policy advice. Contrary to conditionality, policy advice affords more discretion to national actors, who face fewer costs when rejecting or ignoring the advice. This increased discretion is specifically pronounced when they can choose among multiple international bureaucracies that advise on the same topics. Consequently, increasing competition necessitates that international bureaucracies distinguish their advice. In the next section, we present an argument as to how international bureaucracies can differentiate themselves within increasingly complex regimes by departing from bureaucratic universalism.

National embeddedness and tailored research of international bureaucracies

One of the central pathologies of international bureaucracies discussed in the literature is their reliance on universal approaches to diverse and country-specific problems (Babb, 2013; Barnett and Finnemore, 2004; Bicchi, 2006). As Barnett and Finnemore (1999: 71) argue: ‘Bureaucrats necessarily flatten diversity because they are supposed to generate universal rules and categories that are, by design, inattentive to contextual and particularistic concerns.’ Such bureaucratic universalism has been observed by scholars working on different IOs. Some have discussed uniform norms being propagated in the democracy assistance and neighbourhood policy of the European Union (Bicchi, 2006; Börzel and Risse, 2009; Börzel et al., 2009). Others have criticized the IMF’s and World Bank’s overreliance on supply-side economic models for advocating the same policy solutions in countries facing very different economic conditions (Babb, 2013; Barnett and Finnemore, 2004; Stiglitz, 2002; Yi-chong, 2005). Such uniform approaches are seen as a central feature of international bureaucracies trying to provide expertise that is supposed to apply to problems facing diverse countries globally (Barnett and Finnemore, 2004; Clegg, 2013).

Increasing regime complexity can render this practice less feasible if international bureaucracies are trying to stay relevant to their clients. One of the primary consequences of increasingly overlapping regimes is that international bureaucracies need to compete over constituents, resources, attention and issue ownership with each other (Alter and Meunier, 2009; Hofmann, 2009). Similar arguments have been made in the literature on policy advisory systems (Halligan, 1995), where scholars have highlighted that competition among advice-giving actors takes place, especially in pluralist systems (Hustedt and Veit, 2017). Competition can create ‘the types of persistent inefficiencies frequently lamented, such as repetitive efforts, turf battles, and uncoordinated policy that has achievements by one organization later undermined’ (Alter and Meunier, 2009: 19). Suppose international bureaucracies want to gain an edge in competing within increasingly complex regimes. In that case, they can improve their relevance by departing from bureaucratic universalism and tailor their advice more to the preferences of important national stakeholders.

When faced with many different international bureaucracies that advise them, national stakeholders will be more inclined to listen to those that appear more relevant to them. The literature on the IMF and the World Bank has highlighted the importance of sympathetic interlocutors for international bureaucracies’ domestic influence (Arpac and Bird, 2009; Bazbauers, 2020; Chwieroth, 2010; Heinzel and Liese, 2021b; Woods, 2006). Sympathetic interlocutors are national actors ‘both willing and able to embrace the priorities preferred by the institutions’ (Woods, 2006: 10). Such willingness is said to be based on shared understandings of the policy problems and solutions of national actors and international bureaucracies (Chwieroth, 2015; Woods, 2006). When international bureaucrats frame their advice towards vital national stakeholders’ problem perceptions, the latter will be more committed to considering and implementing this advice.

Hence, we claim that those international bureaucracies that are more country-specific in their work will be better able to cater to national stakeholders’ advice. Whether the advice is seen as suitable is crucial. Suitability can be determined by the existing preference order between different approaches to governance and regulation. For example, policymakers in some states may have preferences for command-and-control policies, incentive-based policies or self-regulation (Lütz, 2007). Furthermore, much can hinge on framing policies as relevant in particular socio-economic or cultural contexts (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996).

Specifically, we argue that two characteristics will allow international bureaucracies to increase their country-specificity: national embeddedness and tailored research. First, national embeddedness permits international bureaucracies to understand national debates, recognize windows of opportunity and react accordingly. We understand embeddedness as the degree to which international bureaucracies are entrenched in national debates and decision-making processes. Differing global or regional scope leads to variations in their ability to monitor and contribute to debates in a wide range of member states. A central way to facilitate access to national debates is by having a presence in the country (Weller and Yi-chong, 2010). While some international bureaucracies centralize their operations within headquarters, others have many field offices that frequently liaise with national decision-makers and other stakeholders (Honig, 2020; Nielson et al., 2006). Country offices allow international bureaucracies to employ specialists that live in the country and build relationships with national interlocutors (Eckhard, 2021). These specialists will be better able to recognize windows of opportunities and capitalize on them by framing advice to policymakers’ preferences. Consequently, the international bureaucracies’ advice will be considered more often when it is better embedded in a given member state:

H1: The more embedded a given international bureaucracy is in a member state, the more influential its advice will be.

Second, tailored research of an international bureaucracy can allow the organization to have the relevant knowledge to cater their advice to country contexts. Most international bureaucracies have sizeable policy research departments that produce analyses and advice for member states worldwide. Much of that advice is global in scope, and many scholars have criticized the fact that international bureaucracies use standardized approaches in diverse country contexts (Barnett and Finnemore, 2004; Stiglitz, 2002). When an international bureaucracy conducts more detailed studies of particular member states’ policy environments, it may gain an edge over the international bureaucracies that stay within the realm of global and general advice. The formulated recommendations of international bureaucracies will be much more relevant if they can draw on detailed studies of the issues facing a given member state. Consequently, they will be more able to react to windows of opportunities with well-formulated and specific advice that is more suitable in relevant national stakeholders’ eyes:

H2: The more a given international bureaucracy targets its research to a member state in a policy area, the more influential its advice will be.

Research design

To test our argument, we draw on data collected through a global survey in 2016 (Liese et al., 2021). Therefore, we rely on measuring the attributed influence of policy recommendations (Dür, 2008; March, 1955). Survey data are beneficial for our purposes because they allow us to compare our dependent variable across international bureaucracies and policy areas (Gray and Slapin, 2012). This focus ensures that we can compare different international bureaucracies, whose policy outputs or conditions can look very different. By drawing on survey data, we do not have to choose, for example, whether the impact of the economic survey by the OECD on the adoption of tax reform in Colombia was grander than the role an IMF financial sector assessment report played in the restructuring of the Swedish agency for banking supervision. Instead, we focus on the evaluations of national actors regarding the influence of international bureaucracies’ policy advice and compare these evaluations.

However, measures of attributed influence also have drawbacks (Dür, 2008). First, the measures only account for attribution of influence, not actual influence on specific outcomes. Therefore, we cannot make precise statements about where international bureaucracies affected domestic policy processes. Second, evaluations are less precise because they focus on many different policy issues and different actors. We aimed to minimize this by targeting respondents working in specific policy areas and asking them to evaluate different international bureaucracies separately. Indeed, past research has shown that international bureaucracies may play different roles depending on the policy area (Flonk et al., 2020; Zelli and van Asselt, 2013) (see Figure 1). Specifically, we use survey data on 15 international bureaucracies active in up to four financial policy areas (monetary policy, tax policy, debt management and banking regulation). We decided to focus on four policy areas to test our argument in various policy areas while still allowing comparability. Financial policy was chosen because it represents a central thematic area that all countries deal with and where many international bureaucracies are active in advising national actors. In a final step, we identified international bureaucracies that focus on national financial policy and engage with national actors. Our sample of 15 international bureaucracies includes six global and nine regional international bureaucracies.

Figure 1.

Sample of international bureaucracies and the policy areas they are active in.

Our survey population is made up of all member states of the United Nations (UN). We selected 121 countries because others have pointed to concerns over response rates in surveys of experts (Gray and Slapin, 2012).² In total, we sent our survey to 454 national administrative units in national finance ministries and central banks.³ We addressed the survey to the highest person chiefly responsible for each administrative unit’s respective policy areas. The survey had a response rate of approximately 38%.⁴

Model choice

To model each international bureaucracy’s comparative influence, we employ ordinary least square (OLS) models. In our set-up, each administrative unit indicated the influence of each international bureaucracy active in its policy area. The unit of analysis is the international bureaucracy–national administration dyad (e.g. IMF and tax policy department in country X). All characteristics unique to each administrative unit are controlled for through fixed effects so that the models allow for isolating how international bureaucracy characteristics are correlated with influential international bureaucracies. Furthermore, we cluster errors at the respondent level. This estimation approach allows for correlated errors due to similar evaluations given by the same respondent.

Dependent variable

To understand the influence of international bureaucracy advice, we asked questions that focused on international bureaucracies’ influence through their policy advice. All questions were given in a matrix format, which implies that respondents evaluated the different international bureaucracies simultaneously. This is crucial because we want to understand their choices between different IOs. We measure the degree to which national administrative units consider international bureaucracies’ advice through such a matrix question. We asked respondents to indicate to what extent they take the respective international bureaucracy’s advice into account. Responses were given on a scale from 1 (no advice) to 7 (all advice). We code answers indicating that respondents are not aware as 0 because respondents cannot consider advice if they have never heard of it. We exclude responses where respondents refused to answer. Figure 2 displays the share of non-responses and the average values for consideration of policy advice for each international bureaucracy.

Figure 2.

Respondents indicating that they know the advice of a given international bureaucracy and that they consider such advice, by international bureaucracy.

Independent variables

Our two main variables of interest are national embeddedness and tailored research. To avoid common response bias, we used data collected independently from the survey for the two central independent variables (Fordham and Kleinberg, 2012). In line with the discussion on the role of field offices and headquarters in shaping national embeddedness, we measure embeddedness with a dummy variable that indicates whether a given international bureaucracy had an official office in a given country when the survey was conducted. To measure tailored research, we counted the number of publications each international bureaucracy tailored at a given country in the financial policy areas in the two years preceding the survey.

Control variables

We control for many international bureaucracy characteristics discussed in the literature to minimize the possibility that omitted variables drive the results. First, our arguments on national embeddedness and tailored research are built on the assumption that the activities of international bureaucracies are more country-specific under these conditions. However, such country-specificity may result from the varying regional or policy scope of the different international bureaucracies. To ensure that the measures do not merely account for such differing scope, we employ a dummy indicating if a given international bureaucracy is active globally and another dummy measuring whether international bureaucracies are active in all four policy areas.

Second, we are interested in explaining the factors shaping the influence of policy advice as a means of soft governance. Some international bureaucracies have substantial coercive measures, like lending and conditionality, and maintain country offices to inform these practices. Therefore, we control for an international bureaucracy’s perceived ability to coerce national actors into adopting their advice using conditionality. To do so, we use data on respondents’ assessments of an IO’s ability to affect them through conditionality or enforcement. Furthermore, tailored policy research may invite some other actors to pressure national actors to adopt international bureaucracies’ advice. To minimize the possibility that such dynamics confound our results, we control for the perceived pressure to follow a given international bureaucracy’s advice. The survey’s related question focused on the degree to which national administrative units have been pressured by any third parties to consider international bureaucracies’ advice.

Third, authors have argued that policy advice is only potent if national actors see it as impartial (Barnett and Finnemore, 2004). More tailored research may persuade national administrations of such impartiality. To ensure that such dynamics do not affect our results, we control for the respondents’ perceptions of international bureaucracies’ impartiality collected through our survey.

Fourth, one may be concerned that some larger international bureaucracies’ advice could be considered more often because they perform functions like monitoring, policy implementation or technical assistance that require more country offices and research output. Again, both independent and dependent variables would be affected by this pattern. To reduce the possibility that they drive results, we employ dummies denoting whether international bureaucracies perform functions like policy implementation, surveillance and technical assistance. Furthermore, we control for the administrative budget that a given international bureaucracy has per member state to account for similar arguments regarding different international bureaucracies’ different levels of resources.

Finally, in some models, we employ measures from the survey to account for the reputation of an international bureaucracy’s expertise in national respondents’ eyes and the degree to which they think an international bureaucracy’s policy advice is congruent with national preferences. We employ these control variables cautiously because the argument we posit could affect the consideration of policy advice, the attribution of expertise and the degree to which national respondents see advice as congruent with their preferences. Nevertheless, suppose our results hold even when controlling for these perceptions. In that case, we would be confident that there are additional benefits from embeddedness and tailored research that the international bureaucracy’s reputation for expertise and giving congruent advice does not cover.

Analysis

Table 1 displays the results from five models employing our two main independent variables and several groups of the discussed control variables. Model 1 only employs the two independent variables. In Model 2, we further control for the regional and policy scope of the international bureaucracy’s work. Model 3 also includes control variables for enforcement, pressure and impartiality. In Model 4, we also control for implementation, surveillance, technical assistance and the international bureaucracy’s budget per member state. Finally, Model 5 also includes the survey-based control variables focusing on expertise and incongruence with national preferences.

Table 1.

Regressions focusing on consideration of policy advice.

	(1) Advice	(2) Advice	(3) Advice	(4) Advice	(5) Advice
National embeddedness	1.0381*** (0.1640)	1.0570*** (0.1862)	0.3980* (0.1793)	0.3184⁺ (0.1761)	0.3388** (0.1245)
Tailored research	0.1621*** (0.0339)	0.1561*** (0.0349)	0.0584⁺ (0.0306)	0.0680* (0.0314)	0.0481⁺ (0.0247)
General purpose		0.0057 (0.1552)	–0.6664*** (0.1406)	–0.8154*** (0.2084)	–0.6931*** (0.1605)
Global IOs		0.1021 (0.1472)	0.1883 (0.1312)	–1.0765* (0.4172)	–0.2246 (0.2152)
Pressure			0.2918** (0.0983)	0.2999** (0.0983)	0.2457** (0.0890)
Enforcement			0.4435*** (0.0687)	0.4170*** (0.0725)	0.1540* (0.0613)
Impartiality			0.1672 (0.1013)	0.1639 (0.1045)	0.0336 (0.0828)
Operational IO				0.2532 (0.3288)	0.5599* (0.2453)
Surveillance				1.3562** (0.4569)	0.5246* (0.2624)
Technical assistance				–0.0801 (0.4840)	–0.2768 (0.4124)
Budget per member state				–0.2345 (1.6517)	0.5507 (1.5065)
Expertise perception					0.5110*** (0.0839)
Incongruence					–0.2836* (0.1103)
Constant	2.4653*** (0.0667)	2.3821*** (0.1458)	0.7953 (0.5744)	0.8708 (0.6746)	1.1470 (0.8706)
Respondent fixed effects	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
N	907	907	527	527	436
R ²	0.534	0.534	0.747	0.752	0.843

Notes: Standard errors clustered at the country-level in parentheses. ⁺p < 0.10; *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

The results indicate that both national embeddedness and tailored research play an important role in explaining which national administrative units prefer international bureaucracies’ policy advice. Both variables of interest are statistically significant or marginally significant at conventional levels. The coefficients of both variables are moderate. The model with the strongest association between national embeddedness and policy advice is Model 2. If a given international bureaucracy has a country office in a member state, the respondent’s consideration of its policy advice increases on average by 1.05 on a scale that ranges from 0 to 7. The model with the most substantial link between tailored research and policy advice is Model 1. A one-unit increase in the number of tailored reports increases the consideration of policy advice, on average, by 0.16. That means that an international bureaucracy needs to produce between five and six tailored reports to increase consideration of advice in a similar order of magnitude as the increase we observed for country offices. Furthermore, the control variables show the expected results, with substantial and robust coefficients for pressure, conditionality and expertise. Overall, the findings support our argument that national embeddedness and tailored research can make a difference in enhancing the influence of some international bureaucracies over others.

Discussion and conclusion

International bureaucracies are increasingly seen as influential actors by scholars active in both public administration and international relations. Giving policy advice to national counterparts is one of their central means to influence member state policy, next to more coercive measures, like conditionality and enforcement. Simultaneously, they are part of ever-more complex regimes that give rise to many different international bureaucracies vying for national stakeholders’ attention. This creates competitive pressures for international bureaucracies. We argue that these competitive pressures necessitate abandoning uniform approaches to policy problems and solutions. International bureaucracies can increase their relative influence by catering their advice to country-specific contexts.

We tested the importance of two characteristics that allow international bureaucracies to cater their advice more to national contexts. Our hypotheses emphasize that presence in a member state and tailored research render international bureaucracies’ advice more influential. Having an office in a member state will allow international bureaucracies to maintain relationships with important stakeholders within national bureaucracies and to observe national debates on policy better. More detailed engagement with national policy problems can increase the understanding of these problems and allow for more specific advice that addresses them. We tested these expectations by drawing on data collected through a global survey asking for the consideration of international bureaucracies’ policy advice within high-level national administrative units. The survey data focus on the evaluations of national administrative units active in four areas of financial policy and more than 80 countries.

The empirical results support the expectation that national embeddedness and tailored research are important factors that affect the potency of international bureaucracies’ advice. To compare the different characteristics of the 15 international bureaucracies we study, our empirical models hold all differences between national administrative units constant by employing administrative unit fixed effects. This empirical approach allows us to model each international bureaucracy’s relative influence given a set of bureaucratic characteristics. The results are consistent with the argument advanced throughout this article. Even when holding a large number of alternative explanations constant, robust associations of national embeddedness and tailored research with consideration of policy advice remain.

Three limitations need to be kept in mind when interpreting the evidence we present. First, we cannot claim to have estimated causal effects. We did not experimentally manipulate our main independent variables and, therefore, cannot use randomization to assess causality. Instead, we estimate a local average treatment effect of those countries with a country office or of those countries and policy areas that are tailored through international bureaucracies’ research. This effect likely differs from the average treatment effect we could only have observed if country offices or tailored research were allocated randomly. Second, we rely on the attribution of influence rather than on the actual influence of international bureaucracies’ advice on outcomes. Our evidence could be supplemented by case-study research that tries to discern the mechanism linking national embeddedness and tailored research more clearly to the consideration of international bureaucracies’ policy recommendations. Third, international bureaucracies are only one group of actors within policy advisory systems. Scholars working on policy advice have established, among other things, the importance of advice by academics, civil society and think tanks (Pattyn et al., 2019). More research is needed to understand how and with whom international bureaucracies compete for national actors’ attention.

Despite these limitations, the results contribute to debates on international bureaucracies’ influence, knowledge and advice. Much of the literature emphasizes the importance of appearing as scientifically rational, neutral and technocratic bureaucracies to substantiate expert authority (Barnett and Finnemore, 2004). One of the central pathologies involved in such an approach is the overreliance on global blueprints, that is, applying similar solutions to diverse problems. The results presented here emphasize the benefits that international bureaucracies can reap from becoming more tailored in their country focus. They support those who argue that global blueprints need to be adapted and translated to become meaningful for country-level work.

The results also add to the emerging debate on regime complexity. The discussion has mostly analysed the level of the international regime. This focus allowed the authors to provide essential insights into the way complexity affects global governance. However, regime complexity also has considerable repercussions for the day-to-day work of international bureaucracies. The attention of national decision-makers is limited. It is possibly not enough for international bureaucracies to espouse global policy scripts and expect national counterparts to adapt them to specific country circumstances. Instead, international bureaucracies become more influential when they are more embedded in national contexts and produce tailored research focusing on a better understanding of the specific member state in question.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank two anonymous reviewers, Steffen Eckhard, Julia Gray, Ronny Patz, Svanhildur Thorvaldsdottir and the participants of an online workshop on International Public Administrations for very helpful comments and suggestions. We thank Clara Bünger, Marlen Rave and Marco Schäfer for excellent research assistance.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

Funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Research Unit International Public Administration (IPA) with grant number LI 1947/4-1 is gratefully acknowledged.

ORCID iDs

Per-Olof Busch

Mirko Heinzel

Andrea Liese

Notes

Per-Olof Busch is a senior researcher at Adelphi and was postdoctoral researcher at the University of Potsdam until 2020. His research focuses on international environmental governance and International Organizations.

Hauke Feil was a research associate at the University of Potsdam until 2019. His main fields of research are International Organizations, survey methods, and development cooperation.

Mirko Heinzel is a research associate at the Chair of International Relations at the University of Potsdam. His research focuses on International Organizations, specifically International Financial Institutions, and their bureaucracies.

Jana Herold was a research associate at the Chair of International Organizations and Policies at the University of Potsdam until 2020. Her research interests include International Organizations and agricultural development.

Mathies Kempken was a research associate at the Chair of International Organizations and Policies at the University of Potsdam until 2020. He researches International Organizations and development cooperation.

Andrea Liese is Professor of International Relations at the University of Potsdam and principal investigator in the Research Unit International Public Administration (IPA). One of her main research interests are International Organizations and their bureaucracies.

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Policy recommendations of international bureaucracies: the importance of country-specificity

Abstract

Points for practitioners

Keywords

Introduction 1

Policy recommendations in times of institutional overlap

National embeddedness and tailored research of international bureaucracies

Research design

Model choice

Dependent variable

Independent variables

Control variables

Analysis

Discussion and conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Declaration of conflicting interests

Funding

ORCID iDs

Notes

References

Introduction¹