Studying the influence of international bureaucracies. A conceptual framework

This chapter outlines the conceptual framework for assessing and explaining the influence of international bureaucracies. It first conceptualizes international bureaucracies before elaborating the dependent variables and the concept of “influence” as used in the research, and then considers three clusters of factors that may explain variation in the degree and type of influence of international bureaucracies: Cognitive, normative, and executive influence. Based on these three factors, the chapter presents bureaucracies as knowledge brokers, negotiation facilitators, and capacity builders. It also discusses the concept of relative change in the behavior of actors and compares bureaucratic influence with regime effectiveness. The chapter concludes by expounding the empirical research procedures, including case selection, field research and interview methodology, and the expert survey.