Managers of Global Change: The Influence of International Environmental Bureaucracies (The MIT Press) - Tapa dura

Managers of Global Change provides a welcome return to careful attention to the possibilities and patterns of organizational agency. -Global Environmental Politics ... this book will ... be of interest to scholars in other fields, and practitioners who want to understand sources of and constraints on bureaucratic influence. ... The authors' findings are intriguing, and will help to advance the study of this area of world politics. -Review of International Organizations ... the book ... fills the gap in our knowledge on how these bureaucracies operate and compare. It is insightful in highlighting the role that international bureaucracies do play in international negotiations and how they may, in some circumstances, shape international negotiations. -Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy Managers of Global Change certainly offers a vast empirical overview of the performance of global environmental bureaucracies, a number of interesting insights about their functioning, and a solid intellectual and theoretical basis for guiding future studies on how international bureaucracies influence the decisions, norms, and administrative frameworks that govern policymaking around the world. -Governance

An examination of the role and relevance of international bureaucracies in global environmental governance. International bureaucracies-highly visible, far-reaching actors of global governance in areas that range from finance to the environment-are often derided as ineffective, inefficient, and unresponsive. Yet despite their prominence in many debates on world politics, little scholarly attention has been given to their actual influence in recent years. Managers of Global Change fills this gap, offering conceptual analysis and case studies of the role and relevance of international bureaucracies in the area of environmental governance-one of the most institutionally dynamic areas of world politics. The book seeks to resolve a puzzling disparity: although most international bureaucracies resemble each other in terms of their institutional and legal settings (their mandate, the countries to which they report, their general function), the roles they play and their actual influence vary greatly. The chapters investigate the type and degree of influence that international environmental bureaucracies exert and whether external or internal factors account for variations. After a discussion of theoretical context, research design, and empirical methodology, the book presents nine in-depth case studies of bureaucracies ranging from the environment department of the World Bank to the United Nations' climate and desertification secretariats. Managers of Global Change points the way to a better understanding of the role of international bureaucracies, which could improve the legitimacy of global decision making and resolve policy debates about the reform of the United Nations and other bodies.