Why do some international organizations (IO) accrete delegated authority over time while in others delegation is static or declines? We hypothesize that the dynamics of delegation are shaped by an IO's founding contract. IOs rooted in an open-ended contract have the capacity to discover...

The reallocation of authority upwards, downwards, and sideways from central states has drawn attention from a growing number of scholars in the social sciences. Yet beyond the bedrock agreement that governance has become (and should be) multi-level, there is no convergence about how it should be...

The reorganization of European political economy since the mid 1980s has had to come to terms with two of the most fundamental issues of political life: the structuration of political authority and participation, and the scope of authoritative decision making in the economy. The European Union...

The reallocation of authority upwards, downwards, and sideways from central states hasdrawn attention from a growing number of scholars in the social sciences. Yet beyondagreement that governance has become (and should be) multi-level, there is no consensusabout how it should be organized. This...

The reallocation of authority upwards, downwards, and sideways from central states has drawn attention from a growing number of scholars in the social sciences. Yet beyond the bedrock agreement that governance has become (and should be) multi-level, there is no convergence about how it should be...

This paper engages three theories—neofunctionalism, intergovernmentalism, and postfunctionalism—that have their intellectual roots in the study of European integration in the past century. The purpose of this paper is to assess their use value for explaining EU developments in the 21st...

This paper surveys fundamental contrasts in the articulation of international authority using a new dataset, constructed by the authors, that estimates the composition and decision-making rules of 72 international organizations from 1950 to 2010. We theorize that two modes of governance –...