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...

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 –...

This paper offers a fresh perspective on institutional change drawing on recent advances in the economic theory of contracting. Contractual incompleteness enhances organizational flexibility, but only at the cost of perceptual ambiguity. We hypothesize that the willingness to engage in a highly...