Governing the World by Law and Lottery?

International Organizations face numerous difficulties due to lack of popular support around the world. They are often seen as inefficient bodies with ineffective policies. The so-called "democratic deficit" is frequently source of complaints. Others are worried about the increasing influence of NGOs that are susceptible to influence from their specific donors. This lack of popular support not only makes enforcement of international policies more difficult. It also increasingly results in violent protest against international organizations, as witnessed at meetings of the WTO, IMF, and the World Bank.

Reasons for the failures of international organizations can be found in principal-agents problems. The principals (the citizens of member states) have little control over the actions of their agents (the different international organizations). The delegation of competencies to international organizations provides no adequate procedures that ensure that the principals can influence the performance of their bureaucratic agents.

Increased transparency could solve the acceptance problem among the world citizen. However, knowledge about the different policies and the reasoning behind it alone does not bring better control over the agents due to the lack of political accountability of the international actors.

Also the more narrow and strict definition of the competencies of international organization as well as of the standards under which they act could tighten the grip on these bodies. This way the detection of failures and the distribution of responsibility for them would be easier. But this approach does not allow for the principals taking consequences out of the failures of their agents.

Stutzer and Frey (Making International Organizations More Democratic (2005), 1:3 Review of Law and Economics 305) propose increased citizen participation in international organizations in order to solve the acceptance problem. All citizens of member countries of an international organization should be given a potential right of participation in the organization’s decision-making by way of initiatives and referenda to change the ground rules of such organizations and by granting the right to recall high bureaucrats of these organizations. Since such direct democratic elements would encounter enormous transaction costs in large international organizations which cover up to billions of citizens, only a randomly selected sample of these citizens actually gets to exercise the above rights.

While random selection of voters seems arbitrary and uncertain, it gives every member of the potential electorate the same probability of being selected. Introducing quotas for nationalities, religions, genders, regions, or wealth levels would be complicated and bound to bias the selection of the voters.

The authors expect several improvements as a result of their proposal: Efficiency should be raised by effectively controlling higher public officials in international organizations. At the same time, influence of special interests in international governance should be weakened as citizens’ influence increases. Finally, collective decisions should become more self-enforcing, due to the strengthened legitimacy of international agreements.

While this seems to be an interesting approach, it remains doubtful that acceptance and support of international organizations will grow significantly after introducing such referendums and initiatives. Basic problems of international law - such as the difficulty of identifying and sanctioning violations of international law or the perceived partial immunity of powerful global players from international law - remain and will often frustrate people’s trust in the organizations administering that law. Finally, an increase of effectiveness of the work of international organizations by citizen participation requires a considerable level of education and access to information that is not ensured worldwide today.

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A law which affects unjustly must be changed.