Daniel Nielson and Michael Tierney's article, “Delegation
to International Organizations: Agency Theory and World Bank Environmental
Reform” (International Organization, Spring 2003), makes a
strong argument for ways in which principal-agent (P-A) models advance
theoretical explanations of the behavior and performance of international
organizations (IOs). Most IOs suffer from widely recognized gaps between
their mandates and their performance, gaps not well explained by the major
theories in our field. P-A models are premised on the assumption that
performance problems naturally arise when one actor (the principal)
delegates to another actor (the agent) the authority to act in the
former's interests. The models seek to explain why and how the
divergence of interests between the two parties may result in the
agent's actions differing from the principal's intentions, how
agents may be better controlled, and the costs of doing so.I would like to thank Barbara Connolly, Martha
Finnemore, Jeffry Frieden, Dan Guttman, Patrick Jackson, Carmela Lutmar,
and Melissa Moye for helpful comments.