Abouharb, M. R.; Cingranelli, David; Filippov, Mikhail. 2019. “Too Many Cooks: Multiple International Principals Can Spoil the Quality of Governance.” Social Sciences. 8:5 139. Replication Dataset & Do File. (Zip)
We contribute to the research stream emphasizing the competition between international
organizations and citizens for influence over the domestic policy choices of national politicians.
Drawing upon previous theoretical and empirical work on the common agency problem, we contend
that the joint influence of a country’s memberships in multiple international governmental
organizations (IGOs) generates consistent, unintended, disruptive effects, which reduces domestic
accountability and can worsen the quality of a domestic government. Even if we assume that
joining any particular IGO is beneficial for member states, the competing demands of multiple IGO
memberships could undermine the quality of their governments. Our comparative, cross-national
empirical findings support this theoretical expectation. Countries participating in a larger number
of IGOs tend to have poorer scores on five widely used indicators of the quality of a domestic
government. Future research should identify the types of policies and countries where the negative
externalities of international cooperation on domestic accountability are greatest.
