As the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to grow, policymakers are increasingly grappling with the question of how to regulate this technology. The most far-reaching international initiative is the European Union (EU) AI Act, which aims to establish the first comprehensive, binding framework for regulating AI. In this article, we offer the first systematic analysis of non-state actor preferences toward international regulation of AI, focusing on the case of the EU AI Act. Theoretically, we develop an argument about the regulatory preferences of business actors and other non-state actors under varying conditions of AI sector competitiveness. Empirically, we test these expectations using data from public consultations on European AI regulation. Our findings are threefold. First, all types of non-state actors express concerns about AI and support regulation in some form. Second, there are nonetheless significant differences across actor types, with business actors being less concerned about the downsides of AI and more in favor of lax regulation than other non-state actors. Third, these differences are more pronounced in countries with stronger commercial AI sectors. Our findings shed new light on non-state actor preferences toward AI regulation and point to challenges for policymakers balancing competing interests in society.

States covet leadership and staff positions in international organizations. The posts of civilian leaders and force commanders of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations are attractive to member states. In selecting peacekeeping leaders, the UN Secretariat balances three considerations: satisfying powerful member states by appointing their nationals; recognizing member states' contribution to the work of the organization; and ensuring that leaders have the necessary skill set. We investigate appointments of more than 200 civilian and military leaders in 24 UN missions, 1990-2017. We find that contributing troops to a specific mission increases the chances of securing a peacekeeping leadership position. Geographic proximity between the leaders' country and the conflict country is also a favorable factor whose importance has increased over time. Civilian leaders of UN peacekeeping operations tend to hail from institutionally powerful countries, while military commanders come from major, long-standing troop contributing countries. Despite some role that skills play in the appointment process, the UN's dependence on troop contributors, together with its reliance on institutionally powerful states, can be a source of dysfunction if it prevents the organization from selecting effective peacekeeping leaders. This dynamic affects other international organizations that have significant power disparities among members or rely on voluntary contributions.

International organizations' ability to respond promptly to crises is essential for their effectiveness and legitimacy. For the UN, which sends peacekeeping missions to some of the world's most difficult conflicts, responsiveness can save lives and protect peace. Very often, however, the UN fails to deploy peacekeepers rapidly. Lacking a standing army, the UN relies on its member states to provide troops for peacekeeping operations. In the first systematic study of the determinants of deployment speed in UN peacekeeping, we theorize that this speed hinges on the incentives, capabilities, and constraints of the troop-contributing countries. Using duration modeling, we analyze novel data on the deployment speed in 28 peacekeeping operations between 1991 and 2015. Our data reveal three principal findings: All else equal, countries that depend on peacekeeping reimbursements by the UN, are exposed to negative externalities from a particular conflict, or lack parliamentary constraints on sending troops abroad deploy more swiftly than others. By underlining how member state characteristics affect aggregate outcomes, these findings have important implications for research on the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping, troop contribution dynamics, and rapid deployment initiatives.

When reform negotiations in international organizations (IOs) produce limited substantive progress, the diagnosis is typically a lack of political will. We identify a different dynamic: in protracted negotiations, international policy paradigms can emerge that enshrine a politically realistic but incomplete issue definition and thereby focus the debate on a subset of policy instruments that do not fully address the underlying problem. We draw on the multilateral negotiations literature to show how policy paradigms-which are widely explored in Comparative Politics, but largely neglected in International Relations-can emerge even in heterogenous IOs, where deep cognitive cohesion is unlikely. The risk of negotiation failure incentivizes negotiators to adopt and maintain achievable issue and goal definitions, which over time are accepted as axiomatic by diplomats, IO officials, and policy experts. The resulting international policy paradigms help avoid institutional paralysis, but can also impede more ambitious reforms. To establish the empirical plausibility of this argument, we highlight the contemporary international policy paradigm of rapid deployment in UN peacekeeping, which focuses more on establishing an initial brigade-sized presence than on rapid deployment of the full peacekeeping force. Drawing on primary documents and interviews, we identify the roots of this First Brigade policy paradigm in reactions to the UN's failure to respond to the 1994 Rwandan genocide and trace its consolidation during UN reform negotiations in the 2000s and early 2010s. We also demonstrate that an alternative explanation of the paradigm as reflecting operational lessons-learned does not hold: a brigade-sized initial presence is rarely sufficient for mandate implementation, does not reliably speed up full deployment, and creates risks for peacekeepers. By highlighting the existence and impact of international policy paradigms, our study adds to scholarship on the role of ideas in International Relations and provides a novel perspective on reform negotiations in IOs.

Studies of conflict management by international organizations have demonstrated correlations between institutional characteristics and outcomes, but questions remain as to whether these correlations have causal properties. To examine how institutional characteristics condition the nature of international organization interventions, I examine mediation and ceasefire monitoring by the Arab League and the United Nations during the first phase of the Syrian civil war (2011-2012). Using micro-evidence sourced from unique interview material, day-to-day fatality statistics, and international organization documentation, I detail causal pathways from organizational characteristics, via intervention strategies, to intervention outcomes. I find that both international organizations relied on comparable intervention strategies. While mediating, they counseled on the costs of conflict, provided coordination points, and managed the bargaining context so as to sideline spoilers and generate leverage. While monitoring, they verified violent events, engaged in reassurance patrols, and brokered local truces. The execution of these strategies was conditioned on organizational capabilities and member state preferences in ways that help explain both variation in short-term conflict abatement and the long-term failure of both international organizations. In contrast to the Arab League, the United Nations intervention, supported by more expansive resources and expertise, temporarily shifted conflict parties away from a violent equilibrium. Both organizations ultimately failed as disunity among international organization member state principals cut interventions short and reduced the credibility of international organization mediators.

We identify and investigate a fundamental puzzle in contemporary mediation of armed conflicts. Although the preparedness of international mediators has increased, the proportion of armed conflicts that receive mediation has not increased, but decreased. Using quantitative data on the occurrence of mediation between 1989 and 2013, our analysis suggests that this puzzling contradiction cannot be explained by conflicts being more fragmented, intractable or internationalized. Instead, we argue that the puzzling decline of mediation can be explained by a mismatch between supply and demand in the international mediation 'market'. Although there are more mediators available, the rise in the number of conflicts involving Islamist armed actors, coupled with increased reliance on terror-listing, especially since 2001, has placed a growing number of conflicts beyond the reach of international mediators. Our findings challenge the conventional belief that the post-Cold War era is characterized by high mediation rates and point to the need to develop the practice of mediation to maintain its relevance in the contemporary conflict landscape.

Recent decades have witnessed the emergence and spread of a broad range of liberal norms in global governance, among them sustainable development, gender equality, and human security. While existing scholarship tells us a lot about the trajectories of particular norms, we know much less about the broader patterns and sources of commitments to liberal norms by international organizations (IOs). This article offers the first comparative large-N analysis of such commitments, building on a unique dataset on JO policy decisions over the time period 1980-2015. Distinguishing between deep norm commitment and shallow norm recognition, the analysis produces several novel findings. We establish that IOs' deeper commitments to liberal norms primarily are driven by internal conditions: democratic memberships and institutional designs more conducive to norm entrepreneurship. In contrast, legitimacy standards in the external environment of IOs, often invoked in existing research, mainly account for shallower recognition or talk of norms.

This article provides a systematic assessment of bargaining success in the reform of the Eurozone 2010 to 2015. Theoretically, we develop an argument about preferences and institutions as determinants of bargaining success and contrast this argument with an alternative account privileging states’ power resources. Empirically, we conduct a statistical analysis of new data covering all key reform proposals. Our findings are three-fold. First, contrary to a conventional narrative of German dominance, the negotiations produced no clear winners and losers. Second, while power resources were of limited importance, holding preferences that were centrist or close to the European Commission favored bargaining success—particularly when adoption only required the support of a qualified majority. Third, these descriptive and explanatory results reflect dynamics of compromise and reciprocity.

This article examines the extent to which economic or political factors shaped government preferences in the reform of the Economic Monetary Union. A multilevel analysis of European Union member governments’ preferences on 40 EMU reform issues negotiated between 2010 and 2015 suggests that countries’ financial sector exposure has significant explanatory power. Seeking to minimize the risk of costly bailouts, countries with highly exposed financial sectors were more likely to support solutions involving high degrees of European integration. In contrast, political factors had no systematic impact. These findings help to enhance our understanding of preference formation in the European Union and the viability of future EMU reform.

In the face of escalating conflicts or atrocities, international organizations (IOs), alongside non-governmental organizations (NGOs), often vocalize public condemnation. Researchers have examined NGO shaming, but no extant literature has comparatively explored if, how and why IOs shame. This article fills this gap. We conceptualize IO shaming as condemnatory speech acts and distinguish between the agent, targets and actions of shaming. We theorize how compliance and socialization are motives that lead IOs to shame. Empirically, we use new data on more than 3000 instances of IO shaming, covering 27 organizations between 1980 and 2015 to examine empirical patterns across the three dimensions of agents, targets and actions. We find that the majority of IOs do employ shaming but to varying degrees. Global, general-purpose IOs shame the most and regional, task-specific IOs the least. IOs mainly shame states, but there is a rise in the targeting of non-state and unnamed actors. While many condemned acts relate to human rights and security issues, IOs shame actions across the policy spectrum. These findings indicate that IO shaming is driven by compliance and socialization motives and that it is a wider phenomenon than previously recognized, suggesting possible avenues for further inquiry.