The Shadow of History in Inter-Organizational Cooperation for the Environment

• Author: Azusa Uji
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10704965221115625
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Journal of Environment &

Development

2022, Vol. 31(4) 352–374

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10704965221115625

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The Shadow of History in

Inter-Organizational

Cooperation for the

Environment

Azusa Uji

1



Abstract

Why do international organizations (IOs) adopt different arrangements for cooper-

ation? Drawing on the theory of institutional context and the rational theory of in-

ternational design, I argue that a prior thick institution between IOs, which involves the

adjustment of organizational mandates and/or activities, facilitates a decentralized

arrangement for their current cooperation by fostering mutual expectations and

reducing uncertainty. If the prior institution merely assumes direct combinations of

resources and expertise, a centralized arrangement is needed to reduce uncertainty

regarding the counterpart IO’s cooperative motive. With archival analysis and ex-

tensive interviews with IO staff members, this argument is tested against two empirical

cases of inter-organizational cooperation undertaken by the United Nations Envi-

ronment Program under the MinamataConvention on Mercury. The in-depth analysis

reveals how IOs cope with demands and obstacles for inter-organizational cooperation

on the ground, which has been largely unexplored in the literature.

Keywords

International organization, Minamata convention, institutional context, environmental

treaty, institutional design, sustainable development

Introduction

As global issues become progressively complex, there is increasing demand to bring

together multiple actors with distinct policy expertise to solve them. Scholars and

1

Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University, Japan

Corresponding Author:

Azusa Uji, Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University, Yoshida Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501, Japan.

Email: uji.azusa.2z@kyoto-u.ac.jp

policymakers are paying attention to cooperation between international organizations

(IOs). While preceding studies identify why International Organizations (IOs) coop-

erate (Balas, 2011;Biermann, 2008;Gest & Grigorescu, 2010;Huigens, 2015), this

study asks why the arrangements adopted by the IOs for cooperation differ. In this

study, a cooperative arrangement refers to a form of institutionalized cooperation,

which facilitates cooperation by moderating cooperation problems (Koremenos, 2016,

10). It is equivalent to the institutional design (f‌lexibility, centralization, scope, and

control) for interstate cooperation (Koremenos et al., 2001;Koremenos, 2016) and is

distinct from cooperation types (e.g., coordination, collaboration, and orchestration) or

inter-organizational cooperative activities (e.g., informational sharing, f‌inancing, and

standard setting). Accordingly, this study rests on the premise that cooperative ar-

rangements for IOs are similar to institutional design for cooperation between states.

Biermann (2015, p. 45) stresses the importance of studying arrangements for inter-

organizational cooperation and argues that cooperation failure can generate disastrous

policy consequences ascribed to the IOs’lack of knowledge regarding how they should

cooperate to achieve a shared governance goal. Improving our understanding of such

cooperative arrangements advances the study of IOs and provides a useful policy

prescription for global governance in which IOs play a major role.

Incorporating the perspective of institutional context (Jupille et al., 2017;

Copelovitch & Putnam, 2014), I argue that the choice of cooperative arrangements

depends on the thickness of the prior institution under which the same pair of IOs

cooperated. I def‌ine a thick institution as cooperation involving the adjustment of

organizational mandates and/or activities and a thin institution as cooperation involving

direct combinations of resources and expertise (Clark, 2021). I regard the former as

being able to foster mutual expectations, thus reducing uncertainty regarding coun-

terpart IOs’cooperative motive for future cooperation, and the latter as not being able to

do so. Combining this argument with the rational design theory, I expect that if the prior

institution was thin, a centralized arrangement (where a centralized command structure

serves as an administrative apparatus to manage cooperative activities hierarchically) is

needed to reduce uncertainty regarding the counterpart IOs’cooperative motive. If the

prior institution was thick, a decentralized arrangement (the absence of a centralized

command structure leaves much leverage for IO personnel to manage cooperation)

suff‌ices their cooperation needs.

I analyze two cases of inter-organizational cooperation in relation to the Minamata

Convention on Mercury (hereafter, the Minamata Convention). Under the Convention,

the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which acts as a secretariat, co-

operates with different IOs. I selected the Minamata Convention as a case study, where

IOs extensively engage in inter-organizational technical cooperation to tackle the issue

of mercury within the broader agenda on society, development, and health, inf‌luenced

by the cross-cutting approach of UN sustainable development goals (SDGs). In two

cases, the UNEP is involved in sets of dyadic cooperation with IOs to implement the

Minamata Convention. One connects UNEP with the World Health Organization

(WHO) and the ILO for health-related issues through a centralized arrangement. The

other assigns the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United

Uji 353