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Whereas Chapter 1 reviews general theories of European integration, Chapter 2 contains a review of theories of institutional change with a particular emphasis on a troika of institutionalist theories: Rational Choice Institutionalism (RCI), Historical Institutionalism (HI), and Sociological Institutionalism (SI). RCI is this book's theory of choice, essentially amounting to an assumption that institutions are fairly easy to change and an explanation that actors compete to change them when status quo institutions prevent them from achieving their preferences. The book's RCI‐based argument claims that power‐changing informal accords get created in the EU when constraints on the EU's primary political actors change, the actors being the Council of Ministers, the European Commission, and the European Parliament. It predicts that the Parliament as the weakest actor succeeds in bargaining for advantageous informal accords with its stronger counterparts when one or more of a serious of specific conditions temporarily empower it.

This chapter presents the theoretical framework, building on sociological institutionalism and its two strands, namely organization studies and world society theory. The chapter starts with a presentation of how world society is formed, which actors are important and how change in world society can be caused. The idea of institutional entrepreneurship is introduced, including a section on how institutional entrepreneurs can be analyzed and how they can use networks to bring change. The chapter continues with an analysis of the concepts of rationalization. The oft-assumed homogenous world culture is analyzed with regard to internal variance, relying on the concept of institutional logics. In the final section, these findings are connected to institutional entrepreneurship and the analytical framework that guides the rest of the book’s chapters is established. The chapter concludes with a hypothesis on how institutional entrepreneurship and rationalization determine different forms of global governance.

This chapter provides an introduction to the informal level of decision-making and presents the book’s central argument. That is, the ways in which actors interact and negotiate within international organizations can explain why some find consensus more quickly than others. The chapter adopts sociological institutionalism as a theoretical framework and applies it to explain how informal norms and informal relations among key actors affect speed of response. The text distinguishes between informal and formal modes of decision-making and the conditions under which informality can facilitate the building of consensus and, ultimately, quicker multilateral responses to crises. As the argument is unpacked, interpersonal trust is identified as a key mechanism. The chapter offers two final and detailed sections: one providing the theoretical argument behind the role of informal norms and one providing the theoretical argument behind the role of informal relations.

This chapter considers the role of planners in reform processes by outlining how they can be understood as professional technical experts, as subjects of neoliberalism and as frontline ‘Street-level Bureaucrats’. This leads to an exploration of ‘sociological institutionalism’, which draws upon Giddens’ structuration theory, and which provides the theoretical framework for the subsequent chapters. The chapter concludes that planning reform, like other public sector modernisation, must be considered as a ‘peopled process’.

This chapter offers a discussion of the relevance of international organizations’ efficiency in crisis response. It is framed in broader scholarly and policy debates on the effectiveness of peace operations. The chapter introduces the book’s argument that differences across organizations’ informal norms and networks can explain variation in organizations’ response rates in the context of conflict. This focus on informal factors challenges traditional explanations of decision-making in international organizations because they concentrate on the interests of individual member states. In an overview of the methodology, the author describes the use of elite interviews and discourse analysis to gain insider perspectives on decision-making from those actors directly involved in security negotiations. Survey-based interviews were specifically conducted with 50 ambassadors and more staff from four international organizations (the AU, EU, OAS, and OSCE). Following a discussion on how response rates can be measured, the subsequent section presents an original database of response rates. Finally, a sociological institutionalist explanation sheds light on why a more affluent organization, such as the EU, might prove more efficient than those with fewer resources and capabilities.

Building on evidence presented in the previous chapter, this chapter makes the case that international organizations with informal institutional cultures react more rapidly than those organizations with formal institutional cultures. The chapter explains positive and negative impacts of informal norms on efficiency through the application of a sociological institutionalist theory of bureaucratic dysfunction, adapted from scholarship by Barnett and Finnemore. Individual norms are identified and categorized. The chapter emphasizes differences regarding how information is shared at the European Union Political and Security Committee in contrast to how it is at similar committees at other organizations. For each of four international organizations, the author describes and illustrates the implementation of both positive and negative norms.