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Porous organizational boundaries and associated states: introducing memberness in international organizations

The current binary understanding of membership in international organizations (IOs), especially regional organizations (ROs), creates blind spots and biases in our understanding of who matters in IOs, as well as why and how they matter. Existing scholarship primarily looks at full member-states or n...

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Autores principales: Hofmann, Stephanie C., Andreska, Anamarija, Burai, Erna, Uribe, Juanita
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10663123/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38026732
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13540661231163988
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author Hofmann, Stephanie C.
Andreska, Anamarija
Burai, Erna
Uribe, Juanita
author_facet Hofmann, Stephanie C.
Andreska, Anamarija
Burai, Erna
Uribe, Juanita
author_sort Hofmann, Stephanie C.
collection PubMed
description The current binary understanding of membership in international organizations (IOs), especially regional organizations (ROs), creates blind spots and biases in our understanding of who matters in IOs, as well as why and how they matter. Existing scholarship primarily looks at full member-states or non-state actors to capture who influences such organizations. Associated states are often portrayed as passive receivers of IO rules instead of active contributors. We address this blind spot and resulting analytical bias by exploring what types of association relationships exist and how they impact IOs. We propose a novel conceptualization of membership that we call memberness. On the level of IOs, memberness is based on the relative openness of organizational boundaries and stratified access via material and ideational contributions. On the level of states, memberness captures associated states’ individual choices to contribute materially and/or ideationally to an IO. Memberness moves away from a purely rights-based understanding of membership (or who you are in an IO) to include a capacity-based understanding (or what you do in an IO). This shift in focus uncovers new channels of influence on IOs. Associated states’ material and ideational contributions to IOs constitute three memberness types: payroller, sponsor, and advisor. We argue that these memberness types impact IOs’ vitality, design, and performance in previously unrecognized ways. We illustrate these types with empirical examples from ROs across the globe and discuss the implications of memberness for IO research programs.
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spelling pubmed-106631232023-11-22 Porous organizational boundaries and associated states: introducing memberness in international organizations Hofmann, Stephanie C. Andreska, Anamarija Burai, Erna Uribe, Juanita Eur J Int Relat Article The current binary understanding of membership in international organizations (IOs), especially regional organizations (ROs), creates blind spots and biases in our understanding of who matters in IOs, as well as why and how they matter. Existing scholarship primarily looks at full member-states or non-state actors to capture who influences such organizations. Associated states are often portrayed as passive receivers of IO rules instead of active contributors. We address this blind spot and resulting analytical bias by exploring what types of association relationships exist and how they impact IOs. We propose a novel conceptualization of membership that we call memberness. On the level of IOs, memberness is based on the relative openness of organizational boundaries and stratified access via material and ideational contributions. On the level of states, memberness captures associated states’ individual choices to contribute materially and/or ideationally to an IO. Memberness moves away from a purely rights-based understanding of membership (or who you are in an IO) to include a capacity-based understanding (or what you do in an IO). This shift in focus uncovers new channels of influence on IOs. Associated states’ material and ideational contributions to IOs constitute three memberness types: payroller, sponsor, and advisor. We argue that these memberness types impact IOs’ vitality, design, and performance in previously unrecognized ways. We illustrate these types with empirical examples from ROs across the globe and discuss the implications of memberness for IO research programs. SAGE Publications 2023-04-18 2023-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10663123/ /pubmed/38026732 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13540661231163988 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Article
Hofmann, Stephanie C.
Andreska, Anamarija
Burai, Erna
Uribe, Juanita
Porous organizational boundaries and associated states: introducing memberness in international organizations
title Porous organizational boundaries and associated states: introducing memberness in international organizations
title_full Porous organizational boundaries and associated states: introducing memberness in international organizations
title_fullStr Porous organizational boundaries and associated states: introducing memberness in international organizations
title_full_unstemmed Porous organizational boundaries and associated states: introducing memberness in international organizations
title_short Porous organizational boundaries and associated states: introducing memberness in international organizations
title_sort porous organizational boundaries and associated states: introducing memberness in international organizations
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10663123/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38026732
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13540661231163988
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