Today we have a guest post from Keith A. Preble, Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Albany, SUNY. He can be reached at kpreble [at] albany [dot] edu.
Instructions
Instructor should create a Slack workspace (or something comparable). The exercise below can work with a class/lecture of any size and requires minimal instructor involvement. I suggest dividing your class/lecture into groups of 6-8 students by creating private channels for each group on Slack. Instructors can review the interactions on Slack for grading, too.
Preparatory Work
None required. Students should have some understanding of international institutions/organizations.
Premise for Students
While the World Health Organization is charged with addressing public health emergencies and issues, member states, medical interest groups, the press, pundits, commentators, and ordinary citizens believe that the organization lacks agility and authority to address pandemics like COVID-19.
Imagine that your group is has been charged with designing a new international institution. Your goal is to develop a new international institution that deals not only with COVID-19 but also future pandemics.
Political scientists often debate how international institutions should be designed. Koremenos et al. (2001) have argued that “states use international institutions to further their own goals, and they design institutions accordingly” (762).
Whether international institutions are “false promises,” simply reflect state power, help regulate cheating and cooperation, or are independent is a matter for debate. With these ideas in mind, each group should think about how you might design an international institution to deal with a transboundary problem (like a pandemic/COVID-19).
Group Instructions
Each group should elect a facilitator/team leader to lead the discussion questions below. Team leader should send a short debriefing email to the instructor at the end of the exercise outlining the name of the institution they developed, some key provisions, and an assessment on the effectiveness of the exercise.
Discussion Questions
Each group should discuss and debate each of the questions below:
1. What are the membership rules for your organization – who can/will be a member? Think carefully about asymmetries among the member states.
2. How will states and other actors who are a part of your institution deal with assessing the various outcomes and choosing the best outcome?
3. What issues will your international institution deal with? Will you restrict your international institution to simply responding to pandemics or do you think there are other issues that your institutions?
4. Do you envision creating a regime? An IGO? A mix? Something ad hoc? Defend your choice.
5. Will there be a headquarters? Where will tasks be centralized? Will states create their own domestic institutions that will liaison with other states through this organization/regime/etc.? Remember that of all the questions you address, this question is the most political. Think about why the answer to this question is problematic.
6. How will collective decisions be made? Think about who will run the organization? How will this person be selected? Will membership be universal or more restricted? Will there be a body akin to the General Assembly or other fora for debates? What role will experts or other nonstate actors play (if any)?
7. Pandemics can be “new circumstances.” What happens to the institution if something happens that hasn’t been thought of? How will your institution adapt?
8. How will you enforce the rules of your organization? In other words, if a state fails to adapt the necessary public health protocols, what can/will your organization/institution be able to do?
9. How will your organization cope with uncertainty about other members in the organization? Is there a way an institution can be designed to help deal with these problems?