Toward Problem Solving Through Delegation and Rule-Based Decision-Making

Selected Publications

Gehring, Thomas (2012): Deliberative Regulation through European Agencies and other Network Structures? In: Madalina Busuioc, Martijn Groenleer, Jarle Trondal (eds.): The Agency Phenomenon in the European Union. Emergence, Institutionalisation and Everyday Decision-Making. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pages 105-127.

Gehring, Thomas and Isabel Plocher (2009): Making an Administrative Trustee Agent Accountable: Reason-Based Decision Making within the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism. In: International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 3, pages 669-693.

Gehring, Thomas and Eva Ruffing (2008): When Arguments Prevail over Power. The CITES Procedure for the Listing of Endangered Species. In: Global Environmental Politics, Vol. 8, No. 2, pages 123-148.

Gehring, Thomas and Michael Kerler (2008): Institutional Stimulation of Deliberative Decision-Making: Division of Labour, Deliberative Legitimacy and Technical Regulation in the European Single Market. In: Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 46, No. 5, pages 1001-1023.

This long-term project explores whether functionally differentiated decision processes within international institutions and the European Union can drive member states and other self-interested actors toward producing problem-adequate decisions. Both international institutions and the EU comprise decision processes that envisage delegation of specific decision functions to agencies and committees, while committing these bodies to substantive and procedural rules and submitting them to accountability mechanisms.

The project is linked to on-going discussions on new modes of governance and on deliberative decision-making (arguing vs. bargaining). It starts from the premise that appropriately designed institutions may deprive even rational utility maximizers of their bargaining power, if they envisage delegation of specified decision-making functions to other bodies. In such arrangements, final decisions emerge from collaboration among at least two subsystems.

The project has been focusing at several areas of risk regulation within the EU single market, including European standardization, licensing of pharmaceuticals, and regulation of the financial market. It has also explored decision processes of the Word Bank, the Kyoto Protocol and the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Currently, we investigate the consequences of the United Nations Security Council practice to delegate decision-making power to sanctions committees.