Introducing the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset (IPOD)

Abstract

There is a growing recognition that international organizations (IOs) formulate and adopt policy in a wide range of areas. IOs have emerged as key venues for states seeking joint solutions to contemporary challenges such as climate change or COVID-19, and to establish frameworks to bolster trade, development, security, and more. In this capacity, IOs produce both extraordinary and routine policy output with a multitude of purposes, ranging from policies of historic significance like admitting new members to the more mundane tasks of administering IO staff. This article introduces the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset (IPOD), which covers close to 37,000 individual policy acts of 13 multi-issue IOs in the 1980-2015 period. The dataset fills a gap in the growing body of literature on the comparative study of IOs, providing researchers with a fine-grained perspective on the structure of IO policy output and data for comparisons across time, policy areas, and organizations. This article describes the construction and coverage of the dataset and identifies key temporal and cross-sectional patterns revealed by the data. In a concise illustration of the dataset's utility, we apply models of punctuated equilibria in a comparative study of the relationship between institutional features and broad policy agenda dynamics. Overall, the Intergovernmental Policy Output Dataset offers a unique resource for researchers to analyze IO policy output in a granular manner and to explore questions of responsiveness, performance, and legitimacy of IOs.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11558-023-09492-6.

Keywords: Decision-making; International organizations; Policy; Policy agendas.

Fig. 1

Total count of policy acts, 1980–2015, by IO

Fig. 2

Annual count of policy acts, by IO, 1980–2015. Y-axes are adjusted to each IO’s maximum

Fig. 3

Policy topic, proportional distribution of acts for each IO in the sample. Each column (IO) adds up to 100 percent

Fig. 4

Policy topic, proportional distribution of all IO policy acts in sample, 1980–2015

Fig. 5

Policy type, proportional distribution of acts for each IO in the sample

Fig. 6

Policy type, proportional distribution of all IO policy acts in the sample, 1980–2015

Fig. 7

Policy instrument, proportional distribution of acts for each IO in the sample

Fig. 8

Policy instrument, proportional distribution of all IO policy acts in the sample, 1980–2015

Fig. 9

Policy target, proportional distribution of acts for each IO in the sample

Fig. 10

Policy target, proportional distribution of all IO policy acts in the sample, 1980–2015

Fig. 11

Year-on-year percentage agenda changes, 13 IOs, 1980–2015

Fig. 12

Institutional friction and degree of punctuation (L-kurtosis) in IO policy agendas