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The international energy agency: state influence and transgovernmental politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Robert O. Keohane
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and the editor of International Organization.
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Abstract

Major decisions of the International Energy Agency (IEA), such as those that established the emergency management system or minimum selling price for imported oil, have been made through a process of interstate bargaining, in which the United States is the most influential actor. A core group, including the IEA secretariat and Germany as well as the United States, has dominated the politics of the organization. Policy implementation, however, has been carried out largely through the national review process of the IEA, which involves a good deal of transgovernmental politics: coalitions between the secretariat and national government agencies, or among those agencies, are frequently important. Transgovernmental networks in the IEA provide opportunities for the exercise of influence by the secretariat. Nevertheless, they are not an unmixed blessing for the organization, since its significance in world politics continues to depend on the support of powerful governments.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1978

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References

1 For the most comprehensive statement of this “neo-realist” position, see the works of Inis Claude, L., especially Swords into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organizations (3rd edition, New York: 1964)Google Scholar.

2 Haas, Ernst B., Beyond the Nation State: Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford, California: 1964)Google Scholar; Cox, Robert, “The Executive Head,” International Organization 22, 2 (Spring 1969)Google Scholar; Cox, Robert W. and Jacobson, Harold K., eds., The Anatomy of Influence: Decision Making in International Organization (New Haven, Conn.: 1973)Google Scholar.

3 Cox, , “The Executive Head,” cited, p. 225Google Scholar; Jacobson, , “WHO: Medicine, Regionalism, and Managed Politics,” in Cox, and Jacobson, , Anatomy of Influence, cited, p. 214Google Scholar.

4 Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., “Transgovernmental Relations and International Organizations,” World Politics XXVII, 1 (10 1974)Google Scholar.

5 Nye and I, for instance, drew on the studies in Anatomy of Influence for examples of transgovemmental behavior. From a systematic point of view, this use of data, although suggestive, is far from optimal.

6 Russell, Robert W., “Transgovemmental Interaction in the International Monetary System, 1960–1972,” International Organization 27, 4 (Autumn 1973): 431464CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dickerman, C. Robert, “Transgovemmental Challenge and Response in Scandinavia and North America,” International Organization 30, 2 (Spring 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hopkins, Raymond F., “The International Role of ‘Domestic’ Bureaucracy,” International Organization 30, 3 (Summer 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Keohane and Nye, cited, p. 54.

8 I am indebted to Professor Peter Cowhey for this point.

9 Of the scholarly work on the IEA that had been located by the author as of April 1978, only one article contained any substantial discussion of politics in the organization after its formation in November 1974. See Willrich, Mason and Conant, Melvin A., “The International Energy Agency: An interpretation and Assessment,” American Journal of International Law 71 (1977): 199223CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Willrich and Conant rely on the interstate approach throughout. For a thorough analysis of IEA institutions and legal arrangements, see the article by its legal advisor, Scott, Richard, “Innovation in International Organization: The International Energy Agency”, Hastings International and Comparative Law Review Inaugural Issue, (Spring 1977): 156Google Scholar. Doran, Charles F. has a chapter on the EEA in his book, Myth, Oil and Politics: Introduction to the Political Economy of Petroleum (New York: 1977), chapter V, pp. 100132Google Scholar. Doran formulates some hypotheses about IEA political prospects on the basis of a factor analysis of members' attributes and assumptions about relationships between attribute similarity and cooperation; but he does not directly examine political behavior in the organization, and makes several incorrect inferences about it. Lester, James, “Energy R&D: U.S. Technology Transfer to Advanced Western Countries,” in Nau, Henry, ed., Technology Transfer and United States Foreign Policy (New York: 1976)Google Scholar contributes a careful analysis of the 1974 Washington Energy Conference and events leading up to agreement on the International Energy Program in 1974.

10 During November 1977, I conducted interviews, averaging roughly one hour, with ten officials of the IEA, including the executive director, Ulf Lantzke, the deputy director, J. Wallace Hopkins, and four of the other five top officials of the Secretariat. I had interviewed several officials in the U.S. Department of State on these questions in April; and in November I also interviewed an official from the U.S. delegation to the OECD, with responsibility for energy matters. I have cited these interviews in the text only by date, to avoid embarrassing any officials who cooperated with me.

Officials of the IEA also permitted me to examine records of Governing Board meetings, including supporting materials, on the following conditions: “that Mr. Keohane will not take away from IEA premises any of the foregoing, he will not cite or publish any such papers and he will give us a copy of the IEA part of his notes for factual review before his manuscript is published.” No agreement was made giving IEA officials any right to challenge interpretations or arguments that I might make. The factual review was for the purpose of checking to see that confidential information, especially about the actions or positions of particular countries, was not revealed by me. The IEA did not request any changes in my manuscript, although private comments from IEA officials led me to make a few alterations for purposes of accuracy and clarity. Nothing in these arrangements implies approval by the Agency, or any of its officials, of the facts or interpretations in this article, which are my own responsibility.

Since I had never had any relationship to the International Energy Agency before the Fall of 1977 and personally knew none of its officials, I do not believe that I was given any special privileges. I expect that other scholars wishing to study the IEA would probably be granted access on terms similar to those specified above. I cannot, of course, guarantee that; and I therefore cannot be certain that other scholars could evaluate my findings by examining the materials that I studied in preparing this article.

For a discussion of similar problems with regard to a more sensitive area than that of energy, see the preface to Lowenthal's, Abraham, The Dominican Intervention (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp. viixGoogle Scholar.

11 Agreement on an International Energy Program, TIAS No. 8278, 14 ILM 1 (1975); or in Committee Print, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, United States Senate, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, November 1974. The original members of the IEA were Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Federal Republic of Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States. Greece, New Zealand, and Norway have subsequently joined, the latter in a special agreement with the Agency limiting its responsibilities under the International Energy Program (IEP). See Agreement between the International Energy Agency and the Government of the Kingdom of Norway (IEA, 02 1975)Google Scholar.

12 See Agreement on International Energy Program (hereafter, IEP), cited. For detailed accounts, see Scott, “Innovation,” and Willrich-Conant, “The IEA,” cited (footnote 9).

13 For a discussion of ISAG, see Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (henceforth, PIW) 30 May 1977: 7.

14 IEP, Article 19.

15 Scott, cited, p. 40.

16 Interview with an IEA official, Office of Information and Emergency System Operations, 21 November 1977.

17 For a discussion of problems encountered by the companies during the 1973–74 crisis, see Stobaugh, Robert, “The Oil Companies in the Crisis,” Daedalus (Fall 1975): 179202Google Scholar.

18 For some early discussions of the controversy over prices, see PIW, 7 June 1976: 3–4; and 8 November 1976: 1–2.

19 Discussions of early tests of the system can be found in the OECD Observer (September–October, 1976); and PIW (8 November 1976:) 1–2.

20 Interviews with officials of the Office of Information and Emergency System Operations, 9 and 21 November 1977.

21 Interview, official of Office of Oil Market Developments, IEA, 7 November 1977.

22 Willrich and Conant, cited, report on the SOM data system, which at the time of their study included only sixteen crude oil streams. Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, 10 May 1976, discusses the study of corporate finances in the industry; Willrich and Conant mention it as well. Other information in this paragraph comes from an interview with an official of the Office of Oil Market Developments, IEA, 7 November 1977.

23 Interview of 7 November 1977, cited.

24 For a published discussion of United States opposition, see Willrich and Conant, cited, p. 208.

25 The information in this paragraph comes from interviews at the IEA and materials reviewed there. A related issue centers around United States antitrust legislation, which makes it necessary for the Department of Justice to give clearance to any meetings in which United States companies are involved, unless the companies are willing to attend at their own risk. This delays and complicates consultations at best, and may in some cases render them impracticable.

26 For a brief analysis, from the viewpoint of an IEA official, of the results of CIEC on energy, see Stabreit, Immo, “CIEC Results in the Energy Sector,” Europa Archiv 17 (1977): 1012Google Scholar.

27 IEP, Chapter VII.

28 See the Communique adopted by the IEA Governing Board Meeting at Ministerial level on Thursday, 6 October 1977, Annex I. IEA Press Release, IEA/PRESS (77) 10, Paris, 6 October 1977.

29 Walton, Ann-Margaret, “Atlantic Bargaining Over Energy,” International Affairs (04 1976): 194Google Scholar. My research supports Walton's account of these negotiations on every important point.

30 Ibid., p. 195.

31 PIW, 9 February 1976.

32 See IEA, Long-Term Cooperation Programme, 30 January 1976, State Department Treaty Series #8229.

33 The United States strongly supported this effort. In a speech to the OECD on 21 June 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger publicly proposed establishing “collective and individual goals for substantially reduced dependence.” Press Release, Bureau of Public Affairs, Office of Media Services, Department of State.

34 For an analysis that reflects the IEA outlook at this time, see World Energy Outlook: A Reassessment of Long Term Energy Developments and Related Policies, Report by the Secretary-General, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris, 1977Google Scholar. This report, prepared by the IEA Secretariat in its capacity as combined energy staff to the OECD, presents its figures in OECD-wide rather than lEA-wide terms, but the fundamental conclusions are the same as those accepted by the SLT and the IEA Governing Board.

35 For accounts of the negotiations, see PIW, 15 September 1976: 3 and 26 September 1977: 6–7. In January 1977, the United States still hoped that individual as well as group targets would be established, according to testimony by Julius Katz, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs. See his testimony before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs of 5 January 1977 (Department of State Press Release).

36 See Annex, I, “Principles for Energy Policy,” to the IEA Communique of 6 10 1977 (cited, footnote 28 above)Google Scholar.

37 Interview with a Secretariat official, 10 November 1977.

38 Energy Conservation in the International Energy Agency: 1976 Review (Paris: OECD, 1976.)Google Scholar

39 Interviews with Secretariat officials, 4, 7, 9, and 10 November 1977.

40 These figures are calculated from materials given to me at the IEA, on the basis of information available publicly, but in rather scattered form. See Energy Research, Development and Demonstration: Programme of the IEA (Paris: OECD 05, 1977)Google Scholar, which indicates the categories in which the eighteen programs then existing were classified. An IEA communique of 6 October 1977, Coal and Solar Energy Development Among Nine New R&D Agreements Signed by IEA Ministers in Paris and Bonn, lists the nine agreements signed in October and their participants at that time. The 28th agreement, on heat exchanges, was signed in the summer of 1977 and involves Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

41 Interview at the Department of State, Washington, April 1977; and interview at the IEA, 4 November 1977.

42 Interview, IEA, 4 November 1977.

43 See, for instance, Ruggie, John G., “Collective Goods and Future International Collaboration,” American Political Science Review 66 (09 1972): 874893CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nau, Henry R., National Politics and International Technology: Nuclear Reactor Development in Western Europe (Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and Ruggie, John Gerard and Haas, Ernst B., eds., “International Responses to Technology,” special issue of International Organization 29, 3 (Summer 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Interview with IEA official, 4 November 1977.

45 International Energy Agency, OECD, September 1977.

46 Interview with IEA official, 4 November 1977.

47 Interview with IEA official, 10 November 1977.

48 Interview with IEA official, 7 November 1977.

49 Interview, Department of State, April 1977.

50 Haas, Ernst B., Williams, Mary Pat, and Babai, Don, Scientists and World Order: The Uses of Technical Knowledge in International Organizations (Berkeley: 1978), p. 159Google Scholar.

51 Keohane and Nye, cited, pp. 44–46.

52 Patterson, Gardner, Discrimination in International Trade: The Policy Issues (Princeton: 1966), p. 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Interview with IEA official, 9 November 1977.

54 Interview with IEA official, 10 November 1977.

55 Keohane and Nye, cited, pp. 46–47.

56 When the interviewer suggested that he wouldn't have expected the Finance Ministry to be happy about it, the interviewee smiled and implied that this was the right guess. Interview with IEA official, 10 November 1977.

57 See Russell, Robert W., “Transgovernmental Interaction in the International Monetary System, 1960–1972,” International Organization 27, 4 (Autumn 1973): 431464CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Interview with the executive director of the IEA, Mr. Ulf Lantzke, November 1977. The policy of retaining primarily fixed-term staff could cut either way for transgovernmental coordination. Staff rotation would make it harder to develop patterns of collegiality and trust; but the presence in national bureaucracies of former IEA officials could facilitate informal Secretariat influence on government policy.