Leadership in International Organizations

Currently reading the new James P. Grant biography, A Might Purpose, by Adam Fifield. I've had the privilege of corresponding with Fifield recently and he'd done an amazing job of explaining what Grant was able to accomplish through brilliant ideas, force of will, and unwavering energy. I'll say more about this when I get through more of it. Its a great read but I'm short of time.

It does have me thinking about the importance of leadership in international organizations, though. I get the sense that for those who work in IOs, its obvious that leadership makes an enormous difference. Just ask anyone who worked at the World Bank under James Wolfensohn, and then had the pleasure of doing the same under Paul Wolfowitz! Political Scientists have been playing catch-up for a while on the importance of leadership rather than the influence of member states, or the political economy of bureaucracies (and their desire for more resources, influence, etc.). A lot of good literature is being produced here, under the general theoretical model of "constructivism" for the most part.

In my pending book on HRBA in India, the importance of good leadership comes up again and again. The meaning of HRBA for, say, the country Health strategy for UNICEF is often not clear to staff; and even when it is, if they aren't convinced that it leads to measurable results, they will be nervous about putting too many resources or too much time into it. Good leaders are needed to make staff feel comfortable using HRBA when their training leads them in other directions. This isn't captured well in a lot of the writing on HRBA but needs to be explored further, and has powerful explanatory power in looking at cross-national variation in implementation.