Delegation of Power to International Organizations: Agency Losses, Unintended Consequences, and Authority Shift

There has been considerable debate about delegation of power to International Organizations (IOs), but few studies compare different types of IOs and explore the question of why agency losses occur over time and to what extent are principals able to detect and remedy agency losses. In addition, principal-agent approaches because they neglect the temporal dimension do not account for unintended consequences to explain agency losses. Drawing on the principal-agent approach and on the historical institutionalism, the main purpose of this research project is to conceptualize agency losses over time based on a comparison of the EU and the WTO.