The Governor's Dilemma
Indirect Governance Beyond Principals and Agents

The Governor's Dilemma develops a general theory of indirect governance based on the tradeoff between governor control and intermediary competence; the empirical chapters apply that theory to a diverse range of cases encompassing both international relations and comparative politics. The theoretical framework paper starts from the observation that virtually all governance is indirect, carried out through intermediaries. But governors in indirect governance relationships face a dilemma: competent intermediaries gain power from the competencies they contribute, making them difficult to control, while efforts to control intermediary behavor limit important intermediary competencies, including expertise, credibility, and legitimacy. Thus, governors can obtain either high intermediary competence or strong control, but not both. This competence-control tradeoff is a common condition of indirect governance, whether governors are domestic or international, public or private, democratic or authoritarian; and whether governance addresses economic, security, or social issues. The empirical chapters analyze the operation and implications of the governor's dilemma in cases involving the governance of violence (e.g., secret police, support for foreign rebel groups, private security companies), the governance of markets (e.g., the Euro crisis, capital markets, EU regulation, the G20), and cross-cutting governance issues (colonial empires, "Trump's Dilemma"). Competence-control theory helps explain many features of governance that other theories cannot: why indirect governance is not limited to principal-agent delegation, but takes multiple forms; why governors create seemingly counter-productive intermediary relationships; and why indirect governance is frequently unstable over time.

Kenneth W. Abbott is Jack E. Brown Chair in Law and Professor of Global Studies Emeritus at Arizona State University. His research focuses on the interdisciplinary study of international institutions, international law, and international relations. He studies public and private governance in fields including environmental protection and he held the Elizabeth Froehling Horner Chair at Northwestern University School of Law, and served as director of Northwestern's Center for International and Comparative Studies. He is a Lead Faculty member of the Earth System Governance Project, and a member of the editorial boards of International Theory, Regulation & Governance, and Journal of International Economic Law. Bernhard Zangl is a Professor of Global Governance at LMU Munich's Geschwister-Scholl-Institute of Political Science. His research focuses on the role of international institutions in global governance. He is a co-editor of International Organizations as Orchestrators. His research was published in the Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Quarterly, Review of International Organizations, Journal of Common Market Studies among others. He studied in Tübingen and Pisa, holds a PhD from the Universität Bremen, and has held visiting positions at the European University Institute, Harvard University, Northwestern University, and the Berlin Social Science Center. Duncan Snidal is Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a fellow of both Nuffield College and the British Academy; he previously taught at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on problems of international cooperation and institutions with an emphasis on institutional design. He is co-editor of International Organizations as Orchestrators and co-author of Institutional Choice and Global Commerce. Recent articles have appeared in International Organization, British Journa