High-Level Panels

This chapter first situates international organizations (IOs) in the context of the changing nature of international diplomacy, including in particular summits and conferences as modes of contemporary diplomacy. It then describes the proliferating number and types of high-level panels as instances of commission diplomacy. Third, it discusses the ideational, normative, institutional, and operational impacts of panels. Finally, it provides a menu of the ingredients for successful commission diplomacy, including the different types of norm actors. The factors that determine the success and failure of high-level panels include their structural and operational features; the quality of leadership provided by their chairs; the breadth, depth, and diversity of expertise of their members; the organization of adequate financial and personnel resources to enable the necessary research and consultations to be undertaken; mission clarity and focus; and the full range of follow-up dissemination, advocacy, and championing of the recommendations. While their operational impact can be diffuse, uncertain, and spread thinly over considerable periods of time, they can be important agents of change in global governance for projecting the power of ideas and processing them into new and improved policy, normative, institutional, and operational outcomes.