Though not surprising as a conclusion, the quality and rigor of his analysis are impressive, certainly impressive enough to avoid being labeled bad IR theory. The “semideviant” case that challenges his theory, Drezner concedes, involves the controversy over the World Trade Organization Agreement onTrade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and Public Health (see Chapter 7, pp. 176–203). He admits that arguments that global civil society (GSC) activism shifted the great powers’ positions in the adoption of the Doha Declara- tion on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health (Nov. 2001) “cannot be summarily dismissed” (p. 184). Although Drezner mounts an alternative explanation, I wondered, on the one hand, whether he conceded too much to GCS arguments, which indicated the power of his analysis in the other case studies. On the other hand, I sensed that the TRIPS case revealed things Drezner did not discuss. He counters the GCS explanation of the Doha Declaration with arguments that draw on the great pow- ers’ security concerns about HIV/AIDS and worries about the impact of September 11, 2001, on the WTO’s future (pp. 184–94). What jumps out is how the ideas and mate- rial actions of nonstate actors (GCS groups and terrorists) and transnational phenomena (epidemic disease, global terrorism, and GCS activism) affected the great powers’ approach to international regulatory cooperation in ways not well captured by Drezner’s state-centric, power- oriented theory. Read in this light, the case study is more than “semideviant” because it contradicts the assertion that the introduction of new actors does not affect the great power concert. The author’s claim that such a concert is a sufficient condition for effective global governance over any trans- national issue invites the hunt for other incidents that might confound the theory. The insufficiency of a great power concert to produce a badly needed international regulatory regime on the sharing and exploitation of avian influenza virus samples might constitute a stronger “devi- ant” case than the Doha Declaration. Drezner’s recogni- tion of his theory’s limitations (pp. 207–8) suggests, however, that he welcomes critical scrutiny of the ideas he has impressively added to the body of IR theory. Delegation and Agency in International Organizations. Edited by Darren G. Hawkins, David A. Lake, Daniel L. Nielson, and Michael J. Tierney. 424p. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. $80.00 cloth, $34.99 paper. DOI: 10.1017/S1537592707072684 — Tim Büthe, Duke University This volume examines and exemplifies the usefulness of principal-agent (P-A) theory for the study of international relations through a set of well-integrated analyses of del- egation to international (governmental) organizations (IOs). The editors begin with some useful, explicit defini- tions of key terms. They define delegation as a revocable “grant of authority” from one or more “principal(s)” to an “agent,” which enables “the latter to act on behalf of the former” in a specified domain and/or for a limited period of time. The agent’s discretion in how to pursue the principal’s objectives is a direct inverse function of the precision of the rules laid down by the principal. Agent autonomy, by contrast, is defined as the possible range of actions the agent can take contrary to the principal’s inter- ests, net whatever mechanism the principal may have put in place to control the agent. To the extent that an agent actually pursues his own interests contrary to the principal’s, we see agency slack. Ten substantive chapters then use this common termi- nology to adapt and extend P-A theory to analyze various specific cases of delegation to IOs, including the Inter- national Monetary Fund (J. Lawrence Broz and Michael Hawes, Erica R. Gould, Lisa L. Martin), multilateral devel- opment banks and aid agencies (Mona Lyne, Daniel Niel- son, and Michael Tierney, Helen V. Milner), the European Union Commission and Parliament (Mark A. Pollack), the World Health Organization (Andrew P. Cortell and Susan Peterson), the United Nations Security Council (Alexander Thompson), international courts and the World Health Organization’s Appellate Body (Karen Alter, Andrew P. Cortell, and Susan Peterson), and the Commission and Court under the European Convention on Human Rights (Darren Hawkins and Wade Jacoby). One of the general insights from this volume is that P-A theory travels well from domestic to international delegation, across a wide range of issue areas. The same set of expected benefits motivate delegation, and cost or difficulty of monitoring increase agent autonomy, for instance in Gould’s analysis of the IMF, just as for domes- tic agents. So is there anything that makes international delega- tion distinctive? Some of the authors suggest that there is. Cortell and Peterson, for instance, argue that IOs-as- agents are more likely to have preferences that differ from those of the member states when the IO has a staff of its own rather than a staff seconded from national bureaucra- cies. David A. Lake and Mathew D. McCubbins, in their concluding chapter, suggest that the importance of infor- mation provision by third parties with the requisite exper- tise for keeping IOs-as-agents accountable creates incentives for states to retain specialized bureaucracies at the domes- tic level, even if most of their policymaking functions have been delegated internationally. There is no func- tional equivalent for this duplication in domestic delega- tion, which also suggests that international delegation may tend to be less efficient. Another difference arises from Lyne, Nielson, and Tier- ney’s distinction between an agent with multiple princi- pals and an agent with a “collective principal,” consisting of a group of otherwise independent actors who jointly December 2007 | Vol. 5/No. 4 861