IOs as Orchestrators Kenneth Abbott, Arizona State University Philipp Genschel, Jacobs University Bremen Duncan Snidal, Universities of Chicago & Oxford Bernhard Zangl, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Draft paper presented to be presented to the SGIR 7th Pan-European International Relations Conference, Stockholm 9-11 September 2010. Slot FD-210. In this paper, we introduce the concept of “Orchestration” to explicate the role played by international organizations (IOs) in an emerging form of international governance. 1 Orchestration is an approach to governance that is especially valuable for actors (such as IOs) that are weak, lack direct access to private actors or other targets of regulation (because they do not have either the authority or regulatory capacity), lack adequate decision-making capacity (because they operate under consensus-oriented decision rules in a context of heterogeneous preferences), and/or lack adequate monitoring and enforcement capacity (because they have limited authority, revenue and administrative staff). The key to Orchestration is to bring third parties into the governance arrangement to act as intermediaries between the IO and the targets of regulation, and to facilitate and coordinate the intermediaries‟ regulator y activities rather than try to govern the targets directly. The intermediaries are important because they have key capacities – such as information, access to targets or monitoring and sanctioning capacities – that the IO may lack. While there are a few notable examples of IO Orchestration, much of our discussion is prospective, highlighting the possibilities of Orchestration as a governance strategy for IOs. Accordingly, our analysis is theoretical and conceptual with empirical illustrations; it is also normative in advocating Orchestration as an available policy tool for IOs. 1 We use the term IO (equivalently, intergovernmental organization) to denote a formal institutional arrangement created by international treaty) with states as primary members and having a permanent secretariat, staff and/or headquarters.