Abstract

This paper argues that increasing the accountability of international organizations might be a way of addressing the problem of bureaucratic pathologies identified by Michael Barnett and Martha Finnemore. If bureaucratic dysfunctions stem from bureaucratic culture, my contention is that greater accountability might shape the internal culture of international bureaucracies so as to make them less prone to pathological behaviour, or at least to some of the pathological mechanisms described by Barnett and Finnemore.