Governance Entrepreneurs is a sophisticated analysis that examines the emergence, evolution and institutionalization of public-private partnerships (PPPs)— an increasingly prevalent form of governance at the international level. The book sets forth a clear and cogent theory and applies it in the areas of environment, health, children and corporate social responsibility to provide extensive empirical evidence in support of the theory. It will certainly become an important work in the field of global governance.

Liliana Andonova challenges the traditional conceptualization of international organizations (IOs) as agents of the state: PPPs do not occur simply because IOs shirk the responsibilities delegated to them by states or exceed their mandates. Instead, she provides a more nuanced explanation of how IOs deal with institutional challenges by carefully leveraging their institutional autonomy. To do this, IOs cede authority, entering into collaborative relationships with non-state actors. In so doing, they strengthen their legitimacy, and often, the resources available to them. Fundamentally, Andonova’s book is about how authority in world politics is constituted and re-articulated through the changing institutional landscape of global governance.

Governance Entrepreneurs provides a theory of endogenous change to account for the rise of PPPs. Andonova’s main argument is that partnerships emerge because of changes that are endogenous to the multilateral system. Policy entrepreneurs come from within international organizations, empowered by their expertise and relational ties. PPP emergence and institutionalization are therefore “endogenous in the sense that they are not imposed by actors external to the organization and rely critically on entrepreneurs to spearhead new institutional features from within” (p. 35).

Andonova enumerates five conditions that facilitate the emergence of PPPs. First, PPPs are more likely to arise when IOs are autonomous, which in turn occurs when states have shared preferences about cooperation. Second, moderate preference divergence among states provides an opportunity for IOs to make proposals with the intention of finding a middle ground. Third, IO “turbulence” —such as budgetary shortages or legitimacy challenges—motivate IOs to create PPPs. These can serve as a means to capture new resources or deflect advocacy pressure “by engaging critics in problem solving” (p. 50). Fourth, IO expertise will enhance its ability to create PPPs—by virtue of their knowledge and capacity. And finally, the presence of non-state actors creates an atmosphere conducive to PPPs. Transnational advocacy networks, NGOs and the private sector in close proximity to the “organizational milieu of IOs” create the incentives and possibility for institutional change (p. 55).

She suggests that these conditions explain not only the creation of PPPs, but also their evolution over time. Andonova also provides an account of the life-cycle of PPPs, identifying three phases: experimental adoption, diffusion, and reverse institutionalization. During the first phase, a small group of governance entrepreneurs identifies problems that can be addressed through partnerships, and develops frames that render them consistent with the organizational mandate and activities. If successful, these experiments progress to a diffusion phase, where participation expands, and the initiative is replicated across multiple contexts. Finally, in what Andonova refers to as “reverse institutionalization” (Chapter 1), the now-successful initiative is integrated as a permanent fixture within the organization. The institutionalization is “reversed” because the principal agrees to it only after the PPP has been created and implemented by governance entrepreneurs. Thus, the principal consents to new IO authority ex-post.

After clearly presenting her novel theory in Chapter 2, Andonova takes a deep dive into the intricacies of institutional politics across a number of issues in global governance. The strengths of the empirics of this book cannot be overstated. Andonova painstakingly compiles a new dataset that documents the rise of partnerships across several different issue areas; the appendix provides useful details on its creation. Moreover, her careful case studies provide compelling evidence to support her theory. And the background discussion of each case delivers a concise recent history of the mandate, activities, and challenges of the IOs she studies.

Chapter 3 is a fascinating read—important for anyone interested in the history and evolution of the United Nations as a whole. It traces the earliest origins of PPPs, beginning in the mid-1990s, as the UN was facing serious financial and political pressure stemming from, among other things, the rapid expansion of peacekeeping missions and the U.S. refusal to pay its UN dues. These pressures created the opportunity for a normative shift: the Secretary General made the case that partnering with the private sector was an important route for maintaining relevance and ensuring effectiveness in the age of globalization. The Global Compact, brainchild of political scientist and UN Assistant Secretary General John Ruggie, was a UN-wide attempt to achieve these goals. Andonova demonstrates that the Compact was not created at Member States’ behest. Instead, state involvement was “light footed” (p. 93), providing ample leeway to the Secretary General to experiment with new approaches to engage business in multilateral governance. This new form grew rapidly and was institutionalized through soft-law instruments like the Millennium Development Goals (which included a goal on partnerships), and a General Assembly resolution formally recognizing the Global Compact. These efforts, along with the subsequent creation of the UN Office for Partnerships, created a space in the UN system for PPPs as a new—and lasting—institutional form.

Chapters 4 and 5 describe the evolution of PPPs in the area of environment, health, and children’s welfare. Each case begins with an examination of the large-N data, which consistently show that IOs are the most frequent initiating actor of PPPs. The life cycle of each sector is traced in detail. Chapter 6 compares the cases and draws out the lessons and implications for governance. I highlight a few key findings here. First, the data demonstrate the diversity of partners involved in PPPs. Governments play a key role in funding new initiatives. And there are a variety of types of NGOs involved. Interestingly, NGOs are more active in UNICEF and WHO PPPs than in those taking place under the auspices of UNEP and the World Bank. This may be surprising to environment scholars, who commonly consider environmental issues to be the most permeable to non-state actors. Perhaps most importantly, Andonova’s data demonstrate that the private sector initiates PPPs much less frequently than any other type of actor. This should dispel concerns, voiced by many, that PPPs are simply a more legitimated form of corporate power.

Second, autonomy comes from a variety of sources that are not endowed by states. The UN Secretary General has the least formal autonomy, and yet leadership by Kofi Annan, and later Ban Ki-moon, was essential to the legitimation of partnerships throughout the multilateral system. Other IOs have leveraged technical expertise in their issue area to create space for entrepreneurship. Interestingly, UNICEF has always had a “strong advocacy identity” which served as an important source of institutional autonomy (p. 147).

Finally, there are important commonalities across the cases. Andonova finds that PPPs tend to focus on implementation and information sharing, rather than rulemaking or other activities that might be construed as threatening state sovereignty (p. 205). The choice of activities undertaken by PPPs is thus strategic and critical to their successful institutionalization: they push the boundaries of their mandates, but never too far, lest states push back.

Theoretically, Andonova’s book elegantly demonstrates the complexity of authority in contemporary global governance. Her work shows clearly why principal-agent theory is insufficient. Authority is not simply constituted by states through acts of delegation; rather, it can be created without the explicit consent of states or other principals. (Indeed, there may be no need for a principal at all.) Put another way, IOs now exist in both hierarchies and networks; this embeddedness allows them to act as brokers to create new alliances and identify new resources. The “agency of agents” is not simple opportunism; rather, it is used to address real-world problems and institutional challenges.

My one wish for this otherwise excellent book is that it had engaged more seriously with other theories beyond the principal-agent framework. The book responds directly to a number of works that conceptualize IOs as agents (Mark Pollack, The Engines of European Integration: Delegation, Agency and Agenda Setting in the EU, 2003; Darren G. Hawkins et al., Delegation and Agency in International Organizations, 2006; Tana Johnson, Organizational Progeny: Why Governments Are Losing Control over the Proliferating Structures of Global Governance, 2014), which is useful. But there are other theoretical lenses, some of which are identified by Andonova, which also shed light on the questions she asks. In particular, work that considers how authority is constituted in the global arena seems important. Some scholarship in this area looks specifically at how private authority emerges (Benjamin William Cashore et al., Governing through Markets: Forest Certification and the Emergence of Non-State Authority, 2004; Tim Buthe and Walter Mattli, The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy, 2011; Graeme Auld, Constructing Private Governance: The Rise and Evolution of Forest, Coffee, and Fisheries Certification, 2014; Jessica F. Green, Rethinking Private Authority: Agents and Entrepreneurs in Global Environmental Governance, 2014). Other research examines how authority assumes different institutional forms, including IO “progeny,” informal institutions, and transnational networks. Like Andonova, this literature seeks to understand how actors work strategically to maneuver around constraints and to leverage existing resources to create or expand their ability to govern.