A Servant of State Masters? IOM’s Mandate, Structure, and Culture

Abstract

This chapter introduces and analyzes IOM’s Constitution and mandate, member state politics, organizational structure, and institutional culture, with a view to understanding the possibility of autonomous action on the part of IOM. First, the chapter explores how IOM’s “permissive” Constitution has enabled its engagement in a remarkably wide range of activities, including in emergency and post-crisis contexts, and the implications of the organization’s lack of a clear, legally entrenched protection mandate. Second, it provides an overview of IOM member state politics, stressing the clear imprint of the United States on the organization, and the rising influence of member states from the global South. Third, it reflects on the relationship between IOM’s organizational structure and culture, examining the role of the director general; IOM’s decentralization and project-based funding model; and some of the tensions that shape the agency, including those between IOM’s humanitarian-oriented Department of Operations and Emergencies and its Department of Migration Management. It also considers generational differences between “old guard,” operationally-focused staffers and younger cohorts. Despite IOM’s rather unlikely institutional foundations for independently shaping migration governance and, more specifically, humanitarian responses to displacement, this chapter argues that the agency has strategically cultivated its capacity for autonomous action, at the same time as it remains highly deferential to states.