The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe/Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe(OSCE/CSCE)was created at the height of the Cold War by countries on both sides of the geopolitical divide to promote the development of shared values and cooperation on a wide range of issues.As the largest regional intergovernmental security organization,the OSCE,recognizing the limitations of its consensual approach to decision-making and the diversity of interests and values of its member states after the cold war,was one of the first regional organizations to develop a comprehensive security concept and a rich thematic agenda ranging from multilateral cooperation to field operations.Its comprehensive security concept covers three dimensions:political and military,economic and environmental,and human,pursuing a broad agenda in the areas of conflict prevention,confidence and security mechanism building,democratization and human rights,etc.Its mission,evolution of its structure and functions,and the breadth of its membership suggest that it may play a unique role in the development of the international community in the European region.However,the OSCE lacks the attention commensurate with its size.On the one hand,it is less prominent in the European security architecture due to the lack of economic incentives of the EU and the military strength of NATO;on the other hand,the divergent interests of its member states and their specific expectations of the OSCE have slowed the acquisition of its status and the advancement of its institutionalization.The uniqueness of the OSCE as a regional security organization makes it of unique research significance.In fact,compared with other international organizations such as NATO and the EU,the OSCE has not been richly researched at home and abroad,which mainly study the OSCE from the international situation,European security architecture,and major power relations or examine its specific functions through cases.Moreover,domestic research is insufficient in recent years and does not reflect the progress as well as new topics of western research.Rather than viewing international organizations as strategic instruments of great power or as independent actors with great autonomy,this paper tends to analyse the characteristics of the OSCE in the context of the interaction between member states and international organizations.In the study of international relations,the principal-agent theory,which is derived from economics,helps to explain why and how sovereign-minded state actors delegate authority to international organizations,the degree of autonomy of international organizations,and the result of the agency,etc.This paper attempts to clarify the interaction between the OSCE and its member states from the perspective of principal-agent theory.The study shows that member states delegate authority to the OSCE out of a consensus to advance democracy,rule of law,human rights and to shape common security in the European region,as well as the benefits of delegation such as credible commitments and effectiveness of collective action.The OSCE has been given the authority and legitimacy to act on behalf of its member states in the areas of political and military security,economic and environmental security,and human security through contracts and institutional rules.At the same time,in order to limit the OSCE’s tendency toward autonomy,member states achieve a certain degree of control and supervision over the OSCE by means of budgets,decision-making rules,and the establishment of monitoring mechanisms.However,due to the nature of international organizations themselves and their agent strategies,the OSCE still has a certain degree of autonomy and permeability,which has an impact on results of agency.The cases of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and election monitoring in Albania show that the autonomy and agency results of OSCE in different mission areas are not exactly the same,and OSCE is more inclined to exert its functions and utility in the field of soft security. |