This volume began with a set of questions asked at Park City, Utah, in May of 2002. The conference was titled “Delegation to International Organizations” and was organized by Scott Cooper, Darren Hawkins, Wade Jacoby, and Daniel Nielson, all of Brigham Young University. The conference asked why governments delegate authority to IOs, how they structure delegation relationships, and what problems result from such delegation. In many respects, this volume reflects the basic architecture of that early conference on the topic. We are thus grateful to the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies; the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences; and the Department of Political Science at Brigham Young University for making possible that initial exploration of ideas about international delegation.

While the broad themes of the volume were laid out in the spring of 2002, the scope of the project was narrowed and refined considerably during two conferences organized by Lisa Martin and held at Harvard University in December 2002 and April 2003. These meetings focused participants specifically on agency theory as a tool for understanding delegation to IOs. For funding and sponsoring these conferences, we are grateful to Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and its Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

To sharpen contributions to the volume, David Lake organized a final conference in Del Mar, California, in September of 2003. This meeting helped make clear the unifying themes of the volume.