States in international organizations: Promoting regional positions in international politics?

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 629-651
Author(s):  
Diana Panke
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Negotiations ◽  
Member States ◽  
Global Problems ◽  
Regional Position

States address many of today’s global problems in international organizations (IOs). At the same time, regional international organizations (RIOs) play important roles in IOs, as a series of case studies suggests. RIO member states can speak on behalf of an RIO in IO negotiations. This paper explores under what conditions states voice RIO positions instead of national ones in IOs and thereby turn into agents of regionalization. Based on a novel dataset of more than 500 international negotiations and a quantitative analysis of theory-guided International Relations hypotheses, this paper shows that states are increasingly likely to negotiate on behalf of an RIO, when they regard grouping positions into regional blocs in IO negotiations as more effective, when they have a formal role as RIO chair, and when they possess financial and staff capacities needed in order to voice a regional position in international negotiations.

20. International organizations in world politics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Park
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
International Monetary Fund ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The International Monetary Fund

This chapter examines the role that international organizations play in world politics. It explains what international organizations are, whether we need international organizations in international relations, and what constraints and opportunities exist for international organizations to achieve their mandates. The chapter also considers the reasons why states create international organizations and how we can analyse the behaviour of such organizations. Two case studies are presented: the first is about the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the G77, and the second is about the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the interests of money-centre banks. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether international organizations suffer from a ‘democratic deficit’.

7. Liberalism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Dunne
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
The Core ◽  
Global Problems

This chapter examines the core assumptions of liberalism regarding world politics. It explores why liberals believe in progress, what explains the ascendancy of liberal ideas in world politics since 1945, and whether liberal solutions to global problems are hard to achieve and difficult to sustain. The chapter also considers central ideas in liberal thinking on international relations, including internationalism, idealism, and institutionalism. It concludes with an assessment of the challenges confronting liberalism. Two case studies are presented: one dealing with imperialism and internationalism in nineteenth-century Britain, and the other with the 1990–1991 Gulf War and its implications for collective security. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether democracy is a better system of government and whether it should be promoted by peaceful and forceful means.

The Working World of International Organizations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xu Yi-chong ◽  
Patrick Weller
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Member States ◽  
The Past ◽  
Key Players ◽  
Global Problems ◽  
Working World ◽  
Orthodox View ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Way

International organizations (IOs) matter. Based on extensive interviews and exchanges with key players in IOs in the past decade, this book uncovers the regular working world of IOs, to challenge the orthodox view that member states alone decide what IOs do and how they operate. This book provides a realistic and provocative account of the way IOs really work, a picture that would be recognized by those who work there. The Working World of International Organizations specifically examines three groups of players in IOs—state representatives, as proxy for states and often with schizophrenic demands, the head of IOs as diplomat, manager, and politician, and the staff of the permanent secretariat with their competing solutions. It explores their actions and interactions by asking who or what shapes their decisions; how and when decisions are made; how players interact within an IO; and how the interactions vary across six IOs. It argues that each and all of them must contribute if any progress is to be achieved in managing global problems. It shows why this is the case by examining how decisions are made in three key areas: agenda-setting, financing, and decentralization.

9. Feminism

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
Helen M. Kinsella
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Policy Decisions ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Poststructural Feminist ◽  
Postcolonial Feminist ◽  
International League

This chapter examines international feminism, focusing on how feminist international relations theories are necessary for understanding international politics, what feminist international relations theories provide for understanding international politics, and how feminist international relations theories have influenced the practice of international politics. The chapter proceeds by explaining feminism and feminist international relations theory as well as feminist conceptions of gender and power. It also discusses four feminist international relations theories: liberal feminist international relations, critical feminist international relations, postcolonial feminist international relations, and poststructural feminist international relations. Two case studies of women's organizations are presented: the Women's International League of Peace and Freedom and the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether feminist foreign policy changes states' foreign policy decisions.

Delegation to International Organizations: Agency Theory and World Bank Environmental Reform

2003 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Nielson ◽  
Michael J. Tierney
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Agency Theory ◽  
World Bank ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Member States ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
And Behavior

Current international relations theory struggles to explain both the autonomy and transformation of international organizations (IOs). Previous theories either fail to account for any IO behavior that deviates from the interests of member states, or neglect the role of member states in reforming IO institutions and behavior. We propose an agency theory of IOs that can fill these gaps while also addressing two persistent problems in the study of IOs: common agency and long delegation chains. Our model explains slippage between member states' interests and IO behavior, but also suggests institutional mechanisms—staff selection, monitoring, procedural checks, and contracts—through which states can rein in errant IOs. We evaluate this argument by examining multiple institutional reforms and lending patterns at the World Bank from 1980 to 2000.

Coordination and collaboration: regimes in an anarchic world

1982 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur A. Stein
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
Joint Decision ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
Independent Decision ◽  
Different Characteristics ◽  
Coordination And Collaboration

The study of regimes can contribute to our understanding of international politics only if regimes represent more than international organizations and less than all international relations. The conceptualization of regimes developed here accepts the realist image of international politics, in which autonomous self-interested states interact in an anarchic environment. Yet there are situations in which rational actors have an incentive to eschew unconstrained independent decision making, situations in which individualistic self-interested calculation leads them to prefer joint decision making (regimes) because independent self-interested behavior can result in undesirable or suboptimal outcomes. These situations are labeled dilemmas of common interests and dilemmas of common aversions. To deal with these, states must collaborate with one another or coordinate their behavior, respectively. Thus there are different bases for regimes, which give rise to regimes with different characteristics. Coordination is self-enforcing and can be reached through the use of conventions. Collaboration is more formalized and requires mechanisms both to monitor potential cheating and to insure compliance with the regime. The article elucidates the assumptions of such an interest-based approach to regimes, assimilates alternative explanations into this framework, and develops the implications for regime maintenance and change.

scholarly journals Klaus Dingwerth, Antonia Witt, Ina Lehmann, Ellen Reichel and Tobias Weise: International Organisations under Pressure: Legitimating Global Governance in Challenging Times

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-123
Author(s):  
Ondřej Svoboda
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Member States ◽  
Multiple Origins ◽  
International Authority ◽  
Normative Expectations

The book reconstructs how the normative yardsticks that underpin evaluations of international organizations have changed since 1970. Based on in-depth case studies of normative change in five international organizations over a period of five decades, the authors argue that, these days, international organizations confront a longer and more heterogeneous list of normative expectations than in previous periods. Two changes are particularly noteworthy. First, international organizations need to demonstrate not only what they do for their member states, but also for the individuals in member states. Second, while international organizations continue to be evaluated in terms of what they achieve, they are increasingly also measured by how they operate. As the case studies reveal, the more pluralist patchwork of legitimacy principles today’s international organizations confront has multiple origins. It includes the politicization of expanding international authority, but also a range of other driving forces such as individual leadership or normative path dependence. Despite variation in the sources, however, the consequences of the normative shift are similar. Notably, a longer and more heterogenous list of normative expectations renders the legitimation of international organizations more complex. Strikingly, then, at a time when many feel international cooperation is needed more than ever, legitimating the forms in which such cooperation takes place has become most difficult. International organizations have come under pressure.

And, Simulations on the United Nations: The Security Council

1984 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 6-6
Author(s):  
J. Philipp Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Security Council ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Politics ◽  
The United Nations

When I first began teaching an Introduction to International Relations course, I quickly saw that my students needed something more than just reading about and listening to lectures on the clashes of perception which are at the heart of international politics. How better to do this than to have them participate in a simulation in which those clashes of perception would surface. Although one could choose one of any number of international organizations to simulate, the U.N. Security Council is probably the best due to its size and geographic balance. Having decided to use a simulation, I was immediately faced with crucial decisions as to how the simulation would be run especially in terms of the complexity of the rules used and the choice of nations to be represented.

Crafting the International Order

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
International Politics ◽  
International Order ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Legal Professionals ◽  
The Past ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Everyday Realities ◽  
Past 300 Years

Lawyers make politics, and international lawyers make international politics. Yet despite there being a few prominent judges and academic stars, the roles which jurists play as practitioners of international politics is often underappreciated or their juristic personas take a backseat to those of the politician and the diplomat. This volume sheds light on how lawyers over the past 300 years have made sense of, engaged in, and shaped international politics. Individual chapters show how politicians and administrators, diplomats and military men conceived of and considered their tasks in legal terms and how the large, amorphous field often described as ‘international relations’ was filled with life in the distinctly legal vernacular of laws and regulations, treaties and agreements, resolutions and conventions. The volume provides insights into what it means when concrete decisions are taken, negotiations led, or controversies articulated and resolved by legal professionals. It also enquires into how the often criticized gaps between juristic standards and everyday realities can be explained by looking at the very medium of law. Rather than sorting people and problems into binary categories such as ‘law’ and ‘politics’ or ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, the case studies in this volume reflect on these dichotomies and dissolve them into the messy realities of conflicts and interactions which take place in historically contingent situations and in which international lawyers assume varying personas.

Nature of International Organizations and Purpose of Their Immunity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Chukwuemeke Okeke
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Cooperation ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
Member States ◽  
World Community ◽  
Vital Functions ◽  
The World

This chapter addresses the nature of international organizations and the purpose of their immunity. International organizations are created by their constituent member States to discharge vital functions and responsibilities on their behalf, and in some cases on behalf of the world community as a whole. They are established to offer cooperative and concerted approaches to common challenges and some problems that have the best chance of being solved through multilateral actions. Although States remain the primary actors in international relations, international organizations have joined the arena to provide the platform that enables different States to work together. International cooperation by States has become a necessity. To achieve their objectives, international organizations are granted certain privileges and immunities by their member States: in particular, jurisdictional immunity, which protects them from legal process. It is well settled that international organizations require those immunities that are necessary for them to fulfill their functions.

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