The United States and Multilateral Institutions

Patterns of Changing Instrumentality and Influence

Margaret P. Karns, Karen A. Mingst

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780415081108
• eBook ISBN: 9781134893300
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

World politics in the post-Cold War world has become increasingly institutionalized. However, the role of international organizations has been overlooked in much of the literature on international regimes. Now in paperback, The United States and Multilateral Institutions examines United States policy in areas ranging from international trade to human rights, and in institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), GATT and the World Health Organization.

• CHAPTER ONE •
The United States and Multilateral Institutions: A Framework for Analysis

Margaret P.Karns
Karen A.Mingst

The period since the end of World War II has been marked by the proliferation of multilateral institutions, including international governmental organizations (IGOs) and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), to facilitate and promote international order and cooperation. Explanation of the bases and patterns of international interactions requires understanding both of why states find it in their interest to cooperate with one another and of the reasons they choose different means to achieve a measure of order and collaboration in an otherwise anarchic environment.

In recent years scholars have adopted the term regime to encompass the variety of formal and informal multilateral arrangements. Yet few attempts have been made to specify the role of formal international governmental organizations within regimes or to link system-level theories of regimes and cooperation with national-level processes and behavior. If regimes and IGOs matter, there must be a two-way flow of influence—a dynamic relationship between them and member state policymaking processes and behavior.

This volume focuses on the United States and multilateral institutions, particularly on U.S.-IGO relationships, based on the hypothesis that institutions make a difference in international interactions because they are utilized by and have influence on even the most powerful states. IGOs in particular have often played key roles in the creation and maintenance of regimes, and it is the organizations within regimes to which governments belong, around whose work bureaucracies are often themselves organized and driven, and whose budgets require governmental decisions on contributions. Patterns of IGO instrumentality and influence need not be constant, out changes in such patterns will shape the evolution of both organizations and the regimes in which they may be embedded. Consequently they will also shape the nature of international order and cooperation.

Although the United States played a key role in the establishment and development of many IGOs in the early postwar period, since the 1960s American willingness and ability to exert leadership and influence have eroded. The United States withdrew temporarily from the International Labor Organization (ILO) under the Carter administration and threatened similar action in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Congress reduced appropriations for IGO contributions in some cases and mandated withholding funds in others. Hence contrary to the trend of “multiplying entanglement”—that is, the proliferation of IGOs and INGOs since World War II (Jacobson et al. 1986)—U.S. commitment to IGOs appeared to decrease. A sequence of actions by the Reagan administration including rejection of the Law of the Sea treaty, opposition to the World Bank’s promotion of energy conservation, and withdrawal from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) further fueled debate in the policy arena over the role of IGOs in U.S. foreign policy. Yet the Reagan administration, after its early hostility toward many organizations, discovered the value of many multilateral institutions and the potential for institutional reform. These developments in the policy arena therefore make an examination of the interplay between IGOs and U.S. foreign policy timely. They underscore the variations over time and, for an individual member state, the utility and impact of specific institutions as vehicles for multilateral cooperation.

By analyzing patterns of changing instrumentality and influence in U.S.-IGO relationships and by seeking explanation of those patterns across a variety of organizations and issue areas, we seek to increase understanding of the dynamics of state-IGO relationships. This is an important step in examining the impact of IGOs and regimes on collective behavior at the international level, as well as the sources and nature of regime change. Examination of the two-way flow of influence with reference to one state and several IGOs will also illuminate this specific aspect of the interactions between domestic and international affairs.¹ These concerns lead us to pose four questions:

1. How has the use of IGOs as instruments of U.S. policy changed over time?
2. How have the constraints and influence of IGOs on the United States changed over time?
3. Why have these changes occurred?
4. What are the policy implications for the United States of these patterns of changing influence?

Investigation of these questions requires further specification of the relationships among IGOs, regimes, and international cooperation and of the two-way flow of influence between IGOs and member states. In this chapter we lay the conceptual foundation for the series of case studies of U.S.-IGO relationships that follow and propose four alternate sources of explanation for the patterns of changing IGO instrumentality and influence. We turn initially to elaborate on the role that IGOs and regimes play in the patterns of interaction among states.

IGOs, Regimes, and Cooperation

The term regime has been commonly used by scholars in recent years to encompass the “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given issue area” (Krasner 1982b:1). It has been argued that regimes “change patterns of transaction costs and provide information to participants, so that uncertainty is reduced” (Axelrod and Keohane 1985:249–50). They make more information available to governments, thereby affecting decision makers’ perceptions of self-interest and their calculations of the costs and benefits of alternative choices (Keohane 1984: chap. 6). Although the processes of international governance, of creating order and patterns of cooperation, are not limited to the activities of such formal organizations (Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986: 759–60), IGOs are the most easily identifiable of the various multilateral arrangements encompassed by regimes.²

IGOs may play key roles in the creation and maintenance of regimes. The charters of IGOs incorporate principles, norms, rules, decision-making processes, and functions for the organizations that formalize these aspects of a regime. The organizations’ decision-making processes may then be used by member states for further norm and rule creation, for rule enforcement and dispute settlement, for the provision of collective goods, and for supporting operational activities. Through regularized processes of information gathering and analysis, IGOs “improve the quality of information governments receive” (Keohane 1984:244). They “bring governments into continuing interaction with one another, reducing the incentives to cheat and enhancing the value of reputation” (p. 245).

Not all organizations perform all of the aforementioned functions, and the manner and extent to which they carry out particular functions varies. As instruments of foreign policy, they provide forums for legitimating viewpoints, principles, and norms. States (and other actors) may also use those forums for perpetuating conflict and blocking cooperation. IGOs encourage coalition-building and linkage among issues. IGOs have also been used to facilitate the interactions of governmental and nongovernmental personnel, leading to the development of transnational networks that have become important parts of many regimes.

As central components of many regimes, IGOs not only create opportunities for their member states but also exercise influence and impose constraints on their members’ policies and the processes by which policies are formed. IGOs affect member states by setting international and, hence, national agendas and forcing governments to take positions on issues. They subject states’ behavior to surveillance through information sharing. They encourage the development of specialized decision-making and implementation processes to facilitate and coordinate IGO participation. They embody or facilitate the creation of principles, norms, and rules of behavior with which states must align their policies if they wish to benefit from reciprocity. Particularly in pluralist societies, IGO-created norms and principles may be used by domestic groups to press for changes in national policies. Informal transgovernmental and transnational networks and coalitions have developed largely out of the necessities and opportunities of interaction within specific IGOs, becoming important parts of many regimes (Keohane and Nye 1977:234).

IGOs as well as international regimes may contribute to the creation of “habits of cooperation” through the repetition of patterns of behavior over time.³ States may be “socialized” by regular involvement in the activities of IGOs and related processes of multilateral interaction and policy coordination. Habits of cooperation build on individual learning and socialization.⁴ They are related to the roots of obedience to international law in habits of law-abiding behavior and desires to maintain a reputation for the same.⁵ Habits of cooperation may be reinforced through the support of domestic groups for certain norms and rules and through bureaucratic changes that create organizational stakes in particular IGOs—that is, in working in and through certain IGOs.

Formal organizations are particularly instrumental in the formation and stability of habits of cooperation by institutionalizing regular meetings, processes of information gathering and analysis and of dispute settlement, and operational activities. To be sure, as in domestic political arenas, various networks of governmental and nongovernmental officials will be useful in moving policy initiatives along and ensuring that the processes of governance are not blocked. Thus in periods of institutional paralysis (or perceived misdirection), informal patterns of organization and ad hoc multilateral groups can ensure that international cooperation does not cease entirely. Over the longer term, however, within many regimes institutional development, especially of formal organizations, is critically important to the maintenance of durable means for providing a measure of predictability in the behavior of other actors, managing conflicts, and addressing the expanding agenda of international problems.⁶

If IGOs are potentially key mechanisms for creating and sustaining patterns of international cooperation, they must in some ways and to some extent influence even the largest, most powerful states in the system. To conceptualize IGOs in particular as instruments of actors’ policies is to see them as means to get other actors to change their behavior, to redefine their interests, and to accept certain constraints. Of necessity IGOs must also be seen as influencers, not only of others’ behavior but of one’s own; that is, there must be some degree of reciprocity (Keohane 1986). As social exchange and power theory suggest, how much one must reciprocate depends on the extent to which one’s own preferences predominate in the exchange. Thus utilizing IGOs to affect the behavior of others involves, in turn, being constrained by those very institutions and by the ways others use them. Even if the value of a particular IGO for regime maintenance erodes over time because of the emergence of new organizations or issues, the habits and patterns of cooperation it has helped to create should facilitate the development of other avenues of cooperation, including ad hoc mechanisms. Crises, on the other hand, may well force states to find new ways of using and even strengthening IGOs. It is to the question of the changing importance of IGOs to the United States, in particular, that we now turn.

Changing Relationships between the United States and IGOs

That the United States emerged from World War II as the dominant political, economic, and military power in the international system is widely recognized. International organizations were an important part of this international system structure, organizations designed by the victors (at least in rhetoric) to eliminate war and its causes and to create a liberal international economic order. As the dominant power, the United States played a key role in promoting the establishment of many IGOs, both in the planning phase during the war and in the early days of the organizations’ development.⁷ For example, it was the United States that sponsored the Uniting for Peace Resolution, thereby increasing the role of the General Assembly.

IGOs offered a way to create structures compatible with American notions of political order and through which to promote U.S. political and economic interests. Although support for such institutions was not necessarily assured (witness the failure to approve the charter of the proposed International Trade Organization in 1948), governmental and public commitment were generally strong. The predominance of Americans in many secretariats and the relatively large share of operating and program funding contributed by the United States reinforced American influence over policies and programs flowing from many IGOs. Inevitably, however, the United States found that it could not always control outcomes within various IGOs. Its predominance was also bound to diminish with time; such is the fate of any power whose dominance is based in part on the postwar weakness of others. In addition, the dramatic transformation of the international system through the process of decolonization and resulting changes in the size, composition, and orientation of many IGO memberships could not help but alter the organizations themselves. Especially in the United Nations in the 1970s, the United States found itself increasingly on the defensive. Its control over agendas slipped; its ability to mobilize votes across all issues eroded; its close ties and influence within secretariats were reduced by the assertion of greater autonomy. U.S. support for international organizations was tested by programs and activities regarded as detrimental to American interests.⁸

It is important to recognize that this change in the U.S. position is quite relative; only when the U.S. role is compared with its position in the early postwar years is a change discernible. Across a broad spectrum of IGOs, the United States remains a major actor whose ability to shape IGO actions and, through them, the behavior of others makes it one of the most important members. Furthermore, although the United States has acted both unilaterally and bilatera...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary
• • Chapter One • The United States and Multilateral Institutions: A Framework for Analysis
• • Chapter Two • U.S. Military Security Policies: The Role and Influence of IGOs
• • Chapter Three • Dominance Without Hegemony: U.S. Relations With the International Atomic Energy Agency
• • Chapter Four • The United States and the International Monetary Fund: Declining Influence or Declining Interest?
• • Chapter Five • The World Bank and U.S. Control
• • Chapter Six • Multilateral Diplomacy and Trade Policy: The United States and the GATT
• • Chapter Seven • International Food Organizations and the United States: Drifting Leadership and Diverging Interests
• • Chapter Eight • The United States and the World Health Organization
• • Chapter Nine • Changing Patterns of Conflict: The United States and UNESCO
• • Chapter Ten • The United States, the United Nations, and Human Rights
• • Chapter Eleven • Continuity and Change In U.S.-IGO Relationships: A Comparative Analysis With Implications for the Future of Multilateralism In U.S. Foreign Policy
• • Chapter Twelve • IGOs, Regimes, and Cooperation: Challenges for International Relations Theory
• List of Contributors