Routledge History of International Organizations

From 1815 to the Present Day

Bob Reinalda

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415476249
• eBook ISBN: 9781134024049
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This is a definitive and comprehensive history of international organizations from their very beginning at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 up to the present day, and provides the reader with nearly two centuries of world history seen from the perspective of international organizations. It covers the three main fields of international relations: security, economics and the humanitarian domain which often overlap in international organizations. As well as global and intercontinental organizations, the book also covers regional international organizations and international non-governmental organizations in all continents.

The book progresses chronologically but also provides a thematic and geographical coherence so that related developments can be discussed together. A series of detailed tables, figures, charts and information boxes explain the chronologies, structures and relationships of international organizations. There are biographies, histories and analysis of hundreds of international organizations.

This is an essential reference work with direct relevance to scholars in international relations, international political economy, international economics and business and security studies.

Part I
1815: British hegemony and the invention of the multilateral conference plus follow-up conference

The Concert of Europe and the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine

The first part of this historical overview starts with an elaboration of political science views on the emergence and evolution of international organizations (Chapter 1). It then describes how British postwar institutional strategy during the Congress of Vienna created the practice of multilateral conferences with follow-up conferences. In the security field this resulted in the Concert of Europe (Chapter 2). In the economic field the promotion of free trade was helped by the wording of the principle of ‘free navigation of rivers’ by the Congress of Vienna, which also created the first intergovernmental organization, the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine, tasked with monitoring this principle’s implementation (Chapter 3).

1
Emergence and evolution of international organizations

1.1 Do international organizations matter?

1.2 Political science views on the emergence and evolution of international organizations

Figure 1.1 Schools within international relations theory

1.1 Do international organizations matter?

Two kinds of international organization: IGOs and INGOs

Two kinds of international organization exist: inter-governmental and non-governmental ones. This book discusses both, because their histories, as was found, are intertwined more closely and from an earlier date than is often assumed. Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs in international relations theory jargon) have nation-states as their members, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) have national NGOs. Whereas IGOs are established and governed by governments, INGOs with public goals are set up by citizens, who through these private organizations are politically active at both the national and the international level. IGOs and INGOs have three characteristics in common: they are based on a covenant (a text drafted by the founders which defines the objectives and the organization’s design), a permanent secretariat performing ongoing tasks and (in the case of IGOs) three or more member states, or (in the case of INGOs) member NGOs from three or more states.

Varying interest in international organizations

The question of whether international organizations matter in international politics, in particular compared with nation-states, has been a topic of dispute. The dominant realist school in international relations theory regards nation-states as the main players and international organizations as barely relevant, INGOs even less so than IGOs (see Figure 1.1 for the various schools in this field). Historians using a similar realist premise have been mainly interested in states and only just, or not at all, in cooperation within IGOs or the resulting roles of IGOs. They regard IGOs as forums where governments representing states meet. As a result, very few overviews of international organizations are available, whether or not inspired by political science, or they are organizational dictionaries and inventories. Within political science, interest in international organizations has fluctuated, as Miles Kahler showed in an overview of the international relations field. During the 1950s international organizations were ‘hardly regarded as the most exciting frontiers of research in the field’ and for two decades they, as well as international law, remained ‘a backwater’ (Kahler 1997, 29 and 33). International relations specialists followed what was happening at the United Nations (UN) and its specialized organizations. Their observations were published in the journal International Organization, founded in 1947. In 1956 Inis Claude published his book Swords into Plowshares, The Problems and Progress of International Organization (Claude 1966³). In this comprehensive and well-balanced treatise an acceptable realist scepticism predominates, unlike in books by orthodox realists such as Edward Carr and Hans Morgenthau, who emphasize the ‘idealist’ character international organizations supposedly have (Carr 1940) (Morgenthau 1948; revised 1978). During the 1960s a new research programme was developed, focusing on decision making within international organizations and the ensuing roles they play. The programme’s two main publications are Beyond the Nation-State by Ernst Haas, published in 1964, and The Anatomy of Influence edited by Robert Cox and Harold Jacobson and published in 1973 (Haas 1968²; Cox and Jacobson 1973). In the early 1970s international relations theory widened its scope, when so-called transnationalism included actors other than states as well, among them transnational corporations and interest groups (Keohane and Nye 1972). The transborder activities and political leverage of these societal actors enhanced the interdependence between national societies and nation-states. Their roles questioned the assumption of states being the only or primary actors in world politics. Notwithstanding this widening trend, international organizations barely had a chance of being studied because of the thesis put forward in—ironically—International Organization: that the formal and bureaucratic character of international organizations blocked a proper view of world politics. Research should not focus on organizations, but on broader, more informal forms of cooperation, such as international regimes. Regimes are frameworks of rules, expectations and prescriptions that states and other actors may agree on in specific policy fields, based on commonly perceived needs. Although regime theory and its ensuing neoliberal institutionalism, elaborated by Robert Keohane (who defined the term institution more broadly than organization by including IGOs, INGOs, regimes and conventions), paid attention to more actors than just states and to cooperation between states, IGOs and international law have remained underexposed in this approach, which was soon guiding the journal International Organization. The research programme set up by Haas, Cox and Jacobson, focusing on what takes place within international organizations, did not get a chance to develop further. Neoliberal curiosity about NGOs remained limited, because the power resources of NGOs were restricted in comparison with those of nation-states. The elaboration of neorealism by Kenneth Waltz in his book Theory of International Politics (1979) narrowed the perspective of the regime theory, because of its return to realist assumptions that great powers dominate world politics and that international bureaucracies are uninteresting and irrelevant. According to Waltz bureaucracies are mainly concerned with securing the continuity and health of the organization, while their leaders are not masters of the matters their organizations deal with (Waltz 1979, 111). Once again, this lack of interest by both neoliberals and neorealists kept research on international organizations restricted. It was not until the 1990s that an awareness of their importance began to grow. This was related to their steering role in the process of globalization that was taking place, their contributions to solving military conflicts and civil wars around the end of the Cold War and the increased role of critical but widely supported NGOs. The generally limited scientific interest in IGOs and NGOs was increasingly confronted with the fact that states have successfully used IGOs and international agreements, and within that multilateral context have appreciated the expert input from NGOs. This left scientific schools paying more attention to the contributions from actors other than states and to the character of bureaucracies’ greater room for manoeuvre. The sociologically-oriented social-constructivist approach developed a new research programme on IGOs and NGOs, which took into account the ideas of citizens focused on change as well as the bureaucratic workings and authority of IGOs.

Figure 1.1 Schools within international relations theory

The main schools in international relations theory are realism and liberal institutionalism, with more systematically elaborated variants in neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism. Power politics are central to realism. The nation-state is the major international actor, trying to survive in a hostile environment by forming and using power. Ideas about sovereignty and self-help assume a separation between domestic and foreign politics, of which the latter is crucial to survival. Liberal institutionalism starts from the idea that democratic institutions can tame the power drive of human beings and states. Democratic states, international organizations and common rules may contribute to peace and security. Domestic and foreign politics are intertwined when states recognize common interests. David Baldwin (1993) summarized the debate between the two neo-variants.

Social-constructivism is a critical school. It rejects the positivist premise of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism, which assumes an external and objective reality in this way: the anarchic situation which exists between states as a result of the absence of a highest authority is considered as ‘given’. Constructivists, however, regard the social world, including international relations, as a human construction. That construction is a dynamic process, in which ideas are being developed and knowledge and understandings are being shared (an intersubjective activity). Anarchy then is not a given, but, according to Alexander Wendt, ‘what states make of it’ (Wendt 1992, 72). The way social structures are defined depends on their shared understandings. The intersubjective understanding in a security dilemma is a social structure in which states are so distrustful that they make worst-case assumptions about each other’s intentions. As a result they define their interests in self-help terms. But in a security community the social structure is based on shared knowledge, with trust between states to resolve their disputes by means other than force, notwithstanding their ongoing promotion of national interests. Constructivists therefore are looking for ways in which international actors change their behaviour as a result of changes in ideas and shared understandings. With regard to IGOs, they are interested in critical ideas put forward by NGOs during the agenda-setting phase and the emergence and acceptance of new norms by IGOs, followed by their acceptance and internalization by a broader public of states and citizens (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998). Constructivists are also interested in rational—legal authority as characteristic of bureaucracies and the ways in which this kind of authority contributes to the more autonomous roles IGOs play in international relations (Barnett and Finnemore 2004). Boas and McNeill (2004) used a constructivist approach in the field of international organizations and development.

Within international relations theory, four phases with regard to international organizations may be discerned. During the first phase of classical realism, international organizations are agents controlled by the great powers, without contributions of their own to international relations. During the second phase of the research programme started by Haas, Cox and Jacobson, international organizations are interesting institutions because the outcome of the political games that are being played within the organizations may add to their autonomous contributions and policies. During the third phase of the international regimes discussion, international organizations can help states to solve collective action problems by considering a long-term perspective rather than taking into account short-term interests. However, although it was proved that long-lasting cooperation between states is possible and that international organizations act as intervening variables, attention was barely drawn to the organizational or bureaucratic aspects of this cooperation. During the fourth phase of constructivism, attention is paid to what is happening within organizations (for instance, in socialization processes) and to the roles international organizations play on the basis of their rational—legal authority. They affect state behaviour through ideas and expertise based on bureaucratic authority. Although NGO contributions to transnational and international relations were observed during the 1970s, neither neoliberal institutionalism nor neorealism took private actors seriously. This was different with constructivism, because it supported the preceding researchers of NGO contributions to international relations, in particular by focusing on transnational advocacy networks.

Nation-states and international organizations: principals and agents?

The realist subordination of IGOs to nation-states is well expressed in the rational model of principals and agents. This model’s premise is that an actor (the principal) delegates some authority to a body (the agent) without renouncing this authority. The purpose of this relationship is that the actor will perform certain tasks for the principal. The relationship between the member states of an IGO and the organization’s bureaucracy (the secretary-general and his or her international staff) may well be discussed as a principal— agent model. The member states are the principals and decide what the IGO’s staff shall and may do. In case the secretariat does not fulfil its functions, either by doing too little or too much, or by handling it differently, the member states, in particular the great powers among them, may call the secretariat to order. They may even revoke the delegated authority and the IGO’s existence will then come to an end. But reality is not as simple as this model, because the agent (the IGO) may create some room for manoeuvre for itself as there are several principals rather than one. Member states seldom agree among themselves, or in all respects (states represented by various departments are not unitary actors). A secretary-general able to lead an IGO may use this disagreement in favour of the objectives of the organization as defined in its constitution (Reinalda and Verbeek 2004, 22). Furthermore, by the time the IGO starts monitoring the implementation of the decisions taken, the principal–agent relationship is turned around, with the IGO as principal demanding that the member states (agents) implement the international decisions. If member states do this insufficiently, the IGO may act by ‘naming and shaming’ the non-implementing states in front of the ‘international community’.

Autonomous roles of IGOs due to leadership and internal capacities

IGOs playing a role of their own than...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of figures
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I: 1815 – British hegemony and the invention of the multilateral conference plus follow-up conference: The Concert of Europe and the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine
• Part II: Transnational networks of citizens: From the anti-slavery movement in 1815 to the International Committee of the Red Cross of 1863
• Part III: The creation of the Hague system: The arbitration movement and the 1899 and 1907 Peace Conferences in The Hague
• Part IV: Public International Unions 1865–1914: Institutionalization of conferences and the creation of continental markets in Europe and the Americas
• Part V: The international foundation for the welfare state 1880–1914: How governments became involved in international labour legislation
• Part VI: Laying down the path of collective security: The First World War, the League of Nations founded (1919) and the interwar period
• Part VII: Laying down the path of common economic endeavours: The International Labour Organization (1919) and the economic and social activities of the League of Nations
• Part VIII: American hegemony and the genesis and evolution of the United Nations system
• Part IX: Collective security in a bipolar world 1945–80
• Part X: Economic cooperation in a bipolar world 1945–70
• Part XI: Decolonization, the North–South divide and Third World experiences with global and regional international organizations 1960–80
• Part XII: Development aid, environmental protection and human rights as normative powers: NGO pressure on governments through intergovernmental organizations 1960–80
• Part XIII: International organizations in the 1980s: The Cold War intensifies and neoliberalism replaces Keynesianism
• Part XIV: The 1990s and new challenges for the United Nations as peacekeeper
• Part XV: Globalization in the 1990s: New challenges for the United Nations system as promoter of economic and social stability
• Part XVI: Regional international organizations from the 1980s onwards
• Part XVII: Security and the international economy on the threshold of the twenty-first century