International Organization Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

International organizations are transnational organizations that are held together by formal agreements and that contain elements of formal institutional structure. International organizations can be divided into two types of organizations: intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). IGOs are those whose membership is composed of state parties. NGOs are groups with global interests and activities but whose membership is independent of state governments. Examples of the former include the United Nations (UN), the World Trade Organization, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the International Seabed Authority, and the International Monetary Fund. Examples of the latter include the International Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, the World Wildlife Fund, and Human Rights Watch. International organizations can be global in their focus, such as the Universal Postal Union or the World Bank, or they can be regional in nature, such as the Organization of American States or the African Union. Currently, it is estimated that there are approximately six thousand IGOs and forty thousand NGOs around the globe, for a total of forty-six thousand international organizations worldwide. International Governmental Organizations: Functions

IGOs have been a part of the international system for over a hundred years, since the establishment in 1865 of the International Telegraphic Union (now the International Telecommunications Union). Since the end of World War II (1939–1945), IGOs have commanded a progressively more prominent place in the international system. While states still maintain pride of place as the primary actors in the international system, IGOs have become increasingly active in a number of areas. IGOs serve as forums for discussion and debate, serve as experts in particular areas of interest, provide humanitarian and other forms of assistance around the world, and facilitate state interactions by providing bodies of rules and methods of enforcement in areas such as trade, weapons proliferation, and environmental protection. Specific examples include the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ providing shelter, aid, and relocation services to refugees around the world and the World Trade Organization’s settling trade disputes between its members before they escalate into trade wars.

More specifically, the functions of IGOs can be divided into several categories: informational, forum, normative, rule creating, rule supervisory, and operational. These are each discussed in turn.

IGOs serve an informational function through the gathering, analyzing, and disseminating of data. This is an important function because many IGOs are composed of experts in certain fields who are in the best position to provide information to the IGOs themselves and to member states. An example of this would be the UN Development Programme, which collects, analyzes, and disseminates data on climate change. Often researchers from IGOs have more opportunity to carry out their research all over the world than they would if they were acting on behalf of individual states.

The forum function of IGOs provides for settings in which members can meet to exchange views, work out compromises to difficult problems, and cooperate on issues relevant to the global community. This occurred, for example, when the global community came together to draft the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, working together to create emissions-reduction targets to reduce greenhouse gas levels. The Group of Twenty, or G20, is another example of an IGO whose global influence continues to increase due to the forum function this group provides to member states in discussing and setting global economic issues.

The normative function stems from the fact that IGOs are often responsible today for determining and defining the appropriate standards of behavior for their members in the global system. This can trickle down and have a universal effect on the behavior of states and other organizations in the international system. A primary example of this is the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has been held as the global standard for human rights aspirations for over sixty years and is referred to not only by states but by other international organizations such as the European Union (EU), the Organization of American States, and Amnesty International.

With regard to the rule-creation function, many IGOs are responsible for drafting legally binding multilateral treaties. The UN, for example, is responsible for the inception of many of the major multilateral treaties in existence today, including the Convention against Torture, the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UN Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. Because IGOs often have global representation of membership and provide a ready forum for discussion, they are natural forums for the creation of such treaties.

Closely related to the rule-creation function is the rule supervisory function. Many of the multilateral treaties created by IGOs contain within their provisions the establishment of new organizations responsible for monitoring compliance with the treaties. Responsibilities of these groups may include accepting state reports of compliance and monitoring compliance with the treaty provisions, settling disputes that arise over treaty provisions, and if available, enforcing the treaty provisions and punishing breaches. As described below, there is ongoing debate within the field of political science as to whether IGOs can truly be effective if they do not have enforcement powers.

The final primary function of IGOs is operational. IGOs such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees collect global resources for housing, clothing, and feeding refugees around the world. The organization is also responsible for the logistics of determining when a situation needs refugee assistance, finding locations for refugee settlements, and distributing resources as appropriate. The fact that this responsibility is delegated to a specific international organization provides a more rapid response than might otherwise be available and can streamline the process from the UN to the refugees in need.

Under modern international law, IGOs have gained a rather significant degree of legal personality, capable of entering into agreements among themselves or with states and responsible for a growing number of tasks on behalf of the community of states. In 1949, the UN sought an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on the question of whether the UN could seek damages on behalf of its employees who might be injured or killed while on assignment. In its decision, Reparations for Injuries Suffered in the Service of the United Nations, the court held that given the functions, rights, and responsibilities given to the UN by its member states, the UN must be held to have legal personality; otherwise, it could not function as intended. This decision recognized that IGOs have legal personalities of their own and are capable of acting in the international systems as separate entities from the member states that form them.

NGos: FUNCTIONS

While IGOs remain the dominant form of international organization in the global community because their membership is made up of state representatives, which gives them rulemaking authority, the influence of NGOs has risen substantially in the past several decades. NGOs serve a number of key functions in the global system, including providing information about specific issue areas to states and their populations, serving as monitors for state behavior to ensure compliance with international norms, and providing grassroots-level support for populations in a number of areas.

First, due to their tendency to specialize in particular areas, NGOs can often be excellent sources of information and data for states and their populations as well as other international organizations. For example, states and the UN rely on annual human rights reports put out by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to accurately assess the human rights situation in certain countries, and they rely on Doctors without Borders for its expertise in providing medical assistance in crisis situations. Unlike many IGOs, NGOs also provide information directly to specific target populations within a state to encourage grassroots activity. Examples of this include a number of environmental groups that provide information to specific communities about environmental preservation and human rights groups that provide targeted medical information to communities in Africa that practice female circumcision to encourage the cessation of the practice. However, because NGOs have no formal powers, their influence varies widely. Moreover, many NGOs are viewed as having political agendas, which can also dampen the influence they have on international policies of states and other international organizations.

A second important function of NGOs is that they often serve as monitors of state behavior, and because they are not beholden to state power politics, they are able to report violations of international norms. One of the most important examples of this function is the annual reports published by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on the human rights practices of states throughout the world. States routinely refer to and use these reports in their own policy formation, and states will protest the accuracy of reports if they feel they have been unfairly criticized. The fact that states respond to these reports is indicative of their importance in the international community. Moreover, NGOs often are able to have people on the ground in countries when official state representatives are refused. Doctors without Borders is, for example, almost universally allowed into states to attend to medical issues, when an official team of U.S. or French doctors may not be welcome.

Finally, NGOs are able to provide grassroots-level support to populations that IGOs and individual states are not able to provide. While they often have a political agenda, NGOs are not part of the global power structure and therefore are often viewed as more neutral in terms of the assistance they can provide populations. NGOs have served many functions within states, from planting trees and teaching about sustainable agriculture practices to encouraging political participation to providing basic health care and education services to underserved populations. This ability to work at the grassroots level has the potential to allow NGOs to have an overall more significant impact than IGOs in terms of effecting change.

International Organizations And Political Science: Theoretical Approaches

Within the field of political science, different theoretical approaches have dealt differently with the increase in number, and expansion of influence, of international organizations. Neorealism, which retains focus largely on the state as the primary actor in the international system, considers international organizations important only insofar as they serve to bolster a state’s power position or further state interests. According to neorealists, states use international organizations as a tool to achieve their own agendas, participating when it serves their immediate interests and withdrawing when their own agendas differ from those of the organizations. For neorealists, the fact that international organizations have limited enforcement capabilities is a testament to the limited nature of their effectiveness.

Neoliberal institutionalists generally consider international organizations an essential tool for states in the international system. Because neoliberal institutionalists suggest that states may seek cooperation as opposed to conflict to achieve their goals, international organizations can play a pivotal role in achieving this outcome. International organizations provide states with a forum to share information and discuss problems, therefore facilitating cooperation by increasing in information sharing among states and ensuring transparency of action. Moreover, international organizations with internal rules and enforcement mechanisms also provide states with assurances that breaches of the principles of the organization will be dealt with. Finally, membership in international organizations provides states with a community of states to which they belong and with which they interact, enhancing state desires to maintain a good relationship—in other words, maintain a good reputation—so that they may continue to reap the benefits of global cooperation.

Given the constructivist consideration of the way ideas and identities within a state may shape state behavior at the international-system level, international organizations are considered for the role that they play in this process. For example, an international organization may function as a norm entrepreneur, creating and advocating new global norms to guide state action. For constructivists, international organizations are also a function of those states that create them and may reflect the ideas, culture, values, and identities of their members. For example, the EU is largely a reflection of the history, values, and ideas of those western European states that created it. Originating in the aftermath of World War II, the focus of the EU on cooperation, human rights, and democracy is largely a reflection of the sentiments of the member state countries at the time of its inception. This relationship between international organizations and the states that create them produces a bond that makes international organizations important actors in the international system.

Current Debates Concerning International Organizations

While international organizations are now widely recognized as part of the international system, a number of issues remain open for debate concerning these transnational actors. The foremost of these is the relationship between state sovereignty and IGOs. Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, state sovereignty has been the cornerstone of the global system. IGOs have increasingly challenged the notion of state sovereignty, usurping more and more responsibility from states. Currently there is a spectrum of IGOs in terms of their relationship to state sovereignty. On one end are organizations such as the UN, in which each individual state retains its sovereignty most of the time. In fact, only through voluntary agreement to relinquish a certain amount of sovereignty or through a UN Security Council resolution, which all member states are required to respect, do states lose any significant portion of their sovereignty at the UN. The UN Charter specifically protects the concept of sovereignty, stating in article 2(1), “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.”

On the other end of the spectrum are IGOs such as the EU, in which states must relinquish a portion of their sovereignty to become members, agreeing to have certain matters legislated at the regional level as opposed to the state level.

Certain areas such as the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people in fact have significantly been taken over by the EU bureaucracy, with states mandated to carry out EU policies.

A second issue, one closely related to the question of sovereignty, is that of the enforcement power of IGOs. Despite the rule-creation and rule-supervision functions of international organizations, these do not always readily include the power of rule enforcement. One of the biggest critiques that neorealists and some neoliberal institutionalists make about the efficacy of IGOs is that they do not have sufficient powers to enforce their mandates and that ultimately member states choose to do whatever they wish. The level of enforcement power IGOs have is largely related to the extent to which they take on elements of state sovereignty. In the EU, for example, there are relatively strong enforcement powers through the European Court of Justice and the European Commission’s and European Council’s ability to sanction member states for failing to carry out their obligations. Many other IGOs, however, to which states do not relinquish such a significant level of sovereignty, have much less effective enforcement mechanisms. For example, the American Court of Human Rights has little authority over states since participation is voluntary. Therefore, its decisions, while technically binding on states, are difficult to enforce. Regardless of the strength of an IGO’s enforcement mechanisms, however, the effectiveness of such mechanisms ultimately relies on the state parties’ willingness to comply. This leads to another issue currently being studied by international organizations scholars: state willingness to comply with IGO norms, decisions, and policies.

As is evident from the differences between the international relations theoretical approaches to international organizations described above, not all scholars of international organizations agree that they serve a benefit to the international community of states. Given this, one of the ongoing discussions within political science is the question of why states would belong to, listen to, and comply with international organizations, whether the more formal rules emanating from IGOs or the more informational and political advocacy of NGOs. There are a number of theories that have been put forth. First, from the rational-choice perspective, belonging to an international organization facilitates a state’s decision-making process on certain issues because it provides the state with a forum for information gathering and discussion, as outlined above. This not only allows the state to gain information that may directly assist it in its decision-making process but provides the state with a mechanism with which to gather information on the intentions and decision-making process of other member states. This makes the decision-making process more transparent and decreases the likelihood of states’ acting with incomplete information. Related to this is the fact that international organizations create a common set of standards concerning norms and procedures, providing a common basis from which all member states may act. Thus, even if the states do not adhere to the norms all the time, they at least have a common starting point.

According to current research, one of the primary effects that international organizations have on state behavior, and one of the primary reasons given for why international organizations, particularly IGOs, are ultimately effective, is that joining an international organization automatically puts a state in a peer community. Once in such a community, states face pressure to comply with the norms and procedures of the international organization. A state’s reputation rests on its compliance with the organization’s directives. If a state consistently goes against the policies and norms created by the international organization or consistently ignores enforcement actions against it by the organization, that state will potentially become an outcast, a position states want to avoid because it can greatly hinder their ability to promote and protect their interests. If a state is viewed as being a violator or a free rider in one organization, this can carry over to other organizations. This can influence the extent to which other states will want to enter into agreements with the violating state, which can affect all manner of transnational activities, from trade to the delimitation of shared resources to migration to security arrangements. States generally do not want to be left out of the international system, so the protection of their reputations is a key reason for them to join and cooperate with international organizations and their policies.

NGOs further contribute to the reputational effect that influences state behavior. Studies have shown that an increase in NGO activity within a state or attention given to a state increases the likelihood of policy change either within a state or at the international-system level. NGOs have a unique opportunity that IGOs do not possess, and that is the ability to work at the grassroots level within a state to encourage citizens to call for a particular state action. Moreover, unlike much IGO activity, which takes place exclusively at the international-system level, far removed from the daily life of most state citizens, NGO activity can be on the ground, tailoring approaches to the individual cultural needs of different states and populations. Examples of successful NGO activities that have effectively changed state behavior out of concern for reputation include the campaign throughout states in Africa to stop the practice of female circumcision as dangerous to the health of women and the dissemination of negative country reports from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which can have a significant influence on a state’s reputation at the international-system level.

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