2 HIGGOTT, Richard. International Political Institutions

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c h a p t e r 3 1
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INTERNATIONAL
POLITICAL
INSTITUTIONS
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richard higgott
1 Introduction
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The study of international organization in international relations now has a strong
intellectual tradition (see Katzenstein, Keohane, and Krasner 1998; Simmons and
Martin 2002; Kratochwil and MansWeld 2005). When we talk about organizations
in international relations we are invariably talking about institutions. As Robert
Keohane (1989, 3) notes, institutions deWne limits and set choices on actor behavior
in both formal and informal ways. They do so in economic, political, and social
settings. Thus one way to think of organizations is as bodies that advance certain
norms and rules. All organizations are institutions, but not all institutions are
organizations. Institutions can lack organizational form, while some organizations
may have multiple institutional roles. This chapter, therefore, sees ‘‘institutions’’
and ‘‘organizations’’ in international relations as two inseparable sides of one coin.
In this Handbook, the editors have chosen to make the distinction between
international economic, political, and security organizations, with the provision
of separate chapters on each. This might make organizational sense, but for
analytical-cum-theoretical purposes in the study of international organization(s)
this distinction is diYcult to apply. The major international organizations do not
lend themselves to discrete issue-area segmentation. International organizations
can exhibit behavior driven by all three issue-areas and some international
organizations see themselves as operating in all three domains. Under conditions
of globalization, economics, security, and politics become increasingly blurred
analytical categories.
Thus, this chapter uses theoretical lenses that span all three issue-areas. But, it
eschews empirical discussion of the international economic institutions (IEIs) even
though the WTO, IMF, and WBG are political organizations in terms of their
agendas and in the manner of their decision-making. The relationship between
economics and security or economic growth and political stability and economics
and democracy promotion are, for example, inextricably interlinked (especially in
the new global security environment post-9/11). Similarly, this chapter eschews
discussions of security treaties and alliances such as NATO. More useful is to have a
general conceptual understanding of the concept of an international organization
and international institutional behavior as part of a wider process of global
governance.
Contemporary understandings of global governance extend beyond the role of
governments, and intergovernmental organizations and the late twentieth century
saw the role of private international regimes and non-state actors from within the
wider reaches of the corporate world and civil society grow dramatically (see Cutler,
HauXeur, and Porter, 1999; Higgott, Underhill, and Bieler 2000). Yet it is inter-
national institutions such as the UN and the EU—notwithstanding that their role
in world politics is at a crossroads greater than at any time since 1945—that remain
the major sites of global governance.
The discussion is in three sections. Section 2 oVers some historical and theor-
etical insights into the understanding of international organization. Section 3 looks
at the UN, the EU, and several other regional actors as exemplars of contemporary
international organization noting that regional organizations are becoming
increasingly important. It is in both international and regional settings that we
Wnd modern international organizations. Section 4 looks at the diVerent ways in
which international organizations have been studied by scholars of international
relations.
There are two seemingly contradictory threads running throughout this chapter.
On the one hand it demonstrates the manner in which states, all states, use inter-
national organizations as vehicles for cooperation. At the same time, however, the
relationship between states and international organization is shown to be one of
tension. States often exhibit distrust in their relations with international organiza-
tions. At the very least states grow weary of the cost of formal organization and
suspicious of international bureaucracies. Thus Section 3 and the conclusion suggest
that we are at an important theoretical juncture in not only the practice of inter-
national organization in the early years of the twenty-first century but by extension
how we study them. As we shall see when we look at the UN and the EU, theoretical
analysis and practical institutional reform are two sides of the same coin.
612 richard higgott
2 International Organization: Some
Historical and Theoretical Insights
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2.1 Historical Context
International organization is about rules agreed amongst independent political
communities. To a greater or lesser extent these rules help determine the shape of
world order. Historically they were developed to overcome the limits of bilateral
state-to-state diplomacy. Technical institutions, limited in scope and aspiration,
emerged prior to organizations with more sweeping economic and sociopolitical
agendas, especially during the ‘‘Wrst wave of globalization’’ at the end of the
nineteenth century (Hirst and Thompson 1999). The International Telegraph
Union (founded in 1865) is often thought of as the Wrst intergovernmental organ-
ization. Between 1900 and 2000 the number of IGOs grew from 37 to well over 400
(Krieger 1993, 451; Schiavone 2001). Key institutions that developed in the second
half of the nineteenth century included the Universal Postal Union and the Concert
of Europe.
The Concert of Europe, while acknowledged as an IO geared to consultation
between the European Great Powers as a way of pre-empting the use of force, was
never imbued with the substantive executive capabilities that we now assume of
international organizations. But, it gave birth to a number of norms concerning
the conduct and status of states and the development of international conference
diplomacy as an important stage in the evolution of international organizations
as actors in international politics (Armstrong 2004, 4). The period between the
Congress of Vienna (1815) and the outbreak of the First World War was the ‘‘era of
preparation for international organization’’ (Claude 1971, 41). The Hague confer-
ences of 1899 and 1907 through to the Paris PeaceConference, that saw the creation of
the League of Nations, experimented with the tools of collective intergovernmental
conXict resolution (mediation, arbitration, commissions of inquiry, and the like.)
Notwithstanding the failure of the League, the growth of international organ-
ization, especially since the end of the Second World War, has been the quintes-
sential characteristic of the international politics (and economics) of the twentieth
century, especially through the birth of the Bretton Woods system (1944) and the
creation of the United Nations in 1945 and its ancillary organizations (such as the
Food and Agricultural Organization,International Atomic Energy Agency,
the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and the Economic Commissions for
Africa, Latin America, and Asia PaciWc, between 1947 and 1974. This organizational
growth reXected the attempt to manage respect for the principle of sovereignty while
at the same time recognizing the growing practical need for states to engage in
collective action problem solving in a range of complex issue-areas. Even
international political institutions 613
as international organization, as both principle and practice, has come under
increasing challenge in the late twentieth and early twenty-Wrst century, this has
been no deterrent to the transformation of existing organizations or the emergence
of new ones (especially at the regional level).
Examples of transformation are the birth of the WTO out of GATT in 1995 and
the African Union from the OAU in 2002. Dramatic developments at a regional
level are to be found in East Asia in the early years of the twenty-Wrst century. Even
older organizations that, to all intents and purposes, have outlived their remits
continue to exist. Notable here are the (former British) Commonwealth and its
weaker facsimile la Francophonie. In addition, NATO still functions vigorously in a
range of areas long after its initial rationale of resisting Soviet expansion in Europe
has passed. Such organizations survive by a process of reinvention. NATO has
moved to a broader deWnition of security in keeping with the evolution of the
twenty-Wrst-century war on global terrorism. The Commonwealth reaYrmed its
value in the 1991 Harare declaration by adopting a stronger ‘‘development’’
oriented mission enhancing best practice in the pursuit of good governance.
2.2 ClassiWcation
Organizations can be transnational and/or cross-regional; they can be explicitly
built around the provisions to be found in Chapters VI, VII, and IX of the UN
charter; some are simply sui generis.1 Many international organizations have
overlapping agendas and competencies. Scholarly analysis has tended to make
general judgments based on membership and the degree of integration of an
organization, functional purpose and policy area, and by structure and legal status.
2.2.1 Scope of Membership and Degree of Integration
Here we can identify: (a) global multilateral organizations—with three or more
members—notably the UN but also the major IEIs and (b) regional multilateral
organizations—again with three or more members but within speciWc geographical
containers: bodies such as the EU, Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), the African Union (AU), and Mercosur. A diVerence between these
groupings is the degree of integration they have achieved. The EU, in contrast to
others, has the ability to take decisions and make policy that can be binding
not only on its member states and but also directly on sub-state public and
1 This chapter is not a catalog of international organizations. A comprehensive survey is to be
found in the Yearbook of International Organisations published annually by the Union of International
Associations found at www.uia.org. See also Archer 2001 and Schiavone 2001.
614 richard higgott
private enterprises and persons within states. The other, less integrated organiza-
tions only have jurisdiction over such sub-state actors through the member
states themselves.
2.2.2 Function or Policy Area
The function or policy area are where IOs become agents for a particular course of
action. Some—like the UN and the EU—are multifunctional in nature. Others—
for example the World Health Organisation or the ILO—are purpose speciWc. Yet
others—the ILO, WHO, and UNCTAD—exercise promotional functions. Some,
such as the Bretton Woods institutions, are agents for the delivery of public goods
although, along with the WTO, they also play regulatory roles.
Some organizations are purely consultative and/or conWdence building in
nature, for example the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) that attempted to secure
a common developing world position on a range of foreign policy issues during the
cold war era or, more recently, the ASEAN Regional Forum that advances a
conWdence building cooperative dialogue on regional security issues between the
states of Southeast Asia and the major Asia-PaciWc powers. The largely ritualistic
and aspirational nature of such bodies does not mean that they are without the
potential to engender meaning and identity as important precursors of deeper
organizational cooperation, as seen in Europe (Rosamond 2000) and even, some
argue, in Southeast Asia (Acharya 2000.)
2.2.3 By Structure and Formal Legal Powers
Two ways to distinguish international organizations from the more general notion
of international institutions is by their legal standing and by the degree of central-
ization and independence they possess. International organizations, reXecting the
notional sovereign equality of states, are institutionalized by treaties. But, in
practice, many IOs have little more than discursive power with no facility for
legal, as opposed to moral, sanction. The evolution of international law invites only
limited comparison with the development of national legal systems. The develop-
ment of international organization is a reXection of the practical limitations on the
emergence of a pattern of systematized rules at the international level.
But it is the presence of formal structures of administration (a bureaucracy and
all that is implied by its presence) that distinguishes an international organization
from the general understanding of an institution. Established organizations usually
have a degree of managerial autonomy from their constituent membership; even if
only of a technical nature pertaining to policy implementation. Notwithstanding
that member states zealously guard their dominion over policy-making and policy
ratiWcation, the powers possessed by IOs are not as insigniWcant as might
be assumed. To a greater or lesser extent, the power to mold understandings,
international political institutions 615
articulate organizational norms, and act as mediators in disputes between mem-
bers can give organizations considerable operational autonomy (see Abbot and
Snidal 2001, 15–23).
Notable among those bodies that do have instruments of formal legal suasion
over (some) member states in the ‘‘political domain,’’ is the UN with the provisions
for taking collective security action under Chapter VII of the Charter. The WTO,
with its dispute settlement mechanism, also falls into this category. To date, only
the EU has supranational legal power over citizens of member states. The impact of
organizations, however, is determined less by formal legal rules than the internal
politics of a given organization and especially the role of the major actors within it.
In this regard, the theory of international organization is important to understand-
ing their role in practice.
2.3 Theorizing International Organization
By way of initial clariWcation we should note that for scholars of ‘‘international
politics,’’ ‘‘international’’ usually means interstate relations while ‘‘global politics’’
embraces the activities of all international actors be they states, or non-state actors.
Similarly, ‘‘global governance’’ has become a hosting metaphor for all political and
economic actors, including international organizations that practice politics
and administration beyond the boundaries of the modern state. By way of further
complication, ‘‘international’’ is also often transposed with ‘‘multilateral,’’ as in the
way bodies such as the UN or the IMF are called either international institutions or
multilateral institutions.
It is, therefore, worth recalling the standard deWnition of multilalteralismas
the management of transnational problems with three or more parties making
policy on the basis of a series of acceptable ‘‘generalized principles of conduct’’
(Ruggie 1993, 11). The key principles identiWed by Ruggie are indivisibility, non-
discrimination, and diVuse reciprocity. It was expected that over time, decision-
making underwritten by these principles would lead to collective trust amongst
players within an institution. A key element in the development of trust would
come from the willingness of the institutional hegemon—that is, the strongest
member of the institution—to agree to be bound by these principles. That is, to
accept the principle of ‘‘self-binding’’ (Martin 2003).
Within this context, the principal way of thinking about the theory and practice
of international organization in the last quarter of the twentieth century was
through institutionalist and regime theory literature. The lesson drawn from this
literature is a recognition of the importance of IOs as vehicles for maximizing
information sharing, generating transparency in decision-making and advancing
the institutional ability to generate credible collective action problem solving in a
616 richard higgott
given issue area, eventually (in some if not all instances) leading to the develop-
ment of enforcement/compliance mechanisms and dispute resolution procedures.
International organizations/institutions are transaction cost reducers (see Keohane
1984, 1989).
But it is not suYcient simply to describe organizational processes. We must also
understand the degree to which these processes deliver outcomes; the prominence
of an international organization does not always correlate with a high rate of
success in problem solving in a given area of international relations. Ambitious
organizations might try to structure rules and behavior in some of the key policy
areas of contemporary global politics but often to little avail.
Unlike the role of IEIs in economic transactions, many of the world’s political
transactions are not conducted through international organizations. They remain
primarily the aVairs of states. In its search for generalization, the hallmark of
scientiWc theorizing, this distinction between the economic and the political was
often unaddressed in the theoretical literature, leading to the conXation of insti-
tutions, regimes, and international organizations with a generic deWnition as
‘‘principles, norms and decision-making processes around which the expectations
of actors converge’’ (Krasner 1983) and with the implication that informal actions,
underwritten by these principles, could be as, if not more, important than the role
of formal organizations. Indeed, Simmons and Martin (2002) argue that it was the
decreasing salience of IOs in the late 1970s to the early 1980s that led a focus on
regimes, rules, and norms.
There was an important insight here; but the regime approach on its own failed
to illuminate the internal dynamics and interstate political contests that take place
within IOs (see Strange 1983). Theoretical lenses, other than those of rationalist and
neoliberal institutionalist theories of cooperation, through which to observe IOs,
especially the EU and smaller regional bodies, emerged. Scholarly insight moved
beyond institutionalist regime literature to take more account of history, culture,
and identity. In addition, explanations of the intersubjective sociolegal context for
interstate behavior were extended to the study of international organization (see
Kratochwil and Ruggie 1986; Hurrell 1993).
These approaches, Wnding fullest expression in the constructivist theorizing of
the late twentieth century (see Wendt 1992, 2000) focused less on the role of IOs as
actors and more on the role of institutions as norm brokers (see Finnemore
1996). States not only use international organizations to reduce uncertainty and
transaction costs. They also use them ‘‘to create information, ideas, norms
and expectations . . . [and] . . . to legitimate or delegitimate particular ideas and
practices’’ (Abbott and Snidal 2001, 15; emphasis added). IOs are thus more than
arbiters, and trustees, they are also norm brokers and ‘‘enforcers.’’
Other approaches to international organization, drawing on the empirical
experience of the EU, focus instead on questions pertaining to the ‘‘degree’’ of
integration. In the theory and practice of international organization the EU is an
international political institutions 617
interesting case. The EU, throughout the closing decades of the twentieth century,
has become increasingly diYcult to categorize simply as an IO. A stronger tendency
has been to see it rather as a more complex system of multilevel governance (see
inter alia: Wallace and Wallace 1996, 3–37; Rosamond 2000; Hooghe and Marks
2001). Notwithstanding the failure of some states to ratify the constitution in 2005,
the EU has undergone a greater process of sovereignty pooling than any other actor
that started life as an IO.
Straddling, or perhaps mediating, institutionalist and integrationist approaches is
what we might call the intergovernmentalist insight into enhanced and eYcient
interstate bargaining (Moravcsik 1994, 1998). Again, notwithstanding setbacks, or
more speciWcally what we might describe as a two steps forward one step back
approach to closer integration, the EU conWrms (in part at least) the normative
aspirations of idealist integration theorists in ways that qualify narrower realist
certainties about the limited utility of enhanced institutional cooperation over time.
One Wnal take on the changing role of international organizations should be noted.
During the closing years of the twentieth century it became increasingly fashionable to
look at international organizations through theoretical perspectives on ‘‘global gov-
ernance,’’ seeing institutions as players in a growing regulatory network of actors in
global politics that also diminishes the traditional realist understanding of the more
or less exclusive role of states in the global decision-making process.
Thus IOs are seen as increasingly important actors in the provision of global
public goods (see Kaul, Grunberg, and Stern 1999). Through these lenses, the key
issue for international organizations is the degree to which they can combine the
eVective and eYcient provision of public goods through collective action problem
solving on the one hand at the same time as they satisfy the increasing global
demand for representation and accountability under conditions of globalization on
the other. The tension between these two understandings of governance remains
unresolved. It is addressed in the Conclusion.
3 Contemporary International
Organization: The UN, the EU, and the
Regional Regulatory Framework
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The early twenty-Wrst century sees feverish discussion of the continued salience of
the UN after the Iraq war on the one hand and the future prospects of the EU in the
wake of the crisis in the ratiWcation of the constitution on the other. It is also a time
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when other regions of the world are experimenting with international organization
at the regional level. In assessing contemporary events, it is all too easy to get caught
up in the immediate. This section locates these principle institutions in a longer-
term context at the same time that it takes account of the very real challenges facing
IOs in the contemporary era.
3.1 The United Nations
A detailed history of the UN is not possible here. Rather, we need to tease out the
salienceof its evolution, contemporary standing, and prospects for a more gener-
alized understanding of the role of international organizations in global politics.
Perhaps the key element in its origins is the degree to which it claimed not to repeat
the structure of the failed League of Nations, but to which, with hindsight, it has a
greater resemblance and salience for the future of the organization than the
founders might care to admit.
Although established in a much more professional manner than the League, the
UN as a collective security system, with its Secretariat, General Assembly, and
Security Council and underwritten by the principle of the sovereign equality
of states, resembled the earlier failed institution (see Armstrong, Lloyd, and
Redmand 2004: 37V). The key diVerence was, of course, the veto of the permanent
members (P5) in the Security Council. But there was more to the UN system than
that. There was also the creation of UN agencies dealing with issues ranging from
atomic energy (IAEA), children (UNICEF), civil aviation (ICAO), development
(UNDP and UNCTAD), education, science, culture, research and training
(UNESCO, UNITAR, and UNU), food and agriculture (FAO), human rights,
narcotics, and drugs (ECOSOC), through to intellectual property (WIPO), and
this list is by no means exhaustive.
While these agencies have never worked other than sub-optimally, the end of the
cold war saw a renewed optimism that the UN might at long last fulWl those roles
which many had originally conceived for it—as the only ‘‘universal, general pur-
pose’’ IO (Diehl 2001, 6) charged with generating global public goods to mitigate
conXict and guarantee peace, security, and well-being. In order to understand why
this has not happened to date it is important to note that the world in 2005 is not the
world into which the UN was born sixty years previously and that reform poses
major diYculties given changes in world order. The key inhibitor of the UN’s core
business is, as UN Secretary General KoW Annan (2000, 6) has frequently noted,
‘‘globalization’’ or more precisely the inability of the UN to mitigate the negative
elements of globalization such as global poverty or enhance global security in the
face of the major change in war-Wghting—the shift from interstate war to non-state
(terrorist) war-Wghting.
international political institutions 619
If accession to the UN was for many states the sine qua non of sovereignty, then
the spread of economic globalization on the one hand and non-state violence on
the other are perhaps the major challenges to that sovereignty in the early twenty-
Wrst century. The challenges faced by the UN in the early twenty-Wrst century are in
many ways a product of its historical privileging of an insistence on sovereign
equality; or more precisely, the challenges posed by the practical denial of this
theoretical state as international politics, lead by the USA and it principle allies,
drifts into an era of non-UN sanctioned humanitarian intervention in places like
Bosnia and pre-emptive security in Iraq.
The attitude of the vast majority of members of the UN to these proactive
policies in the security domain is deeply conditioned by what they see as the failure
on the other hand of the global community, and the UN as the principle IO, to deal
with the exacerbating issue of poverty and global inequality. These twin trials for
the UN, and especially the attitude of the USA towards it and its goals, seem to be
undoing the earlier progress that the organization hadmade by the identiWcation of
the importance of providing collective action problem solving in socioeconomic,
developmental, and ecological policy areas. The UN’s historical progress as a
vehicle for peace building and generating socioeconomic well-being has not
been trivial, but the fundamental contemporary problem is that UN’s potential
remains inhibited by ‘‘the pretence of state governments that they have ‘sover-
eignty’ over a multitude of problems in public policy that now Xow across borders’’
(Alger 2001, 493).
This chapter cannot review the ‘‘UN reform industry’’ that has been in full swing
since the turn of the century (but see Heinbecker and GoV 2005). But even under
optimistic scenarios it will be a problematic endeavor. It in part explains the
concerns of states in international relations to preserve their sovereignty yet at
the same time enhance collective action decision-making in ‘‘trans-sovereign’’
policy areas (see Cusimano 2000). It also sees states make greater recourse to
regional organization. The Wnal problem facing the UN is one that faces many
IOs, namely a legitimacy deWcit in the relationship between the dominant actors
and the weaker players in the organization on the one hand and in the relationship
between the institution and the people it purports to serve on the other. Both
issues, as real world policy issues and as key factors for scholarly analysis, receive
consideration in the Conclusion.
3.2 Regional Organization as International Organization
It is at the regional level that the growth in international organization has beenmost
dramatic. This does not occur in isolation from wider traditions and concerns.
Indeed, the UN spells out the possible mandates that ‘‘regional arrangements,’’ and
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‘‘regional and other inter-governmental agencies’’ under the UN Charter (chapters
VI, VII, VIII, and IX) might have, and the operational partnerships of the United
Nations with its regional agencies.
Early scholarly debates about regionalism emerged from two sources: (a)
normative questions about the sustainability of the nation state as a vehicle for
eVective and peaceful human governance and an interest in functional and
technocratic imperatives for new forms of authority beyond the state; and (b)
the appearance of actual regional integration schemes in Western Europe from the
late 1950s (the European Coal and Steel Community, the abortive European
Defence Community, and the eventual European Economic Community) that
became the intellectual laboratory for the study of regional organizations. Early
neofunctionalists (cf. Haas 1958; Schmitter 1971) used the European experience to
generalize about the prospects for regional integration elsewhere but this optimism
proved short-lived as analogous projects such as the Latin American Free Trade
Area and the East African Common Market failed.
This earlier work often saw regionalism as a defensive mechanism to reduce
dependence on the international economy. But more recently, scholars of the new
regionalism (see Gamble and Payne 1996) see it in a more proactive manner as a
means of greater access to global markets under conditions of globalization. It is no
longer about securing regional autarchy. States now engage in any number of
overlapping regional endeavors without sensing that there may be contradictions
in such a process. It is also a more inclusive process of regionalization than the UN
had in mind in its relations with its various regional agencies. The new regionalism
is a sociopolitical project as well as an economic one. The process of regionalization
also has structural consequences beyond the particular region in which it takes
place. Transregionalism is an increasingly important dimension of international
relations as institutions and organizations play larger mediating roles between
regions (see Hettne 1999).
It is at the meso regional level, between globalization and the nation state,
that increasing eVort has been applied to the management of transterritorial or
multiterritorial collective action problem solving. To date, moves toward regionally
integrated problem solving have been more active in Europe than in other parts ofthe world. But this is not only a European project. Elsewhere, the growing linkages
between diVerent regional integration schemes are evident.
3.2.1 The European Union
The EU is the most developed example of a hybrid, multiperspectival, multi-issue
international organization to date. Its evolution was analysed largely through the
lens of neoclassical trade theory as it developed—from a free trade area, to a
common market, to an economic union—in classic terms (see Belassa 1961). But in
so doing, it made the separation of economics from the politics impossible. The EU
international political institutions 621
is an economic actor (especially in world trade), a political actor in global politics
(even when members cannot agree amongst themselves), and a security actor (even
without as eVective amilitary capability as itsmajor transatlantic partnerwouldwish
it to possess). This is its unique characteristic.
While regionalization processes can be observed throughout the world, there is
no single model of regionalization. But there is a desire for collective action by
societies, through forms of regional cooperation to counter the adverse eVects of
globalization on the one hand, and to maximize the beneWts to be gained from
globalization on the other. But, global governance structures are not monolithic
and regional governance systems display great diVerences in both scope and
capacity to maintain order as countries make choices that reXect their own needs
and political commitments.
The EU has developed sophisticated regulatory frameworks through its institu-
tional architecture and the crystallization of common policies in areas such as
trade and investment. Other regions are developing diVerent regulatory and govern-
ance frameworks. While all, in their own ways, are aiming towards regional
governance systems that can be considered not only eVective but also democratic,
legitimate, and inclusive, the EU remains the major exercise in intergovernmental
decision-making to date. We can say this for several reasons:
. Although contested, Europe does have an integrated governance system, linking
institutional structures, policies, and legal instruments that bring together the
national and supranational levels of decision-making and policy implementation.
. European approaches to governance have developed Xexible and multidimen-
sional concepts of sovereignty in the international system. These ideas of
sovereignty contrast with the bounded, state-based/intergovernmental charac-
terizations of sovereignty and international relations to be found in most
non-European practice and analysis.
. In individual policy areas (for example, trade) Europe has a regulatory
framework unequaled at the global level. Only Europe, of all regional actors,
negotiates within the WTO as a single actor.
. Europe is already engaged in a web of transregional and interregional coopera-
tive relations with other groupings, based upon either formal, institutional
dialogue or more informal agreements. Interinstitutional cooperation has in-
creased. Although often misunderstood, the Asia–Europe (ASEM) process,
EU–Mexico, EU–Mercosur, and the Cotonou Agreements with the African,
Caribbean, and PaciWc States reXect aspirations of regional groups to build
a density of relations and foster trust fundamental to a global governance
framework.
. The EU governance model relies heavily on the rule of law. The role of the
European Court of Justice (ECJ) is crucial in ensuring a system that is both
eVective and fair. The ECJ is thus a political actor, as much as a legal one. It is
622 richard higgott
accessibility to the legal system that makes the EU distinctive from other
international governance models. Contrast it with the WTO, where only states
can make a complaint to the Dispute Settlement Body.
In short, the EU, for all its shortcomings, is a community of sovereign states that
has proved that cooperation can be learned and that cooperation need not be a
zero-sum game. In essence, cooperation within the context of an international
governance system produces results where the participants can in many, if not all,
circumstances perceive cooperative action as a public good. But cooperation
among sovereign states or between states and non-state actors in the establishment
of a governance system is neither automatic nor easy. Successful cooperation to
date has depended on a public sector push, an emerging supranational structure
and the willingness of the member states to pool sovereignty in key areas, to
delegate decision-making and to accept authority in matters over which they
would otherwise have national autonomy. The EU has proceeded further than
any other regional grouping in the establishment of a governance system based
upon the principle of pooled sovereignty.
But theEU’smajor problem, a problem formost international organizations, is that
it has only achieved a limited degree of democratic legitimacy. While the proposed
European Constitution may have reXected a desire to ensure democratic governance,
there was a clear imbalance between the supranational and the national democratic
structures. Finding legitimacy among its citizens and in public discourse within the
EU on the one hand, and among the actors and institutions of global governance on
the other, has proved diYcult. There is a ‘‘sovereignty trap’’ in the European
project. While states have done much to develop democracy and social justice in
the advanced economies, the limits of national governance, and of the concepts
on which it is based, appear less clear in regional and global integration processes.
This has implications for the role of international organizations as vehicles for
global governance. There are examples from EU experience, including the intro-
duction of the single currency, which provide us with a practical example of the
‘‘division’’ of sovereignty. But for international organizations to deliver better
global governance, it is necessary to escape from a bounded notion of sovereignty
and narrow deWnitions of security and state interest in international relations.
Central to overcoming these limitations, as normative scholarship suggests, must
be the recognition that sovereignty can be disaggregated and redistributed across
institutional levels from the local to the global (Held 2004).
3.2.2 International Organization and the Rise of Regulatory Regionalism
in the Developing World
While it clearly diVers from the ‘‘European project,’’ international organization in
the developing world has proliferated from the last quarter of the twentieth
international political institutions 623
century. Noting the major initiatives only, we can identify organizations such as the
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Southern
African Development Co-ordination Conference (SADCC) in Africa; the Organ-
isation of Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) in Central and Eastern Europe;
Mercosur in Latin America; and a range of initiatives in East Asia commencing with
the development of ASEAN in the 1970s, the growth of APEC from the early 1990s,
and initiatives to establish an East Asian Community (initially via the ‘‘ASEAN Plus
3’’ format) in the early twenty-Wrst century.
But the approach to international organization in the developing world is
diVerent to what (too) many scholars think of as the ‘‘European template’’ (Breslin
and Higgott 2000). What has been important in parts of the world such as Latin
America and East Asia is the recognition of the importance of ‘‘the region’’ as a
meso level at which to make policy under conditions of globalization. This chapter
can only provide a sample illustration of this emerging non-EU template. It does sousing the most advanced case—the growth of regional organizational initiatives in
East Asia, especially since the Wnancial crises of the second half of the 1990s.
ASEANmay have started out as a security organization in the context of the cold
war but it, like most regional organizations in the South, has taken on a diVerent
character since then.2 The search for state competitiveness in an era of economic
globalization is now as salient as was the search for state security in the context of
the cold war. The essence of the new institutional regionalism is an endeavor to
create organizational structures that advance regional competitiveness in the global
economy and provide a venue for policy discourse on key regional issues whilst at
the same time preserving state sovereignty. It is this process that has come to be
known as ‘‘regulatory regionalism’’ since the East Asian Wnancial crises of the late
twentieth century (Jayasuriya 2004).
What the Asian crises told regional policy elites was that there was no consensus
on how to manage international capitalism in the closing stages of the twentieth
century. But the economic crises also provided a positive learning experience at
the multilateral organizational level. The crises demonstrated that for economic
globalization to continue to develop in an orderly manner requires necessary
institutional capability to provide for prudential economic regulation.
While most regional policy analysts continue to recognize that such institutional
regulation is best pursued at the global level, regional level organizational initia-
tives have become increasingly important. Thus, strong structural impediments to
integration notwithstanding, East Asia has become more interdependent and even
more formally institutionalized (see Higgott 2005).
But this is not the kind of regional cooperation that has its antecedents in
Europe. Rather it is a regulatory regionalism that links national and global under-
standings of regulation via intermediary regional level organizations. EVectively,
2 A history of regional organization in East Asia is not possible here. See Acharya 2000.
624 richard higgott
regional organizations become transmission belts for global disciplines to the
national level through the depoliticizing and softening process of the region in
which regional policy coordination has become the ‘‘meso’’ link between the
national and the global. Regulatory regionalism sees regional organizations acting
as vehicles for regional policy coordination to mitigate risk while not undermining
national sovereignty. Indeed, there is a strong relationship between state form, the
global economic and political orders, and the nature of regional organization
emerging at the meso level in many regions of the world.
This institutional compromise is inevitable if the continuing tension between
nationalism and regionalism in East Asia (and other regions) is not to jeopardize
cooperation. The meshing of multilevel processes of regulation to reinforce the
connections between the international institutions (e.g. IMF and World Bank)
and regional institutions—for example between the Asian Development Bank and
the emerging instruments of regional monetary regulation in East Asia—have
developed strongly in the early twenty-Wrst century. Similarly, regional organiza-
tions pass down internationally agreed global market standards. In discursive
terms, ‘‘regional regulation’’ carries fewer negative connotations for sovereignty
and regime autonomy than ‘‘regional institution building’’ which, throughout the
pre-crisis days in East Asia, carried with it negative, European style, implications of
sovereignty pooling.
4 International Organization and the
Limits to Global Governance
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
International organizations exhibit a characteristic shared by many other kinds of
organizational structures. They tend to be extremely durable over time even to the
extent of having outlived their usefulness in some instances. There are reasons
for durability speciWc to each individual organization. But there are also more
generalized explanations. In addition to the obvious eVects of inertia, the devel-
opment of an internal bureaucratic dynamic and an organizational instinct for self-
preservation are worth noting. Notably, in an era of globalization, problem solving
becomes increasingly complex and less amenable to state-based resolution.
Policy problems are increasingly deWned as global, or trans-sovereign, problems,
especially in the domains of trade, Wnance, environment, and also security given
the changing nature of threat, human rights, and development. Governments,
especially in the second half of the twentieth century, developed a habit of seeking
international political institutions 625
international organizational responses to problems not amenable to state level
resolution. This is at one level the same for all states, including the USA, although
international organizations are usually more important to smaller than larger
players, even though it is larger players rather than the smaller players that get to
set and steer the agenda of the organizations.
The principal question about the role of international organizations as vehicles
of global governance (economic and political) pertains to the quantity and quality
of this governance in an era where we have an overdeveloped global economy and
an underdeveloped global polity. There is a strong disconnect between governance
seen as eVective and eYcient collective action problem solving in a given issue area
on the one hand and governance as a system of accountability and representation
within international organization on the other. It is this that leads to the debate
about the ‘‘legitimacy deWcits’’ in major international organizations.
The UN and EU, and international organizations in general, share this problem.
The UN has problems of eVectiveness and eYciency in the delivery of global public
policy and of legitimacy. The EU has less of a problemwith delivery but it also has a
major legitimacy problem within European civil society (Bellamy 2005). The
disjuncture between securing legitimation from the bottom up and eVective and
eYcient administration from the top down in international organizations is
captured in the distinction between input legitimacy and output legitimacy (Keo-
hane 2004; Grant and Keohane 2005). This challenges the all too easy assumption
that multilateral international organizations will inevitably remain key actors in
global governance in the twenty-Wrst century. We tend to forget that multilateral-
ism as a foreign policy tool was always a modest endeavor and, as Keohane notes,
‘‘a social construction of the twentieth century’’ that holds less sway at the
beginning of the twenty-Wrst. This is a key issue for international organization.
Without this balance the rational, stable, and harmonious development of an
accountable and acceptable system of regulation at the global level will not be
possible.
5 Conclusion
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
So where do we stand? In the early twenty-Wrst century the theory and practice of
international organization is subsumed within wider scholarship on international
institutions and regimes seen as sets of international rules and norms principally,
but not exclusively, for states. An intellectual contest exists between those who see
international cooperation as rationalistand rational, but limited, and those who
626 richard higgott
have a more sociological, constitutive understanding of international institution-
alism. Esoteric as this might seem, it casts long policy shadows.
If, within a sociological context, we see international organization as institu-
tionalized international relations, then we might conclude by saying that there
appears not to be a strong correlation between the volume of international
organizational activity and its ability to deal eVectively and eYciently with the
large issues in international relations. The strong still operate outside the borders of
organizational norms when it suits them. This is especially the case with regards to
war and military conXict (such as the US-led invasion of Iraq). To this extent, if
realist theory is principally about the interests of the powerful it seems diYcult to
brook its assertions about the irrelevance of international institutions (Mearshei-
mer 1994–5). But as Simmons and Martin ask (2002, 195), if realism was the
sole form of reasoning in international relations then it would not explain
why the United States spent so much of the second half of the twentieth
century underwriting the principles of international organization. Even for
realists—policy-makers more than theorists it needs to be added—IOs still fulWll
important functions. Even realists cooperate.
We do not have to accept the ‘‘end of globalism’’ literature (Ralston Saul 2005) to
recognize the manner in which a range of events have curtailed enthusiasm for
international organization in major quarters. It is not an axiomatic assumption at
the beginning of the twenty-Wrst century that an expanded role for international
organization in this era is assured. The crisis in the role of the UN Security Council
in the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the failure of the USA to ratify the Kyoto
Protocol and to sign on to the International Criminal Court, are testament to the
need to be context speciWc and time speciWc in our judgments of the salience of
IOs. Constraints on the further development of the EU in the wake of the abortive
constitution also bear witness to the limitations of regional projects to advance
beyond certain stages. These judgments give rise to the question, ‘‘where now in the
theory and practice of international organization?’’
Research on international organization in the early twenty-Wrst century will
axiomatically be embedded within the wider study of global governance and
particularly the degree to which international organizations can bridge the
gap between their abilities to provide eVective and eYcient decision-making
underwritten by the best technical expertise on the one hand and the ability of
international organizations to legitimate their actions on the other. The key issues
in any future research agenda therefore will revolve around issues of institutional
reform, great power commitment, and questions of organizational/institutional
legitimacy. Empirically, the focus of research will stay on the major organizations—
the UN, the EU, and important emerging regional actors.
It is diYcult to disaggregate theory from practice in any future research agenda.
In the UN context, for example, no one denies the need for reform nor the key
elements of an institutional reform agenda—from adjusting the Security Council
international political institutions 627
to Wt the contemporary global realities of power rather than those of 1945 through
to securing the Millennium Development Goals. The interesting question, for
scholar and practitioner alike, is less ‘‘what reform?’’ than ‘‘how to get there?’’
(Maxwell 2005, 1). The ‘‘what’’ questions are set out in the 2005 report of the
Secretary General (http://www.un.org/largerfreedom). For the scholar of inter-
national organization the ‘‘how’’ question is a ‘‘cooperation’’ and ‘‘collective
action’’ question that requires theoretical tools such as game theory but used in a
manner sensitive to the political dynamics of the organization and international
politics.
At this early stage in the twenty-Wrst century, the principal political dynamic in
practical terms revolves around how the rest of the members of the UN deal with
the United States. How do you keep the hegemonic actor wedded to multilateral-
ism and the international organizations through which it functions when the
hegemon is convinced that other states see international organization as a way to
constrain it (Beeson and Higgott 2005)? This has created an atmosphere of mutual
distrust that is not only inhibiting the institutional reform process but also the
ability to embed important new international norms such as the ‘‘Responsibility to
Protect’’ (see CIGI 2005, 1–12).
Like the UN, the EU too exhibits serious contemporary problems. But scholars
of the EU tackle these problems in a diVerent way to researchers working on UN
reform. If enhancing institutional performance is the independent reform variable
and greater representation is the dependent variable when looking at the UN, then
this situation is reversed in current research on the EU. Because the EU is at an
advanced legal and institutionalized state of development (see Stone Sweet 2004) it
is the politics of the legitimacy deWcit rather than the institutional performance
deWcit to which scholars turn their attention. Performance and legitimacy are
related, but they can work against each other (see Bellamy 2005).
Scholars of political theory are battling to identify a balance in the relationship
that allows for eYcient decision-making that is both legitimate and accountable. To
date, there is no deWnitive answer how this might be achieved given the deWciencies
in institutional arrangements on the one hand and the absence of a European
demos on the other. This debate currently turns on diVerent readings of the degree
to which eYciency in the provision of public goods is enhanced or inhibited by too
little (or too much) democratic input. As this chapter shows, transparency and
information sharing, central to the eYcient operation of international organiza-
tion, is not the same as democratic accountability (see Keohane 2004; Eriksen and
Fossum 2004; Moravcsik 2004).
In sum, multilateralism as a principal (and principled) element of global
governance in both the economic and the security domains in the early years
of the twenty-Wrst century—and with it, the standing of many international
organizations—is strained at the global level and at a crossroads at the regional
level. Public goods for a ‘‘just’’ global era—economic regulation, environmental
628 richard higgott
security, the containment of organized crime and terrorism, the enhancement of
welfare—cannot be provided by states alone. They must be provided collectively,
be it at global or at regional levels. Notwithstanding the increasing importance of
non-state actors, interstate cooperation, primarily via international organiza-
tions, is still at the heart of successful global policy-making and it is still driven
by the domestic actor preferences of powerful countries (Milner 1997) whether it
be the US in the international organizations or major state actors at critical
junctures in regional projects. Despite persuasive normative arguments in favor
of collective action problem solving, prospects for enhanced successful multilat-
eral cooperation, via international organizations, should not be exaggerated. For
multilateralism to work, and major international organizations to function, rules
must (self-)bind the hegemon, as well as the smaller players. ‘‘Without the
self-binding of the hegemon, multilateral organizations become empty shells’’
(Martin 2003, 14).
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