Chapter 18: International Organizations PDF

Chapter 18. ◦ An international organization is an institution with formal procedures and a membership comprising three or more states. ◦ These bodies can be thought of as instruments through which states pursue their own interests, as arenas that facilitate debate, and as actors that can affect...

Chapter 18. ◦ An international organization is an institution with formal procedures and a membership comprising three or more states. ◦ These bodies can be thought of as instruments through which states pursue their own interests, as arenas that facilitate debate, and as actors that can affect global outcomes. International organizations are created out of a composite of factors. ◦ These include the existence of interdependencies among states which encourage policy-makers to believe that international cooperation can serve common interests, and the presence of a hegemonic power willing and able to bear the costs of creating, and sustaining, an international organization. ◦ The United Nations is the only truly global organization ever constructed. ◦ The UN is nevertheless a hybrid body, configured around the competing need to accept the realities of great power politics and to acknowledge the sovereign equality of member states. ◦ This, in effect, has created the ‘two UNs’. ◦ The principal aim of the UN is to maintain international peace and security, with responsibility for this being vested in the Security Council. ◦ However, the UN has been restricted in carrying out this role particularly by the veto powers of the P-5 and the lack of an independent military capacity. ◦ The UN’s mixed performance in the area of peacekeeping has led to an increasing emphasis instead on the process of peace-building. ◦ The UN’s economic and social responsibilities are discharged by a sprawling and, seemingly, ever-enlarging array of programmes, funds and specialized agencies. ◦ Its main areas are human rights, development and poverty reduction, and the environment. Such widening concerns have ensured strong support for the UN, particularly across the developing world. ◦ The UN faces a range of important challenges and pressures for reform. ◦ These include those generated by the changing location of global power in an increasingly multipolar world, those associated with criticisms of the composition and powers of the Security Council, and those related to the UN’s finances and organisation.