THE LAW AND POLITICS OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS
1. THE LAW AND
POLITICS
OF INTERNATIONAL
ORGANIZATIONS
S M Masum Billah (PhD, VUW)
Professor
Department of Law
Jagannath University
2. Introductory Comments
Inhabit a dynamic space at the intersection of international law
and international politics.
Established by international treaty and governed by international
law.
Populate the international landscape, addressing issues of war and
peace, economics, environment, and virtually every other field of
human endeavor, including many once considered to be
exclusively matters of domestic law such as education and health.
Have become increasingly institutionalized, international
organizations have become key actors in the evolving architecture
of global governance.
3. Presentation Sequence
Explains the major theoretical approaches to the creation
and functions of IOs.
Analyzes the most important conceptual debates over the
autonomy, accountability, and legitimacy of IOs.
Why IOs increasingly seem unable to effectively address
matters of pressing international concern.
A brief conclusion follows.
4. Why IOs are formed and what
purposes they serve.
Four theories:
i) Realism
ii) Functionalism
iii) Constructivism
iv) Liberalism
They mainly differ by the variables they emphasize and
the causal mechanisms assumed to drive the state
behavior.
5.
6. Realism
Three assumptions:
(i) states are the central actors in an anarchic international environment;
(ii) states are endowed with interests that are often conflictual; and
(iii) each state has material power capabilities that shape the substance
and structure of international law and organizations.
Shaped and limited by the states that found and sustain them and have
little independent effect.
Realism is “the theory that international lawyers love to hate”!
Collective good better.
Whether institutions have strong or weak effect depends on what
states intend.
7. Criticism of the Realist Approach
Does little to predict or explain important shifts
in the structure of the international system (i.e.,
the rise and fall of the Arab Spring or the
collapse of the Soviet Bloc).
Does not explain why the states spend substantial
time and resources to create and maintain them.
What is state interest by the way?
8. Functionalism
Provides a compelling rationale for states to create and maintain IOs.
States create IOs to solve cooperation problems that cannot be
resolved unilaterally or via decentralized solutions.
States overcome collective action problems by reducing transaction
costs, providing information, facilitating issue linkages, increasing
transparency, and lengthening the shadow of future.
Rational Design (RD) features: (membership, scope, centralization,
control, and flexibility).
Addresses problems: information, distribution, enforcement.
Dispute resolution: compulsory vs. noncompulsory jurisdiction, available
remedies, initiation of proceedings, the length and terms of judicial
appointment etc.
9. Social Constructivism
Value, history, practices, institutions, multiculturalism, language
change a society.
Constructivists reject the idea that state interests exist prior to
social interaction; rather interest and identity are a product of
social interaction.
As IOs provide focal points for state interaction.
WB, for example, have redefined the concept of “development”,
OECD have helped invent the concept of trade in services.
IOs help to foster the density of continuous interactions that are
necessary to make, remake, or unmake international law.
11. Liberalism
Liberal approach open the black box of the states to foreground the
roles of the individual and social groups and their relative power in
the society to influence state policy.
States are embedded in domestic and international civil society, which
shapes the underlying preferences upon which state policy is based.
Governments to include internationally enforceable intellectual
property norms in the trade system, eventually resulting in the WTO’s
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPs Agreement).
Liberal approaches invite focus not simply on how domestic interest
groups shape international rules and institutions, but also on how
those rules and institutions, in turn, are used to shape domestic policy.
12. Conceptual debates about IOs
Three most pressing issues of IOs:
Autonomy
Accountability and
Legitimacy
They are distinct, yet intersecting.
13. Autonomy
A sense of independent legal personality.
The landmark 1949 advisory opinion of the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) in the Reparations Case found that the UN possessed
international legal personality and could bring a legal claim on its
own behalf, notwithstanding the UN Charter’s silence on both issues.
The Court reasoned that:
“[u]nder international law, the [UN] must be deemed to have those
powers which, though not expressly provided in the Charter, are conferred
upon it by necessary implication as essential to the performance of its
duties.”
Credible commitment, international neutrality, Principal-Agent
Relations.
Agency, delegation and transfer of power (delegation most
appropriate for IOs).
14. Accountability
Accountability “implies that some actors have the right to hold
other actors to a set of standards.
IOs power in modern world have increased.
This calls for accountability.
UN body’s responsibility for Oil-for-Food scandal and
UN peacekeepers’ role in triggering a cholera outbreak in
Haiti have intensified these demands.
15. Contd.
Examples of Accountability mechanisms: reviewing, judging, and
sanctioning IO actions.
In practice, IOs are measured and ranked in terms of their:
transparency, participation, evaluation of operations and quality of
complaint and response mechanisms.
Global Administrative Law have ensured a kind of “intra-regime
responsibility”.
16. Legitimacy
Legitimacy continues to occupy a central position in our
understanding and evaluation of governance institutions.
States’ consent to form the IO is regarded as legitimacy.
Related to the justification and acceptance of political authority.
Legitimate institution is “morally justified in attempting to
govern”.
WTO’s consent requirement suffers from “democratic deficit”,
requires less normative justification.
17. Fragmentation and proliferation
IOs have embraced fragmentation and proliferation.
As opposed to centrality, this is a response to diversity
Hierarchy and coherence are laudable goals for any legal system,
including international law, but at the moment they are impossible
goals. The benefits of the alternative, multiple forums, are worth the
possible adverse consequences … the risk is low and the potential
benefits to the peaceful settlement of international disputes is high.
State do “relational” interactions like “regulatory,”
(administrative) “operational,” (join venture) and
“conceptual”(reconceptualize things) interactions.
18. Institutional Deadlock
The UN obviously has not eliminated global conflict it has:
facilitated the settlement of many regional conflicts,
played a central role in the decolonization process, and
greatly elevated the prominence of human rights in international legal and
political discourse.
IOs at the center of functional regimes have also overseen significant
achievements:
the GATT/WTO and Bretton Woods institutions have spearheaded an enormous
expansion of the global economy that has helped to lift millions out of poverty,
the WHO was instrumental in virtually eliminating polio and smallpox and
reducing infant mortality, and
the UNHCR has assisted over 30 million refugees fleeing war, persecution, and
famine.
Make the conveniences of modern life possible (ICAO, IPU).
19. Contd.
However, IOs role are in deadlock and, perhaps, have declined. To
mention just a few prominent examples:
multilateral efforts to address global climate change, perhaps the
planet’s most pressing challenge, have proven largely unsuccessful to
date;
Many round of global trade talks, launched in 2001, have long been
stalemated.
Why, then, the global cooperation seems to be failing just when it is
needed most?
Lack of global leadership—USA, Japan busy with own affairs.
Growing multipolarity of international relations, where power is
diffusing but politics is diversifying.
Institutional structures—voting, memberships etc.
20. Contd.
For all of these reasons, states and other international actors are
experimenting with other forms of governance:
Networks
public–private partnerships
informal groupings
regional frameworks
a variety of cross-institutional collaborations.
21. Conclusion
If the international community is to successfully resolve the
pressing global problems of today and tomorrow, international
organizations will play key roles.
Thus it is critical for international law and international relations
scholars to understand the law and politics of international
organizations.
In this presentation some of the most important ideas, concepts,
and assumptions have been discussed that shape the debate
surrounding the IOs.
It also reflects the vibrancy, creativity, and richness of
contemporary approach to the IOs.
