INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS AND THE QUEST FOR GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

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INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS AND THE QUEST FOR
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

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INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (IGOs)
NONGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOs)

• There is an impressive number of nonstate actors
  on the world stage that are increasingly flexing
  their political muscles in efforts to engineer
  adaptive global changes.
• Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) are
  purposely created by states to solve shared
  problems. This gives IGOs whatever authority they
  possess for the purposes states assign them. They
  meet at regular intervals, and they have a
  permanent secretariat (or headquarters staff) and
  established rules for making decisions. Example
  the United Nations.
• Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) are
  associations comprised of members who are private
  individuals and groups. NGOs are generally
  regarded as less important than IGOs since they
  do not have states among their members. Example
  Amnesty International.

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GLOBAL INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS

• IGOs differ widely in terms of their sizes and
  purposes. Some of them qualify as global with
  high levels of participation by the state actors
  all around the world, while some others are more
  limited in terms of their scope and regional
  implications.
• In both global and regional scale, the expansion
  of IGOs contributed to the growth of a
  wide-reaching awareness on important global
  issues, such as, trade, disarmament, economic
  development, health, culture, human rights,
  labor, gender equality, poverty, debt...

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THE UNITED NATIONS

• The United Nations (UN) is the most known global
  intergovernmental organization. It is established
  at the end of World War II in 1945, and it is the
  successor of the League of Nations that was
  launched after World War I to prevent a possible
  reoccurrence of such a conflict.
• The organization (UN) reflects the relationships
  of five victorious states (the Peoples Republic
  of China, the United States, Russia, the United
  Kingdom, France) that had been allied during
  World War II, and these states govern the
  organization through their veto authorities in
  the Security Council.
• However, the veto privilege of the given five
  countries does not change the fact that the
  United Nations is a deeply important platform for
  all of its 192 member states to express and share
  their official concerns and attitudes on global
  matters, such as, terrorism, climate change...

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PURPOSES OF THE UNITED NATIONS

• Maintaining international peace and security,
• Developing friendly relations among states based
  on the principles of equal rights and the
  self-determination of peoples,
• Achieving international cooperation in solving
  international problems of an economic, social,
  cultural, and humanitarian character. Promoting
  and encouraging respect for human rights and for
  fundamental freedoms for all,
• Functioning as a center for harmonizing the
  actions of countries to attain these common ends,
• The UN is also a key actor for replacing the
  balance of power system with one based on
  collective security(guided by the principle that
  an act of agression by any state would be met by
  a collective retaliatory response from the rest).

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The UNs Expanding Agenda

• The history of the UN reflects the fact that both
  rich countries and developing countries have
  succesfully used the organization to promote
  their own foreign policy goals, and this record
  has led to the ratification of more than three
  hundred treaties and conventions consistent with
  the UNs six fundamental values international
  freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect
  for nature, and a sense of shared responsibility.
  Check p. 167 for conferences on different issues.
  
• However the UNs ambitions may exceed its meager
  resources. The UN has been asked to adress an
  expanding set of pressing military and
  nonmilitary problems and its plate is full. In
  response to the demands that have been placed on
  it, the United Nations has evolved over time into
  a vast administrative machinery, with offices
  and staff not only in the UN headquarters in New
  York but also in centres throughout the globe.

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THE UNS ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE(contains the
following six major bodies)

• General Assembly is the main deliberative body
  of the United Nations. All members are
  represented according to one-state/one-vote
  formula. Decisions are taken by a simple majority
  with the exception of important questions, which
  require a two-thirds majority. The resolutions
  passed by the General Assembly are only
  recommendations.
• Security Council has the primary responsibility
  of dealing with threats to international peace
  and security. It consists of five permanent
  members with the power to veto decisions (the
  Peoples Republic of China, the United States,
  Russia, the United Kingdom, France), and ten
  non-permanent members elected by the General
  Assembly for two-year terms ( now) Bosnia and
  Herzegovina, Germany, Portugal, Brazil, India,
  South Africa, Colombia, Lebanon, Gabon and
  Nigeria

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THE UNS ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
Economic and Social Council is responsible for
coordinating the UNs social and economic
programs, functional commissions, and specialized
agencies. This body has been particularly active
adressing economic development and human rights
issues. Trusteeship Council is charged with
supervising the administration of territories
that had not achieved self-rule. The Trusteeship
Council suspended operation in 1994, when the
last remaining trust territory gained
independence. International Court of Justice is
the principle judicial organ of the United
Nations. It is composed of fifteen independent
judges who are elected for nine-year terms by the
General Assembly and Security Council. The
competence of the Court is restricted to disputes
between states, and its jurisdiction is based on
the consent of disputants. Secretariat led by
the Secretary General (Ban Ki Moon), the
Secretariat contains the civil servants who
perform the administrative and secretarial
functions of the UN.
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• FUTURE CHALLENGES The past couple of decades
  have been reducing confidence in the UNs ability
  to fulfill its ambitious goals by building global
  norms, and the doubts compounded by many cases
  such as its ineffectiveness regarding the
  genocide in Darfur/Sudan, and its failure to
  tackle the human-rights conditions in Gaza during
  and after the 2008 military operation of Israel.

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OTHER PROMINENT GLOBAL IGOs

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) formed at
  the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. Before
  World War II, the international community lacked
  global institutional mechanisms in economic
  nature. IMF is a truly global IGO designed to
  maintain currency-exchange stability, function as
  a lender for countries experiencing financial
  crises, and promote international monetary
  cooperation.
• The World Bank formed at the Bretton Woods
  Conference in 1944. Originally established to
  support reconstruction efforts in Europe after
  World War II. However, the organization shifted
  its attention to finance projects aimed at
  promoting economic growth by offering loans with
  low interest rates and long repayment plans to
  underdeveloped and developing countries.
• The World Trade Organization established in
  order to prevent a possible repetition of the
  Great Depression of 1929. Bilateral tariff
  concessions called the General Agreement on
  Tariffs and Trade (GATT) superseded by the World
  Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO is targeting to
  replace regional free-trade agreements or free
  trade-blocs with an integrated world-wide system
  of free trade.

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REGIONAL INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS

• The Notion that intergovernmental organizations
  (IGOs) are run by the states that join them
  severely hinders or restrains the IGOs ability to
  rise above the interstate competition and pursue
  their own purposes.
• However, a rival hypothesis emerges from the
  viewpoint or perspective related to the European
  Union (EU). The EU is a unique success story
  among other regional intergovernmental
  organizations. It is an example of peaceful
  cross-border cooperation producing an integrated
  security community with a single economy.

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European Union

• European Union is a regional organization
  created by the merger of the European Coal and
  Steel Community (1951) and the European Atomic
  Energy Community (1957).
• The six founders of the European Coal and Steel
  Community were Belgium, France, West Germany,
  Italy, Luxembourg. Netherlands.
• European Atomic Energy Community (1957). (same
  member countries).
• It has since expanded geographically (1973, 1981,
  1986, 1995, 2004, 2007). Today it has 27 members.

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The Functionalist Philosophical Rationale for
European Integration

• European political integration process aimed at
  the establishment of an institution that would
  occasionally surpass individual European states,
  and this would contribute to the transformation
  of international relations from instruments of
  states to institutions over them.
• European integration process that have led to the
  European Union has been influenced by the
  philosophical backgrounds of functionalism and
  neofunctionalism.
• Functionalism is based on a peace by pieces
  formula in which the IGOs (in our case its the
  EU) built around the shared or pooled
  sovereignty of its member states instead of a
  total surrender of sovereignty. Cooperation on a
  functional area, if successful, will have a
  spill-over effect on the other functional areas
  (e.g., European Coal and Steel Community ?
  European Economic Community)
• (Spillover deepening of ties in one functional
  area of cooperation among the member states of a
  regional IGO, and the expansion of the given
  integration to other areas or fields.)
• Neofunctionalism holds that political
  institutions and policies should be crafted so
  that they can lead to further integration.

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ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

• The Council of Ministers is the European Unions
  administrative unit, and consists of cabinet
  members drawn from the EUs member states. It
  represents the governments of the member states
  and retains final authority over the
  policy-making decisions.
• The European Commission consists of twenty seven
  commissioners each one coming from member states
  who are nominated by the governments of the
  member states and must be approved by the
  European Parliament. Primary functions of the
  commission are to oversee the negotiation of EU
  treaties, propose new laws for the EU, execute
  the decisions of the Council of Ministers, manage
  the EUs budget.
• The European Parliament represents the political
  parties and public opinion within Europe. It is
  elected in direct elections by the citizens of
  the EUs member states. The Parliament shares
  authority with the Council of Ministers, but the
  Parliaments influence has increased over time.
  It passes laws with the council, approves the
  EUs budget, and oversee the Commission

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• The European Court of Justice was given the
  responsibility for adjudicating claims and
  conflicts among the EU member states as well as
  between those states and the institutions within
  the framework of the European Union. In addition,
  the court interprets EU law for national courts,
  and also rules on cases concerning individual
  citizens.
• OTHER REGIONAL INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
  (IGOs)
• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is
  a military alliance created in 1949 primarily to
  deter the Soviet Union in Western Europe. NATO
  has expanded its membership and broadened its
  mission in the post-Cold War era.
• The Association of Southeast Asian Nations
  (ASEAN)-established to promote regional economic,
  social and cultural cooperation.

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• The Economic Community of West African States
  (ECOWAS) established in 1975 to promote regional
  economic cooperation among its members.
• The Organization of the Islamic Conference
  (OIC)-established in 1969 to promote Islamic
  solidarity and cooperation by coordinating a
  large number of activities among a number of
  Islamic states.
• The Latin American Integration Association (LAIA)
  established in 1980 to promote and regulate
  reciprocal trade among its twelve members.
• The Southern African Development Community (SADC)
  established to promote regional economic
  development and integration
• The South Asian Association for Regional
  Cooperation (SAARC)
• established to promote economic, social and
  cultural cooperation

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• The Asia Pasific Economic Cooperation (APEC)-
  plans to establish free and open trade and
  investments in the region for developed and
  developing countries.

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Success of Integration

• What are the factors that make integration more
  succesful?
• Chances of political integration wane without
  geographical proximity, steady economic growth,
  similar political systems, supportive public
  opinion led by enthusiastic leaders, cultural
  homogeneity, internal political stability,
  similar experiences in historical and internal
  social development, compatible economic systems
  with supportive business interests, a shared
  perception of a common external threat,
  bureucratic compatibilities, and previous
  collaborative efforts.

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• Discussion Can nation states cope with
  challenges facing the world?
• Will global intergovernmental organizations
  replace the states as the primary actor in world
  politics?