chapter 31
...................................................................................................................................................INTERNATIONAL
POLITICAL
INSTITUTIONS
...................................................................................................................................................richard higgott
1Introduction
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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 thisHandbook, 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