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 andregionalsettings 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.
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