2 International Organization: Some
Historical and Theoretical Insights
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- 1 Historical Context
International organization is about rules agreed amongst independent political
communities. To a greater or lesser extent these rules help determine the shape of
world order. Historically they were developed to overcome the limits of bilateral
state-to-state diplomacy. Technical institutions, limited in scope and aspiration,
emerged prior to organizations with more sweeping economic and sociopolitical
agendas, especially during the ‘‘Wrst wave of globalization’’ at the end of the
nineteenth century (Hirst and Thompson 1999 ). The International Telegraph
Union (founded in 1865 ) is often thought of as theWrst intergovernmental organ-
ization. Between 1900 and 2000 the number of IGOs grew from 37 to well over 400
(Krieger 1993 , 451 ; Schiavone 2001 ). Key institutions that developed in the second
half of the nineteenth century included the Universal Postal Union and the Concert
of Europe.
The Concert of Europe, while acknowledged as an IO geared to consultation
between the European Great Powers as a way of pre-empting the use of force, was
never imbued with the substantive executive capabilities that we now assume of
international organizations. But, it gave birth to a number of norms concerning
the conduct and status of states and the development of international conference
diplomacy as an important stage in the evolution of international organizations
as actors in international politics (Armstrong 2004 , 4 ). The period between the
Congress of Vienna ( 1815 ) and the outbreak of the First World War was the ‘‘era of
preparation for international organization’’ (Claude 1971 , 41 ). The Hague confer-
ences of 1899 and 1907 through to the Paris Peace Conference, that saw the creation of
the League of Nations, experimented with the tools of collective intergovernmental
conXict resolution (mediation, arbitration, commissions of inquiry, and the like.)
Notwithstanding the failure of the League, the growth of international organ-
ization, especially since the end of the Second World War, has been the quintes-
sential characteristic of the international politics (and economics) of the twentieth
century, especially through the birth of the Bretton Woods system ( 1944 ) and the
creation of the United Nations in 1945 and its ancillary organizations (such as the
Food and Agricultural Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency,
the World Health Organization, UNESCO, and the Economic Commissions for
Africa, Latin America, and Asia PaciWc, between 1947 and 1974. This organizational
growth reXected the attempt to manage respect for theprinciple of sovereigntywhile
at the same time recognizing the growing practical need for states to engage in
collective action problem solving in a range of complex issue-areas. Even
international political institutions 613