articulate organizational norms, and act as mediators in disputes between mem-
bers can give organizations considerable operational autonomy (see Abbot and
Snidal 2001 , 15 – 23 ).
Notable among those bodies that do have instruments of formal legal suasion
over (some) member states in the ‘‘political domain,’’ is the UN with the provisions
for taking collective security action under Chapter VII of the Charter. The WTO,
with its dispute settlement mechanism, also falls into this category. To date, only
the EU has supranational legal power over citizens of member states. The impact of
organizations, however, is determined less by formal legal rules than the internal
politics of a given organization and especially the role of the major actors within it.
In this regard, thetheoryof international organization is important to understand-
ing their role inpractice.
- 3 Theorizing International Organization
By way of initial clariWcation we should note that for scholars of ‘‘international
politics,’’ ‘‘international’’ usually means interstate relations while ‘‘global politics’’
embraces the activities of all international actors be they states, or non-state actors.
Similarly, ‘‘global governance’’ has become a hosting metaphor for all political and
economic actors, including international organizations that practice politics
and administration beyond the boundaries of the modern state. By way of further
complication, ‘‘international’’ is also often transposed with ‘‘multilateral,’’ as in the
way bodies such as the UN or the IMF are called either international institutions or
multilateral institutions.
It is, therefore, worth recalling the standard deWnition of multilalteralism as
the management of transnational problems with three or more parties making
policy on the basis of a series of acceptable ‘‘generalized principles of conduct’’
(Ruggie 1993 , 11 ). The key principles identiWed by Ruggie are indivisibility, non-
discrimination, and diVuse reciprocity. It was expected that over time, decision-
making underwritten by these principles would lead to collective trust amongst
players within an institution. A key element in the development of trust would
come from the willingness of the institutional hegemon—that is, the strongest
member of the institution—to agree to be bound by these principles. That is, to
accept the principle of ‘‘self-binding’’ (Martin 2003 ).
Within this context, the principal way of thinking about the theory and practice
of international organization in the last quarter of the twentieth century was
through institutionalist and regime theory literature. The lesson drawn from this
literature is a recognition of the importance of IOs as vehicles for maximizing
information sharing, generating transparency in decision-making and advancing
the institutional ability to generate credible collective action problem solving in a
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