Theory, methods, and international organizations

International organizations shape the politics and controversies that arise among
countries in a number of ways.
International organizations are diverse and sophisticated entities, with legal, political,
and social dimensions that overlap and conflict in interesting ways.
Which means that international organization are stuck in an eternal dilemma as their
power and existence are derivate of precisely those actors (states) that they are
supposed to regulate or govern or influence.
Realism:
The distinctive feature of realism comes when realits offer a definition of what they
mean by “power” in this formulation. For realists, power is understood in terms of
material, military resources such as tanks and bombs, and in the contribution of
these to the power or security of a country.
At this point, a distinctive perspective to international relations emerges: it suggests
that international politics should be understood in terms of the pursuit of military
dominance by states in an effort to reduce their intrinsic sense of insecurity in
relations to other countries. It is from of this view of the power that we can derive the
central realist prediction: “the great powers will develop and mobilize military
capabilities to constrain the most powerful among them”.
The realist approach to international politics involves an ontological claim (that the
states are the starting point), a theory of their motivation power (materiality). It is
mainly the last of these separates realism from other approaches, since state-
centrism and a desire for power can feature equally in the other perspective as well.
Liberalism:
The liberal approach to world politics begins with an emphasis on the choices that
actors make in the pursuit of their interests, in relation to the choices and interests
of other actors. Liberalism suggests that OIs can be seen as series of agreements
which states enter into expecting to receive a gain.
Contractualism, when applied to international organization, take as its staring point
the states that make up the organization, and studies their choices, options, and
behaviors, states are the agents, and even though they may agree to certain limits
on their freedom as they consent to international rules, they remain legally and
conceptually free to renounce those limits and revoke their consent at any time.
The study of international organizations as regimes is often conjoined with a
recognition that the actually operating set of rules relevant for any particular question
will not begin with formal international organizations.
Constructivism:
Begins with an apparently simple problem. The United States acted with alarm when
North Korea developed a nuclear bomb in the 1990 and 2000 but with support when
the United Kingdom did so earlier in the twentieth century.
Constructivism is founded on the fact that much of international politics is shaped by
the ideas that people and states have about themselves and the world around them
(ideas such “ally and enemy”), and that these ideas can change over time. This is
what makes the world hang together, at the intersection between actors, ideas, and
material world.
In addition on the constitutive effects of interaction between actors and structures in
other words it looks at how the process of interacting in the world interests and the
ideas of the actor.
States and international organizations shape each other in the process of world
politics. As states react to the decisions of international organizations, they can
reinforce the organizations authority and power.
Constructivism does not deny that states seek to pursue their interests, or that sates
seek power. Its distinctive contribution is in showing how they come to see certain
things as being in their interest, or as being useful tools of power, and how these
ideas change in the course in events. It is therefore as much about power and
interests as any of other theories of I.O.
Marxism:
The study of international organizations as regimes is often conjoined with a
recognition that the actually operating set of rules relevant for any particular question
will not begin and end with formal international organizations.
Marxism in I.O scholarship is the way that the political and economic domains ad
linked. For Chimmi, there is little reason to differentiate between in the political
interests expressed by the rich states in meetings of the Security Council and the
economic analyses produced by the IMF both serve the same set of interests,
namely to maintain a stable political system that enables the accumulation of wealth
in ever fewer private hands.
Concluding remarks on I.R theory
There are some common caricatures of I R theory that commonly circulate in
discussions of international organizations, and these should be resisted. For
instance, it is often said that realsm is about the pursuit of power by states, the
liberals are optimistic about cooperation between states, that constructivists see
norms as consequential in explaining international cooperation, that Marxism lost its
influence after the end of cold war.
IOs as fora
In the role as for a, international organizations represent an extension of the
nineteenth-century European practice of holding ad hoc, themed “conferences”
among governments, such as those that produced the first Geneva Conventions.
This practice became largely institutionalized in the United Nations after 1945, with
mayor UN-sponsored conferences on environment and development (Rio 1993),
human rights (Viena 1994), and the status of women (Mexico city 1975, Bejing 1995)
among others. The value of the U.N in these cases is that it can provide experienced
logistical support for such large meetings, even though it itself may not be present
as a formal participant. These meetings represent the “forum” function of IOs in its
clearest form.
The academic study of international organizations has developed various strands for
thinking about this complexity in different ways. The theorical approaches in this
chapter, realism, liberalism, constructivism and Marxism, adopt different staring
points for thinking about international organization.