• IO developed in 19th century in Europe

• Started with public international unions: which were special-purpose agencies

• These were designed to facilitate governments collaborations in social, economic or technical
matters

• Examples of pubic international unions

 International Telegraphic Union (1865)

 Universal Postal Union (1874)

• Why were they started: due to i) rise of industrialism and ii) introduction of new methods of
transportation and communication

• Further motivation to build IOs came from

 Urge to promote coordinated response by states to peacefully solve problems

 Growing social, economic and technical interdependence

 Moderating the conflicts

• Great Powers undertook efforts to further institution in Congress of Vienna (capital of Austria) in
1815

• Post-1898: series of inter-American conferences reinforced the Monroe Doctrine

• Simon Bolivar’s pronouncements regarding Latin America
• Around the time of WW I, basic institutional structure and procedure could evolve and were
confined mainly to Europe

• Broadening of the concept outside Europe happened after WW I

• After WW II
 Established of United Nations: came with negative and positive experiences of the
League of Nations

• International Organisation refers to

 Selznick (1957): Formal system of rules, objectives and rationalised administrative
instrument.

 Duverger (1972): Formal technical and material organisation: constitution, local

chapters, physical equipment, machines, emblems, letterhead stationery, a staff, an
administrative hierarchy etc.

 Ex: NATO, UNH, WHO, ILO

Inter. Org: Nature

• Transnational

• Cooperative arrangement

• Formal structure

• Open or closed membership

Inter. Org: Scope

• Internationalism

• Supranationalism: EU

• Prevention of war

• Collective security

• Defensive alliances

• Preventive diplomacy

• An international organization has been defined “as a forum of co-

operation of sovereign states based on multilateral international
organizations and comprising of a relatively stable range of participants,
the fundamental feature of which is the existence of permanent organs
with definite competences and powers acting for the carrying out of
common aims.
• In the widest sense, international organization can be defined as “a
process of organizing the growing complexity of international relations;
international organizations are the institutions which represent the
phase of that process. They are the expressions of and contributors to
the process of international organization, as well as, the significant
factors in contemporary world affairs.” Further” international
organizations, as institutions may come  and go in accordance with the
significance of the dynamism of international  relations. But international
organization, the process, exists as an established trend. It was   the
stimulus of the existing process ready   at hand  that automatically led,
after the collapse of the League of Nations, to the creation of new
organizations like the U.N. Thus, international organization is the
process by which states establish and develop format and continuing
institutional structures for the conduct of certain aspects of their
relationships with each other. It represents a reaction to the extreme
 decentralization of the traditional system of international relations and
the constantly increasing complexities of the interdependence of states’’
 International organization, institution drawing membership
from at least three states, having activities in several states, and
whose members are held together by a formal agreement.
The Union of International Associations, a coordinating
body, differentiates between the more than 250 international
governmental organizations (IGOs), which have been established
by intergovernmental agreements and whose members are
states, and the approximately 6,000 nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), whose members are associations or
individuals.
 International organizations serve many diverse functions,
including collecting information and monitoring trends (e.g.,
the World Meteorological Organization), delivering services and
aid (e.g., the World Health Organization), and providing forums
for bargaining (e.g., the European Union) and settling disputes
(e.g., the World Trade Organization). By providing political
institutions through which states can work together to achieve
common objectives, international organizations can help to
foster cooperative behaviour. IGOs also serve useful purposes for
individual states, which often use them as instruments of foreign
policy to legitimate their actions and to constrain the behaviour
of other states.
 Although the daily operations of most international
organizations are managed by specialized
international bureaucracies, ultimate authority rests with state
members. IGOs often work closely with other organizations,
including NGOs (e.g., Greenpeace and Amnesty International),
which serve many of the same functions as their IGO
counterparts and are particularly useful for mobilizing public
support, monitoring the effectiveness of international aid, and
providing information and expertise. Although many of the
thousands of NGOs direct their activities toward less developed
countries in Africa and Asia, some of which
 have authoritarian forms of government, most of these groups
are based in developed states with pluralist political systems.
Only a small fraction of NGOs are international in scope, though
they have played an increasingly important role in international
relations.
