International Organization in the Anarchical Society

This chapter identifies a set of fundamental institutions which are constitutive of international society and its elements of order and justice. It goes on to discuss the role of international organizations in fundamental institutional continuity and change, especially change in the constitutive principles and reproducing practices of fundamental institutions. Such changes may come about by design or incrementally. The chapter argues that international organizations have the potential to affect and shape the operation of fundamental institutions and thus international order and justice, either globally or regionally. Moreover, they may support the evolution of new fundamental or primary institutions.

This chapter models international society as a two-level structure, made up of primary or foundation institutions, as that term was understood by Hedley Bull, and international organizations. It suggests that the two sorts of institutions have a non-deterministic but probabilistic relationship in which primary institutions constrain international organizations, while international organizations introduce changes into primary institutions. The model is a construct out of intimations, suggestions and finally modelling stricto sensu contained in six key arguments concerning the relations of fundamental institutions and international organizations. It is a process model that outlines, in ideal form, how messages are conceived, the routes that they take, when they are likely to be frustrated and by what agency. It suggests both structure and agency and shows how they are related.

This chapter discusses how international organizations affect change and continuity of primary institutions. It conceptualises primary institutions as fundamentally flexible over time, although subject to locking-in as well as to emergence in international organizations. Primary institutions are practice-based and therefore evolving continuously, but international organizations are formally negotiated between states and so are notoriously difficult to change. This leads to constant tensions between practice and rules, and sometimes to calls for reform. This claim is illustrated by examples from the UN Security Council. The conclusion to draw is that international organizations are neither window-dressing of international affairs nor necessarily pushers for change. Rather, they contribute to stabilising an otherwise fluid institutional order.

This chapter considers the relationship between international law and the role and practice of the UN Security Council. Proceeding from the assumption that all international organizations are constituted, constrained, and empowered by the fundamental moral principles of the international legal order, it explores the way in which the norms of jus cogens have shaped the Security Council’s institutional environment and practice. It suggests that as a manifestation of the moral principles of international law, jus cogens norms have forged and defined the SC beyond the legal framework set out in the UN Charter. At the same time, it shows that the content and relevance of jus cogens itself have been shaped through Security Council successes and failures.

This chapter explores international sanctions as a practice for states to collectively punish the violation of important international norms through the institutionalized authority of international organizations. More than instrumental foreign policy tools, sanction are ways for states to reaffirm core constitutive principles of international society, stigmatize transgressors and deter future norm violations. The chapter discusses the development of international sanctions since the Concert of Europe and traces how sanctioning as an international practice has shaped the institutions of great power management and war. In so doing, it shows how ‘secondary’ institutions, primarily in this case the United Nations, through institutionalized practices such as international sanctions, can change the understanding or shape the transformation of certain primary institutions.

This chapter explores the way China’s rise to great power status transforms the notions of great power responsibility via the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It demonstrates that primary institutions of great power management and sovereignty have framed the historical process of the constitution and regulation of climate responsibility. In particular, China has begun to perceive climate responsibility as an important attribute of its great power responsibility: the norm of climate responsibility is now a central element of China’s search for legitimate great power status. The chapter proposes that great powers’ contribution to international organizations, as well as their domestic interests and actions, may have wider implications for international order and primary institutions of international society.

This chapter argues that the establishment and development of the UN and the ICC have shaped and changed the constitutive principles and reproducing practices of war (restricted and rationalized for common purposes), great power management (providing for concerted action) and international law (providing for collective enforcement). Furthermore, the UN and the ICC have played an important part in the evolution of a set of fundamental institutions which are constitutive of a solidarist international society as traditionally defined in the Grotian-solidarist theory and thought, namely, humanitarian intervention, international criminal jurisdiction and (various forms of) international trusteeship. These institutions involve practices which are potentially constitutive of international humanitarian government and collective enforcement, but they have also given rise to considerable turbulence as states and other actors try to balance pluralist and solidarist concerns as well as more immediate political interests in complex institutional settings.

The chapter develops the argument that change in the primary institution of trade comes about through political bargaining by reference to the WTO’s intellectual property rights agreement (TRIPS) and interpretations regarding public health in developing countries. The argument of the chapter is threefold: First, trade is shaped by a complex, rule-laden order based on different primary institutions. Second, changes in the trade institution take place through bargaining processes in a trade regime. Third, political bargaining in a regime may create new norms. However, new norms do not replace prevailing norms. Rather, political processes can initiate the emergence of new norms alongside older norms, changing the institution but also producing tensions and contradictions.

Until recently, the English School of International Relations (ES) has been interested in the operation of norms and institutions regulating the ‘society of states’ at the global level. In the last years, however, a new regional focus has marked its research agenda, asking questions on what norms, rules and institutions operate in different regions and whether they mirror those at the global level or are different from them. Yet, in this regional turn, there has so far been a blind spot, namely, the role of regional international organizations in ‘localizing’ global norms and institutions in their regional domain. This chapter presents and interprets the results of the dataset compiled by Barry Buzan and Altin Naz Sunay (English School Primary Institutions and International Organizations, Study of IGO Charters, Section 1:UN Family parts 1 and 3; Section 2: European Intergovernmental Organizations; Section 3: Primary Institutions in the Middle East; Section 4: English School Primary Institutions and Asian Intergovernmental Organizations. Research conducted for Prof. Barry Buzan, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics, 2007) on fundamental institutions and regional organizations with the intention to fill this gap. The initial findings suggest that fundamental institutions are received differently into different regional organizations and different organizations stress different priorities.

This chapter engages with the EU’s contribution to solidarist change in international society in two perspectives. The first part focuses on the internal dynamics of European integration, the second on the EU’s potential to induce external change in the global international society. The analyses provide two major findings: First, against the criticism that the EU would ultimately fail to pursue a transformative agenda, the EU indeed is a solidarising force in international society. Second, solidarising processes must take into account existing pluralist structures. Hence, any solidarist change does also require pluralist re-enactment to some extent.

This chapter argues that the Arab League played an important role in the emergence, consolidation, and change of the principles and practices of Westphalian sovereignty in the Arab interstate society from its foundation in 1945 to the Arab Spring. The first part discusses the impact of the design of the Arab League and its Charter on the emergence of Westphalian sovereignty in the region. The second part discusses how the practices of the Arab League led to the consolidation of Westphalian sovereignty and the decline of Arab nationalism after 1967. The third part examines the Arab League policies during the Arab Spring and their impact on the principles and practices of Westphalian sovereignty in the Arab interstate society.

Why do international governance structures in regions with a history of colonization often display contradictions or gaps between formal commitments and actual cooperation? Rather than looking for exogenous causes, this chapter accounts for the purported dysfunctionalities by tracing and contextualizing the contested institutionalization practices of local agents. Drawing on the English School’s distinction between primary and secondary institutions, it sees regional governance structures not simply as the consequence of competing state interests but, more fundamentally, of attempts to translate a complex normative structure into an organizational framework. The emergence of Southeast Asia’s international society illuminates the political nature of these processes: tensions between primary institutions drove the renegotiation of hierarchies and boundaries but also subverted it, resulting in ambiguous governance structures.