International Organisations Case Study
The number of International Organisations (IOs) is continuously increasing, as well as their role in international policy making. IOs operate a significant number of basic functions that is thought to enhance the prospect of cooperation between states. The first attempt to establish an effective International Organisation was the creation of the League of Nations (LoN) after the First World War. The main purpose of establishing the League of Nations at that time was to serve as a third party intervention in international conflicts. However, the League of Nation failed and thus, the United Nations (UN) was created after the end of the Second World War (Heywood, 2011). The UN and organisations under the UN systems are considered to be the most significant IOs, however, there are 1963 IOs other than the UN in the world today, all deal with different global issues and regional problems within specific nations. IOs nowadays influences the independent behavior of states and governments more than ever before (Andreev, 2007). However, this to some extent affects the states sovereignty and power, thus raising a question regarding the authority and span of decision making of IOs in world politics.
The following essay is going analyze whether IOs should gain more or less authority in world politics. The essay will first give a brief introduction of the main role of IOs in world politics, afterward; the essay will examine the realist and the liberals point of views on increasing the span of IOs authority in world politics.
According to Rittberger, Zangl and Kruck (2012), IOs cover several issue areas of international relations; some of those issues are terrorism, diseases, regional conflict, economic, poverty, climate change, maintain peace and many others. Some International Relations scholars believe that those problems cannot be resolved without multilateral cooperation, even most powerful states are not able to manage these problems alone. Since todays world is categorized by “security interdependence” it requires global governance where IOs play an important role in building international governance. Furthermore, some scholars consider IOs to be a self-directed agent with the ability to set agendas, control state behavior and take legally obligatory actions that might impose upon state sovereignty (Tierney and Weaver).
IOs consist of many different types, however, the two main types are Intergovernmental organisations (IGO) and International non-governmental organisations (INGO). IGOs are public or governmental organization created by an agreement between states such as the UN, the European Union (EU), World Bank and world trade organisation (WTO). While INGOs are organisations created by individuals and are not affected by governments such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace (law.georgetown.edu, 2008). This essay is going to mainly discuses Intergovernmental organisations (IGO) and will