International Institutions: classification and main characteristics

Abstract

International Institutions (IIs) are the result of the need of sovereign states to come together, as an international community, to promote cooperation, development, and social well-being as well as ensuring pacific co-existence. IIs have often been described as “clubs of states” for their constituencies are normally nation states. IIs’ accountability to the individuals and communities that are the ultimate beneficiaries of their activities is usually mediated by the political representation mechanisms. While treaties and alliances among states have existed for centuries, establishmentof formal IIs began in the nineteenth century. The history of international relations shows the first IIs were formed in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. They were mainly focused on specific themes, such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), still in operation today. Of notable significance was the emergence of the League of Nations following World War I. This institution was designed to foster collective security in order to sustain peace. It is in the ashes of this experiment that the United Nations was created after World War II, together with the Bretton Woods institutions. These organizations were set up as a system of international relations intended to maintain peace, develop friendly relations based on the principle of equal rights and self-determination, achieve international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian cooperation, and to establish a stable and global financial and monetary system. In the second part of the twentieth century the number and complexity of inter-governmental organizations progressively grew to encompass more than 250 formal IIs, a UN system composed of more than 30 separate entities, several regional and global Development Banks (among the only remaining institutions to have a triple-A credit rating) and “supra-national” institutions, to whom states delegate entire areas of their sovereignty, such as the European Union.