Membership in International Organizations

Abstract

This is a core chapter of the book. It shows that—contrary to conventional wisdom—international organizations do not need to have members as (i) the parties to the organization’s constituent agreement do not need to become members. Also, (ii) a membership structure is not suitable for all international organizations, especially international organizations producing global public goods or fighting global public bads, and effectively, there are international organizations without a formal membership structure. Also, traditional membership concepts are predicated on the club theory, and in this context, on the correlation of benefits and obligations resulting from membership. However, such traditional concepts of international organization are not suitable, or only suitable to a very limited extent, for new types of organizations producing global public goods for fighting global public bads. In addition, they lose importance as an eligibility criterion even for traditional organizations with a treaty base. The chapter discusses different types of membership and subjects of membership. While it is firmly established that states, international organizations, and dependent territories are eligible subjects of membership, the question whether corporations and other transnational actors may be full members of international organizations is generally not even raised, let alone answered. There is no reason why such forms of institutionalized participation should be excluded. It conceivable that there may be international organizations with a membership structure consisting entirely of corporations and other non-state actors. Affiliate or sector membership of private sector entities and other transnational actors should be encouraged. Moreover, international organizations should become hubs, platforms and fora for a great variety of actors, including sub-state actors. This chapter also reviews membership procedures and various classifications of such procedures based on the number of organs that are involved in the approval of the membership process, based on the criteria adopted for the review process and relating to different subjects of membership.