Abstract
A growing body of research demonstrates powerful effects of international organizations on national policy, and the literature on international conflict is increasingly adopting a network perspective on international organizations, but we still know little about the network structure of the world polity itself. This is surprising in light of the theoretical implications of world polity theory, world systems theory, and the world civilizations approach to the structure of the world polity. Using data on a set of prominent intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), along with a comparison to the complete population of IGOs, this study examines the world polity as a network structured by symbolic and material conflict. Network analysis reveals a contradictory duality in the structure of the world polity: while states are densely interconnected through international organizations, these international organizations are only sparsely interconnected. Contrary to world polity theory, world system position and world civilization predict position in the world polity. These results show that, in neglecting the network structure of the world polity, previous research has underestimated the extent of structural inequality in the world polity. Because embeddedness in the world polity has such powerful effects on state policies, international trade, and international conflict, the centralization and fragmentation of the world polity may have disintegrative implications for world politics.
Highlights
By 2000, only 40 percent of prominent intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) dyads had at least one common member state. These results hold for the subsample of ten prominent IGOs present in both 1950 and 2000: in this network, 76 percent of IGOs shared at least one member state in common in 1950, but this declined to 67 percent by 2000. This suggests that IGOs are becoming less universal in their membership, which is more consistent with the world systems and world civilization approaches to the world polity
This article contributes to the growing literature on political globalization and the world polity by revealing the network structure of IGOs
There is a lack of fundamental research on the international organizations that increasingly shape national policy and play a significant role in political globalization
Summary
A growing body of research demonstrates powerful effects of international organizations on national policy, and the literature on international conflict is increasingly adopting a network perspective on international organizations, but we still know little about the network structure of the world polity itself. The globalization movement has tended to focus on economic rather than political globalization, but it has oriented toward international organizations that promote neoliberal trade policy and reflect the intersection of the political and economic dimensions of globalization (Bandy 2004; Fisher et al 2005; Goldman 2001) Scholarship from this perspective shows that becoming enmeshed in the world polity—by joining international organizations—is related to policy adoption across diverse domains: education (Schafer 1999; Schofer and Meyer 2005), environmental protection (Frank, Hironaka, and Schofer 2000; Schofer and Hironaka 2005), women’s suffrage (Ramirez, Soysal, and Shanahan1997), gender equality (True and Mintrom 2001), same-sex sexual relations (Frank and McEneaney 1999), and human rights (Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui 2005). World polity research shows that the effects of the world polity often outweigh the effects of traditional national-level factors
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