The Nieo and the Distribution of American Assistance

Abstract

IN RECENT YEARS the linkage between international organizations and nations has generated a variety of research approaches. Charles Pentland (1976: 621-59) has summarized these linkages into three principal approaches. First, international organizations can serve as instruments of national policy. In this kind of linkage, international organizations are examined primarily as means that states use to obtain their own national goals. International institutions are in effect another tool of statecraft along with the traditional military, economic, and diplomatic instruments which nations possess. Second, international organizations can act as autonomous international actors above and beyond the nation-state system. In this context, previous research has assessed how far international autonomy has gone and how far these organizations have contributed to international integration. Third, international organizations can intercede as systemic modifiers of state behavior. In this linkage, international organizations are analyzed neither as independent actors in global politics nor as instruments of policy for a particular state. Instead, research in this tradition examines the impact of international organizations behavior upon state behavior, rather than assessing the effect of state behavior upon international organizations as in the first linkage. The aim is to assess how far international organization activities affect nation-state behavior.1