Participation In International Institutions Research Articles

The Globalization Backlash: Exploring New Perspectives

Rising popular discontent with globalization in Europe and the United States has occurred alongside increasing support for extreme right-wing parties, protectionism, and anti-immigrant views. This globalization backlash seems to be contributing to economic globalization’s abatement, especially with respect to trade but increasingly foreign investment, immigration, and participation in international institutions as well. What are the key forces driving these recent events and what are their broader political and institutional consequences? This special issue aims to provide an understanding of some central features of the anti-globalization furor. The studies in this special issue provide fresh insights into the economic factors contributing to the backlash while also addressing how they might interact with cultural forces. It concludes with a discussion of why the globalization backlash has not diffused widely to the developing world.

Turkey’s Candidature to the UN Security Council Seat in 1948: Why the West’s ‘Favorite’ Candidate Lost

Abstract Following the Second World War, Turkey vigorously pursued a policy of effective participation in international institutions. As part of this policy, Turkish diplomats campaigned for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council in the year 1948. This article aims to provide descriptive information about this campaign and explain why Turkey lost the election in the UN General Assembly for the seat reserved for the Near East region. In doing so, the article primarily uses historical documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States (frus) series because they provide very detailed information about backstage diplomacy, motivations of candidate countries, and opinions of the US diplomats about candidates. The article concludes that it was the US Cold War policies that influenced the outcome of the 1948 election. Although it was publicly known that the US supported Turkey in this election, a closer examination of the American diplomatic documents reveals that the US voted for Egypt in order to keep it in the Western camp.

Tracking organizations in the world: The Correlates of War IGO Version 3.0 datasets

This article summarizes the Correlates of War Intergovernmental Organizations (IGO) Version 3.0 datasets. The new datasets include information about the population of IGOs in the international system and state participation in those formal international institutions from 1816 to 2014. Consistent with Versions 2.0 and 2.3, Version 3.0 of the IGO data comes in three forms: country-year, IGO-year, and joint dyadic membership. This article briefly describes the data collection process and identifies important changes to the dataset before moving to analyze fundamental patterns in the data. Most notable among the changes from earlier versions of the data is the inclusion of annual membership data for the 1815–1964 time period. In addition, we present information about the overall trends in the institutionalization of cooperation at both the global and regional levels, with the latter focusing on the interesting membership dynamics in Asia and Africa. We then track and discuss patterns in state memberships and examine how these changes manifest in the dyadic data. The article concludes with a discussion of how the COW IGO 3.0 data compare to other prominent datasets on state participation in international institutions and highlights some new areas of research that will benefit from the release of the updated IGO membership dataset.

China’s Rise and its Implications for ASEAN Region: A Case Study of South China Sea

During the last four decades, China has achieved a status of a powerful state with a huge soft power, integration in the international economy, growing middle class along with increasing participation in international institutions and stock exchanges. Not only it has participated into international institutions but has also set new economic regimes like Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). China’s growing thrust for developments, energy and resources, has enabled it for huge claims within South China Sea. Its recent steps of creating artificial islands in South China Sea and future air bases on them along with other developments are quite notable and have been perceived as China’s shift from a soft power to hard power. South China Sea is extremely significant Sea with its geostrategic importance being the second busiest trade routes. Approximately 60 percent of Japanese and Taiwanese energy resources raw material is supplied through the South China Sea. At the same time the Sea is highly rich in energy resources and different analysis have been made to give an estimate of gas and oil reserves in South China Sea. Due to geostrategic significance of the Sea neighboring countries have asserted their claims on its various Islands however; mainly conflict is over islands of Spartly and Paracel. The ongoing territorial conflict and resulting tension is creating troubles for the regional peace by making regional as well as global powers to be concerned over China’s activities. The study will be investigated under the Sea Power theory of Mahan that how the balance of power is taking shift within region in wake of rise of China, and how it will breed implications for region.

Shifting the paradigm: a typology of affected persons’ participation in international institutions

ABSTRACTInternational law and politics are made first and foremost by states, either independently or through their exclusive membership in international organisations. Nevertheless, civil society has had access to intergovernmental decision-making arenas for several decades, mostly through NGOs. Based on Article 71 UN Charter, NGOs have been granted observer status at many international organisations to advocate for public interest issues like the protection of human rights or the environment. This public interest paradigm, however, is increasingly being challenged by the affectedness paradigm. The latter refers to the increasing participation of people who are affected by issues subject to international regulation. So far, legal scholars have largely overlooked this shift. To address this research gap, this paper examines how the affectedness paradigm has become institutionalised at different international organisations and proposes a typology of affected persons’ participation. The paper argues that affected-led advocacy has not replaced public-interest advocacy, but that the affectedness paradigm has been institutionalised in at least three different ways: the subordination, parity, and priority models. They can be placed on a scale with the priority model giving the strongest role to affected population groups.

Discerning states’ revisionist and status-quo orientations: Comparing China and the US

International Relations literature often refers to states’ motivations as revisionist or status-quo oriented. Such attributions are especially prevalent in discourse on the power-transition theory, suggesting that the danger of war rises when a revisionist China catches up to a status-quo US. Such attributions, however, are rarely supported by systematic evidence providing a direct comparison of Chinese and US conduct. We undertake an analysis of how these countries have behaved differently over time according to their policy pronouncements, their participation in international institutions and agreements, and their voting in the United Nations. Our analysis challenges the conventional wisdom that a rising power tends to be revisionist whereas an incumbent hegemon is invariably committed to the defense of the international order.

Trade and Democracy in Developing Countries: Granger Causality Tests

The relationship between trade and democracy according to the broad scholarship is controversial. The most significant advance in this field is empirical. However, the empirical tests that lack sound theoretical foundations imply correlation and not causation. This paper resolves the puzzle of democracy-trade literature, i.e. instability of democracy-trade relationship, by using a detailed analysis of the relationship stability and its direction across samples, datasets and different model specifications. The rolling regressions are used to identify the subsample instability of the relationship, whereas the Granger causality tests capture the asymmetries in the relationship between trade and democracy and allow testing for the direction of the causality. Among the results, first and foremost, the participation in international institutions in general mediates the relationship between trade and democracy. Second, the direction of causality depends on the number of the lags chosen. Thus, the tests signify the problems in lags selection and the importance to theoretically justify the number of lags that scholars use in the studies. Finally, I document the sample instability. Although the question, what “came first” democracy or trade, remained unanswered, this paper indicates avenues for future research and a call for solid theoretical grounds.

Oil and International Cooperation

The more that states depend on oil exports, the less cooperative they become: they grow less likely to join intergovernmental organizations, to accept the compulsory jurisdiction of international judicial bodies, and to agree to binding arbitration for investment disputes. This pattern is robust to the use of country and year fixed effects, to alternative measures of the key variables, and to the exclusion of all countries in the Middle East. To explain this pattern, we consider the economic incentives that foster participation in international institutions: the desire to attract foreign investment and to gain access to foreign markets. Oil-exporting states, we argue, find it relatively easy to achieve these aims without making costly commitments to international institutions. In other words, natural resource wealth liberates states from the economic pressures that would otherwise drive them toward cooperation.

An Incompetent Actor? Assessing EU External Migration Policy

2015 has seen thousands of migrants undertake desperate and risky journeys across the Mediterranean in order to try to reach Europe. Cooperation with non-EU countries has been emphasized in policy documents as an essential tool in managing these migration flows. However, this presupposes that the EU is able to act deliberately and purposively in international migration governance. Building on the literature on EU external relations, this article assesses the actorness of the EU in international migration governance in terms of authority, existence of policy instruments, policy determinacy, coordination mechanisms, rules of participation in international institutions, recognition by third countries, autonomy of the EU institutions, and cohesion. It concludes that legal competence is central to the ability of the EU to play a role in international migration governance.

Democracy Is Democracy Is Democracy? Changes in Evaluations of International Institutions in Academic Textbooks, 1970-2010

This article examines what democracy means when it is used in academic textbook evaluations of international institutions and how the meaning of the term “democracy” in such evaluations has changed over time. An analysis of 71 textbooks on international institutions in the policy areas of international security, environmental, and human rights politics leads us to several answers. We observe slight changes in relation to three aspects. First, the range of democracy-relevant actors expands over time, most notably in relation to nonstate actors as important participants in (or even subjects of) international policymaking. Second, representational concerns become more relevant in justifying demands for greater participation in international institutions. Third, international organizations are increasingly discussed not only as subjects that enhance the transparency and accountability of the policies of their member states, but also as the objects of democratic demands for transparency and accountability themselves.

Rights, Institutions, and Foreign Direct Investment: An Empirical Assessment1

A burgeoning body of literature assesses the sociopolitical factors that influence investment decisions, including the nature of domestic institutions, societal rights, and participation in international institutions and agreements. Oddly enough, these have evolved largely as separate lines of research, and little effort has been made to compare the relative importance of these sociopolitical factors in making investment decisions. Moreover, though the diverse nature of foreign direct investment (FDI) is widely noted, extant research relies almost exclusively upon the examination of aggregate FDI. As a result, scholars have little insight into the ways that investors prioritize these factors, or how they vary across different industries. In an effort to synthesize these strands of research and further deepen our understanding of the determinants of investment decisions, this study models the prospective impact of several sociopolitical variables that have been found to significantly influence FDI—human rights, democratic governance, and commitment to international trade agreements and investment treaties—across multiple investment sectors.

Reimagining Participation in International Institutions

The optimal design of international institutions to confront 21st century global challenges is an increasingly urgent question in areas ranging from climate change to health and security. A central issue is whether international institutions will maintain the state-centric models of governance they have inherited or expand opportunities for participation by civil society and other stakeholders. Global environmental institutions, which pioneered broadened participation, are increasingly returning to state-centric models of governance, but a new generation of global health institutions is reimagining participation, incorporating civil society representatives as direct participants in decision-making. This article explains the growing divergence between environmental and health institutions as a product of: (1) stakeholder demand for participation, (2) institutional characteristics that influence the supply of participation, and (3) path dependence. Our findings indicate that participatory institutions rarely emerge without strong civil society demand, and are more likely to emerge outside of 20th century institutions such as the United Nations and World Bank. Normatively, evidence from the new global health institutions suggests that direct civil society participation enhances institutional legitimacy, deliberation and effectiveness. Wider adoption of the new participatory model could strengthen the global response to climate change and other pressing challenges.

Reciprocal legitimation: Reframing the problem of international legitimacy

Theorizing about the legitimacy of international institutions usually begins with a framing assumption according to which the legitimacy of the state is understood solely in terms of the relationship between the state and its citizens, without reference to the effects of state power on others. In contrast, this article argues that whether a state is legitimate vis-a-vis its own citizens depends upon whether its exercise of power respects the human rights of people in other states. The other main conclusions are as follows. First, a state’s participation in international institutions can contribute to its legitimacy in several ways. Second, when international institutions contribute to the legitimacy of states, their doing so can contribute to their own legitimacy. Third, a theory of international legitimacy ought to recognize reciprocal legitimation between states and international institutions.

THE BRAZILIAN WAY

This article examines the positions held by Brazil under the administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–present) on nuclear nonproliferation, arms control, and disarmament regimes and on contentious issues in those areas. Under Lula's government, Brazil has wanted to mediate between nuclear weapon and non-nuclear weapon states to consolidate its position as a strong negotiator and to benefit from the possible gains of this position in terms of greater participation in international institutions. It has also wanted to pressure nuclear weapon states to fulfill their disarmament obligations in order to reduce asymmetries in its relations with powerful nuclear weapon countries. At the same time, Brazil has tried to preserve its autonomy and flexibility to protect commercial secrets and preserve national security in relation to its own nuclear program.

Social Rewards and Socialization Effects: An Alternative Explanation for the Motivation Behind China's Participation in International Institutions

Social Rewards and Socialization Effects: An Alternative Explanation for the Motivation Behind China's Participation in International Institutions

‘Patchwork Power’ Europe: The EU’s Representation in International Institutions

Abstract. This article investigates why the EU’s representation in formal and informal international institutions still varies so widely. It draws on a number of case studies and, by analysing their findings in a comparative manner, makes this fragmented representation visible. It argues that institutional rules relating to both the EU and the international fora need to be considered to explain this patchwork. The weaker its legal competences and internal coordination mechanisms, and the stricter and less equal the rules of participation in international institutions, the greater the EU’s inability to ‘speak with one voice’. The plausibility of this claim is illustrated by various examples selected from different issue areas and international institutions of global importance.

International Institutions and the Chinese Red Cross Legislation

Scholars of globalization generally consider law as the least globalized of social fields.1 This is indeed the case; nation-states invariably view the right to make laws as a core element of sovereignty. International border restrictions also limit the influence of international institutions within the legal sphere. Consequently, as Lester Ross points out, ‘International institutions will not provide effective support for the establishment of laws’.2 The impact of international institutions upon the various sovereign nations that continue to join them, however, gradually grows, to the extent of affecting domestic legislation.3 This trend is clearly demonstrated in the influence of international institutions upon China's domestic processes, which is a focus of concern and debate within academic circles. The century of humiliation and hardship that preceded the birth of New China in 1949 made China's rulers doubly cherish the country's hard-won independence. Sovereignty was consequently an extremely sensitive matter. By the late 1980s, however, China was participating in, and building extensive links with major international organizations. As Samuel S. Kim notes in his appraisal of this development, China became an active member of the world system for the first time in modern history.4 As the country's breadth and depth of participation in international institutions grew, the escalating influence of certain among them extended to China's domestic legislation.5

Veto players, electoral incentives and international commitments: The impact of domestic institutions on intergovernmental organization membership

Abstract. The conventional literature on international cooperation in general, and intergovernmental organization membership in particular, depicts a regular, positive relationship between wealthy capitalist democracies and participation in international institutions. While empirical evidence supports this assertion, it says little about the mechanisms, and the accompanying variation among them, by which states enter into international institutions. This study distinguishes industrialized democracies along two dimensions: the nature of their constitutional structures and the organization of their electoral politics. Variations in these features produce variations in the institutional constraints and electoral incentives that matter in determining state participation in international organizations. Results of a pooled cross‐sectional time series analysis of 23 democracies in 1981 and 1992 indicate that the structure of governing institutions and the nature of electoral systems account for much of the variation in intergovernmental organization membership. This study concludes that domestic institutions matter in determining international cooperation through international organizations – a novel insight overlooked by most international relations theories.

Why Engage? China and the Logic of Communicative Engagement

With the breakdown of American relations with China after 1989 and the rapid growth of Chinese power in the 1990s, the American policy of engagement attempted to encourage China to become a moderate participant in the international status quo through the building of economic interdependence, participation in international institutions and strategic dialogues. The widespread belief in the failure of this policy has helped to drive the spiraling conflict between the two states. Drawing on Habermas's distinction between strategic and communicative action, this article argues that the unacknowledged rationalist theoretical foundations of the policy of engagement explain its empirical experience. Engagement rested on a strategic mode of action, in which the building of interdependencies and dialogues were instrumental policies to change the target state. Rationalist signaling models demonstrate effectively why engagement is likely to fail within such a strategic mode of action. The policy of engagement carries within it the potential for a communicative mode of action, however, in which states enter into public dialogues in order to more effectively communicate, discover and shape preferences, and arrive at mutually acceptable institutions. Communicative engagement, designed to allow for the free exchange of reasoned argument under conditions which minimize the direct application of power, provides a superior means to achieve the avowed goals of engagement. Through an analysis of an important potentially conflictual strategic relationship, this article advances the emerging dialogue between rationalist and critical theories by focusing on communication, uncertainty and the transformative potential of public discourse. It draws on a theory of communicative action rooted in Habermas to evaluate the empirical record of engagement in the 1990s, and to articulate theoretical foundations for a communicative engagement which more effectively communicates and shapes state preferences.

Global Interdependence and the Responsibilities of States: Learning from the Japanese Experience

In view of the multiple and complex ways that states are dependent upon one another, it is imperative that governments work together responsibly to address problems that transcend national boundaries. Japan is examined as a case study not only because it is a prototype of a modern interdependent state, but also because the Japanese are actively reassessing their role in world politics in view of their country's emergence as an economic superpower and are taking steps to 'internationalize' their society to facilitate more effective foreign interactions. Japan is a unique case given the combination of its historical isolation, the aggressive role it played in World War II, and its spectacular economic growth of the last few decades. Recent Japanese governments have attempted to play a more active role in maintaining a stable and peaceful world order through diplomatic initiatives, participation in international insti tutions, and substantial increases in foreign aid. Efforts to internationalize the Japanese people include programs to enhance the quality of foreign language instruction, to educate the Japanese people on foreign cultures, and to attract more foreign students, but progress is slow because of language barriers and the group-oriented social structure of the Japanese. Definitions of global responsibilities and the process of internationalization are proposed based on the Japanese experience. Finally, several implications that this study has for peace research are suggested, especially in conceptualizing peace in positive and associative terms and in setting forth agendas on foreign policy and peace action.