HAWES, p.2
Decisions in international organizations are made according to clearly specified
voting rules. These voting rules vary from organization to organization, from powerful
state vetoes (UN Security Council), to weighted voting (the Bretton Woods institutions),
to 'one country, one vote' (UN General Assembly). In spite of these variations, however,
the voting rules in international organizations rarely mirror the underlying distribution of
geo-political power of the members. It would be hard to argue, for example, that the
United States and France are equally powerful, despite the fact that both are accorded the
same veto in the UN Security Council; or that the U.S. and Djibouti are equals in the
world, even though they both share an equal vote in the General Assembly. Yet, despite
this profound disparity between power and voting rules, powerful states still chose to join
and continue their participation in international organizations, and often capture more
than their rules-based share of the benefits of cooperation. Thus, states must be aware of
options for influencing international organizations even when the formal voting rules turn
against them.
This paper is part of a larger research program that is an examines the dynamics
of powerful state participation in international organizations: factors that influence their
ability to get what they want out of multilateral international cooperation. By examining
the influence of an asymmetrical distribution of power among the members of an
international organization on the policy-making process within these organizations, this
study will help explain why powerful states choose to join these organizations in the first
place, and why these states continue to participate in these IOs even when the
circumstances have changed dramatically from the organizations' founders' intentions.
Convention