HAWES, p.3
Understanding the complex interplay between geo-political power and
participation in international organizations, however, requires understanding the reasons
states might choose to participate in international organizations in the first place.
Delegation to International Organizations: Opening Pandora's Box
At its core, the decision to create an international organization boils down to the
benefits that can be accrued from international cooperation. Some issue areas are by
nature extremely difficult to be solved by states acting individually. Coordination
problems and free-rider difficulties pose the biggest (but by no means the only)
challenges facing states seeking to solve complex international problems. The benefits
of institutionalized cooperation have been examined in great detail in international
relations scholarship over the last decades (Haas 1980, Stein 1983, Keohane 1984, Oye
1985, 1986, among others). Perhaps the most important of these benefits are: 1)
reducing transactions costs (and facilitating negotiation), 2) issue-linkage, 3) iteration of
interaction, and 4) monitoring (and sanctioning) of state behavior.
If we assume that states act rationally, we can be certain that states seeking to
create an international organization will structure it such that they can be (relatively)
guaranteed of receiving their approximate share of the benefits of cooperation. Scholars
of the "rational-design of institutions" have examined this problem at length (Koremenos,
Lipson and Snidal 2001) Thus, we can be fairly certain that upon their creation,
international organizations reflect the wishes of their most powerful member states.
These powerful states are, by the design of the institution, or the identity and preferences
of its other members, guaranteed of getting much of the policies they prefer.
Convention