INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS —
COMPLETE EXAM SUMMARY
I. WHAT IS AN INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION?
Definition
An IO is a permanent, intergovernmental, autonomous body created by 3 or more states through a
constitutive treaty.
Three criteria:
• Permanent: fixed geographical location, permanent secretariat, own budget, own equipment. Belgium
alone hosts NATO, the EU, EUROCONTROL, and Benelux headquarters. The UN has offices in New York,
Geneva, Vienna, Nairobi.
• Intergovernmental: 3+ states, joined voluntarily (coerced membership = invalid), with rational/legal
leadership — legitimacy based on rules, not charisma or tradition.
• Autonomous: acts independently through delegated power and its own bureaucratic culture. The UN
Secretariat can propose its own resolutions — it doesn't just wait for instructions from states.
The oldest IO still functioning: Central Commission of the Rhine (1812) — predates the term "international
organisation" by decades.
What an IO is NOT
• An informal club: G20, BRICS — no secretariat, no treaty, no permanent staff
• A summit or meeting: COPs are events, not organisations
• A treaty: the Paris Agreement is a legal text, not an IO
• An international regime: shared rules and expectations without a formal organisation. Example: the
Bretton-Woods system (monetary stability rules) or the Kyoto Protocol (climate rules) — regimes, not IOs.
Controversial cases
• NATO: no clear legal personality written in its treaty; acquired it through court cases. Also routinely acts
beyond its original mandate.
• ICRC: tied to the Geneva Conventions but founded by private individuals. Staff — not governments —
make operational decisions.
• FIFA: has bureaucracy and permanent structure but members are sports federations, not states.
• GATT: ceased functioning in 1995 when replaced by the WTO.
• Catholic Church: international actor but not an IO — not intergovernmental.
Key distinction: every IO is an international actor, but not every international actor is an IO.
,II. CATEGORISATION OF IOs
Criteria Type A Type B
Membership Universal: UN, ILO, WHO Restricted: geographical (EU, ASEAN, African Union, Ara
Authority Intergovernmental: needs consensus — NATO
Supranational:
(one state majority
disagreesdecisions
= nothing
—moves),
UN Security
WTOCounci
Function Programme: sets its own norms — UN General
Operational:
Assembly,
implements
WTO Ministerial
existing Conference
norms — IAEA (nuclea
The UNSC is both programme AND operational: it sets norms (declaring something a threat to peace) AND
enforces them (deploying troops, imposing sanctions). This dual role makes it uniquely powerful.
III. HISTORICAL ORIGINS
Westphalia Treaties (1648)
• Ended the 30 Years' War (Catholic vs Lutheran states, ~8 million deaths)
• Two treaties (Münster and Osnabrück): each state decides its own religion — no outside authority, not
even the Pope
• Created modern states with clearly defined borders — sovereignty became territorial
• Birth of intergovernmentalism: states managing common affairs cooperatively
• States needed to define borders → needed to talk to neighbours → birth of conference diplomacy
Conference Diplomacy (17th–19th century)
• Ad hoc meetings, no permanent structure, no secretariat — convened by states around a specific crisis
• Congress of Vienna (1815–1822): resolved Napoleonic Wars; created the Concert of Europe —
Austria-Hungary, France, Russia, Prussia, UK maintaining balance of power through ad hoc conferences.
Kept relative peace in Europe for decades — but not in the colonies.
• Hague Conferences: first multilateral effort to regulate war — rules on treating civilians, prisoners,
conditions for armed conflict. Still embedded in international law today.
• Hague Court of Arbitration (1889): first permanent international body. Two states in disagreement
voluntarily seek a fair ruling — mostly territorial and maritime disputes.
• Inter-Parliamentary Union: Frederick Passy and William Randal Cremer brought MPs from different
parliaments together to promote peace. Still exists; now includes the European Parliament.
Key trajectory: from resolving wars to preventing them; from ad hoc meetings to permanent institutions.
League of Nations (1919–1946)
• Created by the Versailles Treaty — peace agreement between WWI victors and Germany
• Woodrow Wilson's vision: permanent organisation to prevent future wars through collective security
• Innovations: 1 state = 1 vote (radical); first universal organisation; permanent bureaucracy; top-down
creation (heads of state designed it)
• Negative peace = simply the absence of war
• Failures: US never joined (Congress refused); couldn't stop Nazi Germany, Japanese colonialism, rise of
fascism; Japan and Germany left in 1930s; isolated itself from other existing IOs
, • Dissolved 1946 — members transferred to the new UN
United Nations (1945–)
• Born from WWII — learning the League's lessons
• Positive peace (Johan Galtung): not just absence of war, but freedom from fear and want — the
conditions that make lasting peace sustainable
• Key preparatory conferences: Atlantic Charter (1941), Arcadia (1942), Moscow (1943), Yalta (1945 —
Roosevelt suggested the name)
• Created by victors: 5 permanent UNSC members (US, UK, France, USSR/Russia, China) reflect 1945
power
• 6 organs: General Assembly (1 state 1 vote, deliberative), Security Council (15 members, 5 permanent
with veto), ECOSOC (economic and social, includes NGOs), Trusteeship Council (inherited from League),
ICJ (judicial), Secretariat (executive)
• Supranational: UNSC can act without all states agreeing — states accepted this by joining
IV. WHAT DRIVES IO CREATION?
Wars → IOs
• Napoleonic Wars → Concert of Europe
• WWI → League of Nations
• WWII → United Nations, IMF, World Bank
• Cold War → NATO (attack on one = attack on all) + Warsaw Pact
• New Wars (Mary Kaldor): post-Cold War conflicts are more brutal toward civilians, financially rather than
territorially motivated, fought by armed groups not states → forced NATO to adapt its mandate
Two approaches to IO creation:
• Top-down: heads of state decide a problem exists and build an institution (League of Nations, UN)
• Bottom-up: a problem felt at national level generates pressure for international dialogue (ILO,
environmental organisations)
Industrialisation
• Steam engine + factories → rapid movement of goods, people, information across borders → urgent need
for standardisation
• Functionalist approach (key theory): IOs work best on concrete, well-defined, technical issues.
Cooperating on letter sizes or train gauges builds trust between states that might fight over territory. The
League of Nations partly failed because it didn't integrate these functional IOs into its system.
• Examples:
• ITU (1865): standardised telecommunications — reason your phone works abroad
• Universal Postal Union (1878): standardised mail — reason you can send a letter to Japan
• International Railway Union (1922): standardised track gauges — reason you don't always change
trains at borders
• ILO: social regulations responding to industrial exploitation of workers
COMPLETE EXAM SUMMARY
I. WHAT IS AN INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATION?
Definition
An IO is a permanent, intergovernmental, autonomous body created by 3 or more states through a
constitutive treaty.
Three criteria:
• Permanent: fixed geographical location, permanent secretariat, own budget, own equipment. Belgium
alone hosts NATO, the EU, EUROCONTROL, and Benelux headquarters. The UN has offices in New York,
Geneva, Vienna, Nairobi.
• Intergovernmental: 3+ states, joined voluntarily (coerced membership = invalid), with rational/legal
leadership — legitimacy based on rules, not charisma or tradition.
• Autonomous: acts independently through delegated power and its own bureaucratic culture. The UN
Secretariat can propose its own resolutions — it doesn't just wait for instructions from states.
The oldest IO still functioning: Central Commission of the Rhine (1812) — predates the term "international
organisation" by decades.
What an IO is NOT
• An informal club: G20, BRICS — no secretariat, no treaty, no permanent staff
• A summit or meeting: COPs are events, not organisations
• A treaty: the Paris Agreement is a legal text, not an IO
• An international regime: shared rules and expectations without a formal organisation. Example: the
Bretton-Woods system (monetary stability rules) or the Kyoto Protocol (climate rules) — regimes, not IOs.
Controversial cases
• NATO: no clear legal personality written in its treaty; acquired it through court cases. Also routinely acts
beyond its original mandate.
• ICRC: tied to the Geneva Conventions but founded by private individuals. Staff — not governments —
make operational decisions.
• FIFA: has bureaucracy and permanent structure but members are sports federations, not states.
• GATT: ceased functioning in 1995 when replaced by the WTO.
• Catholic Church: international actor but not an IO — not intergovernmental.
Key distinction: every IO is an international actor, but not every international actor is an IO.
,II. CATEGORISATION OF IOs
Criteria Type A Type B
Membership Universal: UN, ILO, WHO Restricted: geographical (EU, ASEAN, African Union, Ara
Authority Intergovernmental: needs consensus — NATO
Supranational:
(one state majority
disagreesdecisions
= nothing
—moves),
UN Security
WTOCounci
Function Programme: sets its own norms — UN General
Operational:
Assembly,
implements
WTO Ministerial
existing Conference
norms — IAEA (nuclea
The UNSC is both programme AND operational: it sets norms (declaring something a threat to peace) AND
enforces them (deploying troops, imposing sanctions). This dual role makes it uniquely powerful.
III. HISTORICAL ORIGINS
Westphalia Treaties (1648)
• Ended the 30 Years' War (Catholic vs Lutheran states, ~8 million deaths)
• Two treaties (Münster and Osnabrück): each state decides its own religion — no outside authority, not
even the Pope
• Created modern states with clearly defined borders — sovereignty became territorial
• Birth of intergovernmentalism: states managing common affairs cooperatively
• States needed to define borders → needed to talk to neighbours → birth of conference diplomacy
Conference Diplomacy (17th–19th century)
• Ad hoc meetings, no permanent structure, no secretariat — convened by states around a specific crisis
• Congress of Vienna (1815–1822): resolved Napoleonic Wars; created the Concert of Europe —
Austria-Hungary, France, Russia, Prussia, UK maintaining balance of power through ad hoc conferences.
Kept relative peace in Europe for decades — but not in the colonies.
• Hague Conferences: first multilateral effort to regulate war — rules on treating civilians, prisoners,
conditions for armed conflict. Still embedded in international law today.
• Hague Court of Arbitration (1889): first permanent international body. Two states in disagreement
voluntarily seek a fair ruling — mostly territorial and maritime disputes.
• Inter-Parliamentary Union: Frederick Passy and William Randal Cremer brought MPs from different
parliaments together to promote peace. Still exists; now includes the European Parliament.
Key trajectory: from resolving wars to preventing them; from ad hoc meetings to permanent institutions.
League of Nations (1919–1946)
• Created by the Versailles Treaty — peace agreement between WWI victors and Germany
• Woodrow Wilson's vision: permanent organisation to prevent future wars through collective security
• Innovations: 1 state = 1 vote (radical); first universal organisation; permanent bureaucracy; top-down
creation (heads of state designed it)
• Negative peace = simply the absence of war
• Failures: US never joined (Congress refused); couldn't stop Nazi Germany, Japanese colonialism, rise of
fascism; Japan and Germany left in 1930s; isolated itself from other existing IOs
, • Dissolved 1946 — members transferred to the new UN
United Nations (1945–)
• Born from WWII — learning the League's lessons
• Positive peace (Johan Galtung): not just absence of war, but freedom from fear and want — the
conditions that make lasting peace sustainable
• Key preparatory conferences: Atlantic Charter (1941), Arcadia (1942), Moscow (1943), Yalta (1945 —
Roosevelt suggested the name)
• Created by victors: 5 permanent UNSC members (US, UK, France, USSR/Russia, China) reflect 1945
power
• 6 organs: General Assembly (1 state 1 vote, deliberative), Security Council (15 members, 5 permanent
with veto), ECOSOC (economic and social, includes NGOs), Trusteeship Council (inherited from League),
ICJ (judicial), Secretariat (executive)
• Supranational: UNSC can act without all states agreeing — states accepted this by joining
IV. WHAT DRIVES IO CREATION?
Wars → IOs
• Napoleonic Wars → Concert of Europe
• WWI → League of Nations
• WWII → United Nations, IMF, World Bank
• Cold War → NATO (attack on one = attack on all) + Warsaw Pact
• New Wars (Mary Kaldor): post-Cold War conflicts are more brutal toward civilians, financially rather than
territorially motivated, fought by armed groups not states → forced NATO to adapt its mandate
Two approaches to IO creation:
• Top-down: heads of state decide a problem exists and build an institution (League of Nations, UN)
• Bottom-up: a problem felt at national level generates pressure for international dialogue (ILO,
environmental organisations)
Industrialisation
• Steam engine + factories → rapid movement of goods, people, information across borders → urgent need
for standardisation
• Functionalist approach (key theory): IOs work best on concrete, well-defined, technical issues.
Cooperating on letter sizes or train gauges builds trust between states that might fight over territory. The
League of Nations partly failed because it didn't integrate these functional IOs into its system.
• Examples:
• ITU (1865): standardised telecommunications — reason your phone works abroad
• Universal Postal Union (1878): standardised mail — reason you can send a letter to Japan
• International Railway Union (1922): standardised track gauges — reason you don't always change
trains at borders
• ILO: social regulations responding to industrial exploitation of workers
