States in international organizations: Promoting regional positions in international politics?
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702020965267 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Author | Diana Panke |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essay |
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
States in international
2020, Vol. 75(4) 629–651
! The Author(s) 2020
organizations: Promoting
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702020965267
regional positions in
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international politics?
Diana Panke
University of Freiburg
Abstract
States address many of today’s global problems in international organizations (IOs). At
the same time, regional international organizations (RIOs) play important roles in IOs,
as a series of case studies suggests. RIO member states can speak on behalf of an RIO in
IO negotiations. This paper explores under what conditions states voice RIO positions
instead of national ones in IOs and thereby turn into agents of regionalization. Based on
a novel dataset of more than 500 international negotiations and a quantitative analysis
of theory-guided International Relations hypotheses, this paper shows that states are
increasingly likely to negotiate on behalf of an RIO, when they regard grouping positions
into regional blocs in IO negotiations as more effective, when they have a formal role as
RIO chair, and when they possess financial and staff capacities needed in order to voice
a regional position in international negotiations.
Keywords
International organizations, regional international organizations, international negotia-
tions, regionalization, international politics, negotiations, groupings, capacities,
incentives
Corresponding author:
Diana Panke, University of Freiburg, Political Science, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Systems
Belfortstraße 20, Freiburg, 79085, Germany.
Email: diana.panke@politik.uni-freiburg.de
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International Journal 75(4)
Many of today’s global problems are addressed in international organizations
(IOs), such as malnutrition and epidemics at the World Health Organization
(WHO); violations of rights, such as free movement or freedom of speech at the
Human Rights Council (HCR); and the liberalization of trade in goods and serv-
ices at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Traditionally, states are members of
such IOs and cooperate in these arenas in order to pass binding or non-binding
international rules and norms.
Yet, increasingly, regional international organizations (RIOs), as institutional-
ized arenas in which three or more states from a geographically defined region
cooperate in several policy areas, also gain formal and informal access to such
multilateral negotiations. Only in a few exceptional instances have RIOs become
formal members with full speaking and voting rights, such as the European Union
(EU) in the WTO and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC). Often, RIOs can register themselves as observers and obtain
access to international negotiations, whereas only states with full IO membership
status have speaking and voting rights. Even if RIOs are not usually full members
of IOs, they still play a role in IOs, as their member states can—and as this paper
illustrates, do—speak on their behalf. Thus, a regionalization of international
relations has taken place, driven by RIO member states. This paper explores the
conditions under which states turn into agents of regionalization and voice region-
al instead of national positions in international negotiations. How often do states
speak on behalf of RIOs and how can differences between states be explained?
To address this research question, this paper proceeds in the following steps:
The second section reviews the International Relations literature and discusses
insights into the prevalence of RIOs in international relations. This review reveals
that RIOs are seldom full members of IOs, but their member states can neverthe-
less act in concert and vote as a bloc in international negotiations, suggesting that
the regionalization of international relations carries the potential to alter the
nature of formal state-centred international relations fundamentally. Yet, the
review of the literature also suggests that this process is to a considerable extent
driven by RIO member states. The third section investigates empirically whether
and which states contribute to the regionalization of international relations. To
this end, it presents a novel dataset that contains data on the speeches made in
more than 500 international negotiations in more than 20 different IOs between
2008 and 2012. A closer examination of the patterns of national positions voiced
by states and speeches in which RIO positions were articulated reveals that the
latter accounts for more than 8% of the contributions in international negotia-
tions. Yet, there is considerable between-state variation concerning their inclina-
tion to speak for an RIO in international negotiations rather than putting forward
national positions. France is the strongest driver of regionalization, while countries
such as Russia, Tunisia, or Yemen did not negotiate on behalf of an RIO at all.
Trinidad and Tobago voice RIO positions five times as often as Peru or Tonga.
Thus, states differ in the extent to which they push the regionalization of interna-
tional relations. The fourth section draws on rationalist liberal theoretical
Panke
631
approaches to capture theoretically state activity in multi-level contexts. It devel-
ops hypotheses on conditions under which states actively participate in interna-
tional negotiations and explicates when we expect that they voice regional instead
of national positions. The fifth section presents the empirical analysis of the
hypotheses and discusses the findings, revealing that states are drivers of a region-
alization of international relations. But not all states are equally likely to articulate
RIO positions in IO negotiations. Rather, states are increasingly likely to negotiate
on behalf of an RIO, when they regard grouping positions into regional blocs in IO
negotiations as more effective, have fewer free-riding opportunities, have a formal
role as an RIO chair, and possess the financial and staff capacities needed to act on
behalf of an RIO in an international negotiation.
States, RIOs, and international relations
Traditionally, international relations are characterized by interactions between
states. Early International Relations scholarship examined the conditions under
which states are increasingly likely to wage war with one another and when and
how peace could be pursued.1 In the 1970s and 1980s, the puzzle of cooperation
under anarchy was increasingly addressed.2 Hence, researchers examined the role
of power, interests, and institutions for interstate cooperation.3 The major focus
was on why, how, when, and where states cooperate with one another, either on an
ad hoc basis or in institutionalized arenas.4 IOs, as institutionalized arenas for
1.
Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948); Kenneth Waltz,
Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); Robert Gilpin, War and
Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Kenneth Waltz, Theory of
International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979); Stephen Walt, Origins of Alliances (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1987); and Immanuel Kant, “Perpetual peace. A philosophical
sketch,” In Lewis White Beck, ed., Kant. On History, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1963).
2.
Robert A. Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984); Robert O.
Keohane, After Hegemony. Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1984); Robert A. Axelrod and Robert O. Keohane, “Achieving coop-
eration under anarchy: Strategies and institutions,” World Politics 38, no. 1 (1986): 226–254; and
Kenneth Oye, ed., Cooperation under Anarchy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986).
3.
Robert O. Keohane and Jospeh S. Nye Jr., Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown,
1977); Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press,
1986); and Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions and State Power (Boulder, CO: Westview,
1989).
4.
Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer, and Volker Rittberger, Theories of International Regimes
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Robert O. Keohane, “The demand for interna-
tional regimes,” in Robert O. Keohane, ed., International Institutions and State Power (Boulder CO:
Westview Press, 1989), 101–131; Stephen D. Krasner, “Regimes and the limits of realism: Regimes
as autonomous variables,” in Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimges (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1993), 355–368; Peter Mayer, Volker Rittberger, and Michael Zu¨rn, “Regime
theory: State of the art and perspectives,” in Volker Rittberger, Regime Theory and International
Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 391–430; John G. Ruggie, “International regimes, trans-
actions, and change: Embedded liberalism in the post-war economic order,” in Stephen D. Krasner,
ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), 195–232; and James G.
March and Johan P. Olsen, “The institutional dynamics of international political orders,”
International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 943–969.
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International Journal 75(4)
cooperation between three or more states, in which membership is not defined by
geographic criteria, not only increased in numbers in this period but also turned
into essential fora for negotiating the rules and norms of an international order.5
With the end of the Cold War, a wave of regionalization took place, as the
number...
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