The Definition of Openness

As mentioned above, institutions can, to some extent, play an independent and important role in governing an international system. This has been the main point of Liberal Institutionalism. Robert O. Keohane emphasizes that the function of institutions is to provide public goods, such as meeting places, information exchanges, or contract surveillance. The focus while researching the significance of the institutions themselves (rather than the alteration of influence of their member states) is not on the politics, but rather the distribution of resources. Neoliberalists also argue that negotiations and the multilateral method should be another important way to establish or change international institutions. International institutions have been created through multilateral negotiations when most countries have accepted the authority and function of the organizations. If some state attempts to change an existing institution, it must persuade so many other negotiating partners that the process always turns out to be laborious and futile. For instance, it has been almost impossible for any country to change the rules of the World Trade Organization.⁶⁴ Hence, the number of states that can participate in the decision-making process and the amount of voting power each individual member state holds is of critical importance. The more open an institution is, the more persuasive the theory of the liberal institution will be. Also, the more autonomy an institution is endowed with, the less likely that it will be dominated by an individual state.

In comparison to the explanatory power of the theory of Liberal Institutionalism on formation and evolvement of an international organization, Neorealists directly refer to the term “openness”

and explore its relationship with power. As mentioned above, Stephen Krasner gave an excellent analysis on the relationship of the Third World and the postwar liberal international order. He defined openness as the voting power distribution among nations for decision-making. According to him, the openness of international institutions should be the most significant factor in determining

64 See Iain Johnston, “China and International organizations,” in World Economy and Politics (Chinese Journal), at:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~johnston/IWEP2.pdf.

the outcomes of Third World efforts. He divided the relations of state and international organization into four categories: congruent (which means state power creates the institution, but the institution does not merely meet the demands of its creator), incongruence (which means state power can not control the institution, but the institution is not anti-hegemon either), dynamically stable (which means that state power decides the institution and institutional reciprocally enhances state power), and dynamically instable (which means the institution impairs the hegemon’s power). The decline or relative decline of the great power will lead to a redistribution of power, thus leading to openness.

Thereafter, the transformation of openness will again result in a change of resource distribution and ultimately induce a corresponding variation of relative power. Three factors will stimulate international institutions into transferring from congruence or dynamic stability to incongruence or dynamic instability. First is the initial autonomy of the international institution when it was legitimately established. Second is the decision-making rights enjoyed by the bureaucrats. Third is the direct influence of hegemonic decline, such as reluctance to provide financial aid or failing to rally support through promising some tempting benefit. Thus, the openness of international institutions will be elevated and the hegemon will gradually lose its influence after the establishment of these institutions and a variation in the relative power distribution. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s, the US had to suspend its support to many international organizations such as UNESCO.⁶⁵

Therefore, the discourse of Krasner could mainly be categorized as Neorealist even though it simultaneously embodies some elements of Liberal Institutionalism. According to Krasner, the decline of a hegemon’s relative power will lead to a change in institutions or in its influence on existing institutions. The rights enjoyed by the bureaucrats to affect the decision-making procedure could be counted as another reason. The first factor is concentrated on here in order to better understand the impact of openness on the hegemon’s influence on international organizations.

The original organizational principles fundamentally decide the basic power distribution and to a great extent eliminate the possibility of a redistribution of voting power. The bureaucrats of some international organizations may seek to show their independence in order to justify the significance of their institutions. However, since the senior officials and executives have always been elected

65 Roger A. Coate, “Changing Patterns of Conflict: The United States and UNESCO,” in Margaret P. Karns and Karen A. Mingst, The United States and Multilateral Institutions, 1990.

through voting of the member states, they have to rely on the paramount state to consolidate their position or to pursue reappointment. The UN Secretary General position is a good example.

As for the influence of power on openness, the relative decline of the hegemon won’t lead to a revolutionary change in existing organizations. For instance, the relative decline of the US hegemony has caused the collapse of the Bretton Woods System, but the IMF and its liberal principles remain functioning. The changes instead have been to the operational rules of the institutions. Only after structural transformation occurs will the basic organizational principles likely be replaced. According to Robert Gilpin and other Neorealist scholars, the international order since the modern era has been selfish and hegemonic, though the specific content of the various orders differs. For instance, before World War II, territory distribution was the core part of international order because of the dominant status of agriculture in economic surplus. After a hegemonic war, the winners would redistribute the territorial domains.⁶⁶ This kind of order was finished so that newly rising states would tend to challenge the existing orders and establish another favorable international order. Therefore, the limited openness of international institutions has been the primary cause of hegemonic conflicts. However, the basic organizational principles of this distribution won’t be changed after structural transformation. The economic and technological reforms have changed the nature of contemporary international order to some extent. Trade and financial hegemony (not territory and population) have become the foremost pillars of national power and the core parts of the international order. As mentioned above, the US established a series of international organizations to manage the world economy and politics. The openness of these organizations is elaborated on in the next chapter. Now, however, it is necessary to emphasize that some of the critical organizations are still relatively closed, especially those related to resource distribution.

There is another advantage to limiting the scope of openness to the basic organizational principles of international organizations. If the definition of openness includes other factors such as concrete procedures or operational rules, it will be very difficult to identify the extent of and the change in openness because such procedures and rules vary all the time. Accordingly, the openness of international organizations will be changing all the time. Even during the same period, different orientations of procedures and rules changes make it impossible to identify whether the organization

66 Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics, 1981.

is being more open or closed, not to mention doing comparative study among different organizations.

For instance, when we want to identify US influence on the IMF, it is difficult to compare the direct voting power of the 1950s and the early 1960s with US influence in the 1990s, which depended on more factors such as soft power. If we define openness as a basic organizational principle, the comparison among various organizations then becomes feasible. For example, UNESCO is organized so that each member has an equal vote, but the IMF has a weighted vote system. The limitation enabled the parsimony characteristic of this research and makes scientific study possible.

Changes to procedures and rules are influenced by power and openness and they can directly reflect the transformation of the influence of the great power. Therefore, they can be used as important examples to demonstrate the relationship between power/openness of the state and the corresponding influence of the state.

Since there are many merits used to define openness as a basic organizational principle (such as consistency and comparability), according to what standard should the openness of an organization be identified? Two standards in particular deserve examination.

The first is access to the organization. If entry into an organization is convenient with low conditionality, the organization should be classified as relatively open. After the Second World War, in order to exclude the majority of developing states and protect the privileges enjoyed by the great powers (or to put it another way “maintain the efficiency of the organization), critical political and economic organizations created restrictive clauses for membership entry. For instance, any state or customs territory having full autonomy in the conduct of its trade policies may join (“accede to”) the WTO, but the WTO members must agree on the terms. These terms included steps such as “tell about yourself,” “work out with us individually what you have to offer,” “Let’s draft membership terms,” and “the decision.”⁶⁷ In fact, some organizations are relatively closed on account of their regional geography, such as the European Union or special cooperation groups such as OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries).⁶⁸

67 Please refer to the WTO Official Website, at http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org3_e.htm.

68 The Organization of the Petinfluenceum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is made up of Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela; since 1965, its international headquarters have been in Vienna, Austria. The principal aim of the Organization, according to its Statute, is the coordination and unification of the petinfluenceum policies of its member countries and the determination of the best means for safeguarding their interests, individually and collectively. Please refer to the Wikipedia Website, at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC.

The second is the decision-making process. Will any member state share equal voting rights or is their say measured according to other conditions? The weak states usually prefer the national sovereignty principle and tend to support the “one state, one vote” way of decision-making.

However, great powers are inclined to maintain their privileges through some kind of weighted voting power distribution. If an organization adopts the equal voting power distribution in decision-making, it could be counted as a relatively open organization because the great powers will have to persuade most of the member states to support its ideas. UNESCO is an example of this type of organization in the United Nations System. Since the 1970s, developing states have often dominated the agenda and the passage of resolutions. However, the IMF and the UNSC (United Nations Security Council) are relatively closed and allow the great powers a degree of dominance.

Lately, the membership of most global international organizations has become very universal, so the first standard has been not so remarkable when compared to the second one. However, it is still very important for states such as Russia that are struggling to enter the World Trade Organization. Based on these two standards, we can clearly identify the openness of some international organizations.