The first international organization came into being a long time ago. Since the beginning of the Westphalia system, there have emerged a large number of international treaties and organizations, of which the League of Nations and the postwar United Nations System should be counted as the most prominent. In order to facilitate further studies and make them representative, the scope of my research will be limited to the postwar period and concentrate on the United Nations System.
The postwar era has been a golden age for the development and institutionalization of various
international organizations. The United Nations System stays at the center of world governance while more and more international organizations come into being for dealing with interstate affairs.
Although many international organizations emerged between the two World Wars, those institutions lacked the support of the main powers and were too weak to play an important role in international politics. Compared with this period, states are becoming increasingly dependent on formal international organizations so as to realize their national interests. Kenneth W. Abbott and Duncan Snidal have carefully examined why states act through formal international organizations and drew the conclusion that “by taking advantage of the centralization and independence of IO’s, states are able to achieve goals that they cannot accomplish on a decentralized basis.”70 Only when states place an emphasis on their interests in international organizations will a study on the influence of states on international organizations be meaningful and possible.
This empirical study concentrates on the United Nations System first because it has been a core part of the postwar international order and thus has been able to enjoy great significance in global politics. In comparison to regional international organizations and other intergovernmental or nongovernmental organizations, the United Nations enjoys a much higher level of prestige and capabilities, and its fields of work cover almost every aspect of human life. Therefore, I will select several representative organizations within the United Nations System: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the economic and financial field, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the cultural field, and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in the political and security field.
The first reason why these three organizations were chosen is because they are critical international organs and leaders in their respective fields. The UNSC is the most important organization in the international security field. It is also the only body that can impose compulsory obligations on the UN member states. The UNSC also fulfills many other critical missions inside the UN, such as recommending an applicant country to be a new member state as well as candidates for the position of Secretary General.
The IMF is one of the three important organs that are in charge of the world economy together
70 Here “decentralized basis” means the anarchy of international society. See Kenneth W. Abbott and Duncan Snidal,
“Why States Act through Formal International Organizations,” in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 42, No. 1, Feb. 1998, p. 29.
with the World Bank and the WTO (World Trade Organization). However, the World Bank is focused on reducing poverty and providing long-term loans to poor countries and is not a regulating organization. The WTO, which formally emerged in 1995, is in charge of much of the world’s trade.
Before the formation of the WTO, GATT was the main coordinating organization in this field. Its primary function was to organize multilateral negotiations rather than manage world trade. There had been no managing organ for trading affairs before the founding of the WTO. Furthermore, compared to the WTO, the IMF not only aims at promoting the stability of international finance, but also directly influences the economic policy and structure of its member states. It is well known that finance is the core of the modern international economy. The IMF is the only international economic institution to be so deeply involved in the monetary policy of its member states economic policy. As elaborated on in Chapter 5, the IMF has often successfully persuaded states in crisis to reform their domestic economic structure.
UNESCO is the most important organization in the culture field. Though the culture field seems to be not very important when compared with the security and economic fields, UNESCO has played a very important role in the political struggles between the US, the USSR, and the Third World.
Actually, UNESCO has been the best example for examining the influence of openness. Even as the hegemon, the US, lost its domination of UNESCO in the late-1960s.
The second reason for choosing these organizations is technological. These three organizations are not only critical organizations within the United Nations System, but also represent different levels of openness. As elaborated on in the next chapter, the IMF and the UNSC are relatively closed when compared with UNESCO. Through n empirical study based on the evolution of power and the extent of openness, the changing influence of the US is clearly demonstrated. As US power evolved, its influence within these organizations also underwent corresponding changes. It is also shown that with changes in openness, US influence on different organizations during the same period is also not identical. That is to say, the status of power and extent of openness decide American influence on international organizations. This is the theoretical conclusion of this chapter.
Why were other organizations within the UN system not chosen? Generally speaking, there are 6 principal organs in the UN system: the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, the International Court of Justice, the Secretariat, and the Trusteeship Council.
Among these, the Security Council, General Assembly, and Economic and Social Council seem to play the most significant role in dealing with multilateral negotiations. They are also the most frequently referred to organs. The International Court of Justice is a very special organization with high-level technological specialization, but it has no great influence on daily international affairs.
The Secretariat, as an executive institution, is led by the Secretary General and should not be regarded as an international organization.
Considering the close relationship between the Security Council and the General Assembly, especially considering that the most important issues have to go to the Security Council in the first place, It was finally decided to limit the focus to the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council. In the Economic and Social Council there are three categories: the Specialized Agencies, the Functional Commissions, and the Programmes and Funds (P&F). For the convenience of this research (especially considering that there are a great deal of decision-making procedures to explore), the Functional Commissions and the Programmes and Funds categories were excluded from the scope of the research at this stage. The voting share is very important in defining openness, which has been determined by a stable membership status or according to assessment by the organizations, while the P&F lacks this feature.
Relative power and organizational openness have a great impact on state influence on international organizations. Considering that the focus of this dissertation is to examine the US influence on the United Nations System, the next chapter, Chapter Two, investigate the evolution of the American power status and the openness of three representative organizations: the IMF, UNESCO and the UNSC. Chapter Two will also reviews existing studies on the relationship of power, openness, and US influence on these three institutions.