Have scholars properly understood, anticipated, predicted, and in any way helped to shape international organization developments since 1945? Or have they merely reported on events as they unfolded, shifting their research foci from one momentary concern to another in response to the ebb and flow of conditions in the world around them? One pattern that characterizes the maturation of the field of international organization in the postwar era is the steady disengagement of international organization scholars from the study of organizations, so that today one must question whether such a field exists any longer except in name only. The discussion traces the rise and fall of international organization as a field of study, first describing the origins and the evolution of the field, then analyzing the failure of international organization scholars generally to anticipate or shape international organization developments, and finally offering some suggestions for reviving the field and the institutions themselves which are its raison d'être.
After a brief discussion of the existing literature and a description of the data set, the paper compares the role of four international institutions in two-party disputes in terms of (1) participant behavior and characteristics, (2) relationships between participants, and (3) characteristics of the disputes and institutional responses. The major purpose of the comparison is to assess various middle-range theoretical ideas that have been suggested by scholars and to determine whether the differences on the variables are a function of structural (PCIJ and ICJ versus League and UN) or historical (PCIJ and League versus ICJ and UN) variations. A final section of the paper presents a scheme for further research on the role of international institutions in the international bargaining process.
This article examines the systemic constraints and opportunities confronting the United Nations, specifically as an instrument for making and implementing `global policy', in an era in which universal and formal organizational approaches to international co-operation are seriously being called into question. The author argues that global policy entails some manner of global organization which can provide the necessary apparatus for engaging the international system in policy-relevant political-intellectual routines at the system-wide level. The UN could play a special role in facilitating decisions by the international community as to what type of policy device is possible and desirable in a given problem area (norms, rules, organizations, or other outputs) as well as what the policy scope might be (global or subglobal). However, under the present set of arrangements - labeled `functional eclecticism' - the UN is poorly equipped to help determine how much formal institutionalism and globalism is optimal for the international system. Another model - `dirigible pluralism' - is articulated that suggests an alternative set of arrangements whereby the UN might move toward routinizing international public policy processes and furnishing a degree of central guidance compatible with an increasingly subsystem-dominant, polyarchical world.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.