Answer to Question #265959 in Economics for Princess

Question

What efforts of the whole array of inter-governmental organizations do the dynamics of globalization demand?

Answer 1

In the period after the Second World War, international organizations, especially in the United Nations system, the institutions of the Bretton Woods system, and the WTO, exerted an increasing influence on interstate relations and, more generally, on the development of international relations. Their number, especially at the regional level, has steadily increased. The transfer of power to the international sphere entailed the establishment of permanent international administrative institutions, the status of whose employees is guaranteed by international legal provisions. Contrary to popular belief, globalization has not diminished the importance of intergovernmental agreement systems. The industrialized countries have thus established links that give their economic policies a high level of convergence. The process of European integration, as it developed in particular after the Unification Act and the Treaty of Union in Maastricht, is the most characteristic reflection of this institutional development. At a more general level, the OECD, like the GATT / WTO, have played a decisive role in the dynamics of globalization. International financial institutions, in particular the IMF and the World Bank, influenced the liberalization of the transfer of goods, services, and capital in developing countries, providing guidance under the auspices of the United States on structural change policies that were a stage of globalization. In addition, the UN and its individual institutions were constantly involved in defining the main directions of globalization and in promoting its progressive development.

Despite their important political and symbolic role, these structures attract relatively little interest from the academic world. They are often assessed in institutional legal terms as if a simple listing of their powers and the resulting functions were sufficient to explain their political role and the tasks they perform. Of course, there is solid work on the Bretton Woods institutions, due to their impact on the economies and politics of the poorest countries, but academic research on the topic of the UN and other specialized institutions remains very limited. Most works on the theory of international relations do not pay attention to them at all or do it very superficially, practically ignoring their functioning from within, decision-making mechanisms, and their political role. The "realists" view them as an instrument of state policy, deprived of real autonomy. "Neorealists" are engaged in the construction of an abstract scheme that deduces the necessary emergence of these structures from the interaction of great powers, without being concerned with the role and tasks of international institutions. Works with a "functionalist" emphasis focus primarily on the process of European integration, analyzing very specific institutions that differ significantly from the United Nations or regional organizations. It is paradoxical that the current called "neoliberal institutionalism", which contributed to the development of the concept of regimes does not show interest in international organizations.