Chapter Fourteen: International Organizations and International Law

Exercises

Exploring Hypotheses About International Institutions.

Using your college or university's library, obtain a copy of “The Rational Design of International Institutions,” by Barbara Koremenos, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal, from International Organization vol. 55, issue 1 (autumn 2001): 761-799. Skim the article, then use that information to help you determine where to read more closely to answer these questions.

• Koremenos and the contributors to the international organization special issue define international institutions as both formal organizations and informal regimes. International organizations have observable characteristics: they have offices and budgets and staff. Regimes and other informal institutions, on the other hand, do not. Imagine that you were going to design a study to test some of the article's conjectures about rational design and that you wanted to include these informal organizations in the sample. What kinds of observable effects would informal institutions have? In other words, how would you know an informal institution existed so that you could include it?
  
  
  
• For each of the international organizations listed below, identify two of the article's conjectures that appear to be supported by that organization's design. You may identify the conjectures as C1, M3, and so on; see the helpful list on page 797. You may need to do some background research on these organizations to respond.
  
  • The United Nations (UN)
  • The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
  • The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
  • The European Union (EU)
  • The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)
  • The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF)
  • The Shanghai Cooperation Organization
  • Mercosur (The Common Market of the South)
  • The International Court of Justice (ICJ)