Summary

International organizations (IOs) are a byproduct of the European Westphalian anarchical interstate system to facilitate interstate international economic, social or technical cooperation. They grew exponentially in the second half of the 20th century and have become a ubiquitous component of the international relations landscape. There is now a glut of theories, each making different assumptions about the nature of international politics, focusing attention on different aspects of IO and propounding widely diverging conclusions about the role and functions of IOs. There is, however, a trend among these: the legal/historical tradition which initially provided the intellectual lens through which IOs were understood has given way to a mix of realist regime theory and liberal intergovernmentalism views. In a broad comparative public policy analysis framework, scholarship continues to evolve on the norm-making, regulatory, distributive, and redistributive policies emanating from IOs together with their impact and legitimacy.