The Growth of International Institutions

Abstract

In quantitative terms, the growth of international institutions in the past half-century has been nothing short of phenomenal. It is a simple matter for the historian to collect facts and figures demonstrating the validity of the proposition that the century extending from the Congress of Vienna to the Conference of Versailles was an era of slow germination, and that the subsequent period has been marked by the luxuriant growth and fruition of the organizing tendency in international relations. The numbering of international organizations is not an exact science, for the distinction between occasional international conferences and formally established international bodies emerged only gradually during the earlier era, and today the census-takers may disagree as to whether particular bodies should be listed as separate organizations or as segments of larger or more complex entities. Such imprecision has negligible importance, however, since even the roughest of calculations yields overwhelming evidence to support the conclusion that the number of international organizations, both inter-governmental and non-governmental, has increased tremendously since 1919. At the close of what I have described as the era of germination, some thirty public international agencies and fewer than four hundred of the private variety existed; fifty years of growth, marked by notable flurries in the periods immediately following the two World Wars, have advanced the process of international organization to the point at which the Yearbook of International Organizations for 1968–69 (twelfth edition) carried entries for 300 of the former and 2700 of the latter type.

Reprinted from Brian Porter (ed.) The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919–1969 (Oxford University Press, 1972) copyright University College of Wales, with permission.