Abstract
Chapters 6 through 9 looked at specific international organizations (IOs) as agents of international cooperation in issue-areas that have strong political components. The IOs themselves were designed in part to answer political questions, to decide in favor of one set of state preferences over others as a prior condition to cooperation. But there is a wide range of IOs, relatively small and narrowly focused, that are designed to deal with technical and functional, rather than political, cooperation. They are designed to take goals that all countries agree on—such as efficient international postal delivery, the safety of international civil aviation, and combating dread diseases—and allow them to cooperate on achieving those goals more effectively. All countries agree on goals such as international peace and development, but disagree about what exactly those goals mean and about the conditions under which they should be achieved. With a goal such as safe international civil aviation, there is likely to be less disagreement about both goal definition and the conditions of cooperation.
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Notes
For a broader discussion of this topic, see Baldav Raj Nayar, “Regimes, Power, and International Aviation,” International Organization 49 (1995): 139–170.
See, respectively, Article 2, paragraph 2 of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and International Civil Aviation Organization, Council Resolution on Environmental Charges and Taxes (Montreal: ICAO, 1996).
World Health Organization, Constitution of the World Health Organization (Geneva: WHO, 1994), Article 1.
World Health Organization, Financial Report and Audited Financial Statements for the Period I January 2000–31 December 2001 and Report of the External Auditor to the World Health Assembly (Geneva: WHO, 2002).
See, for example, E Fenner, D. A. Henderson, I. Arita, Z. Jezek, and I. D. Ladnyi, Smallpox and Its Eradication (Geneva: WHO, 1988).
Eric Stein, “International Integration and Democracy: No Love at First Sight,” American Journal of International Law 95 (2001): 498–499.
See, for example, World Health Organization, Report of the Director-General, 2001 (Geneva: WHO, 2002).
The WHO’s work on SARS, for example, in the end generated some quite good press. See, for example, Donald McNeil Jr. and Lawrence Altman, “As SARS Outbreak Took Shape, Health Agency Took Fast Action,” New York Times, May 4, 2003, p. 1.
On the distinction between the coordination and PD game, see Duncan Snidal, “Coordination Versus Prisoners’ Dilemma: Implications for International Cooperation and Regimes,” American Political Science Review 79 (1985): 923–942.
On this debate, see Frank Biermann and Steffan Bauer, eds., A World Environmental Organization: Solution or Threat for Effective International Environmental Governance? (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). This volume discusses both sides of the debate.
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© 2006 J. Samuel Barkin
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Barkin, J.S. (2006). The Technical Details. In: International Organization: Theories and Institutions. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403983237_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403983237_11
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