Agenda: Today

• Brief aside to Canada’s jurisdictional consent and ICJ

• Hurd Chapter 2: Theory, Methods, and International Organizations

    - What is an IO?
    - 4 basic theories
    - Discussion: overlap, agreement, and disagreement of the theories
    - Discussion: other approaches

• Brief historical look at IOs

    - establishing basic background knowledge
    - broad date ranges are important, specific dates are not

Agenda (2)

• January 30: The United Nations: Law and Administration

    - Readings: Hurd, Chapter 3, pages 44-75

• February 4 - The United Nations: International Peace and Security

    – Readings: Hurd, Chapter 4, pages 76-99

February 6 - The United Nations

    - Reading: Vreeland, James. 2008. "Political Institutions and Human Rights: Why Dictatorships Enter into the United Nations Convention Against Torture." International Organization. 62(2): 65-101,  (Course Reserves)
    - Mattes, Michaela, Brett Ashley Leeds, and Royce Carroll. 2015. “Leadership turnover and foreign policy change: Societal interests, domestic institutions, and voting in the united nations.” International studies quarterly: a publication of the International Studies Association 59(2): 280–290. (Course Reserves)

Announcement

• Thinking about tests for this class

    - In slides, I will designate questions that will likely be on tests as multiple choice, true/false, etc. with a (*)
    - If something is an example of the kind of thing that might be an essay question, I will designate that with an (essay). 
    - The actual questions will differ.
    - Essays are not right and wrong. They are your chance to apply basic knowledge to make an argument. I will be looking for organization and logical application of basic ideas. That is, stringing together some of the (*) concepts appropriately.

Today’s

• Brief aside

• Chapter 2

    - What is an IO?
    - 4 basic theories
    - Discussion: overlap, agreement, and disagreement of the theories
    - Discussion: other approaches

Canada and the ICJ

• Hurd example of Canada withdrawing ICJ jurisdiction over fisheries management (p. 11) (*) and (essay)
• This seems anarchic, but how different is it from our (US specifically) domestic courts?
• Is there a parallel case in the US Constitution?

Canada and the ICJ: At least one parallel

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

    - United States Constitution, Article III, Section 2, Clause 2

What is an international organization?

• Organization versus institution

What is an international organization?

• Organization versus institution
• Basic features

What is an international organization?

• Organization versus institution

• Basic features (*)

    1. Explicit interstate treaty
    2. Sovereign state members
    3. independent corporate personalities - independent legal standing

What is an international organization?

• What is the problem inherent in this design?

What is an international organization?

• What is the problem inherent in this design? (example similar to an essay topic)

• Enforcement

    - Practical: No army versus sovereign state with an army
    - Legal: justifying enforcement against a sovereign state that by definition is supreme

• Issues of eroding sovereignty (domestic political issues)

What is an international organization?

What are Hurd’s three main answers to “what kind of a thing is it?” about IOs? What do they mean?

What is an international organization?

What are Hurd’s three main answers to “what kind of a thing is it?” about IOs? (*)

• actor
• resource
• forum

What are the four theories of international relations that Hurd covers?

• What are they? (*)
• What are the key concerns of each? (*)
• Is the difference always about answers?
• How are they different?
• How are they similar?

What are the four theories of international relations that Hurd covers?

• Realism - security - oriented on conflict
• Liberalism - benefits (and costs) - oriented on rational cost-benefit analysis and cooperation. Rational self-interest.
• Constructivism - ideas - historical realities
• Marxism - inequality and power - economic and political power are inherently linked, part of one system.

Questions

• If realism’s concern is security and conflict, how can it explain the North Korea vs. United Kingdom difference in US foreign policy? (from page 26-27)
• Does a comparison between constructivism and realism in this case mean that realism is a bad model?

Questions

“All models are wrong” is a common aphorism and anapodoton in statistics. It is often expanded as “All models are wrong, but some are useful”.

    - attributed to statistician George E.P. Box

Statisticians Creed

¹

Question:

• How does the rational self-interest analysis of liberalism differ from a rational evaluation of security risks under realism? Where would the two differ?

Question: marxist approach

• Does one have to be a political marxist, or even socialist, to find marxist theories of IR useful or correct?

Question: marxist approach

• Does one have to be a political Marxist, or even socialist, to find marxist theories of IR useful or correct?

• Definitely not!

    - One can acknowledge the ideas behind the marxist approach and simply answer that the system with its inequality in economic and political power is a good one.
    - One can accept the description and find flaws in the system but not think either Marxism or even socialism is the best solution. 

• The same applies to realism, liberalism, and constructivism.

    - One need not be a political liberal to accept that rational choices based on costs and benefits are applicable to states

History of International Organizations

• The idea of international organizations goes back even before the modern nation state (*)

    - Delian League (478 BC) between sovereign city-states
    - Peace of Westphalia (1648 AD) - birth of the modern sovereign nation-state

• Concert of Europe/Congress of Vienna

• Failure of the League Nations (*)

History of International Organizations: Modern IOs

• Purpose of the modern IO infrastructure

    - Comparison to Concert of Europe and League of Nations (peace)
    - What sort of order was it intended to create? (liberal - market oriented especially, then democratically oriented)

• How did the Soviet Union (and eventually Communist China) fit in that order?

Authorship and License

• Main text source: Hurd, Ian. 2024. International organizations: Politics, law, practice. 5th ed. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

• Author: Tom Hanna

• Website: tomhanna.me

• License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.