Universal and Regional Intergovernmental Organizations
UNIVERSAL AND REGIONAL INTERGOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (IGOs)
The history of world politics for the past three hundred fifty years has largely been a chronicle of interactions among states, which remain the dominant political organizations in the world. States' interests, capabilities, and goals significantly shape world politics. (ПолИтикс) However, the supremacy of the state has been severely challenged. Increasingly, world affairs are being influenced by organizations that transcend national boundaries—universal international organizations such as the United Nations and regional organizations such as the European Union. Diverse in scope (сфера деятельности) and purpose, these actors perform independent roles and increasingly exert (приводить в действие) global influence.
In this unit we examine the growth and influence of these transnational organizations, a variety of other nonstate actors, such as ethnopolitical and religious movements and multinational corporations, which are also increasingly active on the world stage. The purpose or this unit is not simply to describe these actors' existence, but to question the extent to which their activities undermine (подрывать) states' continuing autonomy. The focus is on governments' capacity to manage global change, as well as the role of international organizations in the transformation of world politics.
There are two principal types of international organizations: Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)[1] are those whose members are states; non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are those whose members are private individuals and groups. Neither type is unique to the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, although both are now more pervasive (расширяющиеся). The Union of International Organizations, which maintains comprehensive, up-to-date information on both types, records that their numbers increased sharply during the nineteenth century, as international commerce and communications grew alongside
The history of world politics for the past three hundred fifty years has largely been a chronicle of interactions among states, which remain the dominant political organizations in the world. States' interests, capabilities, and goals significantly shape world politics. (ПолИтикс) However, the supremacy of the state has been severely challenged. Increasingly, world affairs are being influenced by organizations that transcend national boundaries—universal international organizations such as the United Nations and regional organizations such as the European Union. Diverse in scope (сфера деятельности) and purpose, these actors perform independent roles and increasingly exert (приводить в действие) global influence.
In this unit we examine the growth and influence of these transnational organizations, a variety of other nonstate actors, such as ethnopolitical and religious movements and multinational corporations, which are also increasingly active on the world stage. The purpose or this unit is not simply to describe these actors' existence, but to question the extent to which their activities undermine (подрывать) states' continuing autonomy. The focus is on governments' capacity to manage global change, as well as the role of international organizations in the transformation of world politics.
There are two principal types of international organizations: Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs)[1] are those whose members are states; non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are those whose members are private individuals and groups. Neither type is unique to the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, although both are now more pervasive (расширяющиеся). The Union of International Organizations, which maintains comprehensive, up-to-date information on both types, records that their numbers increased sharply during the nineteenth century, as international commerce and communications grew alongside