International Organisation And Integration

The authors examine regional cooperation among neighboring countries in the area of regional public goods. These public goods include water basins (such as lakes, rivers, and underground water), infrastructure (such as roads, railways, and dams), energy, and the environment. Their analysis focuses on developing countries and the potentially beneficial role that international organizations and regional integration may play in bringing the relevant countries to a cooperative equilibrium. A major problem in reaching a cooperative solution is likely to be the lack of trust. If neighboring countries do not trust each other because of past problems, they may fail to reach a cooperative solution as each tries to maximize its gain from the regional public good. These strategies typically do not account for spillover effects and ultimately leads to losses for all parties. Other constraints on reaching a cooperative solution are its complexity and the financial requirements. Two types of institutions may help resolve some or all of these problems. International organizations can help with trust, expertise, and financing. The United Nations and the World Bank have been involved in a number of such projects in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, and have been successful in helping parties reach cooperative solutions. Regional integration agreements, though not necessary for regional cooperation, may also be helpful by embedding the negotiations on regional cooperation in a broader institutional framework. The authors examine these issues with the support of both analysis and a number of case studies.

In this book, Miles Kahler examines both global and regional institutions and their importance in the world economy. Kahler explains the variation in these institutions and assesses the role they play in sustaining economic cooperation among nations.

Including several contributions from an international group of historians and experts of international relations, this book analyses the relationship between the United Nations and European integration. The book, which covers from 1945 to the present, is organised into three sections, each dedicated to a different phase of the integration process, during which EU-UN relations had a different character. The essays of the first section deal with the 1950s and 1960s and show the active part played by UN bodies in shaping the integration process. In the second part, covering the 1970s and 1980s, it is the European Community which is shown to have had a visible impact on the life and the decision-making process of several UN bodies. Finally, the third part of the book, on the post-Cold War years, describes a more complex situation, characterised by new geopolitical responsibilities of the European Union, but also by its deep internal transformations due to several treaty revisions and the enlargement to Eastern Europe. Thus, dynamics similar to those described in the first section return, with UN bodies shaping some of the internal rules of the EU, but these coexist with strengthened European activity in the United Nations, in some cases leading to real partnerships.