International Organizations And Internal Conditionality

This book explores how norms-based international organizations, namely the Council of Europe and the OSCE, are still able to win in world politics. Fawn uses the concept of internal conditionality to explain how these organizations have been able to respond to members with a lack of material incentives or instruments of coercion.

This book explores how norms-based international organizations, namely the Council of Europe and the OSCE, are still able to win in world politics. Fawn uses the concept of internal conditionality to explain how these organizations have been able to respond to members with a lack of material incentives or instruments of coercion.

This book examines the implementation of, the spread of, and compliance with emerging global norms. Based on empirical country studies on the implementation of transparency norms defined by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) – a multi-stakeholder process seeking to promote global standards for the transparent and accountable management of oil, gas and mineral resources –, it investigates the various factors and motivations affecting actors with regard to norm compliance. The book demonstrates that compliance with global norms depends on a combination of various factors, including motivations and conditions for introducing norms into the domestic political space; local actors’ level of commitment to the norm; and their capacity for norm compliance. Given its scope, the book will appeal to all international relations scholars interested in processes of norm localisation, compliance, and contestation.

The interconnection between international organizations (IOs) membership and democratization has become a topic of intense debate. However, the main focus of the literature so far has been on IOs created by democratic states and comprised mostly of democracies, for examples the European Union. In contrast to existing studies, this book focuses on another group of regional IOs, referred to as 'non-democratic IOs' which are organizations founded by autocracies. How do these newly emerged organizations interrelate and interact with the outside world? How do they counteract and confront the danger of democratization in their own member states and neighboring states? This book aims to address these questions by developing a new theory of authoritarian regionalism, and by combining both quantitative and qualitative analysis to test it. The quantitative analysis uses a large dataset of all regional organizations worldwide for the post-World War II period, with the aim of defining historical trends in development and the modification of regionalism over the last seven decades (1945-2015). Qualitative analysis refines and develops the argument by looking at the case of post-Soviet Eurasia. The book uncovers a new type of regionalism - 'authoritarian regionalism' and traces its historical roots as well as its implications for modern politics. The book is the first attempt to systematically investigate the functioning and the impact of authoritarian regionalism as a new phenomenon as well as its implications for democratization world-wide. The book contributes to the theory of regionalism, international organizations, studies of autocracies, foreign policy, and democratization world-wide.

This book explores when, why, and how regional organizations adopt and design institutions to promote and protect fundamental standards of democracy, human rights, and rule of law in their member states. These regional institutions have spread globally. While their institutional designs have become increasingly similar over time, regional particularities persist. The book identifies factors that generate the demand for regional institutions and shape its institutional design. The argument combines hitherto juxtaposed explanatory factors of demands and diffusion by integrating them in a single framework and clarifying under what conditions the interplay between demands and diffusion plays out in the adoption and design of regional institutions. The book provides a comprehensive overview of regional democracy, human rights, and rule of law institutions based on two original datasets and draws on multivariate statistical analysis as well as case studies on the making and change of regional institutions in the Organization of American States and the Organization of African Unity/African Union.

This book aims to understand the “texture” of the post-Soviet region, where waves of de-integration and re-integration have been resonating at different times and through diverse manifestations over the last quarter of century. The post-Soviet states have been evolving in an embryonic system of states in their close neighbourhood, whose boundaries and rules of interactions are still in the making. However, one can already detect specific traits of regional governance, one of these being the presence of overlapping organisations and institutions. It includes reflections on relations between state formation and region formation and a tentative conceptualisation of a post-colonial form of regionalism. The focus on small states, featuring different behaviours vis-à-vis regional organisations and regional imaginaries in their transitional and still unsettled state identities and foreign policy narratives, constitutes a further element of originality. This innovative volume is crucial reading for scholars and researchers of International Relations with a special interest in either the Former Soviet Space or Comparative Regionalism.

A penetrating look into the unrecognized and unregulated links between autocratic regimes in Central Asia and centers of power and wealth throughout the West Weak, corrupt, and politically unstable, the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are dismissed as isolated and irrelevant to the outside world. But are they? This hard-hitting book argues that Central Asia is in reality a globalization leader with extensive involvement in economics, politics and security dynamics beyond its borders. Yet Central Asia’s international activities are mostly hidden from view, with disturbing implications for world security. Based on years of research and involvement in the region, Alexander Cooley and John Heathershaw reveal how business networks, elite bank accounts, overseas courts, third-party brokers, and Western lawyers connect Central Asia’s supposedly isolated leaders with global power centers. The authors also uncover widespread Western participation in money laundering, bribery, foreign lobbying by autocratic governments, and the exploiting of legal loopholes within Central Asia. Riveting and important, this book exposes the global connections of a troubled region that must no longer be ignored.

Since the early 1990s, the European Union has included human rights conditionality clauses in its association agreements and other international trade and cooperation agreements. The purpose of these clauses is to entitle a party to take appropriate measures, including suspension of the agreement, in the event that the other party violates human rights or democratic principles. This book provides an account of the evolution of these clauses, their scope and their operation, and analyses the EU's responsibility, under international law, to implement these clauses domestically. Based on this examination, the book explores the extent to which the EU has the legislative competence to include such clauses in its international agreements, and concludes by considering the implications of ultra vires agreements in EU law. This study offers theoretical insights into aspects of international law as well as EU constitutional and external relations law. Its practical conclusionshave major implications not only for the application of human rights clauses, but also for the EU's international treaty practice more generally. Dr Lorand Bartels brings his expertise in international law to this engaging discussion of the EU's use of human rights conditionality in its international agreements.