On 5 March, the international community enthusiastically embraced the signing of the new Treaty of high sea concluded within the United Nations. This news is even more important in a context of strong questions to international organizations and multilateralism.
Although there were already utopian projects of some doctrinaires in the Middle and Modern Ages, the germ of what we call international organisms we can put it in the 19th century. Their origins respond to aspirations to peace and the needs arising from technological development.
In this last category, administrative unions appear, which have been evolving from periodic conferences to permanent bodies endowed with authorities. For example, we find the General Post Office, the International Meteorological Office, the International Agriculture Union (FAO today) and the International Health Service (WHO today).
Today we are witnessing a debate where the effectiveness of international organizations is questioned. The new global challenges and the increasing tensions between states by hegemony do not seem to find a solution track within these organisms. Since international relations, there are many theories that deal with this problem, such as the contributions of neorealism, complex interdependence, the theory of hegemonic stability, and neoliberal institutionalism, among others.
When international bodies are prestigious, they can offer external support to national governments who have no domestic consensus on certain areas and who need to obtain a certain validated external approval quota. But, on the other hand, the survival of organisms with prestige eroded depends on the resistance of some countries to question a system that provides personal privileges and clients at the expense of taxpayers.
Many international bodies, due to the convenience of their parties, share a partial blocking situation. The mechanisms of blocking or veto are undoubtedly one of the main challenges faced by international bodies. If their survival depends on effectiveness (tangible results for all parties) and their legitimacy (confidence), then efforts should go to find overcoming alternatives of these mechanisms. The effectiveness of an international body is given by the ability that its actions have to make an actor behave differently than he would have done by himself. Then, with the mechanisms of blocking and veto, the equation is disturbed.
Today, we are witnesses of a growing global dispute between powers that not only seek to retain their status, but also increase their gravitational weight by weakening their rival at the same time. When the collective decision of an international body points against the interests of one of them (and there are no necessary institutional balances) the functioning is paralyzed. In turn, when a power sees in this same collective will an opportunity to be against his opponent, he tries to instrumentalize it in his favor. In this way, legitimacy is rescheduled.
Paralysis situations are not new. The same organization of the United Nations was crossed by similar scenarios during the bipolar order of cold war. The novelty now appears in other organisms, which regulate other thematic areas, and which previously experienced sporadic paralysis situations (or directly did not have them). The diffusion of power, the increasing interdependence and its vulnerabilities, and the hegemonic competition that exists in the international system is echoed in each of the international bodies.
It is important to also make mention of “original sin” with which international bodies are born. It is almost a rule, that the creation of the majority of international bodies, hides behind the intention to crystallize and perpetuate a certain power configuration favorable to a group of countries. Without going further, the same United Nations and the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank, International Monetary Fund and GATT) are the result of a set of rules and regulatory principles favourable to Western powers. The extension of the international system caused the emergence and introduction of new actors who broke the initial balance in many organisms that acted in the process. agenda-setting and as the collective will is established (voting mechanisms).
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