CATEGORIES OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION: CHALLENGES IN CATEGORIZING SUCH ORGANIZATIONS.

Introduction.                                                                                                                                                                     Since the Second World War, international organizations have become integral features of the international system. International organizations have emerged as significant international actors in their own right, international organizations are today more influential internationally than most underdeveloped states.  In Today’s world, states can not lead a viable international existence as autonomous units; sovereign independence does not guarantee an ability to act in the international arena hence the need to partner with other states to form international organizations.

States must in the modern world cooperate, adjust, accommodate and compromise in so many areas to promote their common welfare, for these and more purposes states have formed elaborate agencies and organizations in a complex set of relationships among nations. Bennett (1995) states that a feature of Today’s world scene is the existence of approximately 3,00O public and 5,000 private international organizations and with the increase of diverse international organizations both in numbers and purpose the issue of categorizing these numerous organizations comes into play. The following is a discussion on categories of international organization.

Categories of international organizations

Different scholars and schools of thought have different perspectives when it comes to the categorization of IOs. Some categorization model is based on the structural peculiarities of some kinds of organization for example in terms of its regional orientation, functional orientation, structural complexity.

Another easy way to classify IOs is based on the structure of their institutions and the comparative power of these institutions.

Lynn H.Miller is cited in Bennett’s book as bringing forth a classification model of all regional organizations into three categories: co-operative, Alliance (NATO) and Functional (OECD).

Membership is another criterion; membership can be open to all actors in the case of UN and its agencies, IMF, World Bank among others.

Organizations can also be classified based on the spill-over effect, in that co-operation in one issue may affect other issue areas, for example ECOWAS initially an economic integration has developed a military wing, ECOMOG to deal with security issues.

According to Clive Archer (1995), the most common way of classifying international organizations is their aims and activities. Basically, what they are supposed to do and what they actually do most international organization be they IGOs or INGOs, usually have their activities and aims stated in the basic document by which they have been established. Another easiest way used in classifying according to Clive is by the structure of the institutions and the comparative power of these structures. Organization such as UPU and ITU had permanent established structure.

International organizations fall majorly under three conventional categories as outlined in the Yearbook of international organizations and they are as follows: intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs), International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOs) and multinational enterprises. This conventional categorization model is discussed in detail below.

INTER-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS.

IGOs are set up by three or more states to fulfill common purposes or attain common objectives (field, Jordan & Hurwitz, 1983). The Yearbook of International Organizations (1979) IGOs are primarily made up of sovereign states based on formal agreements between the governments of this states and possess a permanent secretariat.

IGOs differ on various criteria. The most general classification of IGOs is derived from geographic scope, where an organization can be regional (AU), sub regional (EAC) or global (UN) in geographic spread.

Another category of IGOs is the degree of integration, IGOs can be very loosely integrated with minimum institutional structure and minimum powers conferred upon them by their member states like the UN, or the disbanded League of nations or have high degree of integration like the EU, EAC also aims to achieve a political federation.

International Non-governmental Organizations (INGOs)

Is an organization whose membership is composed of private individuals or groups (Wigel, 2003). An INGO is an organization whose aims should genuinely be international in character, and manifest the intention to engage in activities in at least three states, membership should be drawn from individuals or collective entities of at least three states and must be open to any appropriately qualified entity/individual. May be found by private philanthropy such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, B. Gates and ford foundation or as an adjunct to existing IOs such as catholic and Lutheran churches.

INGOs may be divided into two broad categories according to Bennett (1977), the non profit organization (NPOs) and the multinational business enterprise (MNCs) organized for profit.

Non-profit organizations.

The NPOs is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders but instead uses it to pursue its goals, self preservation and for its expansion. Examples include charities and trade unions. Some NPOs known for their charitable or social nature of their activities conducted over a long period of time include the Red cross, amnesty international founded in UK in 1991 advocates for human rights internationally and by 2002 it had branches in more than 

Multinational Enterprises.

Commonly known as MNCs or enterprises and at times transnational corporations, they are profit firms that have subsidiaries in two or more countries and engage in transnational production of goods and services across national boundaries. It has its management headquarters in one country called home country and operates in several other countries called host countries. Examples include general motors, Unilever, Total, Toyota motors.

 Problems of international organization categorization.

According to Clive Archer (1995), a problem in dealing with international regions is that of delineation; where does one region end and where does another begin: if the world easily divided into segments then the answer would be self evident, but not even the continents provide such neat package in international relations. There seems to be no international organization whose members completely cover one continent and is only drawn from one continent. OAU is the nearest but it excludes South Africa.

Not all scholars subscribe to the same use of terms. Some of the terminology applied to this field of international organization is little understood and sometimes lacks precision for example international organization, transnational interaction, transnational relations (Leroy, 1995). Thus, the categorization of international organizations brings some kind of disagreements and contradictions depending on the meaning one ascribes to the terms used.

The United States for example, is a member of several organizations that claim regional status and that reach to almost every point of the compass, thus variously identifying the U.S with North Atlantic, America and Southeast Asian areas. None of the organizations involved conforms to any geographic region. The commonwealth is also frequently classified as a regional organization, although its members are dispersed around the globe.(Bennette,1995)

Coexistence of regional and universal organizations makes the dividing line between international organizations in these two categories somewhat arbitrary and subjective, for example if a regional organizations/agencies submit to supervision by global agencies or respond positively to their requests for supportive action then the basis for a compatible relationship exists. Thus a combination of regionalism and universalism serves to promote the national interests of most states in their advance beyond unilateralism. (Bennett, 1995)

International organizations tend to slide into each other, developing points of approximation or overlap rather than to maintain fixed distances of separation. Some regional organizations like the AU and OAS have different characteristics hence may overlap in categories.

Some organizations lack the capacity or do no present a sufficient degree of internationality. The 16^th edition (1977) of the yearbook of international organizations gave some recognition to this fact, it states “with the increase in the number and varieties of bodies called ‘international’, it has become difficult to limit a yearbook of international organizations only to those organizations corresponding to the selection criteria used for previous editions, even though those criteria remain valid as a definition of minimal internationality”.

Preconceptions and misconceptions about world institutions, international organizations is common place within the realm of international organization. With the existence of many misconceptions many scholars have come up with some hybrid classification of IOs such as the Conventional IOs, federations of IOs, universal membership organizations.

Another major problem in categorizing international organizations is the extent to which organs of an IO contain NGO representation as opposed to governmental and vice versa. At both ends are IGOs and INGOs respectively, near INGOs’ are organizations like inter parliamentary Union and Interpol-international criminal police organization which have specialized links to governments and to IGOs’ side are those organizations which have non governmental representation in their representation such as the European Community and the ILO. According to The Yearbook of IOs(1978), some contemporary

Conclusion.

Because of the existence of very many and diverse international organizations, their classification continues to pose a serious scholarly debate among the student of international relations. From the above discussion and in the analysis of the challenges visited it is clear that no single principle or categorization model can be adopted to precisely place every IO within its respective domain hence every move that aims to adequately categorize international organizations should adopt or put into consideration the existing multiplicity in the categorization models that is there.