1.1 The Changing Substance of Inter-organisational Relations
In the study of international relations, conflicts, wars and threats often dominate the scene. International organisations usually represent what is positive in the picture, the brighter side, meagre perhaps, but nevertheless there.
The organisations represent cooperation and problem-solving, even progress. Even when we do not have precise knowledge of what they do or how they work, let alone of why they work as they do or what might impact on their performance, we expect something from them. At times, we would wish they were better in what they do or what they are supposed to do. Take the United Nations, the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: how much have not the member states invested in them over the decades, how much expected, but also obtained from them?
When looking at what these organisations do in today’s world, one particular aspect catches attention: the way they cooperate with each other, refer to each other and share the same tasks. Be it the EU looking for a UN mandate for a new mission or NATO Secretary General referring in his speech to the EU as a strategic partner of NATO, all these organisations operate in a shared environment and are quite close to one another.
How international organisations relate to each other and interact is, nevertheless, one of the less well-known aspects of international organisations. This very much applies to these three organisations today. We know them one by one, but our understanding of them together is limited. At the same time, inter-organisational relations are essential to understand if one wants to have a full picture of the condition of international organisations and the prospects of their functioning.
Understanding the relations between international organisations is increasingly important as these relations themselves keep gaining scale and significance. The sheer number of international organisations has grown. Many of them have a growing membership. Most of them have an expanding amount of tasks to perform, and expectations on them tend to grow, often because of the difficulties of other actors, such as states, to handle these tasks.
This leads to more overlap between the organisations, both when it comes to membership, geographical coverage and functions. The overlap, in turn, means that the organisations are more and more connected to each other. Organisations that might not have had any particular relations with each other before may now need these relations. As more and more is assigned to the organisations because more and more needs to be done, cooperative relations with other organisations might be of help in coping with the tasks. They may be pushed closer together by their member states that hope to see synergy and efficient use of resources.
If these are among the reasons for increasing inter-organisational relations, what would their consequences look like? Where do they lead? Such interaction may strengthen the organisations: it can be a way to gaining resources, skilfulness and competence. But the organisations may also end up competing with each other, wasting resources. What seems crucial to understand is that relations between international organisations are truly consequential. They do not only have an impact on what these organisations do but also for how they do what they do, how they work. In a more existential sense, they also have an impact on what their organisational identities are, what their place is in the entire landscape of international relations.
This can be illustrated by a short look at the field of security and defence in Europe where the development of the relations between the European Union, NATO and the United Nations has come to highlight the relevance of inter-organisational studies. The early 2000s opened in this sense a new chapter for research on European security. Central to this was the way in which the EU was becoming more pronounced as an actor in this field. The development of the EU towards actorness in the fields of crisis management, security and defence brought it to domains where other organisations used to work.
As an earlier example, the end of the Cold War also affected the constellations of organisations. Western European Union, the European defence union from the late 1940s, first got redefined as a mediator or bridge between NATO and the EU. Later on, it was to leave this role and the organisational scene altogether. This contributed to the need to define what the relations between the EU and NATO are and formulate the contents and principles of these relations in declarations and agreements.
Meanwhile, neither the EU nor NATO was happy with a regionally limited role: both showed signs of a global imperative. Their search for a role in security, and the globalising nature of security, led them to perceive a need for action beyond their area or territory. The times were relatively calm in Europe; security threats were seen to originate elsewhere. This brought the two organisations to define anew their relations with the one global organisation in charge of security, the United Nations.
A number of interesting debates, episodes and incidents show that relations between these organisations have not been straightforward. In EU-NATO relations, there have been clashes of interpretation such as on NATO’s right of first refusal when it comes to the decision to start a crisis management operation and signs of competition in, for instance, the creation of rapid and ever more rapid reaction forces to be used in the growing field of crisis management, or in the definition of threats. In the relations between these two and the UN, negotiations on their format and nature have been surprisingly complicated.
There is a growing understanding that inter-organisational relations are a consequential phenomenon. Organisations do relate to each other and influence each other. Moreover, there are forces within the organisations and outside that want them to relate to each other. But while inter-organisational relations have consequences on what the organisations do and how they perform, the consequences are not necessarily those intended or wished for. The story of inter-organisational relations can certainly be told in a rational way, but it is not devoid of irrational features or unintended consequences.
Indeed, the organisations themselves chose to characterise these relations in a certain way, reassuringly, as it were. In their official phraseology, the organisations increasingly refer to each other, stressing the positive sides of cooperation. Similarly, politicians from the member states, caught up in this new reality, have stressed the absence of rivalry between organisations even at the face of it and tend to stress their own role, their authority, in deciding on and guiding these relations.
Here, the need to know more and to understand better becomes manifest. What can the consequences of inter-organisational relations be in practice? What do inter-organisational relations consist of actually, what happens between the organisations? What makes organisations cooperate, what makes them not cooperate? If organisational interaction has negative consequences, how to prevent them? How can the consequences be made more positive? When and why can we expect positive consequences, and when negative? Exactly for whom or why would negative consequences be negative?
What are our tools to find the answers to these questions? What do we know, and how can we know? The domain is difficult to tackle in research. Not only is it not clear what the consequences of interaction are: it is also not easy to define what actually is meant by interaction between organisations, or what their relations consist of in practice. In the face of it, we barely have an agreement on what “international organisation” means.
When reading carefully prepared overviews on literature on inter-organisational relations in this field , one is struck by how often the lack of theory is mentioned. Lack of theoretical insights or proper theoretical oversight is often deplored (Koops 2013; Græger and Haugevik 2013). This book, however, grows from the insight that there is perhaps too much theory there. In order to develop fresh understandings, we need first to be better aware of the theories that bind us to repeating certain views—or have kept us unaware of these questions before.
The starting point for this analysis is the insight that inter-organisational relations change organisations. This is the first and most important consequence they have. Looking at the EU in particular, we can see that through interaction with other organisations, it both impacts on others and is impacted by them. None of them remains quite what they were.
We speak about impact and influence; thus, we speak about power. We need something more than their own understanding and something more than most of our theories would say on inter-organisational relations. The concept of power helps us understand these relations. Building a way of analysing inter-organisational relations as manifestations of power relations, or from the vantage point of power, helps us understand the nature and consequences of inter-organisational relations. This, in turn, helps us understand the state of international relations—and perhaps even increase our understanding of what power can be in this field today.
Indeed, the position of international organisations in the broader framework of international relations might be changing, too. Some authors suggest that, overall, literature has not kept in pace with the changes as security matters are increasingly managed, regulated or implemented by and through multilateral security institutions—and that this has been a development that even the most influential of member states, the United States, shaped only to a limited extent (Jones and Forman 2010: 8–9). “Institutional pluralism” might be something typical for European governments, shown very clearly in the EU Security Strategy of 2003 (ESS 2003) that was “remarkably generous to the efforts of other organisations,” perhaps motivated by a desire to show the viability of pluralistic forms (Gowan and Batmanglich 2010: 81, 94).
Does this growing role and growing interrelatedness of organisations mean that a new level of international relations is taking shape above that of the level of states? What would that mean in terms of shifts of power within the system? With the help of this analysis, the goal is to be better able to assess the importance of organisational agency in today’s world. Is its growing (Erskine 2004) or radically diminishing (Naïm 2013)? What would be the reasons for this? What or who would challenge it?
This book aims at shedding light on relations between international organisations with the help of theoretical tools and concepts aiming, in the end, at a better understanding of this part of the empirical reality of international relations. It aims at letting the tools we have do their job, craft different constructions out of the substance at hand and, in the end, bring to the reader not only a freshened way of looking at inter-organisational relations but also an improved understanding of how the tools we use impact on the results of our analyses.
