ABSTRACT
The newspaper headlines “WTO Has Failed Developing Countries,” 1 “Poorest Countries Lack a Proper Safety Net, Says World Bank” 2 and “U.N. Threatens Sanctions Against Sudan and South Sudan” 3 illustrate a common understanding of international governmental organizations (IOs): They are seen as actors in their own right, accredited with a certain legitimacy to rule the world in particular policy areas. This is a rather new perception, as IOs have formerly been conceived of as creations of states to facilitate interstate relations. Today, IOs also are seen as norm entrepreneurs (Karns and Mingst 2010) that facilitate and support norm diffusion (Checkel 1997; Jakobi 2006) or act as “teachers of norms” (Finnemore 1993), monitoring norm implementation (Tallberg 2002) and sometimes even sanctioning states if they violate norms (Dunoff and Trachtman 2009). Furthermore, IOs are perceived as mediators between conflicting parties (Alvarez 2002) or even as lawmakers (Alvarez 2005) who settle disputes (Merrills 2005) and have a legitimizing function (Best 2012). Thus, IOs do not merely facilitate interstate cooperation, but seem to establish a certain level of world order for states and non-state actors alike. These observations are reflected in a number of studies emphasizing the power, authority and influence of IOs in world politics (e.g., Barnett and Duvall 2005; Goldstein, River, and Tomz 2007; Karns and Mingst 2010).
