ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses international organisations in the context of the changing nature of international diplomacy, including in particular summits and conferences as modes of contemporary diplomacy. It describes the proliferating number and types of high-level panels as instances of commission diplomacy. The chapter describes the ideational, normative, institutional and operational impacts of panels. The role, activities and impact of international organisations reflect and in turn shape the conduct of modern diplomacy. High-level panels are a means of collating state of the art knowledge on particular problems and converting them into policy recommendations for improving the collective management of world affairs. The world of international relations has changed substantially since the First World War. International summits and global conference are useful to greater and lesser degrees as occasions for mediating divergent interests and national policy perspectives in order to forge common collective policy priorities on particular global challenges.
