Persistence & Proliferation of Regional Organizations: Bridging European Divides

• In Event: Poster Session: International Collaboration

Abstract

Based on new field research I conducted in Europe in fall 2022, including dozens of interviews with organization staff and government officials as well as an examination of new and archived organizational documents, this paper adds new data to our understanding of intergovernmental organization persistence, proliferation, and overlap. It does so by analyzing heretofore underexplored post-communist regional international organizations, both institutional aspects of their design and evolution as well as their external context (especially Euro-Atlantic integration). Focusing on organizations with Western Balkan members or participants, it examines regional organizations that have largely been left out of analyses of international organization longevity, collaboration, and regime complexity and are often missing from international organization datasets. The bureaucracies of these regional organizations have hardly been systematically examined and the literature on Southeast European regional cooperation and European integration of the Western Balkans rarely communicates with the literature on intergovernmental organizations, yet these organizations play a central role in interconnecting countries across the region and can add new layers to our understanding of international organizations.

Dozens of organizations (both formal and informal) have emerged in Central and Southeastern Europe in just the last 30 years and the majority remain active. These organizations persist – some for two to three decades - despite multiple factors that may have foretold their demise. For example, most were initially externally designed and supported, they to this day include countries with recent and ongoing disputes between them, they contend with a proliferating field of organizations with similar agendas, and many members already achieved the key objective for which they joined, namely EU and NATO membership. Often these organizations include members (or otherwise participants and/or funders) from Southeastern Europe as well as from Central, Southern or Western Europe – longtime EU member states, newer EU member states, and non-EU member states. They thus provide an overlooked but important source of stability, knowledge, and expertise to non-EU members and a potential source of stability and security bridging a divided Europe. By examining some of these organizations’ characteristics and the overall landscape of organizational evolution and proliferation in the region, this research provides a reevaluation of overlap and an explanation of international organization persistence.

Author

• Melanie H. Ram, California State University, Fresno