Higher education in Asian countries and the role of international ...

22
important actors at international level. States invest in IOs to protect their own interests and to
advance or impede state goals in the international economy, politics, environment and security
(Koremenos, Lipson, & Snidal, 2001). Being an active component of international system
organizations also struggle for survival and resist all those forces that endanger their existence.
In this regard organizations survive only if they are able to react to changes that occur in the
world around them (Chevaillier, 2002).
The history of International Organizations (IOs) as a field is built on a rich intellectual tradition
that developed from 1940s to late 1960s and this history has been a part of the elaboration of
more complex and self-consciously analytical formulations (Katzenstein, Keohane, & Krasner,
1998). Usually it is believed that states are the major designer of the IGOs but empirical realities
shows that about two-thirds of the IGOs that exist today were created with some form of
involvement by international bureaucrats from pre-existing intergovernmental organizations
(Shanks, Jacobson, & Kaplan, 1996). So, like living organisms, IGOs also struggle for their
survival, grow and reproduce.
Are international organizations important for the society? Regarding this question, there exist
two main views among the general public: the first one is a realistic view- international
organizations should be treated as significant actors on the international stage; and the second
one is an idealistic view- international organizations are the solution of all major problems, but
the fact is that IOs are neither irrelevant nor omnipotent in global politics (Diehl, 2005).
Conventional wisdom regards the formation of IGOs as an engineering project in which states
weigh the costs and benefits of different design features, such as a dispute resolution mechanism,
and then select those that pass the cost-benefit test (Koremenos, Lipson, & Snidal, 2001).
The existing theories need further refinement to serve the real world because: “Realism,
liberalism, constructivism, and organization theory provide different approaches to organizing
and interpreting data on and from the international public sector. While realism has not taken
international organizations seriously, liberalism has recognized their importance in supporting a
cooperative international community yet is too concerned with meeting this realist challenge of
IO‟s relevance. Thus, the question of whether international organizations matter is discussed
over any concerns in actually understanding how they work. While policy oriented word (e.g.,
peacekeeping, development, human rights) has shed some light on the work of IOs and their