The Changing Order in International Affairs

In a world where everyone seeks power and influence it is hard to distinguish between the
actors who have power and the ones who don´t. With the rise of the internet and social media
it is a lot easier to have influence in various things from the current fashion trends to serious
political debates. The former UN Secretary-General, Kofi K. Annan brought light to the
changing role of states in international affairs at the beginning of the 21st century and twenty
years later we can observe that his idea was not far from reality. Realism describes states as
“the principal actors in world politics,” 1 however that is no longer true. International
institutions (IIs) started to gain power at the beginning of the century and continue to do so.
In the future as their significance in international affairs will strengthen and states will pursue
the cooperation with international institutions when it comes to global issues. It is important
to understand the changing role of states, as in this new order of international affairs a
generally more people-oriented politics is welcomed considering that civilians can engage in
and contribute to the work of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) easier.
This essay will argue how and why the cooperation of states and IIs will become more
significant in the future. Firstly, by exploring the global issues faced in this century, it will be
highlighted why states continue to be less and less significant when working on these
challenges in the international affairs. The change that has been happening since the end of
the cold war makes it clear how it is going to escalate in the future. Continuing with the
importance of having organisations that can keep states accountable about their decisions is
going to be examined which is going to show why respecting the common interest is more
important than implementing the national interest at all cost. Finally, describing how states
and international institutions will divide their work it will become unambiguous why that will
be more effective for developing and carrying out solutions for the global challenges facing
us.
The 21st century brought and continues to bring new challenges that one state alone
cannot solve effectively; therefore, states will seek the help of IIs specialized in these issues.
As it is already disclosed today “the sovereign state, in its most basic sense, is being
redefined by the forces of globalization and international cooperation.” 2 Concerns of the 21st
century are no longer only country-specific, but rather concerns of the “global civil society.” 3
A wide range of problems are rising, like climate change, Covid-19 or the question of AI
1
Mearsheimer „Realism“, 25.
2
United Nations General Assembly, Official Records, 1.
3
Craig, and Mingst, „International Institutions,” 237.
security, which concerns everyone and cannot be solved by one state, therefore a global
alliance and unity in views about these issues increases. Examples of this are already present,
like the cooperation of NGOs and governments to ban landmines. 4 The success of that
cooperation is a good starting point for future partnerships as well as a great indicator why it
is better to work together for states and IIs on these issues. In the mentioned campaign, NGOs
were able to raise awareness amongst civilians about the issue by pointing out how it affects
them, hence making them interested in supporting the campaign 5. In this century where the
individual sovereignty is outstanding, civilians require opportunities to contribute to finding
solutions for the global challenges.6 As seen in the countless protests for climate change
happening all around the world or in the number of volunteers in healthcare throughout
Covid-19 who helped in any way they could, citizens are keen to participate in the
movements that shape the course of their life, therefore if IIs provide space for them, their
involvement will further advance in the future. As IIs will have the support of the public by
giving them the opportunity to engage in their work, states (who are naturally also interested
in gaining public support) will want to cooperate with IIs to keep the general support.
By their nature states are bound to focus on their own national interest which makes
them a less efficient actor when it comes to global challenges, thus IIs will work as an
objective party. These organisations/institutions will keep states accountable about their
behaviour which prevents them putting their national interest above the common interest,
therefore, states will aspire to work close together with them to implement their national
interest as much as possible. There are many cases where states prioritize their national
interest over the common interest A very recent example of that is the Russian-Ukrainian
war, which Mearsheimer could say proves that “realism appears to have a bright future in the
twenty-first century.”7 However, examples of our present days show that IIs already start to
have the power to regulate states and keep them accountable when they act against the
common interest. For instance, the United Nations warned and called Russia to stop the war
and the EU declared many sanctions against them. The most important outcome however is
that the war has also led to an increase of membership in international organisations, in
particular Finland and Sweden joined NATO and by doing that they choose to lose from their
power and sovereignty, because they realized that one state is not strong enough to withstand

4
Ibid., 246-251.
5
Ibid., 249-250.
6
United Nations General Assembly, Official Records, 1-2.
7
Mearsheimer „Realism,“ 25.
the challenges and IIs provide a collaboration of many countries which makes them stronger
against any issues.
which suggests an increase in accountability of IIs in the future. Although today in many
cases they lack authority to prohibit powerful states from doing something, there are already
positive examples where the work of IIs influences even powerful states in their way of
operating. One of them is the change in international economic laws due to globalization and
organized by IIs which “compel sovereign states to adopt the same laws irrespective of their
stage of development.”8 As explained above, the importance of the controlling power of IIs
will increase, consequently the sovereignty of states will decrease, so states will have to
accept them as an actor in international affairs and work together with them.
As an effect of the increasing cooperation, states will increasingly develop their
domestic and foreign policies within the international policy framework determined by IIs.
On the other hand, IIs are becoming the platform that concentrates in international affairs and
work with upcoming issues. IIs – as the name suggests – work in the global sphere on
subjects concerning the reality of more countries, on the other hand, the core of states is to
work on the prosperity of their country. Consequently, it is more effective to trust IIs to work
with specific issues as they would work on those either way. For an accomplished
cooperation to happen, states need to give space and resources for IIs to work on the issues
and come up with possible solutions from the various perspectives they can look at those
issues thanks to the diversity of people working in IIs. Although the challenges faced by
society are complex and there´s many of them, there´s “a network of economic, social and
political IIs”9 which makes it easy to divide the work between them, and to find the group of
IIs who are specialized on the issue and will work on the policies that are best for the society.
Once developed, states can work on how to implement that to their own country or what to
change according to their culture, history, economy and all the other influencing factors. For
example, for states it is more effective to support the work of Greenpeace on environmental
issues and utilize their work and research by implementing it to their own country. In this
system IIs will have the leading role, as “a global civil society inherently facilitates a more
“people-centered” politics and, concomitantly, a conceptual shift toward more democratically
10
oriented transnational political processes,” hence affected countries will work together
closely with them.

8
Chimni, „International Institutions Today,” 7.
9
Ibid., 1.
10
Craig, and Mingst, „International Institutions,” 239.
 Ultimately, as the world is changing the transformation of the role of states in
international affairs is inevitable. The importance of international cooperation, the growth of
significance of IIs, and the need of a controlling power over states shows that they will
become important actors in the future, causing states to prioritize a partnership with them.
The possibility of an effective distribution of work between states and the various IIs
indicates a very positive vision for the future. Naturally, there is a long road until getting to
the ideal cooperation of states and IIs, however the small examples of cooperation and II
involvement in international affairs suggests that there is a development. States, as actors will
not lose significance, however, the effects of globalization prevent a world order where states
are the only actors in international. As “a global era requires global engagement” 11, in this
century where the internet allows civilians to have a say in both global and political issues,
the importance of IIs will continue to grow considerably, as they are the actors in
international affairs who are both for the people and for solving the concerning issues.

11
Annan, Remarks of UN Secretary-General, 3.
 Bibliography:
Chimni, B. S. "International Institutions Today: An Imperial Global State in the Making."
European Journal of International Law 15, no. 1 (2004): 1-37.

United Nations General Assembly. Official Records Fifty-fourth Session – 4th plenary
meeting, A/54/1 (20 September 1999), 1-35. Available online at:
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/285833/files/A_54_PV.4- EN.pdf?ln=en

Mearsheimer, John J. “Realism, the Real World, and the Academy.” In Realism and
Institutionalism in International Studies, edited by Frank P. Harvey and Michael Brecher, 23-
33. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002

Warkentin, Craig, and Karen Mingst. "International Institutions, the State, and Global Civil
Society in the Age of the World Wide Web." Global Governance 6, no. 2 (April 2000): 237-
257.