International Organizations from the Constitutional Point of View

International governmental organizations arc considered by many in an increasingly interdependent world to be a necessity to which there is no alternative. Dramatic external effects and economies of scale arc seen as forces that require the establishment and further development of administrative units beyond national limits (c.g., Baehr and Gordcnkcr 1984). Accordingly, international organizations arc positively evaluated, and questions of efficiency arc considered unimportant or arc answered in a favorable way for the organizations. Other observers, however, take international organizations to be an extreme example of inefficiency and mismanagement. The UNCTAD, for example, is simply called “a failure” in the study by Ramsay (1984). He points out the many scandals in such organizations and regards UNCTAD’s rapid growth in terms of budgets and number of employees as an indicator of waste. Accordingly, international organizations arc evaluated negatively; it is claimed that there is no need for them and that better alternatives exist. The divergent views start from the same observation, that today international organizations arc of great and increasing importance. There exist about 300 intergovernmental international organizations with roughly 100,000 employees and an administrative budget of about U.S. $7 billion (Blanc 1985). A more extensive definition relying on the Yearbook of International Organizations of 1981 counts between 344 and 1,075 international organizations. They constitute a rather new phenomenon in the international system: 94 percent of the 881 international orga­ nizations whose date of foundation is known were created after 1939 and 70 percent between 1960 and 1981. The establishment rate of The Constitutional Point o f View 59