International organizations, the EU and peace among member states: Bringing organization structure in

Abstract

Well-functioning states are often seen as great pacifiers in the sense that serious societal disputes within their respective territories are usually solved without violence. On the other hand, deep conflicts between states may more easily result in violent situations due to the partly anarchical character of the international system. One could therefore expect that studies of war and peace focused extensively on various ways of organizing interstate relations and the potential for replacing anarchy with political order. However, although several peace studies deal with the role of international organizations (IOs), this research is surprisingly absent in review literature. One reason for this absence may be that findings on the peacemaking role of IOs among member states seem to be ambiguous. The purpose of this review essay is to increase our understanding of under what conditions international institutions could matter in this respect. The fierce debate between realists and institutionalists only marginally touches upon the effect that the various ways of organizing IOs might have on interstate peace. Arguably, the only international organization so far that in its structure and work clearly transcends a basically intergovernmental arrangement is the European Union (EU). This could make the EU, and EU-like structures, more able to avoid polarization along the territorial dimension since its organization structure activates cross-cutting cleavages and a system-wide perspective among policymakers, arguably tying together rather than splitting the system. Interestingly, the peculiar organizational structure of the EU seems very much ignored in the IO literature in general, and in peace research on IOs in particular.