Informal Intergovernmental Organizations: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Overview

In current international politics states often interact with one another through informal formats, which are commonly labelled clubs or ad hoc coalitions. Examples of such formats can be found in numerous policy areas related to security, economy, environment and international conflict management. In this regard, analysts speak of a trend towards the informalization of international politics. Whereby informalization is understood as a qualitative shift concerning the institutional framework in which politics take place because it – at least partially – represents a departure from the codified norms and rules that have shaped the international order since the end of World War II (“crisis of the liberal international order”). Although this observation is not fundamentally new, informal processes in general and informal cooperation formats in particular have long been neglected in academic debate. In addition to a lack of systematic terminology and conceptual as well as theoretical foundations, the review of empirical data has only a rudimentary character. Given the above mentioned, this article pursues two goals by which a systematic analysis of informal cooperation formats will be provided, relevant research strands linked and a starting point for further research offered. First, basic considerations about the conceptual foundations and links between informality, informal international institutions and informal governance will be presented. By doing so, it will become clear that informality is a multi-dimensional phenomenon and that IIGOs only represent a specific form of informality. Building on this insight, a comprehensive understanding of international institutions that allows distinguishing between formal and informal institutions will be introduced. The resulting spectrum of institutional arrangements enables the classification of IIGOs as a concrete form of informal international institutions and could be used as a conceptual starting point for a variety of other informal phenomena. By applying this understanding of informal international institutions, it further becomes clear that informality not only describes the institutional features of IIGOs and other informal institutions but also determines their ability to regulate political processes and phenomena. As a consequence, informal governance becomes an inherent characteristic of IIGOs. Secondly, by presenting some preliminary results of a dataset that is currently constructed, an insight into the empirics of IIGOs will be given to shed light on their number and diversity. The database includes 120 cases between 1945 and 2015 and covers information on the establishment, dissolution, number, composition and the particular field of activity of the respective IIGOs.