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date: 25 February 2021

Abstract and Keywords

Regional organizations (ROs) display significant variation in their institutional design. Some have a diversified institutional architecture; others are fairly simple in their institutional organization. Some make decisions by consensus; others use majoritarian decision-making rules. Some appear to be relatively fixed in their institutional structure, while others change considerably over time. This chapter addresses three key questions related to the institutional design of ROs: What are the principal empirical patterns? How can design variation be explained? And how is it related to states’ ability to achieve collective goals? The chapter suggests that pooling and delegation capture distinct aspects of regional organization and examines how the literatures on realism, institutionalism, constructivism, and diffusion explain the variation that can be detected. The authors then review the consequences of institutional design for peace and security, economic welfare, domestic institutions, and international actorness. They conclude by discussing some promising avenues for future research.

Keywords: regional organization, institutional design, pooling, delegation, realism, institutionalism, constructivism

Tobias Lenz

Tobias Lenz is Assistant Professor of Global Governance and Comparative Regionalism, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany.

Gary Marks

Gary Marks is Burton Craige Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA and Chair in Multilevel Governance, Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the Vrije Universiteit (VU), Amsterdam, Netherlands; 2007/2008 Fellow at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study (HWK) in Northwest Germany in cooperation with the Collabo¬rative Research Center on Transformations of the State (TranState, 2003–2014) and the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS, 2007 ff.).

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