Between Functionalism and Hegemony: Regional International Organizations in the History of International Law

Abstract

This article examines the changing practice and theorisation of regional international organizations (RIO S) since the early nineteenth century. It argues that the identity and place of RIO S in international law have been continuously shaped and reshaped by the relational practices of particular entities, understood and enacted as more or less ‘regional’ and ‘organizational’, at different times and places. The article focuses on two axes of tension in particular: the positioning of RIO S between functionalist and territorial logics; and the possibility of RIO S being used for hegemonic or counter-hegemonic purposes. The article traces these two lines of tension through the practice of RIO s and doctrinal and theoretical reflections on that practice, over four periods of uneven lengths: the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the interwar period; the four decades following the Second World War; and the period since the end of the Cold War.