Approaches to the Analysis of International Organizations and the WTO

Abstract

International organizations may be described as “any institution with formal procedures and formal membership from three or more countries” (Willetts 2006: 440). Those organizations in which full legal membership is officially open only to states are called “intergovernmental organizations” or simply “international organizations,” which is the more frequently used term (Archer 2001: 1; Barkin 2006: 1) and, therefore, preferred here, too. They can be contrasted with “international non-governmental organizations,” which may have memberships from national NGOs, local NGOs, companies, political parties etc. (Willetts 2006: 440).