Transnational access to international organizations, 1950-2010:structural factors and critical junctures

The institutional designs of international organizations (IOs) are notoriously resistant to reform. Nevertheless, we have witnessed a dramatic transformation of international organizations, from interstate cooperation toward more complex forms of governance, involving participation by transnational actors (TNAs). This chapter maps the speed, scope, and depth of institutional change in TNA access. Combining descriptive statistics with case studies, the chapter explains the dynamics of institutional change that we observe. The chapter argues that the process of change has been driven by two structural factors—deepening cooperation and domestic democratization—in combination with the end of the Cold War as a critical juncture. The end of the Cold War triggered the temporal intersection of these two structural factors, separating an early period of slow and incremental growth in openness from a later period of rapid and profound expansion of TNA access.