The European Union is a vast collection of international institutions, laws, and political arrangements. At its heart, it is a regional inter-governmental organization that coordinates policies across its member states. This has grown, in scope and in territory, out of the European Coal and Steel Community of 1951 to encompass a customs union, a monetary union, a single labor market, and more. These new areas and competencies have been added through additional treaties negotiated among its states, and not all these treaties have been accepted by all members – as a result, the obligations of member states to the EU can vary widely. For instance, the Euro currency is used in nineteen countries while the Schengen borderless-travel area comprises twenty-two EU countries and four non-EU countries, and the customs union encompasses all EU members and several non-members. The fate of the United Kingdom in relation to the EU is being rewritten today, after its exit in 2020 left it in uncertain regulatory territory. This chapter examines the legal and political structures of the European Union and places the EU in the context of other regional international organizations.

On matters relating to international peace and security, the United Nations has decisive authority to impose itself on any country or dispute in the world. This power goes far beyond the power ever given to any other international organization and it introduces a radically new kind of hierarchy into inter-state relations. There are strict limits, both legal and political, on how this authority can be used, and these limits are in large part responsible for the patchwork of activism and seizure that characterizes the UN’s record on international security crises since 1945. The UN Security Council controls this authority, and decisions to intervene must pass through the peculiar membership and voting rules of the Council. The combination of these rules and the political interests of influential states produces the controversies, actions, and limits that define the UN’s behavior on international security.

My core argument in this book has been that, far from being an invention of the post–Cold War era, humanitarian disarmament has had a long and complex history dating back at least 150 years to the St Petersburg Declaration in 1868. My aim in drawing out that history (or at least some of it) has been to expose humanitarian disarmament’s failures as well as successes, ebbs as well as flows, limitations as well as potential. I have shown that humanitarian disarmament, both in practice and in theory, is a complex and politicised concept, and one which is still evolving today.

It is a perpetual dilemma of market capitalism that firms face a never-ending incentive to reduce costs in order to increase profits. For workers, this is experienced as downward pressure on both wages and working conditions. A global market economy seems to amplify these pressures. The International Labor Organization was created during an earlier period of “globalization,” in the 1910s, to limit the damage this does to the condition of workers in the international economy. The organization produces labor regulations which member governments are encouraged to adopt as domestic laws. Its structure and authority are highly peculiar, a fact that reflects the highly political nature of its subject matter. It includes representatives of labor and employer groups from each member country alongside representatives of their governments. It also has no authority to impose rules on members, relying instead on the process of deliberation to generate rules that will be appealing to states’ self-interests.

The legal hierarchy between international organizations and their member states is diverse and ambiguous. It is conceptually interesting and politically productive. It produces forms of political activity in and around international institutions that shape the conditions of life for people around the world. International organizations are clearly the products of state decisions but, by committing to them, governments subordinate themselves to the rules and decisions of the organizations. It is worth investigating precisely what those rules are as well as how in practice governments react to them. International organizations have few coercive tools of enforcement but violating rules is rarely costless for states. The costs of noncompliance come in many currencies, both internal and external, both explicit and subtle. The practical power of an international organization depends on a complex mix of factors and may be either more or less than what is shown in its legal charter, and indeed it may be both more and less at the same time. To study the impact of international organizations in world politics today requires looking closely at individual cases and crises and the rules that make them up, rather than aiming for generalizations.