States formalize their cooperative relations with the aim of providing, together, certain public goods that they cannot provide in isolation. The range of these goods is greatly varied, encompassing security, identity and religion; and development, infrastructure and regulatory frameworks for trade, labor or air transport, for instance. To this end, States accept to be bound by formal arrangements whereby they commit to deliver these goods, but also to respect the agreements concluded. Formal institutions respond precisely to these needs for provision and commitment.

Globalization has underlined the inability of States to provide goods in isolation and has hence accelerated legal integration at international and supranational levels: the number of international institutions – now over 60,000 – began growing after the Second World War and is still rising; the relations between State administrations and international institutions are becoming ever more numerous; forms of regional organization have been spreading; new forms of global networks and global “administrations” have been developing. As a consequence, scholars worldwide have devoted themselves to studying global governance, international organizations and regionalism. From these various perspectives, what has emerged clearly is that a mono-disciplinary approach is not capable of capturing all the implications related to these issues, which means that it becomes crucial to combine different fields of research. In this context, the use of concepts derived from both political science and law has turned out to be extremely effective, such as in the case of regime theory being used to explain the formation of global regulatory systems. This is why this book presents these two perspectives jointly, in its endeavor to define models of international and supranational legal integration.

Our aim, therefore, is threefold. First, we map and outline models of regional integration by studying their institutional design and processes of governance. Second, we extend our analysis to IOs and other international regimes, to identify which techniques are capable of governing complex global legal systems. Third, we offer a toolbox of institutional processes and legal mechanisms, which may be adopted by current or new projects of international and supranational integration, such as ASEAN. We address these aims in two chapters, both based on the idea of integration as a formal process.

Introduction

Secretariats are the central organs of modern international organizations, so much so that they are often mistaken for the organizations themselves. At times referred to as “bureaus” or “commissions,” they are in fact the permanent administrative bodies of such organizations, primarily responsible for coordinating their day-to-day work and executing much of their will. Although the international secretariat is, indeed, only one component of a broader institutional set-up created by the enabling agreement that is reached among the relevant parties (most often, States), it is “the organizational glue that holds the actors and parts of a treaty system together.” With multilateral responsibility as the principle underlying its work, the secretariat is ultimately a “guardian of the agenda” adopted by the founding or controlling State actors, providing the international organization with continuity and a consistent, recognizable profile in the global arena. Traditionally, the role of secretariats has been limited to performing tasks of a technical-clerical nature, in particular facilitating the creation of the new international regime of which they form a part; mobilization of information; internal management; norm enforcement (through compliance monitoring); and direct service provision. In the modern era, however, secretariats commonly perform policy-related functions as well, increasingly exerting influence and employing technocratic expertise. Rather than merely executing the agenda of the international regime that they serve, they are now often asked to take a substantive part in shaping it.

The gradual rise in the importance of secretariats within many international organizations has led to a greater focus on their role as “public nonstate actors” whose work is a form of “invisible governance.” After decades of being widely perceived as a minor feature of international cooperation and attracting only a marginal interest of scholars, secretariats are now of growing significance to international relations theory, international institutional law and political science at large, having won recognition as international actors in their own right, who, “rather than acting like a concierge, are more like the managers of the hotel, still concerned with the comfort of guests but also with turning a profit.” Their sharper visibility has also prompted a debate on whether, and to what extent, secretariats are vital to the effective functioning of international regimes.