About US

The Columbia Center on International Organization, founded in September 2001, is devoted to policy analysis, teaching, and public discourse on ways of strengthening global and regional institutions so that they are better equipped to address transnational challenges to public policy. 

Scope. The Center has a broad policy-oriented agenda. Its interests encompass both formal inter-governmental institutions and less formal cooperative arrangements among states, civil society, the private sector, and international agencies. 

Historical Context. Spurred by globalization, multilateralism, and the emergence of transnational civil society, the development of international norms and organization at both the regional and global levels proceeded in the 1990s at a break-neck pace. Since then, however, such institutions have been under siege by terrorists, transnational political movements, domestic interest groups, and disaffected governments. Unlike the last great surge in institutional development more than a half century ago, this one has been characterized by reluctant US leadership, by bottom-up political forces, and by a dizzying mix of non-state, state, and bureaucratic actors. Public-private partnerships have been called upon to address issues as diverse as trade and terrorism, proliferation and peacekeeping, health and human rights. Yet in the rush to track global political forces, remarkably little attention has been paid by scholars to the distinct ways in which different states and groups of states have approached their participation in global institutions and norm-building processes. These distinct and sometimes contradictory approaches could be seen most dramatically in the deep divisions in the UN Security Council leading up to the recent war in Iraq. Clearly efforts are needed to rethink the relationships between the architecture of international decision-making on political and security matters and the power relationships among states outside of these bodies. The challenge for the Center, then, is a dual one: to consider both the forest (global institutions) and the trees (national policies and politics) as it seeks to identify ways of strengthening the whole.