Functionalism

Functionalism is an approach to the formation of international organizations that advocates international cooperation on scientific, humanitarian, social and economic issues. Functionalism argues that discrete public-sector responsibilities, or functions, such as exchanging meteorological data, coordinating international air-traffic control, the prevention of pandemic diseases, and promoting sustainable development, are the issues most likely to encourage mutual trust and habits of cooperation between governments rather than attempts to cooperate on more sensitive issues of sovereignty such as citizenship, monetary union, or national defense. The central thesis of the functional [Page 328]approach is to create international agencies with limited and specific powers defined by the function that they perform. Functional agencies could only operate within the territory of those member-states that choose to join them and do not therefore threaten state sovereignty. The nearly global membership and operations of the specialized United Nations (UN) agencies such as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the World Health Organization (WHO) are typical examples of the functional approach in operation. Under Articles 56 and 57 of the UN Charter, the various specialized agencies were brought into relationship with the UN, which can make recommendations for the coordination of their policies and activities.

The UN itself has created programs such as the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Program, and the UN Environmental Program, which are also based on functional principles. The UN Charter makes explicit reference, in Article 55, to promoting conditions of stability and the promotion of higher living standards, economic and social progress, and development. Functionalism therefore underpins the UN system's entire range of activities outside of the collective security role.

The period of 1945 to 1975 represented the most successful period for the application of the functional approach, when a broad consensus about the theories of John Maynard Keynes on the provision of international public-goods in sectors prone to market failure prevailed. The last quarter of the twentieth century proved to be problematic. Political disputes occasionally disturbed the technocratic rationale of the agencies. The rise of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also challenged the democratic credentials of the agencies. Latterly, globalization in the form of privatization, deregulation, and marketization has challenged the public-sector monopoly basis on which the original functional scheme relied. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the combined growth of global civil society and the transnational business sector appeared to progressively narrow the range of services historically and uniquely associated with the functional agencies. The core functions of technical cooperation and development remain.

New functional issues such as combating HIV/AIDS and promoting wider access to information technologies have arisen, but will most likely combine the traditional role of the functional agencies with NGO and corporate partnerships. A variant form of functionalism, known as neofunctionalism, has been applied at a regional level to explain the early stages in the formation of those institutions that later evolved to form the European Union (EU). The European Coal and Steel Community, European Economic Community, and European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) were initially limited to technical, scientific, and tariff reduction mandates. Considerable disputes among academic and policy communities has since ensued as so-called neofunctionalist ideas attempt to use these original limited, functional successes to advance the larger quasifederal project of the EU. Key indicators of quasifederal integration, that is, using functional methods to advance federalist objectives, may be detected in the 2002 adoption of the Eurozone single currency and current attempts to create a common foreign and defense policy. Other regional organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have explicitly limited their cooperation to functional issues by emphasizing the sovereignty of the members and doctrines of non-interference in each other's internal affairs.

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