国际组织

国际组织是具有国际性行为特征的组织，國際組織可分為兩種主要型態：

政府間國際組織：成员都是主权国家或其它国际组织(像欧盟和世界贸易组织).
非政府間國際組織(NGOs)：任何国际组织，凡未经政府间协议而建立，均被视为是为这种安排而成立的非政府国际组织。包括独立组织，民间组织，第三部门，志愿协会。

从法律角度来讲，政府间的国际组织必须有一部公约作为基础，并且有一个法人。 International organizations so established are subjects of international law, capable of entering into agreements among themselves or with states. Thus international organizations in a legal sense are distinguished from mere groupings of states, such as the G-8 and the G-77, neither of which have been founded by treaty, though in non-legal contexts these are sometimes referred to as international organizations as well. International organizations must also be distinguished from treaties; while all international organizations are founded on a treaty, many treaties (e.g., the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)) do not establish an international organization and rely purely on the parties for their administration.

International organizations can be categorised in two main ways: by their membership, and by their function.

[编辑] 成员及功能

国际组织在功能上，成员以及成员的标准上有区别. 某些国际组织(全球性国际组织)是允许所有国家加入的，这样的组织有联合国以及它的下属机构，世界贸易组织等。还有一些国际组织是接受世界上，某一地区或大陆的成员加入的,像欧盟，非洲联盟，东南亚联盟等等。

Some specialized agencies predate all other types. In the nineteenth century, France was the fons et origo of many of them. By this it is meant that much of the driving force to form such bodies (such as those which maintain the SI (metric system) came from the French, and that their headquarters is in France, often in Paris. Under the Third Republic, the International Exposition of 1878 in that city held a great number of meetings of such international organizations - as opposed to the preceding regimes. The motivation was that to keep France a republic and not slip back into either a monarchist or Bonapartist regime, the republicans would underscore their inheritance of the crusading nature of the French Revolution against feudal cultural remnants within France, which had been generalized to the rest of feudal Europe, eventually to the world. Some conclude from this example that internationalism often has national origins, at the difference of globalism.

Other organizations are only open to members from a particular region or continent of the world, like European Union, African Union, ASEAN and so on.

Finally, some organizations base their membership on other criteria: cultural or historical links (the Commonwealth of Nations, La Francophonie, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries), level of economic development or type of economy (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC)), or religion (Organization of the Islamic Conference).

Were it to come about, the ultimate international organization would be a Federal World Government.

The Union of International Associations provides information on international organizations.