Actors’ Demands and Support: the Input Dimension

What you ask for and what you get are two different things. And what you can put into the pot has a bearing on it, too. These truisms also apply to the policy-making process in international organizations. In international organizations the policy-making process is channelled through the constitutional and institutional structures of their political system — their polity. Its impetus and contents are derived from the values, interests and resources of the actors involved. Just as in football the rules of the game and the size of the pitch circumscribe a match, but do not determine its course and outcome, so the polity of international organizations provides an institutional framework which opens up and limits the options of actors in international politics and consequently defines possible moves and excludes others. However, it does not determine political actors’ behaviour. Politics remains the domain of actors, just as the teams’ moves cannot be reduced to the rules of the game in a football match.