The European Journal of International Law Vol. 25 no. 3 © The Author, 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of EJIL Ltd. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email:
[email protected] The Emergence of Functionalism in International Institutional Law: Colonial Inspirations Jan Klabbers* Downloaded from Abstract http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/ The theory of functionalism dominates the law of international organizations, explaining why organizations have the powers they possess, why they can claim privileges and immuni- ties, and often how they are designed as well. Yet, the theory of functionalism is rarely spelt out in any detail, and its origins have remained under-explored. The purpose of the pres- ent article is to outline how functionalism came about by focusing on the ‘pre-history’ of international institutional law. To that end, the article studies the work of a number of late at New York University on November 5, 2014 19th, early 20th century authors on the law of international organizations, paying particu- lar attention to the writings of Paul Reinsch. It turns out that functionalism, as developed by Reinsch, was inspired by his familiarity with colonial administration: colonialism and inter- national organization both manifested cooperation between states. While this is no reason to discard functionalism, it does provide an argument for viewing international organizations more critically than functionalism habitually does. 1 Introduction The law of international organizations is dominated by the theory of functionalism. For well over a century now, international institutional lawyers have understood international organizations as entities created to execute functions through specifi- cally conferred powers, delegated to them by their member states.