Why do international organisations die? Their causes of death deserve attention and analysis. Europe in the 20th century with its plenitude of international organisations provides a rich ground for studying why some of them died, why some lived, why some were resurrected from near-death and why some survive as institutional shells, or zombies. The introduction to this special issue summarises the cases that follow in order to discern a pattern or logic of institutional death in modern European history. A pattern is elusive because causal and conditional factors are almost impossible to separate in cases of institutional death. Yet they show that, in contrast to state collapse, international organisations more often die from without – that is, for external, contextual reasons – than from within. However powerful some external factors, such as war, can be, institutional death is rarely predetermined. In one form or another international organisations possess a strong will to live.

中文翻译：

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消失的机构：欧洲国际组织的生与死 – 导言


国际组织为什么会消亡？他们的死因值得关注和分析。20 世纪的欧洲及其众多的国际组织为研究为什么其中一些人会死去，为什么一些人活着，为什么有些人从濒死中复活，以及为什么有些人作为机构外壳或僵尸幸存下来提供了丰富的土壤。本期特刊的导言总结了以下案例，以辨别现代欧洲历史上制度性死亡的模式或逻辑。模式是难以捉摸的，因为在机构死亡案件中，因果因素和条件因素几乎不可能分开。然而，它们表明，与国家崩溃相反，国际组织往往是从外部消亡的——也就是说，由于外部的、背景的原因——而不是从内部消亡。无论战争等外部因素多么强大，制度性的死亡很少是预先确定的。国际组织以某种形式拥有强烈的生存意志。