ADMINISTRATIVE UNIONS. — This designation comprises those unions of States for specific purposes of international cooperation, which are regulated by union pacts. These determine the aims of cooperation, which induce the contracting States to establish «unions» or institutions (unionist States) of a permanent character, and the means of attaining them; they thus give rise to organs intended to produce effects within the domestic legal systems of the unionist States.
The union is therefore international, insofar as it is established on the basis of an international agreement; but the rules of that agreement do not take into consideration the external activity of the States, but their internal activity, with a view to coordinating, harmonizing, or even unifying their domestic legal systems, in order to achieve the purposes for which the Union was established. The unionist organs are therefore organs of cooperation common to the various unionist States, but their activity cannot be assessed for the purposes of international legal systems, and they consequently lack «international personality». Nevertheless, both doctrine and practice have seen attempts to recognize at least certain unions (e.g., BIT = Bureau Intern. du Travail) or certain unionist organs as possessing international personality (e.g., the Commission for the Danube).
A typical case of an administrative union is the postal union: one of the oldest and most universal. The purpose which the States sought to achieve by establishing the union was to arrive at an internal unification of postal systems (without affecting the administrative organization of the services, which remains governed by national laws), in order to make postal services easy, rapid, and efficient, through the uniformity of their regulation; these services are regarded as one of the fundamental services of the economic and social order. The bureau in Bern is a common organ of the unionist States, with functions of coordination, information, and furthering the improvement of agreements, etc. What is regulated is the postal service, which, even when international, has a national origin. This is indeed its starting point, even when the mail is destined, upon arrival, for another State.
The establishment and constitution of unions or institutions, their purposes, operation, and legal regulation are governed by international agreements which, although varying according to the particular needs and functions assigned to the unionist organs, in substance possess an essentially uniform system, according to a «type» expressing the needs of the time.
In the second half of the last century, many fundamental unions were created according to the single conception that it would be appropriate for the organ of the Union (bureau) to be located in a central and neutral country of Europe. Switzerland was therefore predominantly chosen, and the Swiss government was allowed to supervise the bureau, which was to operate according to Swiss law. Thus established in Bern were the International Office for Literary and Artistic Property and that for industrial property, as well as those for posts, telegraphs (later telecommunications), railways, etc. Other unions were established in other countries according to analogous principles, especially in Paris.
League of Nations (v.) was established, there was no lack of a tendency to bring the existing unions—already numerous—within the framework of the League; in the end, however, they were respected, also as a tribute to the merits of the countries that had hosted them, while many other new ones were created. These assumed the name of institutions or organizations and were also modeled on a single and uniform type. They fell with the League of Nations (1st gen. 1947), but the UN (v.) took them up again and multiplied them, with a strongly marked tendency to absorb previous initiatives, establishing and constituting the new ones according to a substantially uniform system and the following fundamental principles: 1) all UN member States belong to them by right (automatic accession), but non-member States may also belong to them through accession (which becomes admission in the case of States formerly enemy of the United Nations); 2) relations between the organizations and member States are governed by the provisions of a statute adopted by convention; 3) the organizations enjoy broad autonomy, notwithstanding the interference of the UN; 4) relations between the UN and the organizations are governed by special conventions; 5) each organization has its own headquarters (currently in Europe or America), its own organs, its own systems, and its own means (assembly, executive organ, secretariat). The tendency to confer international legal personality upon the organizations is becoming increasingly pronounced, not without doctrinal and political disagreement.
On the basis of these principles, the International Labour Organization, abbreviated OIT, the Food and Agriculture Organization, abbreviated FAO (v. ORGANIZZAZIONE METEOROLOGICA. PER L'AGRICOLTURA), the World Health Organization (OMS), the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO [v.]), etc., have been regulated. They continue to increase, now covering almost every possible form of international cooperation.
From a formal point of view, the organization of the Unions is governed either, especially in the case of those established within the League of Nations or the UN, by special agreements (autonomous union pact), or by agreements regulating particular services or matters (literary property, industrial property, railways, etc.) and also dealing with the unionist office.
Attempts have repeatedly been made to classify administrative unions. But such classifications always prove approximate and useless. It may be said that there is no possibility of cooperation among peoples in the scientific, technical, cultural, educational, economic, agricultural, communications, transport, etc. fields that has not led to the formation of unions. The more cooperation among peoples becomes vigorous and takes root, the more one feels the need to invigorate that cooperation by regulating it and subjecting it to the intervention of coordinating and promoting organs, with a tendency to assign them initiative and essentially active functions.