International Relations scholarship has traditionally focused on full member’s preferences and their relationships to the international organisations they are part of. There is also burgeoning literature on why and how international organizations open participation up to non-state actors. In this paper, we propose to look at different ways in which regional organisations associate states, non-state actors and other organisations. What types of associations exist apart from full membership and what is their function? Based on an emerging typology of association agreements, we ask what these types can tell us about the ways full members understand the function of their organisation. We suggest that organisations can be ‘sponsor seekers’ via association agreements, which reflects an understanding of the organisation as a distributive agency; ‘status provider’ associations are a way to elicit or enhance reciprocal support across issue areas, whereas ‘mentorship’ type of association reveals that full members understand their organisation as a site of socialisation. The paper thus offers a typology of association agreements of regional organisations as a contribution to understanding formal/informal institutional development.
