International organizations come in many shapes and sizes. Within this institutional gamut, the multipurpose multilateral intergovernmental organization (MMIGO) plays a central role. This institutional form is often traced to the creation of the League of Nations, but in fact the first MMIGO emerged in the Western Hemisphere at the close of the nineteenth century. Originally modeled on a single-issue European public international union, the Commercial Bureau of the American Republics evolved into the multipurpose, multilateral Pan American Union (PAU). Contrary to prominent explanations of institutional genesis, the PAU's design did not result from functional needs nor from the blueprints of a hegemonic power. Advancing a recent synthesis between historical and rational institutionalism, we argue that the first MMIGO arose through a process of compensatory layering: a mechanism whereby a sequence of bargains over control and scope leads to gradual but transformative institutional change. We expect compensatory layering to occur when an organization is focal, power asymmetries among members of that organization are large, and preferences over institutional design diverge. Our empirical and theoretical contributions demonstrate the value a more global international relations (IR) perspective can bring to the study of institutional design. international relations (IR) scholars have long noted that international organizations provide smaller states with voice opportunities; our account suggests those spaces may be of smaller states’ own making.

This article examines the formative years of flight in the United States and argues that Pan-Americanism served as a guiding ideology in the development of the nation's early aeronautic endeavors. With the advent of the airplane at the turn of the twentieth century, U.S. Pan-Americanists believed that aviation would provide a solution to the sociological and practical problems that hindered the development of international unity among the American republics. By physically transporting individuals, products, and cultural media rapidly across the hemisphere via the sky, aircraft would unite the peoples of Latin America and the United States and promote inter-American cooperation. To see the Pan-American potential of aircraft fulfilled, Pan-Americanists cooperated with private U.S. aviation organizations to expound the value of flight and to generate interest in aviation across the Western Hemisphere. Although a variety of Pan-American initiatives were successfully undertaken during the 1910s, the outbreak of the First World War hindered the movement and ultimately led to the transformation of aviation into a tool of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. By examining the origins of U.S. aviation through the lens of Pan-Americanism, this article seeks to reevaluate the pervading imperial narrative of the history of U.S. aviation in the Western Hemisphere.