Intergovernmental cooperation on collective action problems and social dilemmas faces significant challenges, as difficulties often stem from conflicts between national self-interests and collective long-term goals, lack of trust, and uncertainty about other states' commitments. Transboundary environmental issues demonstrate a clear example of collective action problems and social dilemmas, in which the Baltic Sea and HELCOM constitute such a case.  The Baltic Sea is one of the most polluted seas in the world, which in turn has placed demands on the surrounding countries to address and rectify these issues through the establishment of an intergovernmental organization, in the shape of HELCOM. HELCOM is therefore the responsible body tasked with tackling this, through policymaking and cooperation within the Baltic Sea region. Despite efforts made in the area, HELCOM has not succeeded in achieving its many goals, making HELCOM an interesting case to study. This thesis aims to research how the key institutions of HELCOM are designed, and how they influence its governance and decision-making processes using the IAD framework, and to investigate how institutional design shapes collective action outcomes. These questions aim to contribute to the study's purpose, which is to analyze institutional choices within intergovernmental collaborations and to examine the relationship between institutional design and collective action. The thesis is conducted using qualitative text analysis, specifically applying qualitative content analysis to answer the study's research questions. The empirical data consists of official HELCOM documents, which form the basis for the results presented in this study.  The study's results show that HELCOM, like other intergovernmental organizations, can be explained and understood through the IAD framework. Based on this investigation, the IAD framework could highlight that HELCOM's key institutions are designed similar, even though their area of competence differentiates. Furthermore, the study's results indicate that the design of different rules within an organization has a significant impact on the outputs of actions characterized by collective action, as it turned out that the results of various measures within HELCOM's institutional arrangements varied between different working groups. Thus, there may be incentives and benefits in designing the institutional arrangements of intergovernmental organizations in different ways, to achieve a more effective approach to combating collective action problems.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the foreign policy outcomes of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to understand the extent to which a Regional Intergovernmental Organization (RGO) consisting of developing nations is able to promote regional cooperation. Much of the literature on integration and the formation of Intergovernmental Organizations was developed with regard to western nations. These approaches are examined for their contributions to foreign policy behavior analysis and with respect to understanding why small and developing nations join such organizations. Final analysis of the outcomes using two scales to measure the organization's ability to promote regional cooperation reveal that the level of success was moderate and the level of political action undertaken by the GCC was generally moderate to low. Leadership is supportive of the organization but both external and internal factors contribute to the modest levels achieved so far. Issues of national sovereignty and a decade of regional conflicts affected the ability of the organization to achieve greater levels or regional cooperation.