There has always been something paradoxical with mainstream theories of international organizations in public international law. Yet the source of the field’s many perplexities has remained somewhat elusive. Instead of adding another layer on top of existing constructions, this book has argued that the real problem lies right at the bottom. It pertains to how international lawyers have generally tended to theorize the state for analytical purposes, explicitly or implicitly, literally or fictionally. So long as we leave these assumptions about the state uninterrogated, our theories are bound to push themselves into the same analytical corner.