more objectives the international or supranational organization has, the higher the costs associated with the latter argument. International outsourcing of foreign policy is, however, only partly possible. The political issues of importance for a VSC have to be promo - ted by its own foreign policy and by its lobbying in international orga- nizations. For our examination we build no theoretical expectations, with the exception of the obvious statement that VSC have fewer exter- nal relations, fewer representations and fewer memberships in interna- tional organizations than larger countries. Note that there is, of course, a partial congruence between the inte- rests of larger adjacent countries and VSC, but there are also differences in vital interests. These differences are mainly due to the differentiation and niche strategies of many small countries, of which tax policy is a prominent example. Therefore, VSC seem to try to obtain membership in important international and regional organizations almost regardless of the costs in order to be able to influence decisions which concern them to a considerable extent. Some aspects of foreign policy can, however, be sourced out inter- nationally. Many smaller countries do not have embassies or other rep - re sentations in relatively less important countries. They are either repre- sented by a larger neighbor, or they entirely abstain from being repre- sented. The evidence in Table 4.8 is mainly in line with intuition. All VSC, with the exception of Nauru, are UN members, and many are members of the IMF and of Interpol. WTO membership is not that widespread, but, at any rate, 15 VSC are WTO members. Nauru is the only country with only one membership in the selected quartet of important institu - tions; Andorra, Micronesia, Monaco, Palau and San Marino exhibit two memberships. It can therefore be concluded that there are relatively strong incentives for VSC to be part of international politics by means of organizational membership. The majority of VSC also belonges to regional economic organiza- tions. Foreign economic policy, hence, also seems to play an important role for VSC. This might be due to the above-mentioned importance of niche strategies, which are mostly related to economic issue and, there- fore, have to be defended in regional economic organizations. The fact that Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the Seychelles are not part of any regional integration scheme is due to the inexistence of such a scheme 105 
Organizational choice: theoretical expectations versus reality