The technical term for these is RIRs. Regional Internet Registries. There are five of them, ARIN (North America), APNIC (Asia Pacific), RIPE (Europe), AFRINIC (Africa) and LACNIC (Latin America).

The RIRs are delegated the numbers from IANA, and they in turn delegate numbers to LIRs, Local Internet Registries, such as an ISP or a maybe a large organisation which has vertically incorporated that functionality.

The RIRs represent, and are paid for by, the LIRs in their region and so to some extent they reflect local consensus, local culture, etc. This means in some sense RIPE's security policies reflect what European ISPs and similar wanted, for good or ill.