Associate membership of the ICC

The International Cricket Council (ICC) was founded at Lord's on 15 June 1909 as the Imperial Cricket Conference, with Australia, England, and South Africa as its founding members. In the beginning, only countries within the commonwealth could join. These members were then joined by India, New Zealand, and the West Indies in 1926 and later by Pakistan in 1953. In 1961, South Africa resigned due to their leaving the Commonwealth. The Imperial Cricket Conference was renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965 with new rules permitting countries from outside the Commonwealth to be elected into the governing body for the first time. Any new member elected to the governing body could only be an Associate Member with the possibility of being promoted to a Full Member. The first Associates were Fiji and the USA. In 1989, the ICC was again renamed, this time to International Cricket Council. South Africa was reelected as a Full Member to the ICC in 1991 and Zimbabwe was elected in 1992. The most recent new Full Member is Bangladesh, which was elected in 2000. The ICC currently has 105 members.

Membership is a hierarchy and there are three categories of membership: Full Members, Associate Members, and Affiliate Members. In the highest category, there are 10 Full Members. 2nd category has 39 Associate Members and lowest category has 56 Affiliate Members. As of Feb 23, 2017 there are plans to only have two memberships, Full and Associate, with associate members being able to become full members depending on performance and other criteria. Affiliate membership will be removed completely and given a chance to apply as associate member if they meet the stringent criteria of Associate Membership. This applies to all 56 Affiliate Members.

...
Wikipedia