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Cave! hic dragones: a critique of regime analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Susan Strange
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Extract

This article questions the usefulness of the concept of regimes on the grounds that it is a fad; ambiguous and imprecise; value-biased towards order rather than change or equity; essentially static in its interpretation of the kaleidoscopic reality of international cooperation and conflict; and, finally, rooted in a limiting, state-centric paradigm. Each of these objections represents a dragon that unwary young scholars should be warned to avoid—or at least to treat with caution. On the grounds that those who look for a tidy general theory encompassing all the variety of forces shaping world politics are chasing a will o' the wisp, the article suggests as an alternative that we should pay attention to the overlapping bargaining processes, economic and political, domestic as well as international, by which the outcomes of the interaction of states, of authorities with markets and their operators, and of political institutions and economic enterprises, determine between them the "who-gets-what" of the international political economy.

Type
Conclusions, Con and Pro
Information
International Organization , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , Spring 1982 , pp. 479 - 496
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1982

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References

1 Aron, Raymond, The Imperial Republic: The U.S. and the World, 1945–1973 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974)Google Scholar.

2 For a more extended discussion of this rather basic question, see my “Still an Extraordinary Power”, in Lombra, Ray and Witte, Bill, eds., The Political Economy of International and Domestic Monetary Relations (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Petras, James and Morley, Morris, “The U. S. Imperial State”, mimeo (03 1980)Google Scholar; and Calleo, David, “Inflation and Defense”, Foreign Affairs (Winter 1980)Google Scholar.

3 See Arthur Stein's article in this volume, p. 300.

4 Yao-so Hu, Europe under Stress (forthcoming).

5 Krasner, Stephen D., “Factors Affecting International Economic Order: A Survey”, mimeo (07 1979)Google Scholar, the earliest draft of his introductory article to this volume.

6 GATT, International Trade 1980–81 (Geneva: GATT, 1981), p. 11Google Scholar.

7 Cohen, Benjamin J. with Fabio Basagni, Banks and the Balance of Payments: Private Lending in the International Adjustment Process (Montclair, N. J.: Allenheld Osmun, 1981)Google Scholar.