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The limits of international organization: systematic failure in the management of international relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Giulio M. Gallarotti
Giulio M. Gallarotti
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Government at the John Andrus Center for Public Affairs, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.
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Abstract

Contributors to the literature on international organization (IO) have traditionally been overly optimistic about the ability of multilateral management to stabilize in-ternational relations and have tended to ignore the destabilizing effects of IO. While recent revisionist scholarship has acknowledged both the potential for organizational failure and the conditionality of management, it has tended to focus on how IO fails within specific issue-areas and institutions. This article offers a typology of the inherent (systematic) failures of IO across issue-areas and institutions and thereby seeks to bridge the gaps in our understanding of why many different institutions and managerial schemes have adverse effects. It argues that IO is prone to failure (1) when it attempts to manage complex, tightly coupled systems of relations and issues; (2) when it serves as a substitute either for more substantive and long-term resolutions to international problems or for responsible domestic or foreign policy; (3) when it intensifies international disputes; and (4) when it generates moral hazard. In offering a general theoretical approach to understanding the destabilizing effects of IO, the analysis is intended to serve both as a focal point for understanding critical approaches to the study of IO and as an alternative rationale for eliminating the excesses of multilateral management.

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Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , Spring 1991 , pp. 183 - 220
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1991

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References

An earlier version of this article was presented at a seminar sponsored by the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security (PIPES) at the University of Chicago in May 1989. I gratefully acknowledge the comments of the seminar participants as well as the suggestions of Riccardo Fiorito, Jeff Frieden, Robert Jervis, Stephen Krasner, Duncan Snidal, and the anonymous referees of International Organization.

1. Throughout this article, I refer to international organization (IO) and international organizations (IOs) in keeping with the following distinction made in the mainstream IO literature: the term “IO” refers to both the formal (institutionalized) and informal (noninstitutionalized) processes of management, while the term “IOs” refers to the institutions engaged in the formal processes of management. IOs are thus a subset of IO. See Rochester, J. Martin, “The Rise and Fall of International Organization as a Field of Study,” International Organization 40 (Autumn 1986), pp. 753–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kratochwil, Friedrich and Ruggie, John Gerard, “International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State,” International Organization 40 (Autumn 1986), pp. 777–813CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Claude, Inis, Swords into Plowshares, 4th ed. (Random House: New York, 1984)Google Scholar.

2. See Brooks, Roger, “Africa Is Starving and the United Nations Shares the Blame,” Back-grounder 480, Heritage Foundation, 01 1986Google Scholar.

3. General arguments on moral hazard in the international monetary system have most recently been made by Kindleberger, Charles in The International Economic Order (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT. Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

4. See Raymond Hopkins, “Reform in the International Food Aid Regime: The Role of Consensual Knowledge,” International Organization (forthcoming).

5. de Cuéllar, Javier Pérez, Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, no. A/37/1 (New York: United Nations, 1982)Google Scholar.

6. The scope of IO is defined by neofunctionalists as the range of issue-specific tasks involved in a managerial scheme, while the level is defined as the “central institutional capacity to handle a particular [issue-specific] task.” See Nye, Joseph, “Comparing Common Markets: A Revised Neo-Functionalist Model,” in Lindberg, Leon and Scheingold, Stuart, eds., Regional Integration (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University. Press, 1971), p. 201Google Scholar; and Schmitter, Philippe, “Three Neo-Functional Hypotheses About Integration,” International Organization 13 (Winter 1969), p. 162Google Scholar.

7. See Kratochwil and Ruggie, “International Organization”; and Rochester, “The Rise and Fall of International Organization as a Field of Study.” Regarding the normative rationale for the study of IO, see also Ruggie, John Gerard, “The United States and the United Nations: Toward a New Realism,” International Organization 39 (Spring 1985), p. 345CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Kratochwil and Ruggie, “International Organization.”

9. Regime analysts and neoliberal institutionalists have argued that big government can be redundant and is unnecessary when limited forms of management are sufficient. But the viability of smaller government is all the more compelling when big government is subject to organizational failure.

10. As Conybeare notes, “Federalists, functionalists, neofunctionalists, and pluralists all agree as to the inherent desirability of world government.…It would not be a caricature to infer from the modern IO literature that the world needs more supranational authority to manage interdependence, public goods, and externalities in general.” See Conybeare, John, “International Organization and the Theory of Property Rights,” International Organization 34 (Summer 1980), pp. 307–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The critical focus of my article, however, is not the modern IO literature per se but, rather, those strands in the IO and international relations literature that uncritically profess the need for the extensive multilateral management of international relations and support the benign view of IO from which this prescription stems. Some strands are not overtly managerial in orientation. And in many cases, as pointed out in my article, the logics of their arguments are not antithetical to the usefulness and importance of limited forms of IO.

11. Critiques of domestic government have been far more prevalent and systematic than have general critiques of IO. For a typical example of the former, see Rose, Richard, “What If Anything Is Wrong with Big Government?” Journal of Public Policy 1 (02 1981), pp. 5–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An inquiry into the reasons for this neglect would be speculative. Perhaps it is simply a matter of specialization, with IO failing to attract the attention of erstwhile critics of big domestic government who are specialized in domestic political issues. Or perhaps the unpleasant effects of IO are not felt on an individual level to the same extent as the unpleasant effects of domestic government are. IOs do not conscript or tax individuals, for example. Their dues come from nations rather than individuals; their laws do not affect individuals directly; and there is no authoritarian appropriation of human capital and resources. Quite simply, there are fewer reasons for individuals to be angry with IO.

12. There are, of course, exceptions to this trend, notably in the classic literature on integration and interdependence. But even these show limitations. Early neofunctionalists argued that IO can have adverse effects on specific interest groups and elites within nations but have said much less about the adverse impact on international order and relations between nations. Haas noted that organizations can sometimes fail to achieve their goals, but he did not go on to explore the possible negative consequences of this failure. Morse noted that IO can adversely affect nations by limiting their autonomy, but he did not pursue the manifold consequences of this constraint. See Haas, Ernst, The Uniting of Europe (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 288–89Google Scholar; Haas, Ernst, Beyond the Nation-State (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964), p. 126Google Scholar; and Morse, Edward, Modernization and the Transformation of International Relations (New York: Free Press, 1966), p. 100Google Scholar.

13. Haas, , Beyond the Nation-State, p. 31Google Scholar.

14. Mitrany, David, A Working Peace System (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1966), pp. 52, 63, and 97Google Scholar.

15. Ibid., p. 37.

16. Ibid., p. 98.

17. Of course, even for neofunctionalists, spillover is not a given. Integration has been conceptualized as positive, stagnant, and negative.

18. See Haas, , Beyond the Nation-State, p. 459Google Scholar; and Haas, , The Uniting of Europe, p. 287Google Scholar.

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22. Morse, , Modernization and the Transformation of International Relations, p. 80Google Scholar.

23. Ibid., pp. 85 and 93.

24. Brown, Seyom and Fabian, Larry L., “Toward Mutual Accountability in Nonterrestrial Realms,” International Organization 29 (Summer 1975), pp. 887–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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27. Block, Fred, The Origins of International Economic Disorder (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 225Google Scholar.

28. Solomon, Robert, The International Monetary System, 1945–1981 (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), p. 379Google Scholar.

29. See Friedman, Irving, Toward World Prosperity: Reshaping the World Money System (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1987), p. 273Google Scholar. More specifically, Friedman calls for a resuscitation of the managerial instruments of the Bretton Woods system, which he and many others believed were strong. Actually, the system reflected rather weak management in con-figuring monetary relations. Relations carried on in a rather haphazard way with occasional multilateral (G-10) and unilateral (U.S.) management.

30. In its journal, Backgrounder, the Heritage Foundation has published numerous studies that take a critical view of UN operations. See especially Pilon, Juliana Geran, “The Center on Transnational Corporations: How the UN Injures Poor Nations,” Backgrounder 608, 10 1987Google Scholar; Gulick, Thomas, “How the U.N. Aids Marxist Guerrilla Groups,” Backgrounder 177, 1982Google Scholar; and Brooks, “Africa Is Starving and the United Nations Shares the Blame.” See also Lichenstein, Charles et al. , The United Nations: Its Problems and What to Do About Them (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 1986)Google Scholar; and Pines, Burton Yale, ed., A World Without a U.N. (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 1984)Google Scholar.

31. See the following works by Yeselson, Abraham and Gaglione, Anthony: “The Use of the United Nations in World Politics,” in Spiegel, Steven, ed., At Issue: Politics in the World Arena (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), pp. 392–99Google Scholar; and A Dangerous Place (New York: Viking Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

32. Robert Jackson argued, for example, that the UN could be likened to “some prehistoric monster, incapable of intelligently controlling itself. This is not because it lacks intelligent and capable officials, but because it is so organized that managerial direction is impossible.” Jackson, is quoted in “The United Nations Agencies: A Case for Emergency Treatment,” Economist, 2 12 1989, p. 23Google Scholar. See also David Pitt, “Power in the UN Superbureaucracy: A Modern Byzantium,” and Galtung, Johan, “A Typology of United Nations Organizations,” in Pitt, David and Weiss, Thomas, eds., The Nature of United Nations Bureaucracies (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1986), pp. 23–38 and 59–83, respectivelyGoogle Scholar.

33. See, for example, Abdalla, Ismail, “The Inadequacy and Loss of Legitimacy of the International Monetary Fund,” Development, vol. 22, Society for International Development, Rome, 1980, pp. 46–65Google Scholar; Payer, Cheryl, The Debt Trap: The International Monetary Fund and the Third World (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Payer, Cheryl, The World Bank: A Critical Analysis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Hayter, Teresa, Aid as Imperialism (New York: Penguin, 1974)Google Scholar; Cox, Robert, “The Crisis in World Order and the Problem of International Organization in the 1980s,” International Journal 35 (Spring 1980), pp. 370–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cox, Robert, “Labor and Hegemony,” International Organization 31 (Summer 1977), pp. 385–424CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cocks, Peter, “Toward a Marxist Theory of European Integration,” International Organization 34 (Winter 1980), pp. 1–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Conybeare, “International Organization and the Theory of Property Rights.”

35. Ruggie and Wijkman, however, are generally positive about the functions of IO with respect to confronting issues of publicness. See Ruggie, “Collective Goods and Future Inter-national Collaboration”; and Wijkman, Per Magnus, “Managing the Global Commons,” Inter-national Organization 36 (Summer 1982), pp. 511–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. Vaubel, Roland, “A Public Choice Approach to International Organization,” Public Choice, vol. 51, 1986, pp. 39–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. See the contributions to International Organization, vol. 36, Spring 1982Google Scholar, a special issue on regimes. See also Keohane, Robert, After Hegemony (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Keohane, Robert and Nye, Joseph, Power and Interdependence, 2d ed. (Glen-view, Ill.: Scott, Foresman, 1985)Google Scholar. For surveys of the literature on regimes and neoliberal institutionalism, see Haggard, Stephan and Simmons, Beth, “Theories of International Regimes,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987), pp. 491–517CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Grieco, Joseph, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,” Inter-national Organization 42 (Summer 1988), pp. 485–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other works that are concerned with less managed relations, see Conybeare, “International Organization and the Theory of Property Rights”; Wijkman, “Managing the Global Commons”; Corden, W. Max, “The Logic of the International Monetary Non-System,” in Machlup, Fritz, Fels, Gerhard, and Muller-Groeling, Hubertus, eds., Reflections on a Troubled World Economy: Essays in Honor of Herbert Giersch (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983), pp. 59–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Corden, W. Max, “Fiscal Policies, Current Accounts and Real Exchange Rates: In Search of a Logic of International Policy Coordination,” Weltwirtschaftliches, vol. 122, 1986, pp. 423–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vaubel, Roland, “Coordination or Competition Among National Macro-Economic Policies?” in Machlup, , Fels, , and MullerGroeling, , Reflections on a Troubled World Economy, pp. 3–28Google Scholar; and Feldstein, Martin, “Let the Market Decide,” Economist, 3 12 1988, pp. 21–24Google Scholar.

38. See Cox, “The Crisis in World Order and the Problem of International Organization in the 1980s”; Cox, “Labor and Hegemony”; and Hayter, Aid as Imperialism.

39. This dual categorization of managerial failure is somewhat problematic because what some consider to be random mistakes of bureaucrats may be seen by others as problems endemic to the bureaucratic structure of IO. Similarly, depending on the manner in which malfunction is defined, IO can be said to malfunction systematically or unsystematically. Further research may improve upon the present typology by suggesting a better differentiation both between and within categories. Nevertheless, the dual categorization is useful as a first-cut approach to the general failures in the process of international management. The alternative presentation of undifferentiated failure does little service to the normative and theoretical importance of distinguishing endemic failures from failures that are more stochastic.

A point that deserves emphasis here is that while IO is by nature prone to several types of failure, it does not follow that IO will invariably fail. A simple analogy is that the inherent or genetic predisposition to diabetes does not always manifest itself as disease.

40. The mainstream IO literature has tended to offer a “complexity” rationale for supra-national government: as interdependence becomes more complex and issue-spaces increase in density, the need for IO to orchestrate relations also increases.

41. The subject of complex, tightly coupled systems is formally explored by Perrow in the context of accidents which involve nuclear power, chemicals, and other high-risk technology and which have adverse effects on the various ecosystems. See Perrow, Charles, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar.

42. Ibid.

43. Economists of the Austrian school have underscored this point with respect to attempts at managing complex systems such as markets and prices. Centrally planned economies, contrived price systems, and other forms of control, they argue, produce outcomes that are Pareto-inferior and significantly worse than those effected by a market approach. See, for example, the following works of Hayek, Friedrich: Individualism and Economic Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 187Google Scholar; Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 48–50Google Scholar; and The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 85–88Google Scholar.

44. See Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence; Cooper, Richard, The Economics of Interdependence (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1968)Google Scholar; and Rosenau, James, Turbulence in World Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

45. For a discussion of systems in international politics, see Jervis, Robert, “Systems Theories and International Politics,” in Lauren, Paul Gordon, ed., Diplomacy (New York: Free Press, 1979), pp. 212–43Google Scholar. On the subject of chaos, see Gleick, James, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin, 1988)Google Scholar.

46. Haberler, Gottfried, “The International Monetary System: Recent Developments in Perspective,” Aussenwirlschafl, vol. 42, 1987, p. 379Google Scholar.

47. Branson, William, “The Coordination of Exchange Rate Policy,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, no. 1, 1986, p. 176Google Scholar.

48. See “Passing the Buck,” Economist, 11 February 1989.

49. For discussions of the Louvre Accord and its results, see “The Show Can't Go On,” Economist, 21 November 1987, pp. 13–14; Haberler, “The International Monetary System” and Funabashi, Yoichi, Managing the Dollar: From the Plaza to the Louvre (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1988), pp. 187–92Google Scholar. It is not clear that defenders of the Louvre Accord are correct in attributing positive externalities to it. The argument that even misaligned rates stabilize trade flows assumes that volatility following the imposition of the exchange rate was less than it would have been if the rate had been allowed to converge by market forces. There is more evidence to suggest that, on the contrary, the imposition and market reaction to it created more volatility than would have otherwise occurred.

50. Haberler, , “The International Monetary System,” p. 383Google Scholar.

51. Ibid., p. 381.

52. The direction of swings in response to changes or developments in financial markets, currency markets, and other complex systems is difficult to predict, as are the perceptions of investors and other actors. This brings up the question of whether these systems would be more manageable if actors knew more about the manifold effects of different policies. In some situations, even supposedly prudent policies may have adverse effects if actors in systems are adapting to rather than passively accepting policy. (Such adaptive microbehavior typifies complex, tightly coupled systems.) But this could also be the case when actors are cognitively rigid. For example, given a particular nervous state in currency markets, investors may interpret any kind of interest rate policy (even the most prudent one based on knowledge of how currency markets work) as signaling trouble for a currency. An interest rate hike to prop up the dollar, for instance, may be perceived as a signal that the dollar is weak. A rate decrease may be perceived as a signal that U.S. policymakers will let the dollar slip. And finally, no change in the interest rate may be taken as indecision on the part of U.S. policymakers and perceived as a sign of trouble.

53. See “Almighty Fallen,” Economist, 14 November 1987, p. 11.

54. Vick, James, quoted by Funabashi, in Managing the Dollar, pp. 189–90Google Scholar.

55. Funabashi, Managing the Dollar.

56. See “Brady Avoiding Critics as Group of 7 Gathers,” The New York Times, 2 February 1989, p. D-l.

57. Ibid.

58. Rates were imposed much more frequently under the Bretton Woods regime in the 1950s and 1960s than they have been recently. But the size and the sensitivity of exchange markets were considerably smaller than they are now. And, in fact, the destabilizing money flows of the 1960s attest to the difficulty of sustaining rates misaligned with respect to the market rate.

59. See Funabashi, , Managing the Dollar, p. 190Google Scholar.

60. See ibid., pp. 28, 29, 34, 205–7, 214, and 228.

61. Especially distasteful were the U.S. threats; the U.S. insistence on a high yen rate; the constant changes in negotiating forums, including at various times the G-2, G-3, G-5, and G-7; and the attempts at unilateral management of the dollar rate, characterized by “talking the dollar down” when others refused to accommodate the downward trend of the dollar. See ibid., pp. 53, 182, 217, and 235–37.

62. An alternative interpretation of the Louvre and Plaza episodes might be that large and responsive capital markets, in combination with high mobility in the flow of goods and capital, have made it necessary for advanced industrial nations to coordinate their economic policies and that failures are a small price to pay for the necessary long-term management. No one would argue that coordination is not valuable or that the market can resolve all economic problems. But the Louvre and Plaza agreements generated significant instabilities that most likely would not have occurred in the absence of intervention. Even the necessity of long-term coordination is no excuse for generating market instability that has short-run effects and might in turn generate lasting effects. Given the adverse outcomes of linear managerial approaches taken in the past, it seems all the more inexcusable to turn to them again and again in the present.

63. For reasons relating to the unpredictability of international reactions to the construction of international managerial schemes in the area of the debt problem, Kindleberger appears cautious about the desirability of even attempting to develop collaborative multilateral solutions. If such attempts were made and fail, he argues, and if this generated pessimistic forecasts about developments in the issue-area, the problem is likely to be exacerbated. See Kindleberger, , The International Economic Order, p. 12Google Scholar.

64. See Frankel, Jeffrey and Rockett, Katherine, “International Macroeconomic Policy Co-ordination when Policymakers Do Not Agree on the Model,” American Economic Review 78 (06 1988), pp. 318–40Google Scholar.

65. Streeten, Paul, “The United Nations: Unhappy Family,” in , Pitt and , Weiss, The Nature of United Nations Bureaucracies, p. 187Google Scholar.

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid.

68. It has, in fact, been a long-standing characteristic of international economic summitry for leaders to use international agreements to reduce some of their domestic economic and political costs. See Putnam, Robert and Bayne, Nicholas, Hanging Together: Cooperation and Conflict in the Seven-Power Summits (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; and Vaubel, “A Public Choice Approach to International Organization.”

69. de Cuéllar, Pérez, Report of the Secretary-General on the Work of the Organization, p. 3Google Scholar.

70. Stegenga, James, The United Nations Force in Cyprus (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1968), p. 186Google Scholar.

71. See Yeselson and Gaglione, A Dangerous Place.

72 See Garrity, Patrick, “The United Nations and Peacekeeping,” in , Pines, A World Without a U.N., p. 155Google Scholar. See also Ruggie's, response to Garrity, “The United States and the United Nations,” p. 348Google Scholar.

73. Yeselson, and Gaglione, , A Dangerous Place, p. 178Google Scholar.

74. The literature on collective action suggests that sometimes it is to the benefit of a community as a whole for people not to have private substitutes for poor public services. The fact that they have such substitutes encourages them to exit (vote with their feet) rather than use their voice to contribute to the improvement of those services. For example, communities will be less likely to have poor public schools if private schools do not exist. This will encourage the wealthiest and most educated to contribute to collective action schemes designed to improve the school system. Collective action is enhanced to the extent that private substitutes for public goods are unavailable. One could make an interesting argument about the destabilizing nature of the “star wars” program on these grounds. The program's technology would increase the risk of war among the superpowers because if developed (even by both) it would represent a substitute for further cooperation. For a discussion about the adverse effects of private substitutes, see Hardin, Russell, Collective Action (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), p. 73Google Scholar.

75. Rothstein, Robert, Global Bargaining: UNCTAD and the Quest for a New International Economic Order (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), p. 20Google Scholar.

76. Data show that development is positively correlated with the growth of the private sector. See Erickson, Edward and Sumner, Daniel, “The U.N. and Economic Development,” in Pines, , A World Without a U.N., pp. 1–22Google Scholar. See also Pilon, “The Center on Transnational Corporations.”

77. See Brooks, “Africa Is Starving and the United Nations Shares the Blame.”

78. Hopkins identifies these problems as central targets for multilateral food aid reform in the 1970s and 1980s. See Hopkins, “Reform in the International Food Aid Regime.”

79. See Claude, , Swords into Plowshares, pp. 417–19Google Scholar.

80. Ibid.

81. Roberts, Adam and Kingsbury, Benedict, “The UN's Roles in a Divided World,” in Roberts, Adam and Kingsbury, Benedict, eds., United Nations, Divided World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 11Google Scholar. The problem is not a matter of nations believing that the UN is a real and significant instrument of world peace and that they therefore avoid other means of addressing global security issues. Rather, the problem is that any positive perceptions of the security-enhancing potential of the UN may alter their incentives to apply their full resources to other strategies. This suggests an element of moral hazard, a subject discussed in a later section of my article.

82. See Funabashi, , Managing the Dollar, p. 41Google Scholar.

83. It is impossible to definitively state that in the absence of IO, nations would act more responsibly or make the necessary hard choices required for long-run stability in their economies. Certainly, nations might seek other ways to avoid making hard choices. However, to the extent that IO provides additional “outs” or, alternatively, fails to close off less responsible avenues, it augments or maintains the possibilities for destabilizing policy choices in the long run.

84. Some might argue that this tendency toward substitution was not as apparent to the founders of the Bretton Woods system, since their principal goal was to provide nations with liquidity as a way to avoid market intervention (prompted by balance-of-payments disequilibria) in the short run and thus give them the opportunity to develop more incremental adjustment policies in the long run. Furthermore, the fixed exchange rates and the circumscription of internal adjustment were a reaction to the problems that prevailed during the interwar period. The point to be made here is that the opportunities for adverse substitution which IO provides can as likely be unintended as intended. For a discussion of the early objectives of the Bretton Woods system, see Gardner, Richard, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy: Anglo-American Collabo-ration in the Reconstruction of Multilateral Trade (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), chap. 5Google Scholar.

85. In “A Public Choice Approach to International Organization,” pp. 47–49, Vaubel cites evidence that inflation tends to be higher among nations that exhibit more convergent inflation rates.

86. See Tumlir, Jan, Protectionism: Trade Policy in Democratic Societies (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1985), p. 12. On a related note, critics of super-301 and strategic American trade policy argue that these initiatives represent a destabilizing substitute for a long-term resolution to the trade deficit, which would require the elimination of the underlying microeconomic and macroeconomic causes. See “The Snit List,” Economist, 3 June 1989, pp. 30–31Google Scholar.

87. Economist, 26 September 1987, p. 56.

88. See Corden, W. Max, “The Coordination of Stabilization Policies Among Countries,” in Ando, Albert, Herring, Richard, and Marston, Richard, eds., International Aspects of Stabilization Policies (Boston: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, 1977), pp. 139–40Google Scholar.

89. See Gallarotti, Giulio M., “Toward a Business-Cycle Model of Tariffs,” International Organization 39 (Winter 1985), pp. 155–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The success of GATT in lowering tariffs may be counterproductive, given the fact that nations often substitute nontariff barriers. These barriers are more protectionist and more distorting of trade flows, since producers cannot compensate for them by managing prices and costs. This illustrates the fact that IO can channel policy into less stabilizing instruments.

90. Claude, , Swords into Plowshares, p. 446Google Scholar.

91. Yeselson, and Gaglione, , “The Use of the United Nations in World Politics,” p. 396Google Scholar.

92. See Tugwell, Maurice, “The UN as the World's Safety Valve,” in Pines, , A World Without a U.N., pp. 157–74Google Scholar. The Churchill quote is from his speech on 26 June 1954 in Washington, D.C.

93. Tugwell, , “The UN as the World's Safety Valve,” p. 157Google Scholar.

94. Kirkpatrick, Jeane, speech before the Anti-Defamation League on 11 February 1982 in Beach, Palm, Fla., pp. 11–12Google Scholar.

95. Kirkpatrick, quoted by the Associated Press, 29 October 1982.

96. See Claude, , Swords into Plowshares, pp. 89–94Google Scholar; and Ruggie, , “The United States and the United Nations,” p. 354Google Scholar.

97. Yeselson, and Gaglione, , A Dangerous Place, pp. 31–43Google Scholar.

98. Tugwell, , “The U.N. as the World's Safety Valve,” p. 158Google Scholar.

99. The ultimate outcome in this intervention was markedly different from the original intention “not to take any action which would make [the UN] a party to internal conflicts in the country.” See UN Security Council, Official Records, meeting no. 872, 7 07 1960, p. 5Google Scholar.

100. See Yeselson, and Gaglione, , A Dangerous Place, p. 203Google Scholar. With respect to the indirect effects of IOs on African politics, Jackson and Roseberg see a quite different deleterious effect. By accepting African nations as members regardless of their political regimes, IOs serve to legitimize oppressive political systems. See Jackson, Robert and Roseberg, Carl, “Why Africa's Weak States Persist: The Empirical and Juridical in Statehood,” World Politics 35 (10 1982), pp. 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101. See Claude, , Swords into Plowshares, p. 130Google Scholar. Some analysts might interpret the 1990 involvement of the UN in the Iraq-Kuwait crisis as a breakdown in the deleterious Cold War use of the organization and argue that with superpower agreement the UN can be a positive force in abating and preventing crises in global security. There are several problems with this interpretation. The first and most obvious is that it is premature to draw conclusions, given that the crisis is still in progress at the time of the writing of this article. The second is that we have to question whether the UN initiated or followed the U.S. lead in attempting to resolve the crisis. The United States, defending its geopolitical and resource-security interests in the Middle East, played the major role with regard to constructing a unified response to the invasion of Kuwait. Insofar as the 1990 UN resolutions called for actions that the United States and its allies had already committed themselves to, the organization merely served as a stamp of approval or vehicle for legitimating the actions. The European Community has, in fact, at the time of the writing of this article made a collective request to the Security Council to pursue air blockade in addition to naval and ground coverage. Critics of the confrontational style within the UN forum might argue that since nations are committed to a confrontational response to the invasion outside this forum, it would behoove the UN to expend its energies toward engineering a diplomatic resolution. This would reduce the possibilities of pan-Arab antagonism (especially from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Jordan) toward the UN and would place the organization in a better position to fulfill its role with respect to resolving other disputes in the Middle East. Given the fact that Hussein has threatened war in response to the UN resolutions, we have to question whether confrontational resolutions are counterproductive and whether the UN has served as a positive force.

102. See Yeselson, and Gaglione, , “The Use of the United Nations in World Politics,” p. 396Google Scholar.

103. Keohane, , After Hegemony, p. 91Google Scholar. See also Keohane, Robert, “The Demand for Inter-national Regimes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), pp. 325–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tollison, Robert and Willett, Thomas, “An Economic Theory of Mutually Advantageous Linkages in International Negotiations,” International Organization 33 (Autumn 1979), pp. 425–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104. See Yeselson, and Gaglione, , “The Use of the United Nations in World Politics,” p. 397Google Scholar.

105. Ibid., p. 395.

106. See Roberts, and Kingsbury, , “The UN's Roles in a Divided World,” p. 19Google Scholar.

107. See Gulick, “How the U.N. Aids Marxist Guerrilla Groups.” It appears that this support has been uneven in a most destabilizing way, given the recent UN decision to allow South Africa to break Resolution 435 and confront SWAPO rebels in Namibia.

108. Massur, quoted in ibid., p. 4. The argument that IO is supposed to promote change and that the PLO and ANC are therefore justified in their use of the UN to promote conflict in the Middle East and Africa presents some problems. First, it assumes that people think it worth the costs of conflict intensification, including death and destruction, to promote change. Many would not think so. Second, it assumes that any parties advocating changes to some status quo are justified in using IOs to promote conflict. In fact, nations have historically been encouraged to bring their disputes to IOs as a way of avoiding conflict. Finally, there are both peaceful and conflictual avenues to change. Some think it a bad precedent for IOs to expend resources in anything but peaceful solutions. Certainly the traditional spirit of IO suggests diplomatic approaches to resolving conflicts of interests.

109. Operation Condor in 1966 and the immediate reception of this terrorist operation on the part of the Argentine masses suggest a sharp turning point in Argentine policy toward the Falklands in the mid-1960s. See Reisman, W. Michael and Willard, Andrew, eds., International Incidents (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 121–22Google Scholar.

110. In 1974, the newspaper Cronica began a campaign for the invasion of the Falklands. In January 1976, the Argentine foreign minister predicted a head-on collision with Great Britain. Just one month later, an Argentine destroyer fired on the British research ship Shakleton. See ibid., pp. 122–27. UN involvement may have contributed to the Falklands episode by exacerbating the domestic antagonism toward Great Britain and driving policy toward a more militant response. While this is somewhat speculative, one thing is certain: in its resolutions and other involvement in this matter, the UN provided sources of legitimacy that could be used by Argentina as justification for confrontational approaches to the problem. This in itself violated the traditional spirit of the UN objective to encourage peaceful diplomatic resolution of inter-national disputes.

111. Historical limitations in the demands and enforcement of conditionality have given nations more leeway than is good for their own long-run economic stability.

112. See Kindleberger, , The International Economic Order, p. 39Google Scholar. See also Kindleberger, Charles, “The International Monetary System,” in International Money: A Collection of Essays (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981), pp. 297–300Google Scholar.

113. Keohane, and Nye, , Power and Interdependence, p. 274Google Scholar .

114. Interestingly, Puchala has argued that during the first half of the European Community's existence, much of its success was actually attributable to weaknesses in getting nations to follow rules. The Community has, however, shown itself to be much stronger in the second half of its existence in both generating legislation and encouraging adherence. See Puchala, Donald, “Domestic Politics and Regional Harmonization in the European Communities,” World Politics 27 (07 1975), pp. 496–520CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

115. In “Fiscal Policies, Current Accounts and Real Exchange Rates,” p. 426, Corden sees the post-Bretton Woods period as a period of decentralized monetary relations, “an international laissez faire system.”

116. Solomon, Robert, “Issues at the IMF Meeting,” Journal of Commerce, 10 1979, p. 4Google Scholar.

117. Keohane, and Nye, , Power and Interdependence, p. 274Google Scholar.

118. Ibid., p. 273. For other contributions to this literature, see Conybeare, John, “Public Goods, Prisoners' Dilemmas and the International Political Economy,” International Studies Quarterly 28 (03 1984), pp. 5–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Conybeare, “International Organization and the Theory of Property Rights”; Stein, Arthur, “Coordination and Collaboration: Regimes in an Anarchic World,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), pp. 299–324CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snidal, Duncan, “Coordination Versus Prisoners’ Dilemma: Implications for International Cooperation and Regimes,” American Political Science Review 79 (12 1985), pp. 923–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snidal, Duncan, “Relative Gains Don't Prevent International Cooperation,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, Ga., 31 08 1989Google Scholar; McKeown, Timothy, “Hegemonic Stability Theory and 19th Century Tariff Levels in Europe,” International Organization 37 (Winter 1983), pp. 73–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wagner, R. Harrison, “The Theory of Games and the Problem of International Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 77 (07 1983), pp. 330–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar.

119. The conventional argument about the advantages of optimal tariffs assumes that other nations will not retaliate.

120. In “The Logic of the International Monetary Non-System,” p. 65, Corden implies that these predatory costs increase on the margin, thus suggesting that the restraints against predation will rise as predation increases.

121. See Corden, , “Fiscal Policies, Current Accounts and Real Exchange Rates,” p. 436Google Scholar. This is not to say that the imbalance cannot be politically destabilizing.

122. Even those contributors to the literature on cooperation who are quite sympathetic to the role of IO in world politics note that limited forms of multilateral management can be desirable and effective given the proper underlying conditions in relations among nations. See especially Keohane, and Nye, , Power and Interdependence, pp. 274–76Google Scholar; and Ruggie, , “Collective Goods and Future International Collaboration,” p. 888Google Scholar.

123. Keohane, and Nye, , Power and Interdependence, p. 274Google Scholar.

124. Ibid., p. 35.

125. Ibid., pp. 35 and 274. See also Keohane, After Hegemony; and Keohane, “The Demand for International Regimes.”

126. See the special issue of International Organization, vol. 36, Spring 1982Google Scholar.

127. See Stein, “Coordination and Collaboration”; and Young, Oran, “Regime Dynamics: The Rise and Fall of International Regimes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), pp. 277–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Wagner, “The Theory of Games and the Problem of International Cooperation”; and Snidal, “Coordination Versus Prisoners’ Dilemma.”

128. Snidal, , “Coordination Versus Prisoners' Dilemma,” p. 932Google Scholar. Even with more conflictual payoff structures, such as that of prisoners' dilemma, notes Wagner, functions relating to the dissemination of information about preferences and potential choices can play an essential role in bringing about cooperative outcomes. Furthermore, in cases in which conflictual games generate horizontal proliferation (interissue linkage in games), modest managerial assistance is required to arrive at mutually beneficial equilibria. Snidal argues that to the extent that horizontal properties emerge, the game “becomes embedded in a broader social context, and cooperation is increasingly possible with less centralized enforcement.” See Snidal, ibid., p. 939; and Wagner, “The Theory of Games and the Problem of International Cooperation.”

129. For a discussion of the role of focal points in generating mutually beneficial outcomes in games, see Schelling, Thomas, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

130. Ruggie, “International Responses to Technology.”

131. See Keohane, and Nye, , Power and Interdependence, p. 274Google Scholar; Conybeare, “International Organization and the Theory of Property Rights”; Vaubel, “A Public Choice Approach to International Organization”; and Wijkman, “Managing the Global Commons.”

132. Conybeare, , “International Organization and the Theory of Property Rights,” p. 314Google Scholar.

133. Wijkman, , “Managing the Global Commons,” p. 527Google Scholar.

134. See Mitrany, , A Working Peace System, pp. 28 and 73Google Scholar.

135. See, for example, Haas, , Beyond the Nation-State, p. 126Google Scholar.

136. In Power and Interdependence, p. 276, Keohane and Nye make a similar point with respect to viable moderated management of crisis versus nonviable control management.

137. See Morse, , Modernization and the Transformation of International Relations, p. 85Google Scholar.

138. See Hardin, , Collective Action, pp. 62–65Google Scholar.

139. See Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

140. Ruggie, , “Collective Goods and Future International Collaboration,” p. 888Google Scholar.

141. See ibid.; Conybeare, “International Organization and the Theory of Property Rights”; and Wijkman, “Managing the Global Commons.”

142. Jervis argues that cooperation is more likely to occur in economic relations than in security relations because the underlying strategic structure of the former is positive-sum, while that of the latter is closer to zero-sum. See Jervis, Robert, “Security Regimes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), pp. 357–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Of course, a disaggregation of economic relations would show a significant variation in the complexity of the various forms, ranging from commodity agreements, which are relatively simple, to macroeconomic coordination, which is highly complex.

143. See Urquhart, Brian, “International Peace and Security,” Foreign Affairs 60 (Fall 1981), pp. 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

144. These schemes require neither extensive scope nor extensive level. Their effect depends on their ability to address the right issues in the right ways. Depending on underlying strategic structures in specific relational contexts, institutions that assist cooperation may be more substantive means of generating positive outcomes than institutions that manage cooperation. Often, as has been suggested in this article, big and broad functions make it more difficult to substantively address issues.

145. See Putnam and Bayne, Hanging Together.

146. Critics of super-301 would identify a similar motive behind the U.S. trade policy toward Asia.

147. Nowhere is this more evident than in alliance relations. See Diesing, Paul and Snyder, Glenn, Conflict Among Nations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), chap. 6Google Scholar.

148. Jervis, for one, has differentiated between security and international economic regimes in terms of viability and stability. See Jervis, “Security Regimes.”

149. Discussions of moral hazard in international politics have generally focused on monetary relations, but the possibilities for moral hazard appear to be more far-reaching. Jervis and Nye, for example, make interesting albeit brief allusions to possibilities for moral hazard in security relations. See Jervis, , “Security Regimes,” p. 368Google Scholar; and Nye, Joseph, “Nuclear Learning,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987), p. 390Google Scholar.