In precolonial and colonial North America five Iroquois nations, which previously had fought for generations, stopped wars among themselves and lived in peace for about 325 years. This history raises several questions: why did the Iroquois nations stop fighting each other; did the fact that each nation was a democracy have anything to do with the end of war among them; and what are the lessons of this peace for international relations scholars? A security regime formed by the Iroquois in 1450, known as the Iroquois League, accounts for the peace. Comparing the Iroquois League with the Concert of Europe indicates an important role for norms and institutionalization in ameliorating the security dilemma. Further, the five democratic nations that formed the Iroquois League exemplify Immanuel Kant's idea of a system for “perpetual peace.” Finally, the history of the Iroquois League challenges realist claims of cross-cultural and timeless validity.

The problems of distribution and information impede international cooperation. They arise when actors select how they will cooperate. An exploration of the interaction between these problems using a limited information model of cooperation leads to six conclusions. First, leadership solutions to coordination problems always exist, but leadership here is very different from hegemonic provision of public goods. Second, actors can cooperate in the face of anarchy even without a shadow of the future. Third, diffuse reciprocal strategies arise naturally in coordination problems. Fourth, norms and institutions are intertwined within successful cooperation. Fifth, the form of cooperation on an issue varies with the relative importance of distribution and information. Finally and most important, distributional and informational problems interfere with each other. Arrangements to cooperate can successfully address one, but not both, of these problems.

Whether a treaty elicits compliance from governments or nonstate actors depends upon identifiable characteristics of the regime's compliance systems. Within the international regime controlling intentional oil pollution, a provision requiring tanker owners to install specified equipment produced dramatically higher levels of compliance than a provision requiring tanker operators to limit their discharges. Since both provisions entailed strong economic incentives for violation and regulated the same countries over the same time period, the variance in compliance clearly can be attributed to different features of the two subregimes. The equipment requirements' success stemmed from establishing an integrated compliance system that increased transparency, provided for potent and credible sanctions, reduced implementation costs to governments by building on existing infrastructures, and prevented violations rather than merely deterring them.

Standard explanations for trade liberalization do not fully account for Mexico's turn toward free trade during the 1980s. To a large extent, the initiative came from within the country. Even many Mexican entrepreneurs whose sectors seem likely to lose from increased competition now support trade liberalization. Four conditions lowered the “political cost-benefit ratio” for policymakers and entrepreneurs. First, Mexico's leaders dispersed implementation into several financial ministries, thereby better insulating this policy from lobbying by the likely “losers.” Second, potential losers were less well-informed than were likely “winners.” Third, under these conditions, the liberal ideological biases of Mexican elite policymakers and investors flourished, prompting them to accept a higher political cost than would have been tolerated otherwise. Finally, many Mexicans came to perceive trade liberalization as a necessary tool in the fight against inflation. Each of these hypotheses, however, also flags a possible threat to the policy's future political survival.

What conditions led the One Hundredth Congress of the United States to enact fair trade and strategic trade policies into law during 1987-88? Political partisanship is an important force, with Democrats supporting and Republicans opposing all types of trade intervention. Otherwise, the coalitions of support for and opposition to the various trade policies differ, particularly in the Senate. In that body, international business is associated with support for fair trade policies and with opposition to classical protectionism, while domestic U.S. business is associated with support for classical protectionism. Liberalism is strongly associated with support for fair and strategic trade policies but is not associated with classical protectionism. In the House of Representatives, the long-standing protectionist coalition remains an influence. Few forces in support of free trade remain in U.S. politics. Changing international market conditions rapidly affect the making of U.S. trade policy.