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The dilemma of informal governance with outside option as solution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2015

Daniel Verdier
Daniel Verdier*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The efficiency-oriented part of the literature on informal governance points to institutional costs as a reason for governments to prefer to cooperate with each other through commitments that are not binding. Left unexplained is what I call the dilemma of informal governance: how informal governance copes with the problem of cheating, to which formal governance has traditionally provided the solution. I show that like-mindedness, the current solution to the dilemma, is convincing but underspecified. Working from a model of governance encompassing the three time-honored dimensions of obligation, precision, and delegation, I analytically explore two other solutions, one that fails, information transmission, another that works, outside option, which I borrow from the power-oriented part of the literature on informal governance. A key finding is that informal governance, despite being neither self-enforceable nor informative, is sustainable for mild Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) types in the presence of outside options. I illustrate the model findings by tracing an historical correlation between power polarization and formalism in the design of security regimes.

Keywords

informal governancesecurity regimesoutside optionobligationprecisiondelegation
Type
Original Papers
Information
International Theory , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 195 - 229
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2015 

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