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International Regimes: Toward a New Theory of Institutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Oran R. Young
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Abstract

The current burst of work on regimes or, more broadly, on international institutions, reflects an emerging sense—especially among Americans—that the international order engineered by the United States and its allies in the aftermath of World War II is eroding rapidly and may even be on the verge of collapse. But is the resultant surge of scholarly work on international regimes any more likely to yield lasting contributions to knowledge than have other recent fashions in the field of international relations? The jury will remain out until a sustained effort is made to evaluate the significance of regimes or institutions more broadly, as determinants of collective behavior at the international level.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , October 1986 , pp. 104 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1986

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References

1 Kratochwil, Friedrich, “The Force of Prescriptions,” International Organization 38 (Autumn 1984), 685CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid., 685–703.

3 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

4 For a well-known description of international society in these terms, see Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 In a recent essay, Charles P. Kindleberger states that he prefers “to think of leadership or responsibility” rather than hegemonic power. But concepts like leadership and responsibility surely fail to capture the element of imposition or coercion embedded in many uses of the term “hegemony.” See Kindleberger, , “International Public Goods without International Government,” American Economic Review 76 (March 1986), 10Google Scholar.

6 This fact has given rise to the concept of coercive diplomacy. See Schelling, Thomas C., Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar and Young, Oran R., The Pol itics of Force: Bargaining during International Crises (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

7 Lewis, David K., Convention: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Hardin, Russell, Collective Action (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982) chaps. 10–14Google Scholar; Schelling, Thomas C., Micromotives and Macrobehavior (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), chap. 7Google Scholar.

8 Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar.

9 For a thoughtful review discussing some of the limits of Axelrod's analysis under real world conditions, see Gowa, Joanne, “Anarchy, egoism, and third images: The Evolution of Cooperation and international relations,” International Organization, 40 (Winter 1986), 167–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 For a recent restatement of Kindleberger's position on this issue, see Kindleberger (fn. 5), 10.

11 Olson, Mancur Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965) chap. 1Google Scholar.

12 Hobbes attached particular importance to the rough equality of individuals in the state of nature because he assumed that virtually every individual in such a state would possess the physical ability to kill any other member of the group.

13 North, Douglass C. and Thomas, Robert Paul, The Rise of the Western World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Warner, William W., Distant Water: The Fate of the North Atlantic Fishermen (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983)Google Scholar.

15 Thornton, A. P., The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies (New York: Macmillan, 1959)Google Scholar.

16 For a brief but clear account by an economist of status-maximizing behavior, see Mishan, E. J., What Political Economy Is All About (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) chap. 17Google Scholar.

17 Although writers like Waltz sometimes suggest that the character of the international system forces individual actors to operate as status maximizers, others attribute such behavior simply to envy or an individual's lust for power.

18 Keohane (esp. 110–32) engages in some interesting efforts to vary the behavioral assumptions he employs in thinking about international cooperation. Nonetheless, the theoretical force of the analysis set forth in After Hegemony stems directly from behavioral models which assume that individual actors are self-interested utility maximizers.

19 For some related observations, see Keohane, Robert O., “Reciprocity in international relations,” International Organization 40 (Winter 1986), 1–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Rawls, John, “Two Concepts of Rules,” Philosophical Review 65 (No. 1, 1955), 24Google Scholar.

21 Ibid.

22 See also Keohane (fn. 19).