bargaining enforcement and multilateral sanctions when is cooperation counterproductive scholars and policymakers generally assume that multilateral cooperation is a necessary condition for economic sanctions to be of any use however previous statistical tests of this assumption have shown that sanctions are more successful with lower levels of cooperation this puzzle calls into question established theories of economic statecraft as well as theories of international cooperation in this article i test possible explanations for the ineffectiveness of multilateral cooperation on sanctions events using james fearon s 1998 breakdown of cooperation into bargaining and enforcement phases as a framework for discussion the empirical results show that when multilateral economic sanctions fail their failure is due to enforcement not bargaining problems without the support of an international organization cooperating states backslide from promises of cooperation backsliding occurs because of domestic political pressures and uncertainty about the intentions of the other sanctioning countries backsliding causes an initial burst of cooperative behavior to decay over time without institutional support cooperation is worse than useless it is counterproductive this result suggests that international cooperation is a more fragile equilibrium than previously thought but undercuts realist arguments that international organizations are unimportant

the international telecommunications regime the political roots of regimes for high technology the international telecommunications regime provided a multilateral framework that reinforced domestic monopolies and bilateral cartel arrangements in the global market the regime s epistemic community believed that telecommunications services and equipment were best supplied by national monopolies and that international communications by telephone telegram and telex should be jointly provided by monopolists strong domestic political incentives reinforced this cognitive framework when technological innovation triggered a successful political attack on the domestic regulation of telecommunications in a few key countries the stage was set for a global challenge to the intellectual and political foundations of the regime two paths to reform have emerged their significance can be assessed by looking at changes in the distribution of benefits from the regime changes in the manner in which governments delegate power to the regime and shifts in the epistemic community associated with the regime

after the break up institutional design in transitional states this article integrates historical and rational choice approaches to institutional origin and change to explain the establishment of electoral systems in three former soviet central asian republics kazakhstan kyrgyzstan and uzbekistan it argues that institutions designed under transitional circumstances are products of the interaction between the preceding historical and institutional setting and the dynamic uncertainty that surrounds them strategic actors engaged in the process of institutional design use both contexts in order to assess the degree to and direction in which their relative power is changing they then negotiate accordingly so as to attain their preferred institutional outcomes central asia s electoral systems in particular can be best understood as the product of very similar and long standing regional power struggles being played out under varying dynamic and uncertain conditions

explaining cooperation under anarchy hypotheses and strategies what circumstances favor the realization of mutual interests in the absence of centralized authority and through what strategies can nations foster the emergence of cooperation by altering the circumstances that they confront elementary game theory suggests three sets of conditions that serve as proximate explanations of the incidence of cooperation and discord i payoff structure mutual and conflicting preferences 2 the shadow of the future single play and iterated games and 3 number of players two person and n person games each of these three attributes of context may be subject to willful modification nations may create the preconditions for cooperation through strategies to alter payoffs lengthen the shadow of the future and reduce the number of actors required to realize limited mutual interests

multilateralism bilateralism and exclusion in the nuclear proliferation regime i use the nuclear proliferation regime to show that dyadic diplomacy is not necessarily incompatible with the building of a multilateral regime bilateralism is not the opposite of multilateralism but an efficient component thereof although this point will not be new to most students of institutions no general rationale has so far been offered on the complementarity of bilateral and multilateral diplomacy start ing from a characterization of proliferation as the result of a large number of prisoner s dilemmas played out between states engaged in local dyadic rivalries i demonstrate that it is possible for the superpowers to design an optimal mix of threats and bribes in which states with low compliance costs join the regime on the terms of the multi lateral treaty alone states with intermediate compliance costs need additional cus tomized incentives delivered through bilateral agreements and states with high compliance costs are not only left out of the regime but also punished for nonpartici pation i draw a few comparative statics that i systematically test on nuclear prolif eration treaty npt membership data i discuss the applicability of the model to the currency trade and aid regimes

less filling tastes great the realist neoliberal debate this essay examines and reformulates the realist neoliberal debate focusing initially on the issue of the attribution of goals to states we argue that not only are goals merely the epiphenomena of other things but also that their specification constitutes but a re description of strategic environments that is although an attribution of goals may contribute to our characterization of outcomes a discussion of them is not central to the development of a theory that explains and predicts the outbreak of conflict and the patterns of cooperation instead we argue that the realist neoliberal debate should be recast so that our central research agenda is the development of substantively specific models that allow us to ascertain how the equilibrium to a game in which states structure international affairs influences the types of issue specific subgames states play how countries coordinate to equilibria of different types how we can characterize the coordination problems associated with different equilibria how states can enhance the attractiveness of an equilibrium and how states can signal commitments to the strategies that are part of that equilibrium

international institutions and economic sanctions economic sanctions have long occupied the attention of both scholars and policy makers despite the widespread use of sanctions many observers have concluded that the inherent problems associated with imposing sanctions involving multiple senders substantially limit their effectiveness this article reviews two books that analyze the factors that influence cooperation among senders of multilateral sanctions these books indicate that international institutions can do much to promote cooperation of this sort however this essay argues that the extent to which international institutions facilitate cooperation among senders of sanctions is likely to depend on the domestic politics of members the type of institution being used for this purpose the nature of the strategy being pursued and the distribution of power among members although these books make significant contributions to our understanding of the factors that promote cooperation among senders of multilateral sanctions they examine the factors that promote the effectiveness of sanctions in only a peripheral manner one potential influence on the effectiveness of sanctions that are organized by an international institution however is the likelihood that the institution will be captured by member states or by interest groups within them additional research that investigates the conditions under which international institutions are likely to be captured and the implications of institutional capture for their performance may therefore prove useful to scholars of international relations and economic statecraft

an exclusive country club the effects of the gatt on trade 1950 94 using data on bilateral trade flows from both before and after world war ii this article examines the impact of the general agreement on tariffs and trade on trade between its members and on the system of interwar trade blocs it shows that the distribution of the benefits produced by the gatt was much more highly skewed than conventional wisdom assumes the article also shows that the gold commonwealth reichsmark and exchange control blocs exerted positive and significant effects on trade after 1945 the authors attribute these effects to the bargaining protocol that governed successive rounds of gatt negotiations the signature element of the postwar trade regime

energy rebound effect in china s industry an aggregate and disaggregate analysis abstract considering the crucial role of industrial sectors in energy conservation this paper investigates the impact of output growth on energy consumption in china s industrial sectors with an index decomposition model and the energy rebound effect in the industrial sectors with a panel data model using the annual data during 1994 2012 the empirical results indicate that first industrial output growth is proved to be the major factor in promoting industrial energy consumption while energy intensity reduction and structure shifts across industrial sub sectors play the dominant roles in slowing down industrial energy consumption second there does exist energy rebound effect in china s aggregate industry which ranges from 20 to 76 during 1995 2012 or 39 on average in particular the energy rebound effect in manufacturing is relatively smaller during the sample period i e 28 on average finally the energy rebound effect in both china s aggregate industry and manufacturing exhibit an overall decreasing trend over time

the gains debate framing state choice the theoretical bifurcation of international relations theory into neo realist and neo liberal camps has resulted in a gains debate that says little about an empirical world in which states exhibit both relative and absolute gains pursuit this article deploys prospect theory in an attempt to move beyond the gains debate the intent here is synthetic by bringing the predictions of both perspectives under a single theoretical umbrella we can model a broader set of state behavior the thesis developed demonstrates that states in a gains frame pursue absolute gains and are risk averse while states in a losses frame pursue relative gains and are risk acceptant this hypothesis is assessed against the behavior of the european community in the formation of the montreal protocol a regime intended to protect the earth s protective ozone shield the new model accurately predicts the timing and content of shifts in ec preferences suggesting that a synthesis of realist and liberal approaches is possible

entrenching the yoshida defense doctrine three techniques for institutionalization japan s level of defense expenditure relative to tbe size of its economy bas long been uniquely low among the major industrialized countries as of 1995 japan s expenditures stood at 0 96 percent of gross domestic product gdp even adding to this tbe approximately 0 3 percent of gdp devoted to pensions for retired personnel the level of spending is considerably less than that of major westem states such as tbe united states united kingdom france and germany as well as industrialized asian states such as south korea taiwan malaysia and singapore furthermore these relative magnitudes have remained reasonably stable over tbe past few decades see table 1 defense expenditure as a percentage of gdp or gnp gross national product often referred to simply as defense burden has over tbe past few decades become the standard benchmark for measuring a state s relative contribution to international security because of this tbe appropriateness and consequences of japan s relatively low expenditure of national wealth on defense bave been hotly debated botb in japan and abroad critics accuse japan of unfairly exploiting a defense free ride to build its economic success and others worry that japan s lack of military capabilities prevents it from becoming a normal state whose political role is commensurate

setting international standards technological rationality or primacy of power standards have become one of the most important nontariff barriers to trade especially national product standards that specify design or performance characteristics of manufactured goods divergent national standards often inhibit trade whereas regional and international standards increasingly serve as instruments of trade liberalization consequently the setting of international standards seemingly technical and apolitical is rapidly becoming an issue of economic and political salience but who sets international standards who wins who loses this article offers a fresh analytical approach to the study of international standards which the authors call the institutional complementarities approach it builds on insights from realism and the battle of the sexes coordination game but emphasizes complementarities of historically conditioned standardization systems at the national level with the institutional structure of standardization at the international level it posits that after controlling for other factors that influence involvement in international standardization differences in institutional complementarities play a critical though largely accidental role in placing firms from different countries or regions in a first or second mover position when standardization becomes global the authors illustrate the insightfulness of this approach through statistical analyses of the first scientific set of data on standards use and standardization collected by the authors through an international online survey

bargaining enforcement and international cooperation neoliberals and their neorealist critics have debated the relative importance of two main obstacles to international cooperation problems of cheating and enforcement and problems of relative gains by contrast i argue that problems of international cooperation have a common strategic structure in which a third distinct obstacle plays a crucial role almost regardless of the issue area states must first resolve the bargaining problem of agreeing on terms before they can implement and begin to enforce an agreement furthermore the bargaining and enforcement problems interact using a game model i show that if states must bargain to determine the deal to be enforced the shadow of the future cuts two ways a high expectation of continued interactions may make enforcing the agreement easier but it can also give states an incentive to bargain harder delaying agreement in hopes of getting a better deal empirical evidence from trade and arms control negotiations suggests that this mechanism may help to explain the costly standoffs that are often observed in international politics and are problematic for received neoliberal theories

international law and domestic institutions reconciling north american unfair trade laws while scholars have written much about the role played by international institutions in cooperative behavior among nations they have not examined the domestic political motives that may lie behind nations decisions to join such organizations two level games analysis provides a framework for studying domestic politics not as a constraint upon nations that enter into international agreements but as a catalyst for nations to enter into agreements the dispute settlement procedures of the north american free trade agreement and its predecessor the canada u s free trade agreement offer an empirical illustration of this point

interests power and multilateralism multilateralism characterizes to varying degrees patterns of interaction among states and the formal organizations they construct the utility of multilateral norms or organizations varies with the type of cooperation problem states confront thus the functional logic of international cooperation leads to hypotheses about the conditions under which the institution of multilateralism may be a feasible and efficient solution as in coordination problems and those under which it will not as in collaboration problems within these constraints powerful states choose institutions that will serve their interests with multilateral arrangements becoming more attractive as the future is valued more highly multilateral institutions should be stable in circumstances of changing distributions of power relative to more hierarchical institutions the vulnerability of patterns of international cooperation to various exogenous changes depends on the type of strategic interaction underlying state behavior

money talks supplementary financiers and international monetary fund conditionality what explains the changes in international monetary fund imf conditionality i argue that imf conditionality agreements are influenced by supplementary financiers the imf regularly relies on external financing to supplement its loans to countries facing payments imbalances as a result these supplementary financiers are able to exercise leverage over the imf and the design of its conditionality programs i consider the influence of one type of supplementary financier private financial institutions on imf conditionality conclusions are supported by a data set of 249 conditionality arrangements coded according to their terms and two case studies

explaining institutional change policy areas outside options and the bretton woods institutions i propose and test a theoretical framework that explains institutional change in international relations like firms in markets international institutions are affected by the underlying characteristics of their policy areas some policy areas are prone to produce institutions facing relatively little competition limiting the outside options of member states and impeding redistributive change in comparison institutions facing severe competition will quickly reflect changes in underlying state interests and power to test the theory empirically i exploit common features of the bretton woods institutions the international monetary fund and world bank to isolate the effect of variation in policy area characteristics the empirical tests show that despite having identical membership and internal rules bargaining outcomes in the bretton woods institutions have diverged sharply and in accordance with the theory

domestic institutions and international regulatory cooperation comparative responses to the convention on biological diversity international regimes develop in three general ways through coercion convergence harmony or mutual state choice lasting coercive cooperation is rare 1 harmony is of limited interest 2 in the majority of cases and those of the greatest theoretical and practical significance regimes arise through explicit state choices to cooperate this article explores state choice toward international regulatory regimes for environmental protection regulatory regimes are frequently aimed at diffuse private actors and behaviors international regime rules are commonly transformed into binding domestic rules or standards regulatory cooperation and environmental cooperation in particular is marked by the degree to which this process of implementation relies upon and is shaped by existing domestic institutions and political structures because regulatory regimes at the international level are nearly always administrated through regulatory regimes at the domestic level the latter in conjunction with the politics new regulation end page 482 engenders are central to understanding state choice while many analyses have examined the role of domestic politics in international cooperation i focus on domestic institutions this article shows how institutions in conjunction with the interests of key societal actors and the political incentives faced by governments help to determine the expected political economic and legal impact of international commitments given that states are collectively the architects of international institutions and these anticipated effects thus partly endogenous the domestic regulatory structures of powerful states can also be critical influences on the scope structure and terms of international institutions to develop these claims i examine an important recent case of international environmental cooperation the protection of global biological diversity biodiversity and analyze the divergent responses of two leading states to the core agreement of the new regime while the united kingdom signed and ratified the convention on biological diversity cbd 3 negotiated as one of the keystones of the 1992 united nations conference on environment and development unced the united states refused to do so both states were active participants in the negotiations and shared a host of similarities the likelihood both of harm from biodiversity loss and of gain from biodiversity protection positions as economic powers intensity of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries antiregulatory leadership and positions on critical issues like intellectual property protection two theoretical perspectives that examine areas of potential difference are used to explore this divergence in choice toward the cbd building on the seemingly central role played by science and scientists in the formation of environmental regimes peter haas and others have developed a prominent knowledge based account of state behavior in which epistemic influence built on positive and normative understandings shared by an elite community of experts explains much of the observed intergovernmental coordination in environmental affairs 4 an alternative perspective that i term regulatory politics proposes that variations in core domestic institutions critically shape the anticipated impact of regime rules and hence the domestic politics of international cooperation

bargaining uncertainty and property rights in fisheries garrett hardin s tragedy of the commons metaphor is commonly invoked to account for the unfortunate state of world fisheries but the world s oceans are no longer a global commons and have not been so for the past two decades open access regimes have persisted within many exclusive economic zones eezs during this time but coastal states authority to regulate domestic fisheries has existed for more than a generation faced with the prospect of hardin s tragedy coastal states have had more than twenty years to devise institutional constraints that would prevent it this article asserts that the dismal experience with eezs is in large part attributable to distributive bargaining problems that arose within coastal states in the wake of eez extension moreover the article argues that high levels of uncertainty that characterize the early stages of institutional development have exacerbated these problems finally the article demonstrates how the variety of institutional designs and paths of institutional development that are observed in the cases of iceland norway and atlantic canada result from the different configurations of political power and political structure within each case while the empirical discussion is focused upon property rights and fisheries the theoretical discussion of bargaining and uncertainty has widespread application across comparative and international politics

the international politics of harmonization the case of capital market regulation the internationalization and globalization of capital markets greatly complicates the tasks of national financial regulators it is becoming increasingly difficult if not impossible to regulate the activities of banking and securities firms and the broad range of transactions in which they engage on a national level in this article i explore the process of international regulatory harmonization in capital markets focusing especially on the mechanisms political pressure market pressure and institutional arrangements that facilitate this process i argue that the united states and the united kingdom are dominant players in the capital market and that the factors most relevant for understanding harmonization processes are 1 whether other jurisdictions have incentives to emulate the regulatory innovations of the dominant financial centers and 2 whether the dominant centers experience negative externalities in the process these two factors shed considerable light on whether harmonization will be spurred primarily by market forces or by politics they also suggest the likely role of international institutions in the process of regulatory harmonization the argument is illustrated using four issue areas capital adequacy requirements for banks anti money laundering rules accounting standards and information sharing among securities regulators

power control and the logic of substitution in institutional design the case of international climate finance how do powerful states control international organizations ios in contrast to the conventional wisdom that treats weighted voting rules as the primary means that powerful states use to codify their asymmetric control in institutional design we propose that funding rules are equally important our framework develops a logic of substitution whereby permissive earmark rules that allow donors to stipulate how their contributions to an io are used are a design substitute for weighted voting from wealthy states perspective whether asymmetric control is incorporated in design through voting or funding rules depends on whether egalitarian norms emphasizing political and legal equality or shareholder norms emphasizing influence commensurate with financial power govern voting and representation rights at the io focusing on the domain of climate finance we demonstrate that weighted voting rules are used at international climate finance institutions icfis associated with multilateral development banks but that wealthy states pursued permissive earmark rules at icfis within the united nations system where egalitarian norms are strong in this way powerful donors can exert control over resource allocation even when developing states appear to hold equal influence on governing bodies in addition to providing a reassessment of how power translates into control at ios our framework offers insight into forum shopping behavior and sheds light on substitution dynamics that involve other dimensions of design across a range of issue areas

modeling the forms of international cooperation distribution versus information 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

the politics of dispute settlement design explaining legalism in regional trade pacts dispute settlement mechanisms in international trade vary dramatically from one agreement to another some mechanisms are highly legalistic with standing tribunals that resemble national courts in their powers and procedures others are diplomatic requiring only that the disputing countries make a good faith effort to resolve their differences through consultations in this article i seek to account for the tremendous variation in institutional design across a set of more than sixty post 1957 regional trade pacts in contrast to accounts that emphasize the transaction costs of collective action or the functional requirements of deep integration i find that the level of legalism in each agreement is strongly related to the level of economic asymmetry in interaction with the proposed depth of liberalization among member countries

coordination versus prisoners dilemma implications for international cooperation and regimes the study of political institutions in general and international cooperation in particular has been beneficially influenced by the prisoners dilemma pd game model but there is a mistaken tendency to treat pd as representing the singular problem of collective action and cooperation by relaxing the assumptions of 2 2 games and developing an alternate model of the coordination game i show how some cooperation problems have very different properties from those found in pd the analytical results of the two games are compared across several important dimensions number of strategies available number of iterations of the game numbers of players and the distribution of power among them the discussion is illustrated with specific problems of international cooperation and the implications of alternative cooperation problems for the formation and performance of international regimes are explored the basic solutions for pd and coordination have divergent ramifications for the institutionalization stability and adaptability of regimes and for the role of hegemony in the international system however the coordination model does not replace the pd model but complements and supplements it as a way to understand the diversity of political institutions these results are widely applicable to areas of politics beyond international relations

international regimes and alliance behavior explaining nato conventional force levels with the end of the cold war the military posture of the north atlantic treaty organization nato has entered a period of profound change prior to the recent dramatic political events in europe however nato conventional force levels in the central region had been remarkably stable for some three decades this article seeks to explain this record of stability in terms of three widely used theories of international relations it argues that balance of power theory and public goods theory cannot alone provide a satisfactory account rather these traditional approaches for understanding alliance behavior must be supplemented by regime theory which emphasizes the constraining effects of enduring institutional factors even in the face of structural change specifically it shows how an international regime has influenced the provision of conventional forces in the central region by alliance members more generally this analysis seeks to contribute to the literature on international regimes in three ways first it demonstrates that regimes do matter by providing an example of their importance for explaining state behavior and international outcomes second it extends regime theory to relations among military allies third it elaborates a comprehensive model for understanding why states actually comply with regime injunctions the model stresses both the ways in which regimes effectively modify the international environment within which states operate altering the costs and benefits associated with different courses of action and the ways in which participating states may internalize regime norms and rules thereby making compliance increasingly automatic

the fourth wave of democracy and dictatorship noncooperative transitions in the postcommunist world the transition from communism in europe and the former soviet union has only sometimes produced a transition to democracy since the crumbling of the berlin wall in 1989 and the collapse of the soviet union in 1991 most of the twenty eight new states have abandoned communism but only nine of these have entered the ranks of liberal democracies the remaining majority of new postcommunist states are various shades of dictatorships or unconsolidated transitional regimes this article seeks to explain why some states abandoned communism for democracy while others turned to authoritarian rule in endorsing actorcentric approaches that have dominated analyses of the third wave of democratization this argument nonetheless offers an alternative set of causal paths from ancien regime to new regime that can account for both democracy and dictatorship as outcomes situations of unequal distributions of power produced the quickest and most stable transitions from communist rule in countries with asymmetrical balances of power the regime to emerge depends almost entirely on the ideological orientation of the most powerful in countries where democrats enjoyed a decisive power advantage democracy emerged conversely in countries in which dictators maintained a decisive power advantage dictatorship emerged in between these two extremes were countries in which the distribution of power between the old regime and its challengers was relatively equal rather than producing stalemate compromise and parted transitions to democracy however such situations in the postcommunist world resulted in protracted confrontation between relatively balanced powers the regimes that emerged from these modes of transitions are not the most successful democracies but rather are unconsolidated unstable partial democracies

political shirking opponent quality and electoral support several recent papers in the public choice literaturesuggest that legislators shirk or vote in a mannercontrary to constituent interest this paper exploresthe relationship between senatorial shirking andelectoral consequences i model political shirking opponent quality and election outcomes assimultaneous and find significant evidence of arelationship between shirking over the senatorial termand electoral outcomes however i find that voterspunish recent shirking much more than they punishearly term shirking and that senators apparently actconsistently with this relationship

the relative gains problem for international cooperation modern realism claims that the fear that others will enjoy relatively greater benefits frequently impedes international cooperation recent articles in this review by duncan snidal and robert powell modeled conditions under which the impact of relative gains varied joseph grieco criticizes snidal s model as based on assumptions that allow him to avoid rather than confront the realist arguments he also argues that powell s model while constructive ignores important additional sources of sensitivity to relative gains in response powell discusses the value of alternative assumptions about preferences and constraints in international relations snidal defends his analysis and presents an additional proof to support the independence of his central result the diminishing impact of relative gains with increasing numbers of states from assumptions of concern to grieco both responders emphasize their work as contributing to a contextually rich theory of international politics that builds on elements of both realism and neo liberalism

redistributive cooperation market failure wealth transfers and the basle accord indecember1987 policymakersbelongingtothegroupoften g 10 signeda far reaching agreement on international nancial regulation the basle accord ontheinternational convergence of capital measuresand capital standards underthetermsof thisagreement g 10 policymakersimplemented uniform risk based capitalrequirements on commercial banks the origins of the basle accord according tokapstein lay in the consequencesof international nancial integration international nancial integration by raising systemic risk and eroding regulators capacity toensure the soundness of national banking systems generated a market failure evi denced by thedebt crisis commercial bankshad accepted ariskier portfolioofloansthan society considered optimal and were now unwilling to bear the full costs of thislending behavior financial market failurecreated a demand for international regula tiontowhichpolicymakersrespondedby supplying thebasleaccord to theextentthat the payments system had the characterof apublic good it wasreasonable to askevery state to contribute to its maintenance bank supervisors responded to theneed for greater oversight by negotiating the basleaccord

the effects of structures and power on state bargaining strategies when and why will states adopt more or less cooperative bargaining strategies standard answers to this question focus on the role of state power other scholars highlight socialization effects i argue that in most international negotiations the institutional bargaining structure will mitigate the effects of power and socialization and drive state bargaining behavior factors highlighted by formal models of international bargaining should therefore best explain the variation in the strategies states adopt i introduce empirical measures of these abstract concepts and test their effects against those of power and socialization using an original dataset of state bargaining strategies in the european union eu the results show that structural factors best explain variation in the eu states bargaining strategies i conclude by highlighting the conditions under which these effects should explain state bargaining behavior in other international negotiations and discuss the implications of this argument for the study of international bargaining

global communications and national power life on the pareto frontier regime analysis has focused on issues of market failure the resolution of which depends upon knowledge and institution building global communications regimes however have been concerned either with issues of pure coordination or with coordination problems with distributional consequences outcomes have been decided by the underlying distribution of national power in those areas where power was asymmetrically distributed and there was no agreement on basic principles and norms radio broadcasting and remote sensing no regime was formed in those areas where distributional issues could not be unilaterally resolved allocation of the radio spectrum and telecommunications regimes were created although both principles and rules changed with alterations in national power capabilities

loosening the ties that bind a learning model of agreement flexibility how can states credibly make and keep agreements when they are uncertain about the distributional implications of their cooperation they can do so by incorporating the proper degree of flexibility into their agreements i develop a formal model in which an agreement characterized by uncertainty may be renegotiated to incorporate new information the uncertainty is related to the division of gains under the agreement with the parties resolving this uncertainty over time as they gain experience with the agreement the greater the agreement uncertainty the more likely states will want to limit the duration of the agreement and incorporate renegotiation working against renegotiation is noise that is variation in outcomes not resulting from the agreement the greater the noise the more difficult it is to learn how an agreement is actually working hence incorporating limited duration and renegotiation provisions becomes less valuable in a detailed case study i demonstrate that the form of uncertainty in my model corresponds to that experienced by the parties to the nuclear non proliferation treaty who adopted the solution my model predicts