structural causes and regime consequences regimes as intervening variables international regimes are defined as principles norms rules and decisionmaking procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue area as a starting point regimes have been conceptualized as intervening variables standing between basic causal factors and related outcomes and behavior there are three views about the importance of regimes conventional structural orientations dismiss regimes as being at best ineffectual grotian orientations view regimes as an intimate component of the international system and modified structural perspectives see regimes as significant only under certain constrained conditions for grotian and modified structuralist arguments which endorse the view that regimes can influence outcomes and behavior regime development is seen as a function of five basic causal variables egoistic self interest political power diffuse norms and principles custom and usage and knowledge

international bargaining in the presence of global environmental change this model deals with the greenhouse effect that is to say with a problem of international pollution through a description of the bargaining process it aims to determine the different forms that may be taken by cooperation agreements between the countries involved we demonstrate in particular that under some conditions it is always possible for the countries to reach an agreement such agreements are the work of a group of so called leader countries characterized by their commitment in favour of cooperation these leader countries use transfers to induce other countries to join them but they can be insufficiently attractive to convince all the countries to cooperate so as we show in the discussion the cooperation is not necessarily total therefore the key of a common problem can be a partial cooperation and not necessarily a common cooperation

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

co operation and unilateral commitment in the presence of global environmental problems this paper focuses on the link between group co operation and unilateral commitment of some countries in the presence of global environmental problems we show that in case of a failure of negotiation some countries can decide to commit unilaterally and reduce their emissions we call this behaviour precautionary commitment absence of international agreement does not mean global defection from the environmental issue we also show that the emergence of a non co ordinated global co operation can result from a strategic action from the members of the coalition the insiders of the coalition create an incentive for the non members to reduce without co ordinating their emissions

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

regimes and the limits of realism regimes as autonomous variables two distinct traditions have developed from structural realist perspectives the first the billiard ball version focuses purely on interaction among states the second the tectonic plates version focuses on the relationship between the distribution of power and various international environments it is the latter tradition that suggests why regimes may be important for a realist orientation however it also opens the possibility for viewing regimes as autonomous not just as intervening variables there may be lags between changes in basic causal variables and regime change there may be feedback from regimes to basic causal variables both lags and feedback suggest an importance for regimes that would be rejected by conventional structural arguments

power politics and international trade r recent literature attributes the relative scarcity of open international markets to the prisoner s dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade we argue that the prisoner s dilemma representation does not reflect the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in an anarchic international system namely their security externalities we consider these external effects explicitly doing so leads us to two conclusions 1 free trade is more likely within rather than across political military alliances and 2 alliances are more likely to evolve into free trade coalitions if they are embedded in bipolar systems than in multipolar systems using data drawn from an 80 year period beginning in 1905 we test these hypotheses the results of the analysis make it clear that alliances do have a direct statistically significant and large impact on bilateral trade flows and that this relationship is stronger in bipolar rather than in multipolar systems in the early 1970s students of international relations began what would become a long and heated debate about the political correlates of open international markets recently however an important element of consensus has begun to emerge most contributors to this debate now seem to agree that the prisoner s dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade explains the relative dearth of open international markets here we argue that what has become the standard prisoner s dilemma representation neglects the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in the anarchic international system namely their security externalities we consider these external effects explicitly in order to do so we construct and analyze a simple game theoretic model the results of this analysis demonstrate that tariff games between allies differ systematically from those played between actual or potential adversaries these differences imply that free trade is more likely within rather than across political military alliances however our analysis also suggests that the evolutionary prospects of alliances vary those that are the products of bipolar systems are more likely to evolve into free trade coalitions than are their multipolar counterparts less credible exit threats and clearer responsibilities for alliance stability explain the advantage of a bipolar system we test this argument using data drawn from an 80 year period beginning in 1905 the empirical analysis supports our argument it demonstrates that alliances have a direct statistically significant and large effect upon bilateral trade moreover it shows that on average alliances have a much stronger effect on trade in a bipolar than in a multipolar world 2

backward looking interest rate rules interest rate smoothing and macroeconomic instability the existing literature on the stabilizing properties of interest rate feedback rules has stressed the perils of linking interest rates to forecasts of future inflation such rules have been found to give rise to aggregate fluctuations due to self fulfilling expectations in response to this concern a growing literature has focused on the stabilizing properties of interest rate rules whereby the central bank responds to a measure of past inflation the consensus view that has emerged is that backward looking rules contribute to protecting the economy from embarking on expectations driven fluctuations a common characteristic of the existing studies that arrive at this conclusion is their focus on local analysis the contribution of this paper is to conduct a more global analysis we find that backward looking interest rate feedback rules do not guarantee uniqueness of equilibrium we present examples in which for plausible parameterizations attracting equilibrium cycles exist the paper also contributes to the quest for policy rules that guarantee macroeconomic stability globally our analysis indicates that policy rules whereby the interest rate is set as a function of the past interest rate and current inflation are likely to ensure global stability provided that the coecient on lagged interest rates is greater than unity

the concentration of capabilities and international trade over the course of the previous two decades political scientists have become increasingly interested in the relationship between international politics and global trade much of the literature on this topic centers on the effects of a hegemonic distribution of power on commerce hegemonic stability theorists argue that hegemony is a necessary condition for the existence of a liberal economic order and that in the absence of a hegemon a liberal international economy is particularly difficult to establish and maintain however a growing number of theoretical and empirical critiques have been leveled against the gemonic stability theory and the issue of whether hegemony helps shape patterns of global trade continues to be the topic of heated debate

coordination and collaboration regimes in an anarchic world the study of regimes can contribute to our understanding of international politics only if regimes represent more than international organizations and less than all international relations the conceptualization of regimes developed here accepts the realist image of international politics in which autonomous self interested states interact in an anarchic environment yet there are situations in which rational actors have an incentive to eschew unconstrained independent decision making situations in which individualistic self interested calculation leads them to prefer joint decision making regimes because independent self interested behavior can result in undesirable or suboptimal outcomes these situations are labeled dilemmas of common interests and dilemmas of common aversions to deal with these states must collaborate with one another or coordinate their behavior respectively thus there are different bases for regimes which give rise to regimes with different characteristics coordination is self enforcing and can be reached through the use of conventions collaboration is more formalized and requires mechanisms both to monitor potential cheating and to insure compliance with the regime the article elucidates the assumptions of such an interest based approach to regimes assimilates alternative explanations into this framework and develops the implications for regime maintenance and change

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

the demand for international regimes international regimes can be understood as results of rational behavior by the actors principally states that create them regimes are demanded in part because they facilitate the making of agreements by providing information and reducing transactions costs in world politics increased interdependence among issues greater issue density will lead to increased demand for regimes insofar as regimes succeed in providing high quality information through such processes as the construction of generally accepted norms or the development of transgovernmental relations they create demand for their own continuance even if the structural conditions such as hegemony under which they were first supplied change analysis of the demand for international regimes thus helps us to understand lags between structural change and regime change as well as to assess the significance of transgovernmental policy networks several assertions of structural theory seem problematic in light of this analysis hegemony may not be a necessary condition for stable international regimes past patterns of institutionalized cooperation may be able to compensate to some extent for increasing fragmentation of power

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

design in context existing international agreements and new cooperation this research note highlights an important element missing from rational design theories of international agreements institutional context the presence or absence of existing and prior agreements between prospective partners in new cooperation if as rational design theorists argue agreement design is deliberate strategic and directed toward enhancing contracting parties ability to credibly commit to future cooperation then prior design successes should influence the terms of additional cooperation we test for this omitted variable problem in three agreement design outcomes ex ante limitations on agreement duration exit clauses and dispute settlement provisions through an augmentation and reanalysis of data from a key study in the rational design literature barbara koremenos s contracting around international uncertainty we show institutional context is positively correlated with inclusion of ex ante time limitations in negotiated agreements and negatively correlated with the inclusion of exit clauses and third party dispute settlement provisions institutional context also mediates and conditions the effects of the explanatory variable at the heart of existing rational design theories uncertainty about the future distribution of gains from cooperation our findings show that the collective appeal of particular design features varies not only with the nature of underlying strategic problems but also with degrees of shared institutional context

the transformation of trade the sources and effects of regime change regimes can be analyzed both as outcomes to be explained and as mediating social institutions that affect international transactions in the case of postwar trade the changing outcomes can be predicted simply and with rough accuracy by a hegemonic model yet that model cannot explain the continuing reduction of tariffs the development of new nontariff codes and the persistence of crucial norms rules and institutions these durable features of modern trade suggest that the logic of regime maintenance is distinct from that of regime initiation nor can the hegemonic model account for the regime s highly uneven weakening the most prominent trade barriers are in mature basic industries the least prominent are in industries with differentiated products and extensive research and development expenditures one explanation which usefully complements a hegemonic model is that sectors differ systematically in their capacity to adapt competitively to imports and hence in their need to preserve their position by trade barriers despite the regime s uneven weakening trade volumes have continued their secular growth in sectors where the regime remains strong it has stimulated two way trade in similar products intraindustry trade where the regime is weaker new nontariff barriers diminish hypothetical trade growth but rarely aim at a permanent rollback in market shares or trade volume

coordination in heterogeneous federal systems abstract we compare centralized and decentralized policy making in a federation in which policy heterogeneity is inherently costly and preferences vary across jurisdictions all jurisdictions agree that some harmonization is desirable but no one agrees on the direction of harmonization this type of collective choice problem arises when members of a federal system have to coordinate nonbudgetary policies such as laws regulations standards or diplomatic policies contrary to the common wisdom decentralization becomes optimal when coordination becomes very important when coordination costs are symmetric decentralization dominates centralization irrespective of the magnitude of externalities and the heterogeneity of preferences in the case of discontinuous network effects standardization never pareto dominates decentralization

the politics of international regime formation managing natural resources and the environment why do actors in international society succeed in forming institutional arrangements or regimes to cope with some transboundary problems but fail to do so in connection with other seemingly similar problems this article employs a threefold strategy to make progress toward answering this question the first section prepares the ground by identifying and critiquing the principal models embedded in the existing literature on regime formation and the second section articulates an alternative model called institutional bargaining the third section employs this alternative model to derive some hypotheses about the determinants of success in institutional bargaining and uses these hypotheses in a preliminary way to illuminate the process of regime formation in international society to lend empirical content to the argument the article focuses throughout on problems relating to natural resources and the environment

transforming disadvantages into advantages developing country mnes in the least developed countries we analyze the advantages and disadvantages of developing country multinational enterprises mnes in comparison with developed country mnes developing country mnes tend to be less competitive than their developed country counterparts partly because they suffer the disadvantage of operating in home countries with underdeveloped institutions we argue that this disadvantage can become an advantage when both types of mne operate in countries with difficult governance conditions because developing country mnes are used to operating in such conditions the empirical analysis shows that although developing country mnes rarely appear among the largest mnes in the world they are more prevalent among the largest foreign firms in the least developed countries ldcs especially in ldcs with poorer regulatory quality and lower control of corruption

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

information systems in treaty regimes one of the most influential arguments in international relations is that international institutions influence states behavior by monitoring their compliance with treaties which in turn facilitates reciprocity empirically however many treaty organizations are not mandated to monitor compliance the article develops a parsimonious theoretical framework to address the empirical diversity of monitoring arrangements by mapping strategic environments onto monitoring arrangements it accounts for who detects noncompliance and who brings it to light in particular two factors the interest alignment between noncompliance victims and their states and the availability of noncompliance victims as low cost monitors largely shape the organizational forms of information systems this simple theory sheds light on a wide range of substantively important treaty regimes

u s soviet chinese relations routine reciprocity or rational expectations international relations theorists disagree about whether great power behaviors reflect bureaucratic routine or reciprocity recently some have suggested that these behaviors result from great powers rational expectations rather than from simple routine or reciprocity the debate is flawed in several respects the quasi experimental studies of great power behavior suffer from specification and measurement errors furthermore most studies of great power behavior focus exclusively on the superpowers without adequately appreciating china s role in world politics we present an improved analysis that recognizes the potential effects of chinese behavior and ameliorates the methodological flaws in existing work the results indicate that the behaviors of the united states the soviet union and china are a relatively stable mix of bureaucratic routine and reciprocity the results also indicate complex asymmetrical connections among u s soviet u s chinese and soviet chinese relations consistent with the notion of a strategic triangle

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

the management of common property resources collective action as an alternative to privatisation or state regulation can locally based collective action be a viable way to manage common property resources many writers on collective action and common property are sweepingly pessimistic about the ability of the people who face problems of common property to organize sustainable patterns of use for themselves this paper shows with reference to prisoners dilemma garett hardin s tragedy of the commons and mancur olson s logic of collective action that the analytical basis for this pessimism is weak in many situations of village based common property resource use there can thus be no general presumption that the collective action route to common property resource management will fail any more than there can be a general presumption that it will work the paper suggests a number of general factors to do with the characteristics of the resources the user group and group state relations on which chances of success depend

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

the limits of rational design the rational design of international institutions special issue of io autumn 2001 makes a significant contribution to the theoretical literature on international institutions it is important however to recognize the limits of both the rational design project in its current form and the conclusions that can be drawn from the special issue about the project s usefulness and validity this article evaluates the project on its own terms as a rationalist attempt to explain variation in international institutions i identify three significant sets of limitations those of the scope of the project those of the analytical framework and those of the efforts that are made to evaluate the framework through empirical analysis although the first set of limitations is largely a matter of choice the last two raise questions about how much of an advance the special issue in fact represents nevertheless these shortcomings are not absolute they can be remedied through further theoretical and empirical research

reputation and hegemonic stability a game theoretic analysis we develop and explicate a game theoretic model in which repeated play incomplete information and reputation are major elements a significant advance of this model is the way it represents cooperation under incomplete information among rational actors of different sizes the model is used to formalize certain aspects of the theory of hegemonic stability it shows that the dilemma or limits of hegemonic stability look like natural attributes of games where reputation is involved unifying both benevolent and coercive strands of hegemony theory an example drawn from recent developments in the organization of petroleum exporting countries shows how our model of reputation guides the study of hegemonic regime construction we conclude by comparing the nature of cooperative behavior under conditions of complete and incomplete information

the effect of international environmental institutions how we might learn more analysts of international politics can measure and explain the effect of international environmental institutions on the behavior of states and other actors and on the natural environment in three steps first we measure the outcome to be explained in terms of goal attainment defined as the difference over time or across cases between actor behavior or the state of the natural environment on dimensions identified by institutional goals and certain end points determined by institutional goals second we assess the effect of an institution in terms of the extent to which the existence or operation of the institution contributes ceteris paribus to variation in goal attainment we transform these two variables into a score of institutional effectiveness to indicate the degree to which institutions contribute to the resolution of the environmental problems that motivate their establishment third we analyze the relationship between institutional effectiveness and specific dimensions of institutional design such as decision making rules membership and access conditions and the compliance system

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

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

abiding by the vote between groups conflict in international collective action we analyze institutional solutions to international cooperation when actors have heterogeneous preferences over the desirability of the action and split into supporters and opponents all of whom can spend resources toward their preferred outcome we study how actors can communicate their preferences through voting when they are not bound either by their own vote or the outcome of the collective vote we identify two organizational types with endogenous coercive enforcement and find that neither is unambiguously preferable like the solutions to the traditional prisoners dilemma these forms require long shadows of the future to sustain we then show that cooperation can be sustained through a noncoercive organization where actors delegate execution to an agent even though this institution is costlier it does not require any expertise by the agent and is independent of the shadow of the future and thus is implementable when the others are not