International Regimes

Introduction

The term 'regimes', and social science approaches to them, are recent but fit into a long-standing
tradition of thought about international law. The onset of detente, the loss of hegemonic status by
the USA, and the growing awareness of environmental problems sensitized social scientists to
the need for a theory of regimes. Liberal institutionalists and realists have developed competing
approaches to the analys

is of regimes.

Liberal Institutionalists vs Realists Approaches to the Analysis of Regimes

Common assumptions

1 States operate in an anarchic international system.

2 States are rational and unitary actors.

3 States are the units responsible for establishing regimes.

4 Regimes are established on the basis of cooperation in the international system.

5. Regimes promote international order.

Liberal institutionalists

1 Regimes enable states to collaborate.

2 Regimes promote the common good.

3 Regimes flourish best when promoted and maintained by a benign hegemon.

4 Regimes promote globalization and a liberal world order.

Realists

1 Regimes enable states to coordinate.

2 Regimes generate differential benefits for states.

3 Power is the central feature of regime formation and survival.

4 The nature of world order depends on the underlying principles and norms of regimes.

Defining Regimes
Regimes are identified by Krasner as 'sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and
decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of
international relations'.

An example of a regime This is a complex definition and it needs to be unpacked. Krasner has
done this, by drawing on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GAIT) for illustrative
purposes. The GAIT was initially an agreement drawn up in 1947 and reflected the belief of its
signatories that it was necessary to establish an organization that would be responsible for the
regulation of international trade. In fact, it proved impossible to establish such an organization at
that time, and the GAIT acted as a substitute. It was given a secretariat and a general director
responsible for carrying out the preparatory work for a series of conferences at which the
signatories of the GAIT met and reached agreements intended to foster international trade. In
1994, after the Uruguay Round of negotiations, it was agreed that it was now time to move
beyond the GAIT and establish a formal World Trade Organization, as originally intended.
Krasner was writing before this development took place, but it does not affect the validity of the
GAIT as an illustration of what is meant by a regime.

The four defining elements of a regime

1 Principles are represented by coherent bodies of theoretical statements about how the world
works. The GAIT operated on the basis of liberal principles, which assert that global welfare will
be maximized by free trade.

2 Norms specify general standards of behavior, and identify the rights and obligations of states.
So, in the case of the GAIT, the basic norm is that tariffs and non-tariff barriers should be
reduced and eventually eliminated. Together, norms and principles define the essential character
of a regime and these cannot be changed without transforming the nature of the regime.

3 Rules operate at a lower level of generality than principles and norms, and they are often
designed to reconcile conflicts which may exist between the principles and norms. Third World
states, for example, wanted rules which differentiated between developed and underdeveloped
countries.

4 Decision-making procedures identify specific prescriptions for behaviour-the system of

voting, for example, which will regularly change as a regime is consolidated and extended. The
rules and procedures governing the GAIT, for example, underwent substantial modification
during its history. Indeed, the purpose of the successive conferences was to change the rules and
decision-making procedures.

Globalization and International Regimes

 Regime theory is an attempt initiated in the 1970s by social scientists to account for the
existence of rule governed behaviour in the anarchic international system.
  Regimes have been defined by principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures.
 Regimes can be classified in terms of the formality of the underlying agreements and the
degree of expectation that the agreements will be observed. Full-blown, tacit, and dead-
letter regimes can be identified.
 Regimes now help to regulate international relations in many spheres of activity.

Competing Theories of Regime formation

 The market is used by liberal institutionalists as an analogy for the anarchic international
system.
 In a market/international setting, public goods get underproduced and public bads get
overproduced.
 Liberal institutionalists draw on the Prisoner's Dilemma game to account for the
structural impediments to regime formation.
 A hegemon, 'the shadow of the future', and an information-rich environment promote
collaboration and an escape route from the Prisoner's Dilemma.
 Realists argue that liberal institutionalists ignore the importance of power when
examining regimes.
 Realists draw on the Battle of the Sexes game to illuminate the nature of coordination and
its link to power in an anarchic setting.

Conclusion

Although liberal institutionalists and realists acknowledge that regimes are an important feature
of the international system, and draw on similar tools of analysis, they reach very different
conclusions about the circumstances in which regimes emerge. For liberal institutionalists,
regimes arise because there is always a danger in the anarchic international system that
competitive strategies will trump cooperative strategies. By contrast, realists link the emergence
of regimes to situations where there is a mutual desire to cooperate, but where anarchy generates
a problem of coordination. The implications of power for the two approaches also diverge. For
liberal institutionalists, power may be used by a hegemon to pressure other states to collaborate
and conform to a regime. But it is also acknowledged that states can establish and maintain
regimes

It is unsurprising to find this outcome being challenged by developing states, which argued that
part of the spectrum should be reserved for future use. More surprisingly, this new principle has
been accepted. But realists argue that this is not the result of altruism on the part of the
developed world. It is a consequence of the fact that developing states can interfere with the
signals of neighbouring countries. This gave them access to a power lever, which they otherwise
would not have possessed • The market is used by liberal institutionalists as an analogy for the
anarchic international system. • In a market/international setting, public goods get underproduced
and public bads get overproduced. • Liberal institutionalists draw on the Prisoner's Dilemma
game to account for the structural impediments to regime formation. • A hegemon, 'the shadow
of the future', and an information-rich environment promote collaboration and an escape route
from the Prisoner's Dilemma. • Realists argue that liberal institutionalists ignore the importance
of power when examining regimes. • Realists draw on the Battle of the Sexes game to illuminate
the nature of coordination and its link to power in an anarchic setting. in the absence of
hegemonic power.

Collaborative strategies are pursued and maintained because of the 'shadow of the future' -a
mutual recognition that if any state defects from a regime, it will result in mass defection on a 'tit
for tat' basis, and states will move from an optimal to a sub-optimal outcome. For realists, on the
other hand, power is seen to play a crucial role, not as a threat to discipline states caught
defecting from a collaborative agreement, but in the bargaining process to determine the shape of
a regime around which all states will coordinate their actions. Stein, who introduced the
distinction between collaborative and coordination games into the regime literature, never
assumed, however, that they represented mutually incompatible approaches to regime formation.
In practice, the two games discussed in this chapter that capture the distinction simply distil
different aspects of the complex processes associated with regime formation.