Regime theory
As a theoretical exploration within the tradition of neoliberal institutionalism, regime theory seeks to explain how non-state actors arise, persist, and fade away. It also seeks to discover if international institutions can acquire autonomous authority, how this might happen, and why they are useful as independent actors in international relations.
Put simply, regimes arise because they are useful in solving problems that confront states. A functional approach (taken by Robert Keohane) explains this usefulness in three ways. First, regimes are "quasi-contracts" that organize state relations by establishing mutual expectations of behavior and a pattern of state responsibilities. Second, they lower the transaction cost of cooperation, thus producing productive cross-linkages between states and facilitating such cooperation. Finally, regimes reduce uncertainty and increase the amount of information available to states, thus offsetting the fear and security dilemma that states face in an anarchic international environment.
Regimes will most likely dissipate without the interest and support of dominant states, but regimes can persist autonomously without such support as explained by the concept of "lags." Lags occur when the power and interests that created a particular regime change and yet the regime itself does not. This can occur due to state customs and habits that arise through usage, actor uncertainty that a world without the regime would be better than a world with it, or states' inability to produce a viable alternative regime or institution.
Autonomous regimes can exert influence on states in several significant ways: they can change how states perceive their interests (e.g. assigning new value to cooperation), alter the interests themselves (e.g. redefining what is acceptable/unacceptable), act as a source of power (e.g. particularly for dominant states whose power is fading), or alter states' actual power and capabilities (e.g. through the allocation of rights within the regime's structures).
In response to realist criticisms regarding these supposed "value-laden" arguments that idealistically promote an orderly and rather static international environment, an unusual analogy describes how regimes can proliferate amidst self-interested states: the evolution of state interests is likened to the maturing of a child. An ego-centric child who is unaware or indifferent to the welfare or interests of others grows into an "instrumentally interdependent" adolescent, wherein others matter to them only insomuch as those others can affect or intrude upon them. Upon marriage, this young adult becomes "situationally interdependent," wherein improvement to one's partner(s) is an improvement to one's self as well. Finally, as a parent this person becomes "empathetically interdependent," wherein they become altruistic towards the welfare of their offspring.
The second and third phases in this analogy, characterized by interdependence without altruism, represent international environments wherein regimes are likely to be used by rational actors who find cooperation to be in their own self-interest. This analogy also serves to explain why regimes are created, the hurdles that they face in their arising and persisting, but also why they will tend to persist once an interdependent relationship between states has been fostered.
While much time is spent in international relations theory discussing and explaining why cooperation is so difficult, regime theory makes interesting and valuable contributions towards explaining the real-life phenomenon of cooperation amidst self-interested states.
Put simply, regimes arise because they are useful in solving problems that confront states. A functional approach (taken by Robert Keohane) explains this usefulness in three ways. First, regimes are "quasi-contracts" that organize state relations by establishing mutual expectations of behavior and a pattern of state responsibilities. Second, they lower the transaction cost of cooperation, thus producing productive cross-linkages between states and facilitating such cooperation. Finally, regimes reduce uncertainty and increase the amount of information available to states, thus offsetting the fear and security dilemma that states face in an anarchic international environment.
Regimes will most likely dissipate without the interest and support of dominant states, but regimes can persist autonomously without such support as explained by the concept of "lags." Lags occur when the power and interests that created a particular regime change and yet the regime itself does not. This can occur due to state customs and habits that arise through usage, actor uncertainty that a world without the regime would be better than a world with it, or states' inability to produce a viable alternative regime or institution.
Autonomous regimes can exert influence on states in several significant ways: they can change how states perceive their interests (e.g. assigning new value to cooperation), alter the interests themselves (e.g. redefining what is acceptable/unacceptable), act as a source of power (e.g. particularly for dominant states whose power is fading), or alter states' actual power and capabilities (e.g. through the allocation of rights within the regime's structures).
In response to realist criticisms regarding these supposed "value-laden" arguments that idealistically promote an orderly and rather static international environment, an unusual analogy describes how regimes can proliferate amidst self-interested states: the evolution of state interests is likened to the maturing of a child. An ego-centric child who is unaware or indifferent to the welfare or interests of others grows into an "instrumentally interdependent" adolescent, wherein others matter to them only insomuch as those others can affect or intrude upon them. Upon marriage, this young adult becomes "situationally interdependent," wherein improvement to one's partner(s) is an improvement to one's self as well. Finally, as a parent this person becomes "empathetically interdependent," wherein they become altruistic towards the welfare of their offspring.
The second and third phases in this analogy, characterized by interdependence without altruism, represent international environments wherein regimes are likely to be used by rational actors who find cooperation to be in their own self-interest. This analogy also serves to explain why regimes are created, the hurdles that they face in their arising and persisting, but also why they will tend to persist once an interdependent relationship between states has been fostered.
While much time is spent in international relations theory discussing and explaining why cooperation is so difficult, regime theory makes interesting and valuable contributions towards explaining the real-life phenomenon of cooperation amidst self-interested states.
posted by machiavelli at 12:20 PM
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