Chapter 12. International Regimes

Richard Little

• Introduction

• The Nature of Regimes

• Globalization and International Regimes

• Competing Theories: 1. The Liberal Institutional Approach

• Competing Theories: 2. The Realist Approach

• Conclusion

Reader's guide

Liberal institutionalists and realists are engaged in a major debate about the role played by regimes—delineated areas of rule-governed activity—in the international system. Both schools acknowledge that although the international system is anarchic (without a ruler) in structure, it has never been anomic (without rules). Interest in regimes surfaced in the 1970s along with concern about the ability of the United States to sustain the eco­nomic regimes formed after the Second World War. What are the essential features of regimes? There is no straightforward answer to this question, and the chapter uses a def­inition, typology, and examples to reveal their complex character. Under what circum­stances do regimes come into existence? This question forms the nub of the debate. Although liberal institutionalists and realists use very similar tools of analysis—drawing on microeconomics and game theory—they arrive at very different conclusions. Are the conclusions compatible? The question remains contested.

Introduction

An important dimension of globalization has been the establishment of worldwide regimes to foster rule-governed activity within the international sys­tem. Although international rule-governed activity predates the emergence of the modern state it is only during the course of the twentieth century that regimes can be regarded as a global phenome­non, with states becoming enmeshed in increas­ingly complex sets of rules and institutions which regulate international relations around the world. There is now no area of international intercourse devoid of regimes, where states are not circum­scribed, to some extent or other, by the existence of mutually accepted sets of rules. Indeed, many regimes are so firmly embedded in the system that they are almost taken for granted. Most people do not consider it at all surprising, for example, that we can put a letter in a postbox, and be confident that it will be delivered anywhere in the world from the Antarctic to Zimbabwe, or that we can get on an aeroplane and expect to fly unmolested to our des­tination at any point across the globe. Only when something goes drastically wrong, as, for example, in 1983, when the Soviet Defence Forces shot down the civilian South Korean airliner, KAL 007, killing all 269 persons aboard, is our attention drawn to the fact that international relations are, in practice, extensively regulated by complex regimes negoti­ated and policed by states.

It may seem unremarkable, at first sight, that states have established regimes to ensure that mail gets delivered anywhere in the world and that air­craft can fly safely from one country to another. The advantages of such regimes appear so obvious that it would be more remarkable if such regimes had not been put in place. However, the existence of these regimes becomes rather more surprising when it is acknowledged how much controversy can surround the formation of regimes, how con­tentious established regimes can prove to be, and how frequently attempts to form regimes can fail. It is because the use of regimes to promote everything from arms control to the enhancement of global economic welfare seems to be so self-evidently beneficial, that the difficulty of securing regimes requires some explanation. Sadly, there is no agreed answer. Although few doubt that regimes are an important feature of the contemporary interna­tional system, as this chapter aims to demonstrate, theorists in the field of international relations are deeply divided about how and why regimes are formed and maintained.

The concept of a regime is relatively recent, com­ing into common parlance in the 1970s. But students of international relations have been inter­ested in rules regulating the behaviour of states since the origins of the state system. The contemporary focus on regimes, therefore, needs to be seen as the current phase in a long, essentially European tradition, that can be traced back at least to the time of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), the Dutch jurist, who is often identified as 'the father of international law'. Despite the length of this tradition, the status of international law has always been questioned within jurisprudence, that branch of legal studies investigating the theoretical or philosophical foun­dations of the law. It is argued by a significant school of thought that a legal system can only be established and enforced within the centralized structures provided by the state. Although this view has been contested, it is by no means obvious how law is formulated and maintained within the anar­chic or decentralized structures of the international system. Indeed, the impression has sometimes been given that the international system is essentially anomic—devoid of agreed rules and norms. And this impression has been reinforced by the popular association of anarchy with a breakdown of order, rather than with a system lacking a centralized structure of government.

The problematic status of rules in the anarchic international system was largely overlooked, how­ever, in the era after 1919, when the institutional­ized study of international relations was established. In the wake of the traumatic First World War there was a widespread hope that states would now be willing to establish world order on the basis of international law, although little thought was given to whether there was any theoretical justifica­tion for such optimism. In any event, the hope was dashed when international law was so flagrantly violated during the 1930s. The approach came to be dismissed as idealistic; and after the Second World I War, few accepted any longer that order in the inter­national system could rest on international law.; Moreover, theorists were preoccupied with working out the implications of moving from a multipolar system into the bipolar nuclear era.

By the 1970s, however, a series of global develop­ments, to be discussed below, encouraged theorists in International Relations to return to the long-established theoretical concern with the role of rules in the international system. This new breed of theorists, primarily American, in the first instance, were and remain self-consciously interested in developing International Relations as a social sci­ence. They have spawned an enormous literature (Levy 1995), with research, now no longer confined to the United States (Rittberger 1993), that is becoming increasingly complex and diverse.

At the risk of over-simplification it can be sug­gested that regime theorists are located within the two broad schools of liberalism and realism (see Chs. 6 and 8). The debate between them compli­cates conventional assessments of both schools: realism, in the past, is considered to have been scep­tical or uninterested, in international law, while regime theorists in the liberal camp, identified as liberal institutionalists, have accepted key assump­tions made by neo-realists, and these, along with their social science credentials, are considered to have moved them beyond the established liberal tradition (see Ch. 8). But despite the shared theo­retical assumptions, liberal institutionalists and realists adhere to very different assessments of regimes (see Box 12.1). Liberal institutionalists focus on the way that regimes allow states to over­come the obstacles to collaboration imposed by the anarchic structure of the international system. Realists, by contrast, are interested in the way that states use their power capabilities in situations requiring co-ordination to influence the nature of regimes and the way that the costs and benefits derived from regime formation are divided up. Only after studying the two approaches can we assess to what extent these different approaches can be rendered compatible. Collaboration and co-ordination are see to constitute different approaches to co-operation.

Why did IR (International Relations) theorists begin to focus on regime formation in the 1970s? One factor was the growing awareness that, at least in the context of the West, the United States had played the role of hegemon during and after the Second World War. The term derives from the Greek, meaning leader, and it was argued that the United States had been able to play this role because of its preponderance of power in the international system. During this era, the United States, because of its hegemonic position, had been able to estab­lish and maintain a complex array of economic regimes in the West; the regimes had played a vital role in the growing prosperity which had taken place after the Second World War. By the 1970s, however, partly because of the economic success in Europe and Japan, and partly because of the disas­trous policy in Vietnam, the capacity of the United States to maintain its hegemonic status was put in doubt. It is unsurprising that an interest in regimes coincided with this development.

Box 12.1. Liberal Institutional v. Realist Approaches to the Analysis of Regimes
Common Assumptions
States operate in an anarchic international system
States are rational and unitary actors
States are the units responsible for establishing regimes
Regimes are established on the basis of co-operation in the international system
Regimes promote international order
Competing Assessments
Liberal institutionalists	Realists
1. Regimes enable states to collaborate	1. Regimes enable states to co-ordinate
2. Regimes promote the common good	2. Regimes generate differential benefits for states
3. Regimes flourish best when promoted and maintained by a benign hegemon	3. Power is a central feature of regime formation and survival
4. Regimes promote globalization and and a liberal world order	4. The nature of world order depends on the underlying principles and norms of regimes

Liberal institutionalists and realists both reacted to this development, but in very different ways. Liberal institutionalists were concerned about the possibility that at a point in time when the need for regimes was becoming increasingly urgent, the loss of hegemonic status by the United States could mean that it would be increasingly difficult to establish these regimes. Realists argued, by contrast, that if the United States did lose its hegemonic status, then there would be a shift in the balance of power and the liberal principles governing the regimes established by the United States would start to be challenged more effectively by Third World states wanting a new set of regimes established on the basis of different norms and principles. Although their analysis pointed in different directions, both liberal institutionalists and realists acknowledged the need for a more sophisticated theoretical understanding of regimes.