International Regimes: A Conceptual History

Abstract

In spite of close to twenty years of theoretical elaboration and empirical research, the international regime concept still lacks a critical edge. The concept, introduced into the international relations literature in the 1975 Special Edition of International Organization, was initially defined as a set of mutual expectations, rules and regulations, plans, organizational energies and financial commitments, which have been accepted by a group of states.¹ This definition contained many of the elements of Krasner’s widely accepted definition agreed to by a group of scholars seven years later. Krasner defined a regime as a set of ’principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations.’²