Abstract
The tension between efficiency and ideas, between rationalist and ref lectivist methodologies, affects both the institutional and regime approaches to the study of international organizations (IOs). But the effects of this tension are most evident in the latter, which, as we have already noted, looks not at IOs themselves, but at their effects on the patterns of international politics more broadly. The regime approach first caught on in the early 1980s, and has since then remained the predominant framework in political science for studying IOs. Both the rationalist (often called neoliberal institutionalist) approach and the ref lectivist (often called constructivist) approach can trace their lineage back to the early days of the literature on regimes.1
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Notes
See, inter alia, Kenneth Oye, ed., Cooperation under Anarchy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), and James Fearon, “Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation,” International Organization 52 (1998): 269–306.
The seminal work on collective action problems, which uses the union membership example, is Mancur Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965).
Joanne Gowa, “Rational Hegemons, Excludable Goods, and Small Groups: An Epitaph for Hegemonic Stability Theory?” World Politics 41 (1989): 307–324.
On PD, and on the use of this sort of 2 x 2 game in the study of international relations more generally, see Glenn Snyder and Paul Diesing, Conflict among Nations: Bargaining, Decision Making, and System Structure in International Crises (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977).
Douglass North and Robert Paul Thomas, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), and Douglass North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: Norton, 1981) go so far as to claim that economic history as a whole can be written through the story of governments improving markets.
Rober t Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Robert Keohane, “The Demand for International Regimes,” International Organization 36 (1982): 325–356.
Friedrich Kratochwil and John Gerard Ruggie, “International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State,” International Organization 40 (1986): 753–775, and Ronald Mitchell, “Sources of Transparency: Information Systems in International Regimes,” International Studies Quarterly 42 (1998): 109–130.
They are then, in practice, often ignored. See, for example, William Aron, “Science and the IWC,” in Toward a Sustainable Whaling Regime, ed. Robert Friedheim (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), pp. 105–122.
The administrative functions are provided by the Secretariat (the internal structure of the UN will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter). The rules and procedures of the Security Council are published as chapter 1 of the Repertoire of the Practice of the Security Council (New York: UN, serial).
GATT, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade: Text of the General Agreement (Geneva: GATT, 1994), Articles I and III.
Joseph Kahn, “Nations Back Freer Trade, Hoping to Aid Global Growth,” New York Times, November 15, 2001, A12.
Oran Young, ed., The Effectiveness of International Environmental Agreements (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), and Edward Miles, Arild Underdal, Steinar Andresen, Jorgen Wettestad, Tora Skodvin, and Elaine Carlin, Environmental Regime Effectiveness (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001).
For a complete discussion of the problems of the international whaling regime, see Robert Friedheim, ed., Toward a Sustainable Whaling Regime (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001).
Peter Haas, Robert Keohane, and Marc Levy, eds., Institutions for the Earth: Sources of Effective International Environmental Protection (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993).
Bureau of Arms Control, Fact Sheet: The Biological Weapons Convention (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, released May 22, 2002), viewed at http://www.state.gov/t/ac/rls/fs/10401.htm.
See, for example, Elizabeth DeSombre and J. Samuel Barkin, “Turbot and Tempers in the North Atlantic,” in Conserving the Peace: Resources, Livelihoods, and Security, ed. Richard Matthew, Mark Halle, and Jason Switzer (Winnipeg: International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2002).
Rona ld Mitchel l, Intentional Oil Pollution at Sea: Environmental Policy and Treaty Compliance (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).
On the debate about the relationship between regime compliance and regime effectiveness, see Abram Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes, “On Compliance,” International Organization 47 (1993): 175–205, and George Downs, David Rocke, and Peter Barsoom, “Is the Good News about Compliance Good News about Cooperation?” International Organization 50 (1996): 379–406.
For a discussion of international law and adjudication that both discusses and argues against the realist position, see Louis Henkin, How Nations Behave: Law and Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger, 1968).
Elizabeth R. DeSombre and Joanne Kauffman, “The Montreal Protocol Multilateral Fund: Partial Success Story,” in Institutions for Environmental Aid: Pitfalls and Promise, ed. Robert Keohane and Marc Levy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
For a more complete discussion of constitutive rules in international relations, see Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1999). See also Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989).
Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, United Nations Treaty Series No. 973, vol. 75, p. 287 (Geneva: UN, 1949).
For an argument that these ideas are gendered and can be biased in favor of some actors in international relations at the expense of others, see, respectively, Laura Sjoberg, “Gendered Realities of the Immunity Principle: Why Gender Analysis Needs Feminism,” International Studies Quarterly 50 (2006): 889–910; and Thomas W. Smith, “The New Law of War: Legitimizing Hi-Tech and Infrastructural Violence,” International Studies Quarterly 46 (2002): 355–374.
The seminal work on the role of legitimacy in the study of international organizations is Inis Claude, Jr., “Collective Legitimization as a Political Function of the United Nations,” International Organization 20 (1966): 367–379. See also Ian Hurd, “Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics,” International Organization 53 (1999): 379–408.
On the relationship between law and legitimacy in international relations, see Judith Goldstein, Miles Kahler, Robert Keohane, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, eds., Legalization and World Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001) and Henkin, How Nations Behave.
J. Samuel Barkin and Bruce Cronin, “The State and the Nation: Changing Norms and Rules of Sovereignty in International Relations,” International Organization 48 (1994): 107–130, and Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber, eds., State Sovereignty as a Social Construct (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
J. Samuel Barkin, “The Evolution of the Constitution of Sovereignty and the Emergence of Human Rights Norms,” Millennium 27 (1998): 229–252.
For a discussion of the history and current state of international human rights agreements, see Jack Donnelly, International Human Rights (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1998).
See, for example, Rosema r y Foot, Rights beyond Borders: The Global Community and the Struggle over Human Rights in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Beth Simmons, Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Rober t Jack son, Quasi-States: Sovereignty. International Relations, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Jennifer Milliken, “The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods,” European Journal of International Relations 5 (1999): 225–254.
See, for example, Peter Katzenstein, Robert Keohane, and Stephen Krasner, eds., Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
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© 2013 J. Samuel Barkin
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Barkin, J.S. (2013). Efficiency and Ideas. In: International Organization. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137356734_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137356734_5
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