Power, the State, and Sovereignty: Essays on International Relations by Stephen D. Krasner

Author:Stephen D. Krasner [Krasner, Stephen D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, International, Globalization, History & Theory, Political Economy, Political Science, Business & Economics, General
ISBN: 9781135974770
Google: mmuUAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2009-03-04T12:49:18+00:00

Explaining international regimes

The consequences of different configurations of interests for the creation and maintenance of international regimes has been elaborated in a number of studies. There are four possible configurations of interests, two of which can give rise to international regimes. Regimes are irrelevant for situations characterized by either harmony or pure (zero-sum) conflict. Rather, regimes can arise under what Arthur Stein has called dilemmas of common aversions or dilemmas of common interests (Stein 1982; Snidal 1985b: 923–42).

Under zero-sum conditions there is no basis for regimes and no reason to coordinate policies, because one actor’s loss is another’s gain (Waltz 1979; Grieco 1988: 923–42). In a situation of harmony, too, there is no reason to create a regime, because each individual player, acting without regard for the behavior of others, maximizes both its own utility and that of the system as a whole. Purely self-regarding behavior produces both a Nash and Pareto-optimal equilibrium (Keohane 1984: 51).

By contrast, dilemmas of common aversions and dilemmas of common interests are distributions of preferences that do create incentives to establish and maintain international regimes. Both involve strategic interaction. Dilemmas of common aversions refer to situations in which actors must coordinate their policies by agreeing on some set of rules or conventions, to avoid mutually undesirable outcomes. The specific content of these rules will matter only if the actors disagree about which is the most desirable outcome. If there is no disagreement, then the outcome is a Nash equilibrium and is Pareto optimal: there is no incentive for any actor to defect and no opportunity to increase any actor’s utility without damaging that of another. Cheating is therefore not a problem. There is no need to develop elaborate mechanisms for generating and monitoring information, because there is no sucker’s pay-off to worry about. One set of rules is as good as any other, provided that all states agree to do the same thing. For instance, starting from a situation in which no prior investments have been made, it does not matter whether cars drive on the left or right side of the road provided that all drivers adopt the same rule. It may not matter to a couple whether they go to the mountains or the ocean for a vacation, provided that they go to the same place. Such a configuration of interests is shown in Figure 7.1.

With a minimal level of coordination (actors need only avoid switching back and forth at the same time when one starts from the right and the other from the left), all actors will end up driving on either the left or the right, or both members of a couple will go to either the mountains or the ocean. As Snidal (1985b: 931) notes:

Sometimes coordination is presented simply as the problem of two or more actors matching policies where they are indifferent about where they match … Here there is no disjuncture between individual and collective rationality and no problem of collective action. It requires not more than communication and common sense to achieve an outcome that is both individually and collectively optimal.

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