Oran YOUNG, International Cooperation (Building Regimes For Natural Resources and The Environment)

Prologue
Much of the growing literature on international regimes consists of

descriptive accounts of specific institutional arrangements and fails to
address the underlying analytical questions associated with the use of
the concept of regimes as an organizing principle in the study of recur¬
rent international phenomena. As a result, the whole enterprise of
regime analysis continues to rest on a shaky foundation. The concept of
a regime itself is often used so loosely that critics have reasonably ques¬
tioned whether the concept is anything but a woolly notion likely to
produce more confusion than illumination. Furthermore, few sustained
efforts have been made to provide a compelling account of the degree to
which institutional arrangements operate to determine collective out¬
comes in international society. It is therefore hard to judge whether the
study of regimes deserves to become a permanent feature of research in
international relations.
For this reason, the chapters of Part 1 focus on international regimes
in theory. Chapter 1 elaborates on the proposition that international
regimes are social institutions. In the process, it develops some generic
ideas regarding rights and rules in international relations. Chapter 2,
which centers on an extensive discussion of the distinction between
institutions and organizations at the international level, is critical to
differentiating this study from the more conventional literature on in¬
ternational organizations. While the use of the terms institution and
organization is of no great consequence, the distinction between the two
is what makes it possible to use the study of international regimes as a
vehicle for deepening our understanding of the prospects for coopera¬
tion in international society. Chapter 3 turns to the question of how
institutional arrangements serve not only to solve collective-action prob-
9
International Regimes in Theory
lems but also to structure the character of collective outcomes at the

international level. The argument is pivotal in that it indicates why
institutional arrangements are important as independent variables in
our efforts to explain the variance in collective outcomes in international
society. In this context, chapter 4, which deals with the formation and
transformation of international regimes, takes on added significance.
To the extent that institutions matter as determinants of collective out¬
comes, our interest in exploring the dynamics of institutional arrange¬
ments is heightened.
Overall, the four chapters of Part 1 place the analysis of international
institutions in general and international regimes in particular squarely
within the intellectual tradition of studies of social institutions. Cer¬
tainly, no one would argue that the study of social institutions constitutes
a unified and theoretically sophisticated held of enquiry. There is too
much diversity in both definitional matters and theories of causation to
allow us to speak of an acknowledged paradigm for the study of social
institutions. Even so, placing international regimes within the larger
domain of social institutions provides access to a significant fund of
intellectual capital that we can readily tap in our efforts to comprehend a
range of international phenomena. In the process, it should help us to
transcend sterile definitional arguments and to move toward examining
an array of interesting substantive issues suggested by a focus on inter¬
national regimes.
10
Chapter One
International Regimes:
An Institutional Perspective
We live in a world of international regimes. Some of them deal with

monetary issues (for example, the Bretton Woods system and its suc¬
cessors); others govern international trade in commodities (for example,
the coffee agreement). Some regimes serve to direct the use of natural
resources at the international level (for example, the international ar¬
rangements for whaling) or to advance the cause of conservation (for
example, the agreement on polar bears). Still other regimes address
problems pertaining to the control of armaments at the international
level (for example, the nuclear nonproliferation regime) or the manage¬
ment of power in international society (for example, the neutralization
agreement for Switzerland). And there are some international regimes
that encompass several issues within well-defined geographical areas
(for example, the Svalbard regime and the Antarctic Treaty System).
International regimes cover a wide spectrum in terms of functional
scope, geographical domain, and membership. Functionally, they range
from the narrow purview of the polar bear agreement to the broad
concerns of the arrangements for Antarctica and outer space. The geo¬
graphical area covered may be as limited as the highly restricted domain
of the regime for fur seals in the North Pacific or as far-flung as that of
the global regimes for international air transport (the ICAO/IATA
system) or for the control of nuclear testing. With respect to member¬
ship, the range runs from two or three members, as in the regime for
high-seas fishing established under the International North Pacific Fish¬
eries Convention, to well over a hundred members, as in the nuclear
nonproliferation regime. What is most striking, however, is the sheer
number of international regimes. Far from being unusual, they are
common throughout international society.
It is therefore surprising that it took so long for students of interna¬

tional affairs to focus intensively on international regimes and that
much of the newly emerging literature on regimes is weak, particularly
in analytic terms. The last decade has brought a surge of interest in the
study of international regimes.1 We now have fairly extensive descrip¬
tive accounts of some specific regimes2 and some speculative ideas about
phenomena such as regime change.3 Even so, the fundamental charac¬
ter of international regimes remains elusive, and there is nothing ap¬
proaching consensus on the role of regimes in international society.
Considering the pervasiveness of regimes at the international level, the
resultant limits on the state of our knowledge of international regimes
constitute a serious deficiency. In this chapter, I take some preliminary
steps toward Riling this gap, laying out a conceptual framework to be
used in studying international regimes systematically.4
The Core Concept
Regimes are social institutions governing the actions of those involved

in specifiable activities or sets of activities. Like all social institutions, they
are practices consisting of recognized roles linked together by clusters of
1. See, among others, Richard N. Cooper, “Prolegomena to the Choice of an Interna¬

tional Monetary System,” International Organization 29 (1975), 63—97; Ernst B. Haas, “On
Systems and International Regimes,” World Politics (1975), 147-174; John Gerard Ruggie
and Ernst B. Haas, eds., International Responses to Technology, special issue of International
Organization 29 (1975); Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1977); Oran R. Young, Resource Management at the International
Level: The Case of the North Pacific (London and New York: Pinter and Nichols, 1977);
Seyom Brown, Nina W. Cornell, Larry L. Fabian, and Edith Brown Weiss. Regimes for the
Ocean, Outer Space, and Weather (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1977); and Stephen D.
Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983). In addition,
international lawyers have talked about international regimes for some time. See L. F. E.
Goldie, “The Management of Ocean Resources: Regimes for Structuring the Maritime
Environment,” 155-247 in Cyril E. Black and Richard A. Falk, eds., The Future of the
International Legal Order, 4: The Structure of the International Environment (Princeton: Prince¬
ton University Press, 1972).
2. For a range of examples see William M. Ross, Oil Pollution as an International Problem:
A Study of Puget Sound and the Strait of Georgia (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1973)5 M. M. Sibthorp, ed., The North Sea: Challenge and Opportunity (London: Europa,
1975)5 Kenneth Dam, Oil Resources (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); and
Arild Underdal, “The Politics of International Fisheries Management,” unpublished pa¬
per, Oslo, 1978.
3. For example, Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence, pt. 2, and Robert O.
Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984).
4. See also Oran R. Young, Resource Regimes: Natural Resources and Social Institutions
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
12
International Regimes
rules or conventions governing relations among the occupants of these

roles. It is important not to conflate institutions and functions, though
the operation of institutional arrangements can and frequently does
contribute to the fulfillment of certain functions. Like other social in¬
stitutions, regimes may be more or less formally articulated, and they
may or may not be accompanied by explicit organizations.5
Though students of international affairs are often rather imprecise in
their usage, they generally find it helpful to divide the category of
international institutions into two more or less distinct subsets: interna¬
tional orders and international regimes. International orders are broad,
framework arrangements governing the activities of all (or almost all)
the members of international society over a wide range of specific issues.
We speak of the international political order, for example, as a system of
territorially based and sovereign states that interact with one another in
the absence of any central government. Similarly, we think of the inter¬
national economic order as a system of exchange relationships in which
buyers and sellers throughout international society are free to partici¬
pate in an array of international markets. As such, this order subsumes a
collection of more specific arrangements, like the international trade
regime, the international monetary regime, and the international re¬
gime pertaining to direct foreign investment. When Third World states
call for a new international economic order, therefore, they are asking
for fundamental revisions in the basic framework of economic institu¬
tions prevailing in international society; they are not just advocating
certain alterations in the specific arrangements governing trade or mon¬
etary matters.
International regimes, by contrast, are more specialized arrange¬
ments that pertain to well-defined activities, resources, or geographical
areas and often involve only some subset of the members of interna¬
tional society. Thus, we speak of the international regimes for whaling,
the conservation of polar bears, the use of the electromagnetic spec¬
trum, and human activities in Antarctica. Because the members of inter¬
national society are states, the rules or conventions of regimes apply, in
the first instance, to the actions of states. Yet the parties actually engag¬
ing in the activities governed by regimes are frequently private entities
such as multinational corporations, banks, fishing companies, or pri-
5. Even when a regime is articulated formally in a contract or a treaty, informal rules

typically grow up in conjunction with the resulting institutional arrangement in practice.
This fact suggests the importance of a behavioral approach to the empirical identification
of regimes. For some similar observations regarding the study of norms see Robert
Axelrod, “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms,” American Political Science Review 80
(1986), 1096-1098.
!3
vately owned airlines. States participating in international regimes must

therefore assume some responsibility for ensuring that these parties
comply with the dictates of the regimes. It follows that implementing the
terms of international regimes commonly involves a two-step proce¬
dure, a phenomenon that is less characteristic of institutional arrange¬
ments at the domestic level.6
Specific regimes are regularly nested in international orders in the
sense that they build on the foundation provided by more general
institutions rather than offer arrangements that are unconnected to
broader ordeis or that even conflict with the provisions of such institu¬
tions. The commodity regimes dealing with products such as coffee,
sugar, or tin are meant to supplement the market mechanisms of the
international economic order rather than to supplant them.7 The spe¬
cialized arrangements now emerging to cope with the problem of ozone
depletion incorporate the more general arrangements that govern in¬
terstate relations regarding environmental matters; they are not in¬
tended to replace these arrangements. Similarly, the nuclear nonpro¬
liferation regime operates within the prevailing structure of security
arrangements in which relationships of deterrence constitute a key ele¬
ment in the interactions among states.8 It follows, therefore, that analy¬
ses of specific international regimes cannot be complete without some
consideration of the extent to which they are embedded in the larger
institutional orders that are operative in international society.
The mere existence of a social institution will lend an element of
orderliness to the activities it governs. But there is no reason to assume
that institutional arrangements will guide human activities toward well-
defined substantive goals, such as enduring peace, economic efficiency,
or optimum yields from renewable resources.9 The more specific con¬
cept of an international regime contains no intrinsic metaphysical or
teleological orientation, though those involved in the creation or reform
of any given regime often attempt to shape its contents with clear-cut
6. Among other things, this fact explains why those endeavoring to elicit compliance
with the lights and rules of international regimes often turn to domestic courts. See
Richard A. Falk, The Role of Domestic Courts in the International Legal Order (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1964).
7. See also Mark W. Zacher, Trade Gaps, Analytical Gaps: Regime Analysis and
International Commodity Trade Regulation,” International Organization 41 (1987), 173-
8. Roger K. Smith, “Explaining the Non-Proliferation Regime: Anomalies for Con¬

temporary International Relations I heory, International Organization 41 (1987), 25^—
281.
9. In fact, institutional arrangements can produce consequences that are widely
viewed as bad 01 undesirable in social terms. Consider, for example, institutions such as
slavery in domestic societies or war in international society.
H
objectives in mind.10 It is, however, possible to identify several key

components that every regime possesses.
The Substantive Component
The core of every international regime is a cluster of rights and rules.

Though they may be more or less extensive or formally articulated,
some such institutional arrangements structure the opportunities avail¬
able to actors, and their exact content is a matter of intense interest to
these actors.11
A right is anything to which an actor (individual or otherwise) is
entitled by virtue of occupying a recognized role. The role of human
being, for example, is often said to carry with it a right to life. In the
United States, the role of citizen carries with it the right to vote in
elections, the right to speak freely, and the right to move about at will.
We are now witnessing vigorous campaigns to clarify and, in some cases,
to redefine the rights of women, children, hospital patients, inmates in
prisons, and animals. Roles commonly carry with them bundles of rights
that may be more or less extensive and whose precise content is subject
to change over time.12 Of course, the possession of a right does not
guarantee that an actor will actually receive those things to which he is
entitled under the terms of the right. Although rights are often re¬
spected, even acknowledged rights are violated with considerable fre¬
quency in real-world social contexts.
Several categories of rights figure prominently in international re¬
gimes. Property rights may take the form of private-property rights (for
example, rights to commodities traded internationally) or common-
property rights (for example, rights to air space or deep-seabed min-
10. In real-world situations, those involved in regime formation virtually never operate
behind a Rawlsian “veil of ignorance.” See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1971), chap. 3.
11. Though this is not the place to address problems of operationalization in detail, a
few comments on the empirical analysis of rights and rules are in order here. Empirically,
rights and rules can be approached either in terms of the expectations shared by the
members of a given group or in terms of observable regularities in the behavior of the
group’s members. As the two approaches are not mutually exclusive, it may well be
instructive to make use of both in the effort to pin down rights and rules empirically. This
suggests that there is no necessary connection between the rights and rules actually
operative in a social environment and the statements regarding rights and rules contained
in formal documents such as treaties or conventions, though it may still prove useful to
turn to such documents for an easily accessible approximation of the substantive compo¬
nent of specific institutional arrangements. For some additional observations pertaining to
these issues see Axelrod, “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms.”
12. On the idea of bundles of rights see Charles A. Reich, “The New Property,” Yale Law
Journal 73 (1964), 733-787.
z5
erals).13 Because of the prevalence of common-property arrangements

at the international level, international regimes often focus on the de¬
velopment of use-and-enjoyment rights. These may be exclusive in
nature (for example, the right to exploit a given tract on the deep
seabed) or they may be formulated in nonexclusive terms (for example,
the right to use certain international straits).14 But all such rights are
designed to ensure the availability of key resources to actors under
conditions in which private-property arrangements are infeasible or
undesirable. International regimes may also encompass an assortment
of other rights, including the right to protection against certain forms of
aggression, the right to receive specified benefits from international
transactions or productive operations, the right to trade on favorable
terms with other members of international society, and the right to
participate in making collective decisions under the terms of a given
regime.
In contrast to rights, rules are well-defined guides to action or stan¬
dards setting forth actions that members are expected to perform (or
to refrain from performing) under appropriate circumstances.15 Any
given rule exhibits the following features: an indication of the relevant
subject group, a behavioral prescription, and a specification of the cir¬
cumstances under which the rule is operative. In some societies, there
are near-universal rules enjoining individuals to tell the truth and to
keep promises in their dealings with other members of the society. But
rules may be directed toward some clearly designated group, as in the
case of ethical prescriptions governing the behavior of teachers, doctors,
or lawyers. Or rules may focus on some specific activity, as in the case of
prescriptions pertaining to civil aviation or maritime commerce. Of
course, the existence of an acknowledged rule does not guarantee that
the members of the subject group will always comply with its require¬
ments. Even in well-ordered societies, noncompliance with rules is a
common occurrence.
Among the numerous rules associated with international regimes,
three general categories are particularly prominent. First, there are use
rules. For example, members of the ICAO/IATA system are required to
13. Consult, among others, Eirik Furubotn and Svetozar Pejovich, “Property Rights
and Economic Theory: A Survey of Recent Literature,” Journal of Economic Literature 10
(1972), 1137-1162.
14. The result may be described as a system of “restricted” common property: see J. H.
Dales, Pollution, Property, and Prices (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968), 61—65.
15. My use of the concept “rules” differs somewhat from that prevalent in recent
contributions to jurisprudence. Compare H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1961), and Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1977), especially chaps. 2 and 3.
follow certain safety rules in using international airspace; those engaged

in fishing operations are usually subject to rules pertaining to the con¬
servation of hsh stocks; and those using international shipping lanes are
subject to rules designed to maximize safety and minimize marine pollu¬
tion. Frequently, such use rules take the form of limitations on the
exercise of rights. Just as rights commonly safeguard the freedom of
actors to behave in certain ways, rules often spell out restrictions on the
freedom of actors to do as they wish.16 Liability rules constitute a second
category. They spell out the locus and extent of responsibility in cases of
(usually unintended) injury to others arising from the actions of individ¬
ual parties under the terms of a regime. They range from rules concern¬
ing compensation for expropriation of foreign investments under vari¬
ous circumstances to rules pertaining to responsibility for cleaning up
marine environments in the wake of accidents.1? Finally, international
regimes often specify a variety of procedural rules, which deal with the
handling of disputes or the operation of explicit organizations associ¬
ated with regimes.
At the domestic level, collections of rights and rules are commonly
supplemented by extensive sets of regulations and incentive systems.
Regulations are administrative directives promulgated by public author¬
ities and specifying conditions under which certain actors are to operate
on a day-to-day basis. They are widely used to translate rights and rules
formulated in general terms into working managerial arrangements
applicable to real-world situations.18 Incentive systems, on the other
hand, are penalties and rewards employed by public authorities for the
purpose of altering the behavior of actors in desired directions.19 Per¬
haps the classic cases of incentive systems are taxes and subsidies.
Obviously, regulations and incentive systems are used less extensively
in international regimes than in institutional arrangements operating at
the national and subnational levels. They require a public agency pos¬
sessing a measure of authority and power, and such agencies are far less
characteristic of highly decentralized social systems like international
16. See G. H. von Wright, Norms and Actions (New York: Humanities Press, 1963).
17. On liability rules and their significance compare R. H. Coase, “The Problem of
Social Cost,” Journal of Law and Economics 3 (i960), 1—44, and Guido Calabresi and
A. Douglas Melamed, “Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the
Cathedral,” Harvard Law Review 85 (1972), 1089—1128.
18.I use the term regulation in a sense somewhat different from that used in discussions
of public regulation of private industries. For a clear example of this usage see George
Stigler, The Citizen and the State: Essays on Regulation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1975)-
19. Incentive systems can also be used to raise or disburse revenues. Their primary
purpose, however, is to structure the behavior of identifiable groups of actors.
n
society than of the more centralized systems that are common at the
national level. Yet international regimes accompanied by explicit orga¬
nizations can and sometimes do employ these devices. The International
Monetary Fund, for example, has promulgated extensive regulations
pertaining to the drawing rights of individual members, and the pro¬
posed International Seabed Authority would be able to regulate produc¬
tion of manganese nodules to implement more general rules concerning
such matters as the impact of deep-seabed mining on the world nickel
market.20
The Procedural Component
A procedural component of international regimes encompasses rec¬

ognized practices for handling situations requiring social or collective
choices. Situations of this type arise whenever it is necessary or desirable
to aggregate the (nonidentical) preferences of two or more individual
actors into a group choice.21 Such problems occur in most social systems;
they range from the selection of individuals to fill certain positions to the
establishment of the terms of trade in exchange relationships and deci¬
sions on the distribution of valued goods and services.
Several types of social-choice problems arise regularly in international
regimes.22 Some involve the allocation of factors of production (for
example, deep-seabed mining tracts, total allowable catches in fisheries,
segments of the global electromagnetic spectrum). Such problems are
especially difficult to handle at the international level owing to the
prevalence of common rather than private property. Other social-choice
problems relate to issues with explicit distributive implications (for ex¬
ample, adjustments of exchange rates or the disposition of economic
returns or rents associated with deep-seabed mining). Collective choices
are also required to settle disputes. Typically, these disputes arise from
efforts to apply general rights and rules to the complexities of real-world
situations. There are cases, as well, in which collective decisions are
necessary to determine the sorts of activities to permit in an area like
Antarctica, to resolve conflicts between competing uses of the same
resource, and to organize collective sanctions aimed at obtaining com¬
pliance with the rights and rules of an international regime.
20. See, for example, Robert Z. Aliber, The International Money Game (New York: Basic
Books, 1976).
21. For a general analysis of social choice see A. K. Sen, Collective Choice and Social
Welfare (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1970).
22. Problems of social choice pertaining to the selection and reform of international
regimes per se are discussed in chapters 4 and 9 below.
Social-choice mechanisms are institutional arrangements specialized

to the resolution of problems of social choice arising within the context
of particular regimes. Like other components of regimes, these mecha¬
nisms may be more or less formalized, and it is typical for a regime to
make use of several at the same time. The range of these mechanisms is
wide, encompassing such devices as the principle of first come, first
served, markets, voting systems, bargaining, administrative decision
making, adjudication, unilateral action backed by coercion, and orga¬
nized violence.23 Certain conditions are required for the effective opera¬
tion of each of these mechanisms; we may therefore assume that individ¬
ual mechanisms will be associated with particular types of social systems.
The most striking features of international society in this regard are its
relatively small number of formal members and its high level of decen¬
tralization of authority. The social-choice mechanisms characteristic of
such a social setting are the principle of first come, first served, bargain¬
ing, various forms of coercion, and, to a lesser degree, markets. We
should consequently expect problems of social choice in international
regimes to be handled through these procedures.24 Still, voting and
administrative decision making are not altogether absent from interna¬
tional regimes. Voting is significant, for example, in cases like the inter¬
national monetary regime and the ICAO/ IATA system. But there can
be no doubt that unilateral claims, bargaining, and coercion are central
to the processes of arriving at social choices within most international
regimes.
It is also worth noting that some regimes do not possess social-choice
mechanisms of their own. They may rely on the institutional arrange¬
ments of some encompassing international order or share mechanisms
with other regimes in handling problems of social choice. Such situa¬
tions are common where adjudication or voting is employed in reaching
collective choices. For example, the same courts may resolve conflicts of
interest pertaining to civil liberties, business activities, and land use. In
principle, the International Court of Justice or the General Assembly of
the United Nations could be employed to deal with many of the social-
choice problems arising under specific international regimes. In prac¬
tice, however, various combinations of bargaining and coercion geared
to the problems of specific regimes constitute the norm at the interna¬
tional level.
23. The classic study, which focuses on voting systems, is Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice
and Individual Values, 2d ed. (New York: Wiley, 1963).
24. Oran R. Young, “Anarchy and Social Choice: Reflections on the International
Polity,” World Politics 30 (1978), 241—263.
19
Implementation
Smoothly functioning international regimes are not easy to estab¬

lish.25 Rights are not always respected, and even widely acknowledged
rules are violated with some frequency. Nor is it reasonable to assume
that participants will always accept the results generated by social-choice
mechanisms as authoritative and abide by them. Accordingly, it is im¬
portant to think about the effectiveness of international regimes,26 and
this observation suggests an examination of compliance mechanisms as
a third major component of these regimes.
Any discussion of compliance must deal with the incentives of those
who are parties to institutional arrangements. What are the benefits and
costs of complying with rights and rules, in contrast to violating them?
How do individual actors decide whether to comply with the substantive
provisions of international regimes? There is a tendency to assume that
the typical actor will violate such provisions so long as the probability of
being caught in specific instances is low—a line of reasoning that implies
that the existence of effective enforcement procedures is essential to the
achievement of compliance. But this argument appears to be quite wide
of the mark in many real-world situations. It is not difficult to identify a
variety of factors, other than detection and the imposition of public
sanctions, that exert effective pressure for compliance, especially in
conjunction with long-run perspectives on iterative behavior. There is
also no basis for assuming that individual actors make large numbers of
discrete benefit/cost calculations regarding compliance with the provi¬
sions of international regimes. Rather, they commonly develop rules or
policies in this realm, and it seems reasonable to expect that long-term
socialization as well as feelings of obligation will play a part in the
articulation of these policies.27
A compliance mechanism is any institution or set of institutions pub¬
licly authorized to promote compliance with the substantive provisions
of a regime or with the outcomes generated by its social-choice mecha¬
nisms. This characterization conjures up an image of formal govern¬
mental agencies, and such agencies undoubtedly do constitute the classic
means of coping with compliance problems. But less formal compliance
mechanisms are common, and highly decentralized social systems, like
25. That is, reality seldom approximates the condition of “perfect compliance” dis¬
cussed in Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 351.
26. For a similar observation about institutional arrangements at the domestic level see
A. Myrick Freeman, “Environmental Management as a Regulatory Process,” Resources
for the Future Discussion Paper D-4, (Washington, D.C., January 1977).
27. For an intriguing empirical example see Abram Chayes, “An Enquiry into the
Workings of Arms Control Agreements,” Harvard Law Review 85 (1975), 905-969.
20
international society, typically rely on them.28 The result is apt to be a

heavy emphasis on self-interest calculations coupled with publicly recog¬
nized procedures for self-help to redress wrongs.29 Alternatively, such
conditions sometimes give rise to a reliance on arrangements in which
supranational agencies are employed to gather information and to in¬
spect the activities of individual actors, but decentralized procedures are
retained for the application of sanctions (for example, the nuclear non¬
proliferation regime, the ICAO/IATA system, and many of the regional-
fisheries regimes).30
From the point of view of the members of a regime, the development
of compliance mechanisms poses an investment problem. Any expendi¬
ture of resources on such mechanisms will generate opportunity costs,
and declining marginal returns from such investments virtually always
become pronounced before perfect compliance is reached. Accordingly,
it is safe to assume that the members of a regime will rarely attempt to
devise compliance mechanisms capable of eliminating violations alto¬
gether. Exactly where equilibrium will occur with respect to these invest¬
ment decisions depends on the assumptions made about the members of
international regimes. Given the dispersal of responsibility that goes
with the decentralization of authority in international society, however,
it is safe to conclude that underinvestment in compliance mechanisms is
characteristic of international regimes.31 Still, various types of com¬
pliance mechanisms do operate at the international level,32 and such
mechanisms must be treated as a third major component of interna¬
tional regimes.
Clarifying Observations
It is possible to argue that some regime must be present in every

international activity: regimes can vary greatly in extent, and extreme
28. Oran R. Young, Compliance and. Public Authority: A Theory with International Applica¬
tions (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), especially chaps. 4 and 5.
29. For empirical examples consult Lucy Mair, Primitive Government (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1977), especially chap. 1.
30. Ronald S. Tauber, “The Enforcement of IATA Agreements,” Harvard International
Law Journal 10 (1969), 1—33.
31. International regimes, like other social institutions, will ordinarily exhibit the at¬
tributes of collective goods (that is, nonexcludability and jointness of supply) to a relatively
high degree. For a cla'ssic account of the problems of supplying collective goods see
Mancur Olson, Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
i965)-
32. For a variety of examples see William T. Burke, Richard Legatski, and William W.
Woodhead, National and International Law Enforcement in the Ocean (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1975).
21
cases can simply be treated as null regimes. The arrangements for high-
seas fishing prevailing prior to World War II, for instance, might be
described as a regime based on unrestricted common property and the
procedure known as the “law of capture,” rather than as a situation
lacking any operative regime.33 But this line of reasoning is seriously
flawed. Some activities arise de novo in the absence of prior experience
(for example, international satellite broadcasting or deep-seabed min¬
ing). In such cases, we would have to develop some fiction about latent
or tacit regimes to avoid the conclusion that there are situations in which
no regime is present. Further, existing regimes sometimes break down,
leaving a confused and inchoate situation (for example, international
trade and finance in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World
War II).34 Here, too, the concept would have to be stretched excessively
to assert the continued existence of a regime. What is more, avoiding the
temptation to assume the presence of some regime in every specifiable
activity will facilitate later discussions of the origins of regimes and of
regime transformation.
In analyzing international regimes, there is also a tendency to focus on
highly coherent and internally consistent constructs. Yet real-world re¬
gimes are often unsystematic and ambiguous, incorporating elements
derived from several analytic constructs or ideal types. This is sometimes
the result of misunderstandings on the part of those who make decisions
about the creation of regimes. Much of the ambiguity, however, arises
from two other factors. The development of an international regime
frequently involves intense bargaining that leads to critical compromises
among the interested parties. The hard bargaining that characterized
the hammering out of a regime to govern deep-seabed mining illustrates
this phenomenon. Additionally, international regimes generally evolve
and change over time in response to various economic and political
pressures. This is true even of regimes formulated initially in some
comprehensive constitutional contract. With the passage of time, re¬
gimes generally acquire new features and become less consistent inter¬
nally. The point of these remarks is neither to criticize existing regimes
nor to argue that ideal types are unimportant in examinations of the
development of international institutions. But a failure to bear in mind
the distinction between ideal types and reality is bound to lead to confu¬
sion.35
33. Francis T. Christy and Anthony Scott, The Common Wealth in Ocean Fisheries (Bal¬
timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965).
34. Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1973).
35. On the relationship between ideal types and reality, with special reference to the
22
Finally, there is an important distinction between the conditions re¬

quired for the effective operation of an international regime and the
consequences resulting from its operation. To illustrate, consider a re¬
gime governing international trade in some commodity based on pri¬
vate-property rights and a competitive market. The conditions necessary
to ensure effective operation of such a regime include the availability of
information about potential trades, a willingness to accept terms of trade
dictated by the market, and an absence of natural monopolies.36 The
consequences of the operation of the regime, by contrast, relate to the
extent to which it yields economically efficient outcomes; the degree to
which it produces social costs or neighborhood effects, the attractiveness
of the results in distributive terms, and so forth. Both the conditions for
operation and the consequences of operation are central issues in the
analysis of international regimes. But it is important to differentiate
between them clearly, as well as to bear in mind that both these issues are
separable from efforts to characterize the institutional content of an
international regime.
Regimes in Operation
We turn now to some prominent features of international regimes as

they occur under real-world conditions.
Varieties of Regimes
Variation in extent, formalization, direction, and coherence is a prom¬

inent feature of international regimes. Sometimes variations are out¬
growths of underlying philosophical differences. For example, regimes
resting on socialist premises encompass more extensive collections of
rules as well as more explicit efforts to direct behavior toward the
achievement of goals than laissez-faire regimes that emphasize decen¬
tralized decision making and autonomy for individual actors. In other
cases, variation arises from the character of specific bargains struck in
the process of setting up regimes, or from particular patterns of institu¬
tional evolution over time.
The extent of a regime is a matter of the number and restrictiveness of
theory of games, see Anatol Rapoport, Two-Person Game Theory (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1966), 186-214.
36. For a succinct and lucid account of such conditions see Robert Haveman, The
Economics of the Public Sector (New York: Wiley, 1976), 22—27.
23
its rights and rules. At one extreme is the case of unlimited laissez-faire,
in which actors are completely free to do as they please without even the
constraints of a system of property or use rights.37 At the other extreme
are arrangements featuring central planning and pervasive rules gov¬
erning the actions of individual members. Between these extremes lies a
wide range of mixed cases that are differentiable in terms of the extent
to which they include rights and rules restricting the autonomy of
individual members. Though international regimes tend to be less re¬
strictive than institutional arrangements in domestic society, they rarely
approximate the extreme of unlimited laissez-faire.
Some writers have fallen into the habit of equating regimes with the
agreements in terms of which the regimes are often expressed or cod¬
ified.38 In practice, however, international regimes vary greatly in the
extent to which they are expressed in formal agreements, treaties, or
conventions. The current regime for Antarctica is formalized to a far
greater degree than the neutralization arrangements for Switzerland.
As in domestic society, moreover, it is common for informal understand¬
ings to arise within the framework established by the formal structure of
an international regime. Such understandings may serve either to pro¬
vide interpretations of ambiguous aspects of the formal arrangements
(for example, the notion of optimum yield in conjunction with marine
fisheries) or to supplement formal arrangements by dealing with issues
they fail to cover (for example, the treatment of nuclear technology
under the terms of the partial nuclear test-ban regime). Though it may
be helpful, formalization is clearly not a necessary condition for the
effective operation of international regimes.39 There are informal re¬
gimes that have been generally successful, and there are formal arrange¬
ments that have produced unimpressive results (for example, several of
the commodity agreements).40
Regimes are directed to the extent that they exert pressure on their
members to act in conformity with some clear-cut social or collective
37. As an extreme type, this category is empirically empty. But a regime for some
natural resource with no private property rights, no liability rules, and allocation based on
the principle known as the “law of capture” would approach the extreme case.
38. See, for example, Arthur A. Stein, “Coordination and Collaboration: Regimes in an
Anarchic World,” 115—140 in Krasner, International Regimes.
39- As well, formalization is not a sufficient condition for the effective operation of
international regimes. In this connection, note also that any definitional convention that
equates regimes with the existence of formalized agreements cuts off efforts to analyze
relationships betwen institutional arrangements and the formalization of such arrange¬
ments in treaties or conventions.
40. United Nations, International Compensation for Fluctuations in Commodity Trade (New
York; 1961), and Zacher, “T rade Gaps.”
24
goal. Various goals are feasible—including economic efficiency, dis¬

tributive justice, the preservation of ecosystems, and so forth. Even
where there is agreement in principle about the pursuit of some social
goal, however, it may prove difficult to achieve the desired results under
real-world conditions. The goal of maximum sustained yield (much less
optimum yield) with respect to the marine fisheries, for example, is
notoriously difficult to achieve in reality.41 Additionally, when a regime
is directed toward the achievement of several goals at once, close at¬
tention must be paid to the determination of trade-offs among these
goals.42 In the absence of systematic efforts to construct trade-off func¬
tions, any apparent directedness of a regime encompassing two or more
distinct goals will be illusory.
Coherence refers to the degree to which the elements of an interna¬
tional regime are internally consistent. Severe internal contradictions
are common in real-world regimes, even in cases where such arrange¬
ments are articulated in constitutional contracts. For example, there are
often contradictions between use rights for those desiring to exploit
marine resources and rights vested in adjacent coastal states to exclude
outsiders. Similarly, conflicts regularly arise between the alleged re¬
quirements of indivisible state sovereignty and the obligations imposed
by the rules of international regimes. It is not hard to account for these
elements of incoherence in terms of the compromises necessary to
achieve initial acceptance of regimes or in terms of the piecemeal evolu¬
tion of regimes over time in response to changing political, economic,
and social forces. But the widespread occurrence of incoherence means
that we must beware of relying too heavily on neat analytic constructs in
interpreting real-world situations and that we must learn to cope with
the existence of contradictions.
Organizations
Though all regimes, even highly decentralized private-enterprise ar¬

rangements, are social institutions, they need not be accompanied by
organizations possessing their own personnel, budgets, physical facili¬
ties, and so forth. Effective institutional arrangements lacking organiza¬
tions to administer them are widespread in “primitive” societies,43 but
41. P. A. Larkin, “An Epitaph for the Concept of Maximum Sustained Yield," Transac¬
tions of the American Fisheries Society 106 (1977), 1 — 11.
42. On economic approaches to such trade-offs see Richard Zeckhauser and Elmer
Shaefer, “Public Policy and Normative Economic Theory,” 27-101 in Raymond A. Bauer
and Kenneth J. Gergen, eds., The Study of Policy Formation (New York: Free Press, 1968).
43. Mair, Primitive Government.
25
they are by no means confined to societies of this type. For example,

free-enterprise systems relying on competitive markets are classic cases
of social institutions performing vital functions in society with little in
the way of administering organizations.44 Many other social institu¬
tions—such as those governing manners, dress, and intergenerational
relations—serve to structure behavior effectively with little need for
organizations. Although it is undoubtedly true that international re¬
gimes characteristically involve fewer organizational arrangements than
their domestic counterparts, it is important not to carry this general¬
ization too far. The organizations associated with the international
monetary regime are certainly not trivial, and the organizational ar¬
rangements contemplated in conjunction with the deep-seabed mining
regime are quite complex.
Even where the need for organizational arrangements is apparent,
regimes may make use of organizations created for other purposes or
associated with a more comprehensive international order in preference
to creating autonomous arrangements of their own. Such situations are
common at the domestic level; regimes regularly leave tasks involving
information collection, inspection, dispute resolution, and enforcement
to agencies specializing in these matters, so that they do not require
archives, court systems, or police forces of their own. At the interna¬
tional level, this practice appears to be less common. Situations in which
regimes covering well-defined activities could benefit from such ar¬
rangements occur frequently enough. For example, it would be a dis¬
tinct help in connection with the development of arms-control regimes
to be able to rely on the monitoring and verification capabilities of some
broader public authority.45 And some experiments with the use of out¬
side organizational arrangements have occurred, as exemplified by the
role of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and
Natural Resources and the World Wildlife Fund in administering the
regime for endangered species articulated in the Convention on Inter¬
national Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora.46 But com¬
prehensive organizational capabilities are comparatively underdevel¬
oped in international society. Thus, the United Nations is hardly capable
of inspecting activities carried out under the regime for Antarctica or
resolving disputes pertaining to deep-seabed mining. It follows that
44. See Haveman, Economics of the Public Sector, 21, for a description of markets in
precisely these terms.
45- See Richard A. lalk and Richard Barnet, eds.. Security in Disarmament (Princeton:
46. Simon Lyster, International Wildlife Law (Cambridge: Grotius Publications, 1985),
chap. 1 2.
26
international regimes are less tightly linked together than domestic

regimes, even though they often lack extensive organizational arrange¬
ments of their own.
The emergence of organizations associated with international re¬
gimes raises a set of classic questions that are just as pressing at the
international level as they are at the domestic level. How much auton¬
omy vis-a-vis other centers of authority in the social system should these
organizations possess? What sorts of decision rules should the organiza¬
tions employ? How much discretion should the organizations have to
make changes affecting the substantive content of the regime itself?
How should the organizations be financed: where should their revenues
come from and how should they be raised? How should the organiza¬
tions be staffed? What sorts of physical facilities should the organiza¬
tions have and where should these facilities be located? The answers to
all these questions can influence the impact a regime has on its members.
It is therefore to be expected that such issues will be contested vig¬
orously, not only at the outset but also during the whole period over
which the regime is effective. To the extent that administering organiza¬
tions are less important in connection with international regimes than
they are in domestic regimes, this sort of contention will be less pervasive
at the international level. Nevertheless, it is impossible to comprehend
recent negotiations relating to international monetary arrangements,
deep-seabed mining, or the allocation of the broadcast frequency spec¬
trum without paying careful attention to these questions of organiza¬
tional design.47
Policy Instruments
Policy instruments are devices subject to deliberate or planned manip¬

ulation in the interests of achieving social goals. Such instruments can
operate at different levels of generality. Changes in bundles of property
rights, the promulgation of restrictive regulations, and decisions regard¬
ing individual applications for loans or mining licenses may all be
treated as matters involving the use of policy instruments, but they
obviously address problems occurring at different levels of generality.
Policy instruments are apt to be articulated in terms that are specific to
individual regimes or types of regimes. For instance, in fisheries regimes
the determination of allowable catches and decisions concerning the
47. See, for example, Brown et al., Regimes for the Ocean, and Michael Hardy, “The
Implications of Alternative Solutions for Regulating the Exploitation of Seabed Minerals,”
International Organization 31 (1977), 313—342.
27
opening and closing of harvest areas are standard issues involving policy
instruments. Adjustments of exchange rates or the issuance of broadcast
licenses are common policy instruments in other regimes.48
At the international level, a key consideration concerns the extent to
which the use of policy instruments requires the existence of organiza¬
tions. It is possible, for example, to redefine the contents of collections of
rights and rules at occasional assemblies of the members of a regime; it
may even be possible to do so as a result of unilateral actions on the part
of some members of a regime to which others subsequently conform on
a de facto basis. Policy instruments of this sort have an obvious appeal in
highly decentralized settings like international society. This appeal may
account for the current tendency to respond to problems relating to
international maritime regimes by redrawing jurisdictional boundaries
(that is, shifting areas or activities from the domain of international
common property toward the domain of national public property)
rather than by agreeing to well-defined rules for the use of common
property at the international level.49 States can pursue jurisdictional
changes unilaterally and without turning to the forums provided by
international organizations. The administration of use rules for com¬
mon-property resources, by contrast, is apt to require the establishment
of organizations, though the results may be more equitable than those
arising from shifts in jurisdictional boundaries.50
Nonetheless, policy instruments suitable for use by organizations are
by no means absent from the realm of international regimes. The Inter¬
national Whaling Commission has the authority to adjust annual harvest
quotas for individual species of great whales. The International Mone¬
tary Fund can lay down specific conditions in granting loans to countries
experiencing balance-of-payments problems. The International Coffee
Agreement allows for the allocation of export shares among its mem¬
bers. And the proposed International Seabed Authority would be able to
make use of a relatively complex system of licenses to regulate the
production of manganese nodules from the deep seabed. The ability of
these organizations to operate autonomously in using such instruments
48. For further discussion see Giandomenico Majone, “Choice among Policy Instru¬
ments for Pollution Control,” Policy Analysis 2 (1976), 589—613.
49. Changes in regimes for marine fisheries arising from unilateral extensions of juris¬
diction on the part of coastal states exemplify this prospect. In the case of the United
States, the transition was accomplished through the passage of the Fishery Conservation
and Management Act of 1976. For further discussion see Oran R. Young, “The Political
Economy of Fish: The Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976,” Ocean De¬
velopment and International Law 10 (1982), 199—273.
50. For a case in point see the discussion of the regime for deep-seabed mining in
chapter 5 below.
28
may be severely limited. Compliance can also become a major problem

in the use of some of these instruments (for example, export quotas for
coffee).51 But these facts do not suggest a qualitative difference between
the use of policy instruments in international regimes and their use in
domestic regimes.52 In short, though the use of these instruments is
limited by the characteristic weaknesses of organizations associated with
international regimes, policy instruments are certainly not irrelevant at
the international level.
Conclusion
Though there are great variations among international regimes, they

are all social institutions. This suggests, among other things, that re¬
gimes are products of human interactions; specific regimes are always
created rather than discovered. Formalization is not a necessary condi¬
tion for the existence or operation of any given regime. This fact un¬
doubtedly accounts for certain methodological problems that arise in
efforts to study international regimes systematically. But the recognition
of this attribute is a prerequisite for the achievement of analytic success.
In closing this chapter, let me lay out an agenda of questions that
require consideration in the analysis of any international regime:
1. Institutional character. What are the principal rights, rules, and social choice
procedures of the regime? How do they structure the behavior of individ¬
ual actors to produce a stream of collective outcomes?
2. Jurisdictional boundaries. What is the coverage of the regime in terms of
functional scope, areal domain, and membership? Is this coverage appro¬
priate under the prevailing conditions?
3. Conditions for operation. What conditions are necessary for the regime to
work at all? Under what conditions will the operation of the regime yield
particularly desirable results (for example, economic efficiency, distribu¬
tive justice, ecological balance)?
4. Consequences of operation. What sorts of outcomes (either individual or col¬
lective) can the regime be expected to produce? What are the appropriate
criteria for evaluating these outcomes?
5. Regime dynamics. How did the regime come into existence, and what is the
51. Bart S. Fisher, “Enforcing Export Quota Agreements: The Case of Coffee,” Har¬
vard International Law Journal 12 (1971), 401—435.
52. It is not necessary to subscribe to Marxian precepts to realize that domestic as well as
international regimes are sometimes influenced greatly by pressures from actors who are,
in principle, subject to regulation under the terms of these regimes. This is, in fact, the
central insight of the “capture” theory of regulation.
29
likelihood that it will experience major changes in the foreseeable future?

Does the regime include transformation rules that are likely to be effective?
Adherence to such an agenda should produce a growing body of com¬

parative studies dealing with international regimes. Over time, these
studies will improve our ability to construct powerful generalizations
about this fundamental, yet still poorly understood, international phe¬
nomenon.
3<>
Chapter Two
Patterns of International Cooperation:

Institutions and Organizations
Students of international relations, like most other social scientists,

regularly use the terms institution and organization interchangeably. Yet
this practice gives rise to serious problems. Not only does it sow confu¬
sion by conflating two distinct phenomena, but it also forecloses any
possibility of analyzing the complex and interesting relationships be¬
tween institutions and organizations.1 This chapter sets out to remedy
this situation, with particular reference to the study of international
regimes.2 It begins with a discussion of the distinction between interna¬
tional institutions and international organizations. It then explores sys¬
tematically the linkages between institutions and organizations, analyz¬
ing roles organizations play in the administration and maintenance of
institutions as well as opportunities for organizations to contribute to
regime formation or the creation of institutions. In keeping with the
general plan of this book, the chapter makes extensive use of examples
pertaining to international resource and environmental regimes.3 But
the basic arguments are generic; they apply to the entire domain of
international relations.
1. For other statements regarding the importance of distinguishing between institu¬

tions and organizations see John Gerard Ruggie, “International Responses to Technol¬
ogy: Concepts and Trends,” International Organization 29 (1975), 557-583, and Friedrich
Kratochwil and John Gerard Ruggie, “International Organization: A State of the Art or an
Art of the State,” International Organization 40 (1986), 753—775.
2. To obtain a clear sense of the state of the regimes literature consult Stephen D.
Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); Oran R.
Young, “International Regimes: Toward a New Theory of Institutions,” World Politics 34
(1986), 104-122; and Robert O. Keohane, “The Study of International Regimes and the
Classical Tradition in International Relations,” unpublished paper, Cambridge, Mass.,
June 1986.
3. A helpful reference work in this area is Lynton Keith Caldwell, International En¬
vironmental Policy: Emergence and Dimensions (Durham: Duke University Press, 1984).
Institutions and Organizations
Institutions are social practices consisting of easily recognized roles

coupled with clusters of rules or conventions governing relations among
the occupants of these roles. The rules that link institutionalized roles
and, therefore, form the superstructure of institutions ordinarily en¬
compass sets of rights or entitlements (for example, voting rights or
property rights) as well as sets of behavioral prescriptions (for example,
rules governing eligibility to vote or the transfer of property from one
owner to another). Electoral systems are institutions in which candidates
for office interact with voters according to explicit rules specifying when
elections will take place, who may become a candidate, who is eligible to
vote, and what it takes to win election.4 Markets are institutions in which
buyers and sellers interact with one another on the basis of well-defined
rules pertaining to various aspects of exchange relationships, such as the
nature of contracts, permissible forms of advertising, and liability ar¬
rangements.5 Similarly, structures of property rights are institutions in
which owners and nonowners interact in terms of clear-cut rights (for
example, the use and exclusion rights of owners) and rules (for example,
zoning restrictions, prohibitions on the use of property to harm others,
and provisions relating to trespass).6 In every case, the existence of an
institution sets up a network or pattern of behavioral relationships that
lends order or predictability to human affairs.7
Organizations, by contrast, are material entities possessing physical
locations (or seats), offices, personnel, equipment, and budgets. Equally
important, organizations generally possess legal personality in the sense
that they are authorized to enter into contracts, own property, sue and
be sued, and so forth. In political terms, we often focus on governmental
agencies, bureaux, or commissions in thinking about organizations.
Thus, the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the Na¬
tional Park Service, the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council,
and the Alaska Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission are all organi¬
zations. But there are of course numerous organizations in the private
sector as well: the American Medical Association, the American Bar
4. Duncan Black, The Theory of Committees and Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni¬
versity Press, 1958), and Douglas W. Rae, The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1971).
5. Robert Haveman and Kenyon A. Knopf, The Market System, 3d ed. (Santa Barbara:
Wiley, 1978).
6. A. Irving Hallowell, “ The Nature and Function of Property as a Social Institution,”
journal of Legal and Political Sociology 1 (1943), 115—138.
7- Note that this tells us nothing about the degree to which the consequences that
inst itutions produce are just, fair, or otherwise desirable.
52
Patterns of International Cooperation
Association, the National Petroleum Council, the National Rifle Associa¬

tion, the National Wildlife Federation.
International society is well-stocked both with institutions and with
organizations. The states system itself is an elaborate institution govern¬
ing not only interactions among states but also the activities of individ¬
uals and other juridical persons (for example, corporations) who are
treated as nationals of states under this system.8 So is the emerging
public order of the oceans articulated initially in the Geneva Conven¬
tions of 1958 and recast in the Law of the Sea Convention of 1982.9
Similarly, the international monetary system is an institution, albeit one
that is nested within the broader international economic order and that
has been undergoing dramatic changes in recent decades.10 Even war is
a social institution, a fact that undoubtedly contributes to the difficulty
of eliminating organized violence from human affairs.11
The United Nations, on the other hand, is an organization. So also are
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organization of American
States, and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Sim¬
ilarly, there are now several thousand international nongovernmental
organizations, ranging from commercial agencies such as the Interna¬
tional Air Transport Association through humanitarian organizations
such as Amnesty International, religious organizations such as the
World Council of Churches, environmental organizations such as the
World Wildlife Fund, scientific organizations such as the International
Council of Scientific Unions, and organizations representing the con¬
cerns of indigenous peoples such as the World Council of Indigenous
Peoples.12
To sharpen and enrich this distinction between institutions and orga¬
nizations, I shall describe a few illustrative cases in greater detail.
8. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977). For an account of the operation of the states system
with respect to natural resources see Richard B. Bilder, “International Law and Natural
Resources Policies,” Natural Resources Journal 20 (1980), 451-486.
9. For an institutional perspective on the public order of the oceans consult Myres S.
McDougal and William T. Burke, The Public Order of the Oceans (New Haven: Yale Univer¬
sity Press, 1962).
10. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in
Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).
11. Hedley Bull, “War and International Order,” in Alan James, ed., The Bases of
International Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 116—132; Quincy Wright, A
Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942); and Michael Howard, War in
European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).
12. For a more general account of the role of organizations in international society see
Harold K. Jacobson, Networks of Interdependence: International Organizations and the Global
Political System (New York: Knopf, 1979).
35
The regime for the Svalbard Archipelago was established under the
terms of the treaty of 9 February 1920 relating to Spitsbergen.13 The
archipelago is a collection of islands located some 600 miles northwest of
the north coast of Norway and covering 62,400 square kilometers (about
the size of Belgium and the Netherlands combined). The treaty, which
now has forty signatories including both the United States and the
Soviet Union, originated in the larger settlement of issues at the end of
World War I. In essence, the regime articulated in the treaty of 1920,
which entered into force in 1925, couples a recognition of Norwegian
sovereignty over the archipelago with a series of commitments on the
part of Norway to respect all previously established rights in the area, to
allow nationals of all the signatories equal access to exploit the natural
resources of the archipelago, and to maintain the archipelago in a
demilitarized state. Legally, therefore, the Svalbard Archipelago is a
part of Norway. But the Norwegian government does not have the
authority to exclude others from using its resources including both
minerals and fish, and Norway has an international obligation to pre¬
vent the use of it for warlike purposes.
The Spitsbergen treaty does not establish a specialized organization to
administer the Svalbard regime. Rather, the government of Norway
handles all administrative functions for the area. As 0streng says,
“Svalbard is administered by a Governor, who combines the functions of
district judge and revenue officer.”14 Similarly, “the Commissioner of
Mines is responsible for ensuring the observance of the Mining Code,
which applies to all nationalities in Svalbard.”15 There have been dis¬
agreements from time to time regarding the application of Norwegian
regulations to the Russian mining operations located at Barentsburg
and Pyramiden as well as the rules that would govern efforts to extract
natural resources from the continental shelves surrounding Svalbard.
But no one has proposed the creation of a separate organization for the
administration of the regime.
As a second example, consider the regime for renewable resources
set forth in the provisions of the convention of 11 September 1980 on
the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (the Southern
Ocean convention).16 This convention, intended to complement the
Antarctic Treaty of 1959, now includes sixteen Contracting Parties and
13. For a general account see Willy 0streng, Politics in High Latitudes: The Svalbard
Archipelago (London: C. Hurst, 1977).
14. Ibid., 3.
15. Ibid.
16. James N. Barnes, “The Emerging Antarctic Living Resources Convention,” Proceed¬
ings of the American Society of International Law, 1979, 272—292.
34
covers the marine environment located between Antarctica proper and

the Antarctic Convergence. It lays out a restricted common-property
regime designed to ensure conservation (defined to include rational use)
of marine living resources. The Contracting Parties agree to engage in
joint decision making on the harvest of marine life as well as the pro¬
mulgation of regulations governing harvesting activities (for example,
the designation of protected species, size limits, open and closed seasons,
and gear restrictions). Additionally, the parties commit themselves to
taking an ecosystems approach in that they agree to maintain ecological
relationships between harvested and other populations and to prevent
changes in the marine ecosystems of the area that are not reversible over
two or three decades.
To administer this regime, the convention, which entered into force
in 1982, establishes an organizational structure composed of a Commis¬
sion for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (Articles
7-13), a Scientific Committee for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine
Living Resources (Articles 14-17), and a secretariat headed by an execu¬
tive secretary (Articles 18-19). The seat of the organization is at Hobart,
Tasmania. Article 9 grants the commission extensive authority to make
decisions to fulfill the objectives of the regime, and Articles 17 and 19 set
forth specific provisions for personnel and a budget. The convention
states explicitly (Article 8) that the commission will have both legal
personality and the “legal capacity necessary to perform its functions
and achieve the purposes of this Convention.” Additionally, Article 23
calls on the organization created under the terms of the convention to
cooperate with a number of other organizations, including the Antarctic
Treaty Consultative Meetings, the United Nations Food and Agricul¬
ture Organization, and such other intergovernmental and nongovern¬
mental organizations as may prove helpful to its operations.
Another pattern emerges from a consideration of the regime for
deep-seabed mining articulated in Part XI of the 1982 Convention on
the Law of the Sea.17 This regime rests on the principle that the deep
seabed (called the Area) and its resources are the common heritage of
mankind (Article 136). No state is permitted to claim sovereignty or to
assert exclusive management authority over the Area. Nor is any state or
other juridical person (for example, a corporation) allowed to assert
private-property rights in the deep seabed or its resources. Instead, the
convention establishes a common-property regime. But participants
17. For relevant background see the papers in parts 3, 4, and 5 of Bernard H. Oxman,
David D. Caron, and Charles L. O. Buderi, eds., Law of the Sea: U.S. Policy Dilemma (San
Francisco: ICS Press, 1983).
35
cannot use the deep seabed on an open-to-entry basis as in the case of

the traditional common-property regime for the high seas. On the
contrary, they must abide by a highly restricted common-property re¬
gime entailing a complex framework of rules governing the terms of
entry, the allocation of tracts, environmental regulations, technology
transfer, and the distribution of benefits from mining (Sections 2 and 3
of Part XI).
The convention, which has not yet entered into force, provides for a
comparatively elaborate organizational structure to administer the re¬
gime. Known collectively as the International Seabed Authority, the
organization is made up of an assembly, a council, a secretariat, and an
Enterprise, which may engage in actual mining operations under cer¬
tain conditions. The seat of the Authority will be Kingston, Jamaica. The
Authority is charged with responsibility not only for administering a
complex of rules governing the mining activities of member states and
corporations but also for overseeing the provisions of the regime re¬
garding technology transfer and the distribution of benefits from deep-
seabed mining. It may even function as an operating authority in its own
right by activating the provisions of the regime pertaining to the Enter¬
prise. The Authority will have the power to raise money from mining
carried out under its jurisdiction as well as to borrow funds to carry out
its operations. The Authority will have international legal personality; it
will also “enjoy immunity from legal process except to the extent that the
Authority expressly waives this immunity in a particular case” (Article
178). Given the character of the seabed regime as a highly restricted
common-property arrangement, the performance of the Authority will
be critical to the operation of the entire system.
With the distinction between institutions and organizations clearly
established, we are ready to turn to an analysis of the relationships
between the two. Some international regimes require organizations to
administer them; others do not. Whereas many international organiza¬
tions are explicitly linked to regimes, others are freestanding entities
functioning apart from, or in the absence of, operative regimes. To
think about these relationships in an orderly fashion, it will help to
construct a simple 2X2 matrix. As Figure 1 indicates, the matrix
identifies four distinct cases. Where regimes or institutional arrange¬
ments operate in the absence of organizations, I shall describe the result
as international anarchy. The addition of organizations transforms in¬
ternational anarchy into a condition of civil society. In cases where
organizations function independently of regimes, I shall speak of free¬
standing organizations. Finally, the absence of both institutions or re¬
gimes and organizations gives rise to a situation that I shall characterize
as an international state of nature.
36
Organization
Yes No
Civil International
Yes
Society Anarchy
Regime
Freestanding International
No
Organization State of Nature
Figure i. Matrix of institutions and organizations
Under what conditions can regimes perform satisfactorily in the ab¬

sence of organizations? Are there cases in which the formation of a
regime is sufficient to ensure that some organization will come into
existence? Do organizations assume fundamentally different roles in
connection with various types of international regime? Can freestanding
organizations play a leading part in regime formation at the interna¬
tional level? Does a true state of nature prevail in many sectors of
international society? What are the consequences when it does? These
are the questions that any analysis of the linkages between international
institutions or regimes and international organizations must address.
International Anarchy
Anarchy, as its proponents regularly point out, is not a condition of

disorder or chaos. Rather, it is a social state featuring institutions or
regimes that operate in the absence of central organizations to adminis¬
ter them.18
Institutional arrangements that eliminate the need for organizations
altogether or at least minimize the role of organizations have real attrac¬
tions. As philosophically inclined analysts often observe, the absence of
administrative agencies serves to protect the freedom of those par¬
ticipating in social practices.19 To be sure, it is erroneous to suppose that
individual participants will find themselves at liberty to do just as they
please in the absence of organizations or administrative agencies. We are
all familiar with the effects of socialization and social pressure as factors
militating against deviation from the dictates of social conventions.
What is more, the absence of organizations may protect negative free-
18. Daniel Guerin, Anarchism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970).
19. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
37
dom at some cost in terms of positive freedom.20 Nonetheless, it is

indisputable that eliminating organizations will protect individual par¬
ticipants from interference in their affairs on the part of central authori¬
ties seeking to impose some conception of the general will (like that
derived from the ideas of Rousseau and his intellectual heirs).
Additionally, anarchical arrangements facilitate efforts to sidestep a
range of problems that analysts now group under the rubric of nonmar¬
ket failures.21 Of course, organizations are costly to operate. In domestic
societies, for instance, governments often control the expenditure of
25-50 percent of the gross national product, a substantial portion of
which goes to cover the costs of administration in contrast to substantive
programs. Moreover, organizations frequently perform inefficiently,
wasting resources and engaging in redundant activities. They typically
give rise to the rigidities and stultifying effects associated with bureau¬
cratic behavior. The activities of organizations commonly generate un¬
foreseen and unintended consequences that actually impede progress
toward social goals. As a result, it is no longer acceptable to justify
organizations on the grounds that they may contribute to the achieve¬
ment of social goals and that they are likely to be harmless in any case.
On the contrary, it is appropriate to apply a benefit/cost test to the
performance of organizations and to resist the introduction of organiza¬
tions that fail to pass such a test.
Students of international relations generally describe international
society as anarchical.22 By contrast with domestic society, both the extent
and the authority of central organizations are sharply limited at the
international level. During much of the postwar era, commentators
pointed to this condition as a fundamental defect in international so¬
ciety. Many called for world government to eliminate war and to solve
other international problems.23 Even those of a more pragmatic bent
argued the case for a dramatic expansion in the role of specific interna¬
tional organizations. The United Nations, for example, arose in a social
environment dominated by such thinking. So did a wide variety of func¬
tionally specific organizations, like the International Monetary Fund
and the International Whaling Commission. Recently, however, a pro-
20. On the distinction between negative freedom or “freedom from” and positive
freedom or “freedom to,” see Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford Univer¬
sity Press, 1969).
21. See Charles Wolf, Jr., “A Theory of Nonmarket Failure: Framework for Implemen¬
tation AnalysisJournal of Law and Economics 22 (1979), 107—139.
22. Bull, The Anarchical Society.
23. For a well-known example see Grenville Clark and Louis B. Sohn, World Peace
through World lmu) (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958).
nounced mood of skepticism has set in regarding these prescriptions. As

the catalog of nonmarket failures grew, analysts began to express per¬
sistent doubts about the social value of organizations (or governments)
at many social levels. As a result, we are now witnessing a growth of
interest in international society as a source of relevant experience with
anarchical arrangements or regimes involving the minimum in the way
of administrative apparatus.24
Zonal arrangements constitute the preeminent category of anarchical
institutions in international society.25 These arrangements feature geo¬
graphically or areally delimited zones within which individual members
(usually states) exercise jurisdiction or exclusive management authority.
There is no need for central administrative agencies in connection with
zonal arrangements. In their zones, individual states make and enforce
their own rules without consulting others or seeking their consent.
Outsiders must conform to these rules or simply refrain from operating
in the zones of others. Some recent developments suggest an erosion of
the dominance of zonal arrangements in international society. Most
states now acknowledge international obligations regarding matters
such as the maintenance of human rights, the protection of wildlife, and
the control of pollution. Similarly, influential states often seek to bring
pressure to bear on others to take certain actions within their own
jurisdictional domains (for example, to put an end to whaling operations
or curb the trade in endangered species). Yet the enclosure movement
that has arisen in connection with marine areas during the postwar era
makes it clear that zonal arrangements remain highly attractive in inter¬
national society. Coastal states now operate fishery-conservation zones,
pollution-control zones, and arrangements featuring exclusive manage¬
ment authority over the outer continental shelves.26 With the advent of
exclusive economic zones covering extensive marine areas, moreover,
zonal arrangements have gained a greatly enhanced role in interna¬
tional society.27
A second class of anarchical arrangements in international society
encompasses exchange systems. The essential element of such systems is
24. For a thoughtful account of the supply of international public goods in the absence
of central organizations see Charles P. Kindleberger, “International Public Goods without
International Government,” American Economic Review 76 (1986), 1 — 13.
25. For a discussion of zonal arrangements with particular reference to natural re¬
sources see Oran R. Young, Resource Management at the International Level (London and
New York: Pinter and Nichols, 1977), especially chap. 5.
26. For an account that looks upon the enclosure movement with favor see Ross D.
Eckert, The Enclosure of Ocean Resources (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1979).
27. On the events culminating in the advent of EEZs consult Ann L. Hollick, U.S.
Foreign Policy and the Law of the Sea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
39
the assignment of transferable property rights in valued goods to indi¬

vidual members of international society together with a reliance on the
operation of market mechanisms to organize interactions among the
holders of these rights. So long as the resultant markets do not suffer
from severe market failures, there is no need to set up extensive organi¬
zations to administer institutional arrangements of this sort. Of course,
exchange systems are widespread with respect to conventional private
goods. In fact, the role of such systems has tended to expand in interna¬
tional society during the course of the twentieth century as a conse¬
quence of the reduction of trade barriers and the growth of competitive
markets at the international level.28 Today, there is serious interest in
expanding the role of such systems even further by creating property
rights or limited property interests in additional goods. Many commen¬
tators have suggested the establishment of property rights in the man¬
ganese nodules of the deep seabed,29 and there are those who espouse
the creation of transferable property rights in broadcast frequencies as a
method of managing the use of the electromagnetic spectrum.30
A third class of anarchical arrangements features decentralized coor¬
dination. Under such arrangements, the members of international so¬
ciety agree to common rules governing well-defined activities with the
understanding that individual members will take responsibility for im¬
plementing these rules within their own jurisdictions or administrative
zones. The arrangements established under the provisions of the 1971
Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Wa¬
terfowl Habitat (the Ramsar convention) and the 1973 Agreement on
the Conservation of Polar Bears exemplify this option. With the advent
of exclusive economic zones for marine areas, much the same can be
said of the pollution-control regimes for the Mediterranean Sea, the
Persian Gulf, or the Caribbean area established under the auspices of
the Regional Seas Programme of the United Nations Environment Pro¬
gramme (UNEP).31 Going a step further, the members of international
society sometimes set up self-help arrangements that do not require
central organizations. Such practices involve mutually agreed upon
rules for activities that cut across zonal boundaries (for example, com-
28. For relevant background see Charles Lipson, “The Transformation of Trade: The
Sources and Effects of Regime Change,” in Krasner, International Regimes, 233—271.
29. Eckert, Enclosure of Ocean Resources, chap. 8.
30. For further discussion of such ideas consult Francis T. Christy, Jr., “Property Rights
in the World Ocean,” Natural Resources Journal 15 (1975), 695-712, and Seyom Brown,
Nina W. Cornell, Larry L. Fabian, and Edith Brown Weiss, Regimes for the Ocean, Outer
Space, and Weather (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1977).
31. Caldwell, International Environmental Policy, chap. 5.
40
mercial shipping) or take place in some international commons (for

example, the oceans, the atmosphere, outer space, Antarctica) in con¬
trast to areas under the jurisdiction of individual states. But they feature
self-help systems in that individual members assume responsibility for
implementing the mutually agreed upon rules (usually with respect to
their own nationals). The traditional regime for the high seas exem¬
plifies this option. Emerging arrangements regarding the use of outer
space follow a similar pattern. The regime for Antarctica, established
under the Antarctic Treaty of 1959, offers an interesting variant on this
pattern because it permits each of the Consultative Parties to monitor
the activities of the others in Antarctica to ensure that these activities are
in compliance with the provisions of the regime.32
A final method of avoiding central organizations is to agree on com¬
mon rules for an area or activity but then to delegate authority for the
administration of the regime to an individual member or even to an
outside entity. The regime for Svalbard, which relies on Norway for
administration, is a case in point. Even more intriguing arrangements
are now in place in the cases of the regimes set up under the 1973
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild
Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the 1979 Convention on the Conservation
of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (the Bonn convention).33 These
conventions delegate responsibility for the administration of the re¬
gimes to UNEP or, even more specifically, to the executive director of
UNEP. In the case of CITES, the executive director of UNEP has gone a
step further and passed administrative responsibility on to the Interna¬
tional Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources
(IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund.34 The result is a full-fledged
international regime administered by nongovernmental organizations
that are freestanding and that engage in numerous other activities in
addition to their efforts on behalf of the CITES regime.
Of course, there are sharp limitations on what can be achieved
through the operation of anarchical institutions. Above all, anarchy
necessitates the selection of certain types of regimes over others. It is
easy enough, for example, to set up an open-to-entry common-property
regime on an anarchical basis. But restricted common-property ar¬
rangements, like the whaling regime or the deep-seabed mining regime,
32. Philip W. Quigg, A Pole Apart: The Emerging Issue of Antarctica (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1983).
33. Simon Lyster, International Wildlife Law (Cambridge: Grotius Publications), chaps.
12 and 13.
34. Caldwell, International Environmental Policy, 189—192.
41
typically require organizations to set quotas, decide on moratoriums,

promulgate regulations, control production levels, and so forth. Sim¬
ilarly, regimes that encompass provisions for redistributing wealth (for
example, the deep-seabed mining regime) will generally require organi¬
zations to collect revenues and to administer redistributive programs.35
Nonetheless, critics frequently exaggerate the limitations of anarchical
institutions. Ingenuity is sometimes sufficient to solve collective-action
problems without resorting to the creation of organizations or admin¬
istrative agencies. A brief account of some of the putative limits on
anarchy in international society will serve to clarify this proposition.
A wide spectrum of international regimes rely on central organiza¬
tions to collect and analyze pertinent information. The fur-seal regime,
the whaling regime, the regime for Antarctic living resources, and the
international seabed regime, for example, all feature committees or
commissions charged with data collection and analysis. But a little reflec¬
tion will suffice to demonstrate that alternative arrangements can work
perfectly well in specific cases. Freestanding organizations like the Inter¬
national Bureau for Whaling Statistics (located in Sandefjord, Norway)
in connection with commercial whaling or the IUCN in connection with
endangered species36 play a key role in data collection and analysis for
some social practices. Private organizations like the Stockholm Interna¬
tional Peace Research Institute and the International Institute of Strate¬
gic Studies have come to play significant roles as sources of information
pertaining to arms-control regimes. In some cases, the governments of
individual members can do a better job of data collection and analysis
than international organizations can realistically hope to do. It is hard to
imagine the governments of members states relying on international
organizations, for example, to verify compliance with the terms of arms-
control arrangements, such as those established under the Partial Nu¬
clear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 or the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of
1968.37
Collective decision making is another functional requirement that
often serves to justify the transition from anarchy to civil society. Yet it is
perfectly possible to arrive at collective choices in the absence of central
35. For a more general discussion of principles of equitable distribution of the world's
wealth and natural resources see Oscar Schachter, Sharing the World’s Resources (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1977).
36. The Red Data Book, published and periodically updated by the IUCN, has acquired
considerable influence in international efforts to protect endangered species.
37. Abram Chayes, “An Enquiry into the Workings of Arms Control Agreements,”
Harvard Law Review 85 (1972), 905—969.
42
authorities. Of course, exchange systems based on relatively unre¬

stricted structures of private-property rights exemplify this proposition.
But open-to-entry common-property systems in which allocation is ac¬
complished through the operation of the principle of first come, first
served (like the traditional regime for the marine fisheries) also yield
collective choices in the absence of organizations. The point to stress in
this connection, therefore, is that the need to establish organizations is a
function of the type of institutional arrangements created rather than of
the need for collective decision making per se. The regime for deep-
seabed mining articulated in the provisions of the 1982 Law of the Sea
Convention will clearly require an organization resembling the pro¬
posed International Seabed Authority. Still, it would have been possible
to create a regime for deep-seabed mining based on transferable prop¬
erty rights requiring no administrative apparatus beyond some minimal
international registry for mining claims.38
Many observers treat compliance as a critical problem requiring cen¬
tral organization. In fact, they attribute numerous international prob¬
lems to the absence of central authorities capable of monitoring com¬
pliance and enforcing the rules of institutional arrangements. But it is
easy to exaggerate this limitation of anarchy as well.39 No institution can
operate effectively unless the great majority of those subject to its rights
and rules comply with them voluntarily (or at least in the absence of
overt coercion) most of the time. The fact that international society is
well-stocked with viable regimes testifies to the pervasiveness of volun¬
tary compliance, even at the international level. Beyond this, however,
decentralized compliance mechanisms are often effective in interna¬
tional society. It is possible to bring pressure to bear on some violators
(for example, those who fail to comply with international pollution
standards) in the municipal courts of member states. Individual mem¬
bers can threaten to impose sanctions on others who violate the provi¬
sions of international regimes. This is what the United States has done in
the cases of the whaling moratorium and the trade in elephant ivory. In
addition, the prospect that others will withdraw from a regime, initating
38. Eckert, Enclosure of Ocean Resources, chap. 8.

39. For general discussions of compliance at the international level consult Oran R.
Young, Compliance and Public Authority: A Theory with International Applications (Baltimore:
John Hopkins University Press, 1979), and Roger Fisher, Improving Compliance with Inter¬
national Law (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981). For an account that
focuses on resource regimes see William T. Burke, Richard Legatski, and William W.
Woodhead, National and International Law Enforcement in the Ocean (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1975).
43
a process in which a complex social practice unravels, is often sufficient

to deter individual members from violating the terms of international
regimes. It seems clear, for example, that the danger of touching off
destructive trade wars is a major consideration in the behavior of indi¬
vidual states regarding compliance with the terms of the international-
trade regime.
Somewhat similar comments are in order with respect to the problem
of dispute resolution. While it is convenient to be able to turn to a well-
established organization to handle conflicts among participants in a
social practice, it is hardly a necessity. Disputants can always resolve their
differences through direct negotiation, with or without the assistance of
third parties. They can resort to ad hoc arbitral tribunals established for
the purpose of settling specific disputes (for example, the Bering Sea
arbitration regarding fur seals in the 1890s). Or they can turn to estab¬
lished organizations, like the International Court of Justice, that are
freestanding in the sense that they are independent of the institutional
arrangement in question. The role of the Court in resolving the North
Sea maritime boundary issue in the 1960s and the Gulf of Maine contro¬
versy between Canada and the United States in the 1980s exemplifies
this option. What is more, organizations set up to resolve disputes
arising from the operation of specific regimes are frequently ignored.
Those desiring to settle their differences can generally find a way to do
so, whereas those unwilling to settle are not likely to accept the jurisdic¬
tion of a court or specialized tribunal, such as the proposed Seabed
Chamber of the new regime for deep-seabed mining.
Finally, critics of anarchical arrangements frequently point out that
such practices are slow to adjust to rapidly changing circumstances. But
it is far from clear that the introduction of central organizations will
solve this problem. Powerful interest groups that benefit from existing
institutional arrangements often dominate the actions of organizations.
Additionally, organizations are notorious for creating bureaucratic pro¬
cedures that impede change regardless of shifting circumstances in the
external environment. Organizations may actually become a hindrance
to adjustment rather than a vehicle for adapting institutional arrange¬
ments to changing circumstances. This observation suggests that there is
much to be said for arrangements located in the transition zone between
anarchy and civil society, such as the regime for Antarctica under which
the full members hold biennial Consultative Meetings or the whaling
regime under which the signatories hold an annual meeting. These
arrangements allow for responses to changing circumstances without
giving rise to the rigidities of bureaucratized organizations.
44
Civil Society
Despite the prominent place of anarchical arrangements in interna¬

tional society, many international regimes do encompass central organi¬
zations. The Commission for the Rhine River, established in the early
nineteenth century, administers the evolving international regime for
the Rhine River Basin. The International Whaling Commission has
come to play an increasingly significant role both in setting quotas and in
making decisions on moratoriums under the terms of the international
regime for whaling. The International Pacific Halibut Commission, set
up to administer the North Pacific halibut regime, has acquired consid¬
erable influence because it has its own staff and research capability. The
Helsinki Commission administers the regime for the Baltic created un¬
der the provisions of the Convention on the Protection of the Marine
Environment of the Baltic Sea Area of 1974. And it would be easy to
augment this list with numerous related examples. If anything, the role
of organizations linked to institutional arrangements at the interna¬
tional level has grown during the recent past.
What accounts for the importance of organizations even in the anar¬
chical environment of international society? All those who analyze nego¬
tiations regarding the establishment of international regimes will be
familiar with the issue of whether to fold organizations into institutional
arrangements as an element in the bargaining process. In some in¬
stances, incentives to establish central organizations spring from the
substantive nature of the problems under consideration. For instance,
some observers reason that there will be a need for organizations to
administer regimes dealing with international commons (for example,
oceans or outer space) or transboundary problems (for example, flow
resources such as water or migratory resources such as fish or birds).40
Yet it is easy to make too much of this line of reasoning. The traditional
regime for the high seas was a self-help arrangement under which
individual states applied common rules to their own nationals. The
current regime for Antarctica requires remarkably little in the way of
central organizations. Most of the migratory-bird regimes establish sys¬
tems of decentralized coordination under which individual parties are
40. For a range of perspectives on such matters consult Per Magnus Wijkman, “Manag¬
ing the Global Commons,” International Organization 36 (1982), 511—536; Marvin S. So-
roos, “The Commons in the Sky: The Radio Spectrum and Geosynchronous Orbit as
Issues in Global Policy,” International Organization 36 (1982), 665—677; and the special
issue on “Managing International Commons,” ofJournal of International Affairs 31 (Spring-
Summer 1977).
45
responsible for implementing common rules within their own jurisdic¬

tions.
Still, there are problems that do call for central organizations. When
the basic objective is to devise an institutionalized procedure for reach¬
ing agreement on the designation of sites for inclusion in protected
categories, for example, it is difficult to avoid the creation of a commis¬
sion or committee capable of reviewing proposals and making choices.
Consider in this connection the role of the World Heritage Committee
set up under the terms of the 1972 Convention concerning the Protec¬
tion of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (the World Heritage
Convention) to select sites for inclusion on a World Heritage List.41
Similarly, when the problem revolves around the development of cost¬
sharing arrangements for the provision of some public good, such as
peacekeeping or coordinated research, the case for central organiza¬
tions will be strong.42 In such instances, it is hard to devise any alterna¬
tive to central organizations to collect contributions and to apply them to
the supply of the relevant public goods.43
A more compelling argument centers on the proposition that incen¬
tives to create organizations in conjunction with international regimes
flow from the character of the regimes under consideration. If the
participants elect to create an open-to-entry common-property regime,
for example, they will not experience strong incentives to establish a
central organization. Much the same is true of regimes featuring rela¬
tively unrestricted private-property systems coupled with competitive
markets. Restricted common-property systems, by contrast, almost al¬
ways require some sort of organization. At a minimum, there will be a
need for an organization to establish overall limits on efforts or certain
types of behavior (for example, total allowable catches in fisheries, catch
quotas for whales, or effluent standards for pollution regimes). Organi¬
zations become even more important in conjunction with regimes in¬
tended to control entry or regulate the activities of individual resource
users. Consider the role of the Commission for the Conservation of
Antarctic Marine Living Resources in this light. When regimes include
additional restrictions, such as the transfer of technology under complex
rules, the regulation of production levels to control markets, the re-
41. See Lyster, International Wildlife Law, chap. 11.

42. Consider the emerging role of the United Nations University as an organization
dedicated to promoting the public good of coordinated research.
43. Even here, situations fulfilling the conditions of Olsonian privileged groups can
constitute exceptions. See Mancur Olson, Jr., The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1965).
46
distribution of benefits derived from the exploitation of resources, or

the creation of international operating authorities to exploit resources
directly, the need for central organizations naturally grows. This is why
the organizational structure articulated under the provisions of the
regime for the deep seabed is so extensive and elaborate. As I have
already suggested, however, there is nothing inevitable about these
arrangements. It would have been possible to set up a regime for the
deep seabed requiring no central organization, other than some simple
registry for the filing of claims. The need for the elaborate organiza¬
tional structure incorporated into the provisions for the International
Seabed Authority is a function of the character of the regime articulated
in the bargaining process in the Law of the Sea Conference.
There are also circumstances in which incentives to set up organiza¬
tions in conjunction with international regimes stem from the dynamics
of the bargaining process itself. Consider the problem of data collection
and analysis. Most international regimes require the collection and anal¬
ysis of data to support decisions on the use of resources (for example, the
designation of endangered species), to monitor the compliance of par¬
ticipants, and so forth. As I argued in the preceding section, however,
there are often ways to solve such problems that do not require the
creation of central organizations. Yet it is easy to understand how the
establishment of central organizations to handle the tasks of data collec¬
tion and analysis can acquire the character of a salient or prominent
solution from the perspective of those bargaining over the terms of an
international regime.44 Such organizations possess an aura of impar¬
tiality and credibility, a factor of considerable importance in the compet¬
itive/cooperative atmosphere of a bargaining process. What is more,
organizations of this type can fill the need for tangible symbols of the
success of efforts to create negotiated regimes without placing severe re¬
strictions on the freedom of action of the participants. There is nothing
unusual, therefore, about situations in which the establishment of orga¬
nizations in conjunction with institutional arrangements owes more to
the character of the bargaining process itself than to the character of the
regimes actually created.
Finally, it is worth noting the role of intellectual fashions as determi¬
nants of the choices of those striving to create international regimes.
Until recently, for example, there was a distinct tendency to focus on
44. On the concept of salient or prominent solutions in connection with bargaining

processes see Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1960).
47
market failures and to envision roles for organizations in correcting for

such failures.45 Most of the organizations (generally known as councils)
established under the terms of the international regimes for commodi¬
ties, such as coffee, sugar, rubber, and tin, exemplify this perspective. In
a sense, the negotiation of the terms of the proposed International
Seabed Authority during the 1970s and early 1980s represented a kind
of culmination of this trend. Today, by contrast, it has become fashion¬
able to focus on nonmarket failures, which point to a wide range of
problems afflicting governments at the domestic level and organiza¬
tions, such as the United Nations or numerous functionally specific
agencies, at the international level.46 The implication of this line of
reasoning is that we should be cautious about the creation of new
organizations, relying as much as possible on institutional arrangements
capable of coping with collective-action problems in the absence of
organizations. Although both market failures and nonmarket failures
are real enough, there is no clear-cut procedure for calculating the
relative weight of these problems in specific situations. As a result, those
negotiating the terms of specific institutional arrangements are left
either to fall back on ideological preferences or to respond to the winds
of intellectual fashion regarding the relative merits of establishing cen¬
tral organizations in creating institutional arrangements. This observa¬
tion suggests that we should not be surprised by a rising tide of antipathy
to central organizations in conjunction with international regimes. The
problems afflicting current efforts to activate the proposed Interna¬
tional Seabed Authority undoubtedly reflect, at least in part, this de¬
velopment. But it would be a mistake to suppose that this antipathy will
last indefinitely. On the contrary, it is safe to anticipate that there will
be a resurgence of interest in roles for central organizations in due
course.47
By contrast, dominant actors (or hegemons) seeking to forge the links
of imposed regimes may seem, at first, to have little incentive to establish
central organizations in connection with the institutional arrangements
they promote.48 A cursory examination of the long history of colonial
45. For a characteristic formulation see Robert H. Haveman, The Economics of the Public
Sector, 2d ed. (Santa Barbara: Wiley, 1976), especially pt. 2.
46. Wolf, “A Theory of Nonmarket Failure.” For an intriguing argument that focuses
on the growing rigidities of aging organizations see Mancur Olson, Jr., The Rise and Decline
of Nations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982).
47. See also the elegant argument presented in Albert Hirschman, Shifting Involvements:
Private Interest and Public Action (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).
48. On the concept of hegemony consult Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Discord
and Collaboration in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984), chap. 3. For an account that explicitly adopts the perspective of the hegemon see
4$
regimes offers some support for this point of view.49 A major theme of
colonial history, after all, is the preference of imperial powers for net¬
works of bilateral relations in which individual colonies interact on a
superordinate/subordinate basis with imperial powers but have little
opportunity to interact with each other. The essential attraction of such
arrangements is that they facilitate the efforts of imperial powers to
maintain control by isolating colonial leaders and minimizing oppor¬
tunities for colonies to band together in opposition to the policies of
imperial states. Naturally enough, such networks of bilateral relations
do not generate significant roles for central organizations. Yet it is worth
noting that even colonial regimes sometimes give rise to central organi¬
zations. Perhaps the classic example, though certainly not the only case
in point, is the British Commonwealth of Nations.50 The Common¬
wealth evolved after World War I as a means of holding together a
colonial regime in the face of progressive erosion in the physical and
moral dominance of Great Britain as an imperial state. Operating orga¬
nizationally through the Commonwealth Secretariat, it served to co-opt
numerous leaders of individual colonies into the colonial order by giving
them stakes in the perpetuation of the system. The struggles of many
Indian leaders in the 1940s over participation in the Commonwealth as
well as the continuing ties of states like Canada and New Zealand to the
Commonwealth attest to the remarkable effectiveness of this arrange¬
ment and the organization to which it gave rise.
When we turn to other sorts of imposed regimes, the attractions of
central organizations loom even larger. In some cases, organizations
appeal to hegemons seeking to distract attention from their dominant
positions and to engender widespread feelings of legitimacy regarding
the institutional arrangements they create. The IMF originated in this
sort of environment. The United States (or perhaps the United States in
consort with Great Britain) dominated the process of creating the post¬
war international monetary regime.51 Yet the United States chose to
deemphasize its hegemonic role in this context, a fact that made the
creation of an organization like the IMF appealing. An interesting varia¬
tion on this theme involves the establishment in 1948 of the Organiza-
Arthur A. Stein, “The Hegemon’s Dilemma: Great Britain, the United States, and the
International Economic Order,” International Organization 38 (1984), 355—386.
49. For an informative account of the imperial mentality see A. P. Thornton, The
Imperial Idea and Its Enemies (Garden City: Doubleday, 1968).
50. Hedley Bull, “What is the Commonwealth?” in International Political Communities
(Garden City: Doubleday, 1966), 457-468.
51. Richard N. Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy in Current Perspective (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1980).
49
tion for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in connection with

the European Relief Program (or Marshall Plan). Surely, the United
States played a preponderant role in launching the postwar regime of
economic cooperation in Western Europe, which, in turn, gave rise to
the Common Market. Realizing that it would not do to attempt to
supervise this arrangement too closely, however, the United States de¬
liberately promoted the creation of the OEEC as a condition for the
provision of economic aid to individual European states.
In other cases, organizations play more pragmatic roles in conjunc¬
tion with imposed regimes. A case in point is the Council for Mutual
Economic Assistance (CMEA) in Eastern Europe. The contemporary
regime in Eastern Europe, which originated with Soviet military occupa¬
tion at the close of World War II, has long since evolved into an arrange¬
ment under which the Soviet Union, in effect, obtains political alle¬
giance on the part of Eastern European states in exchange for economic
subsidies (for example, secure supplies of energy at lower than world
market prices).52 To be sure, this arrangement is backed by the implicit
threat of Soviet military intervention. But this does not diminish the
importance of the role played by the organizational structure of the
CMEA in making the regime work.53 Somewhat similar remarks are
probably in order regarding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), at least during the early years when the dominance of the
United States was indisputable. A major function of NATO has always
been to promote burden or cost sharing in an environment in which
there is a pronounced incentive for NATO members other than the
United States to treat NATO as a privileged group in which the United
States will continue to supply the public good of collective defense even
if they act as free riders.54
Since the creation of organizations always involves conscious plan¬
ning, it is hard to envision a role for organizations of any kind in
conjunction with spontaneous regimes. And the evidence suggests that
this expectation is a fair characterization of the spontaneous regimes
that have arisen in international society. Even so, a little discussion will
reveal at least a partial exception to this general proposition.
In his influential analysis of the evolution of cooperation, Axelrod ex¬
plores the processes through which spontaneous or, in Hayeks phrase,
52. Michael Marrese, “CMEA: Effective but Cumbersome Political Economy,” Intema-
tional Organization 40 (1986), 287-327.
53- Andrzej Korbonski, “COMECON: The Evolution of COMECON,” in International
Political Communities, 351—403.
54. See also Mancur Olson, Jr., and Richard Zeckhauser, “An Economic Theory of
Alliances,’’ Review of Economics and Statistics 48 (ig66), 266—279.
self-generating regimes are likely to emerge.55 In fact, he sets out

explicitly to investigate the conditions under which cooperation will
“emerge in a world of egoists without central authority,” and he presents
a convincing argument to the effect that the relevant conditions are not
farfetched.56 This line of reasoning undoubtedly helps us to compre¬
hend why it is a mistake to confuse many of the anarchical arrangements
prevailing in international society today with situations characterized by
disorder or chaos. In the process, it also reinforces the views of those
who cherish freedom and abhor the consequences of nonmarket failures
and who, therefore, are attracted to institutional arrangements that
circumvent the need for organizations altogether or, at least, minimize
the role of organizations.
Yet even regimes that arise spontaneously often evolve over time in
such a way that participants in the resultant social practices acquire
powerful incentives to establish organizations to protect these arrange¬
ments from destabilizing pressures. Open-to-entry common-property
regimes for the marine fisheries arose spontaneously and worked rea¬
sonably well prior to the development of modern technologies (for
example, the high-endurance stern trawler) for high-seas fishing. But
the advent of these technologies quickly led to radical instabilities and
pressures to reform the relevant regimes on a conscious basis.57 One
common response has been to add organizations to regimes of this sort
(for example, the International North Pacific Fisheries Commission, the
Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, the Inter-American Tropical
Tuna Commission) as part of a move to transform them from open-to-
entry into restricted common-property regimes.58 Similar observations
are in order regarding certain exchange systems in which competitive
markets emerged on a more or less spontaneous basis. Thus, the growing
instabilities of many commodities markets have led to the creation of
organizations concerned with sugar, coffee, rubber, and tin as part of
revised arrangements intended to manage the markets for these com¬
modities. The track record of these organizations has not been outstand¬
ing.59 And, of course, it is reasonable to conclude that the addition of
55. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984), and
Friedrich A. Hayek, The Political Order of a Free People, vol. 3 of Law, Legislation, and Liberty
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979).
56. Ibid., 3.
57. For a rich descriptive account of this process in the case of the North Atlantic
fisheries see William Warner, Distant Water (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983).
58. Charles B. Heck, “Collective Arrangements for Managing Ocean Fisheries,” Inter¬
national Organization 29 (1975), 711—743.
59. Vincent A. Mahler, “The Political Economy of North-South Commodity Bargain¬
ing: The Case of the International Sugar Agreement,” International Organization 38 (1984),
central organizations transforms these arrangements from spontaneous

regimes into negotiated regimes. But it is interesting to consider dy¬
namic developments of this sort, which stimulate participants to create
organizations even in conjunction with institutional arrangements that
originated as spontaneous regimes.
Freestanding Organizations
Initially, the idea of an organization operating in the absence of a

distinct relationship to an institutional arrangement seems anomalous.
It conjures up an image of an administrative apparatus with nothing to
administer. And there is little evidence of international organizations
operating without reference to the broad institutional arrangements
existent in international society, such as the states system or the interna¬
tional economic order. Yet organizations that are freestanding in the
sense that they are not intimately linked to specific regimes are plentiful
in international society, just as they are in domestic societies. A number
of the specialized agencies of the United Nations system, such as the
Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization,
and the World Meteorological Organization, are fundamentally free¬
standing organizations in these terms. So also are many organizations
not linked to larger organizational structures, such as the International
Council for the Exploration of the Sea (whose inaugural meeting took
place in 1902), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, and
the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restora¬
tion of Cultural Property.
Some freestanding organizations specialize in service activities. They
endeavor to provide well-defined services of value to various groups in
international society without becoming enmeshed in the larger contro¬
versies or conflicts that divide the members. The United Nations In¬
stitute for Training and Research conducts research on subjects of
interest to its members. The International Institute for Applied Systems
Analysis, created in 1972 by twelve national academies of science (in¬
cluding Eastern European as well as Western groups), seeks to bring
science to bear to promote international cooperation. The International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) coordinates the activities of a collec-
7°9~73G Robert H. Bates and Da-Hsiang Donald Lien, “On the Operations of the
International Coffee Agreement,” International Organization 39 (1985), 553—559; and
Mark W. Zacher, “Trade Gaps, Analytical Gaps: Regime Analysis and International Com¬
modity I rade Regulation,” International Organization 41 (1987), 173—202.
52
tion of more specific organizations that focus on individual scientific

disciplines. The Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR),
which has become a major player in coordinating the scientific research
programs of various countries active in Antarctica, is actually a commit¬
tee of ICSU and not an organization with any formal link to the interna¬
tional regime for Antarctica.60 The International Bureau for Whaling
Statistics, which performs a valuable service by assembling and dis¬
seminating information on whale harvests, is not formally a part of the
international whaling regime. The International Institute for Strategic
Studies compiles and disseminates unbiased information on the global
strategic balance and the military activities of individual states. As these
examples suggest, the collection of freestanding service organizations
active in international society today is not only large but also highly
varied in functional terms.
Other freestanding organizations are better understood as problem¬
solving agencies in that they seek to contribute to the amelioration of
divisive issues. Several agencies associated with the United Nations sys¬
tem, such as UNESCO and the Food and Agriculture Organization,
played significant parts in facilitating the international process of de¬
colonization in the postwar era. Other organizations, like the Interna¬
tional Peace Academy, have sought to augment international capabili¬
ties in the realm of conflict management and peacekeeping. Still others,
such as the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and
the United Nations Development Program, have become active in the
effort to devise successful strategies for economic development in the
less developed countries. Amnesty International, a nongovernmental
organization, strives to alleviate human rights violations in a wide range
of countries. Another nongovernmental organization, the World Coun¬
cil of Indigenous Peoples, focuses on the problems of aboriginal peoples
(known collectively as the Fourth World) locked into states they cannot
hope to control. In all these cases, freestanding organizations seek to
ameliorate well-defined problems rather than to assume any major role
in restructuring the institutional arrangements prevailing in interna¬
tional society.
By contrast, a third category of freestanding organizations encom¬
passes those that are overtly regime oriented in that one of their major
purposes is to contribute to the formation of new international institu¬
tions. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, for
60. On the role of SCAR see James H. Zumberge, “The Antarctic Treaty as a Scientific
Mechanism: The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and the Antarctic Treaty
System,” in Polar Research Board, Antarctic Treaty System: An Assessment (Washington, D.C.:
National Academy Press, 1986), 153—168.
53
instance, has become a major forum for those desiring to promote the
package of alterations in the prevailing international economic order
that is known collectively as the new international economic order. More
concretely, the United Nations Environment Programme, which was
created in the wake of the 1982 Stockholm Conference on the Human
Environment but which is not actually linked to an existing regime, has
played a remarkably effective role in promoting the development of
geographically defined regimes that focus on pollution control under
the terms of its Regional Seas Programme61 as well as in facilitating the
negotiation of a more general regime to protect stratospheric ozone.
The International Maritime Organization has provided an important
forum for the development of an evolving regime that deals with the
pollution of the sea from ships. This regime rests on an interlocking set
of international conventions that culminated in the provisions of the
1978 International Convention on the Prevention of Pollution from
Ships.62 Similar observations are in order regarding the role of the
International Atomic Energy Agency in encouraging the negotiation of
an international regime to cope with the problems associated with radi¬
oactive fallout. The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a non¬
governmental organization, has succeeded in playing a part both in
protecting the existing regime for Antarctica and in devising supple¬
mental regimes for marine living resources and minerals in the Antarc¬
tic region. Though it is true that regimes emerge spontaneously under
some conditions, conscious efforts to create institutional arrangements
are frequently protracted and difficult. As a result, freestanding organi¬
zations often become not only sources of innovative ideas for those
negotiating regimes but also pressure groups and even negotiating
forums in the lengthy processes involved in the creation of negotiated
regimes. In such cases, freestanding organizations constitute an advance
guard that endeavors to move international society toward the develop¬
ment of a richer texture of institutional arrangements.63
International State of Nature
We come, finally, to the condition I have labeled an international state

of nature. This condition encompasses any situation characterized by
61. Caldwell, International Environmental Policy, 129—142.

62. R. Michael M’Gonigle and Mark W. Zacher, Pollution, Politics, and International Law:
Tankers at Sea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), and Robin Churchill, “The
Role of IMCO in Combating Marine Pollution,” in Douglas J. Cusine and John P. Grant,
eds., The Impact of Marine Pollution (London: Groom Helm, 1980), 73-94.
63. Note also that organizations may play a rearguard role when they survive the
54
the absence of both institutions and organizations. In a state of nature,

individual actors are free to do as they please, without any pressure to
comply with institutionalized rules, seek the consent of others, or even
consider the consequences of their actions for others.
In one sense, there are no states of nature in contemporary interna¬
tional society.64 The states system establishes a comprehensive frame¬
work of rules or conventions applicable to the realm of terrestrial affairs.
The emerging orders for the oceans and space complement the states
system in the realm of nonterrestrial affairs. Yet there are certainly
many functionally specific areas of international relations not covered
by specialized international regimes and not a matter of concern for
international organizations. Antarctica, prior to the establishment of the
regime articulated in the 1959 treaty, exemplified this condition. There
is, today, no comprehensive regime or organization oriented to the
management of Arctic issues.65 Much the same can be said of many large
natural systems. The regime for outer space is rudimentary at best, and
no regime has arisen so far to structure the activities of the members of
international society affecting the global climate system.66 In this more
limited sense, it seems appropriate to speak of conditions approximating
an international state of nature.
In fact, such conditions are perfectly tolerable so long as levels of
human activity remain low and there is little interdependence among
parties active in a given area. To put it another way, institutional ar¬
rangements generally arise to lend order to human activities and, espe¬
cially, to regulate conflicts of interest arising in connection with human
endeavors. There was no need for a regime covering Antarctica before
states began to assert jurisdictional claims to the continent and to estab¬
lish research stations in the region. No one felt the absence of a regime
for the Arctic Basin so long as the region was of interest only to a handful
of explorers and scientists together with a small population of indige¬
nous peoples living in harmony with the natural environment. Similarly,
it would have made little sense to worry about a regime for outer space
or celestial bodies before technology advanced far enough to permit
human beings to engage in activities having significant impacts on these
areas. The same is true of the upper atmosphere and the global climate
system, now increasingly threatened by such problems as the depletion
regimes they were associated with to become, in effect, freestanding organizations. Some
of the regional fisheries organizations appear to be heading in this direction.
64. Bull, The Anarchical Society.
65. See the collection of essays on polar politics published in International Journal 39
(Autumn 1984).
66. Edith Brown Weiss, “International Responses to Weather Modification,” Interna¬
tional Organization 29 (1975), 805—826, and Brown et al., Regimes for the Ocean.
55
of stratospheric ozone and the greenhouse effect. As these examples

also suggest, however, the expansion of human capabilities gives rise to
an ever-increasing need for institutional arrangements at the interna¬
tional level as well as at the domestic level. With the growth of human
activities comes the prospect of severe disruptions of natural systems
and serious social conflict. The fundamental purpose of institutions is to
control these products of human activities without suppressing the ac¬
tivities themselves.
Lessons for Institutional Design
Perhaps it will help to conclude this chapter by highlighting the

principal implications of the preceding analysis of relationships between
international institutions and international organizations for efforts to
cope with emerging issues in international society.67 For simplicity, I
shall organize this account in the form of a series of propositions di¬
rected toward policymakers endeavoring to come to terms with issues of
institutional design.68
1. The distinction between institutions and organizations is fundamental.
There are roles for both institutions and organizations in international
society. But the common practice of using these terms interchangeably
not only sows confusion, it also impedes efforts to think creatively about
appropriate combinations of institutions and organizations at the inter¬
national level.
2. Some problems associated with the operation of institutions can be solved
without resorting to the establishment of organizations. While organizations
can play a variety of roles, it is easy to exaggerate the need for organiza¬
tions to administer institutional arrangements. Organizations are costly
both in strictly monetary terms and in more intangible terms. Accord¬
ingly, there should be no bias against anarchical arrangements or pre¬
sumption in favor of institutions that feature elaborate organizations.
Policymakers should strive to create organizations only when there is a
demonstrable need for them.
3. When policymakers do choose to establish organizations, they should tailor
these arrangements to the characteristics of the institution or regime under consid¬
eration. Organizations are not appropriate or inappropriate in their own
67. For an account stressing the significance of this perspective see Kratochwil and
Ruggie, “International Organization.”
68. See also the observations in Jan Tinbergen, “Alternative Forms of International
Cooperation: Comparing Their Efficiency,” International Social Science Journal 30 (1978).
223-237.
56
right. Rather, they are more or less well suited to the institutional
arrangements with which they are associated. It follows that policy¬
makers should design organizations to maximize their effectiveness and
minimize their negative by-products in connection with the provisions
of specific institutions or regimes.
4. Policymakers should avoid falling prey to intellectual fashions in thinking
about the linkages between institutions and organizations. Throughout much
of the postwar period, observers treated international anarchy as in¬
ferior to civil society. Today, we are witnessing a marked increase of
emphasis on nonmarket failures leading to minimalist views regarding
roles for organizations at the international level, not to mention govern¬
ments at the domestic level. Yet neither of these intellectual fashions
offers a trustworthy guide for policymakers concerned with institutional
design. There is no substitute for starting with a systematic assessment of
the relative merits of alternative institutional arrangements and pro¬
ceeding to devise organizations (if any) to meet the requirements of the
specific institutional arrangements selected.
57
Chapter Three
The Power of Institutions:

Why International Regimes Matter
Students of international relations often differ sharply from students

of domestic society in the assumptions they make about the significance
of social institutions. Most observers of domestic society simply take it
for granted that institutions such as structures of property rights, mar¬
kets, electoral systems, or mechanisms for settling disputes are major
determinants of collective outcomes in human affairs.1 They even as¬
cribe a coercive quality to social institutions in that they see subjects as
experiencing powerful pressures to conform to the dictates of institu¬
tional arrangements, whether they like it or not. To question these
assumptions would be to challenge some of the most basic premises of
modern, Western thought on the operation of human social systems.
Orthodox students of international relations, by contrast, typically take
the view that social institutions are of little or no significance as determi¬
nants of collective outcomes in international society. Rather, they as¬
sume that international institutions, including regimes of various sorts,
are mere surface reflections of underlying forces or processes, subject to
change with every shift in the real determinants of collective outcomes.2
What accounts for this striking difference? More to the point, is there
a persuasive justification for this dichotomy? In this chapter, I argue that
the difference arises, fundamentally, from certain misunderstandings of
the nature of social institutions and a mistaken conception embedded in
1. I his perspective is exemplified with particular clarity in the public choice literature.
See, for example, James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962). And for an account that probes the underpin¬
nings of this perspective consult Geoffrey Brennan and James N. Buchanan, The Reason of
Rules: Constitutional Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
2. Susan Strange, "Cave! hie dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis,” in Stephen I).
Krasner, ed.. International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 337—354.
The Power of Institutions
the orthodox account of international relations, of the circumstances

facing individual members of international society. I endeavor, in the
process, to offer a convincing explanation of why institutions matter in
international society just as they do in domestic society.
The Orthodox Account
The orthodox account of international relations contrasts interna¬

tional society and domestic society. Some of the key differences are
structural in that they pertain to attributes of the international system
rather than to characteristics of the individual members of international
society.3 Above all, international society is organized in an anarchical
fashion.4 No hierarchy of authority exists among its members. There is
no central government capable of making binding decisions about the
common good and bringing pressure to bear on individual members to
comply with these decisions. Individual members cannot rely on cen¬
tralized enforcement agencies to compel compliance with international
rules or conventions, a fact that has led some observers to describe
international society as a self-help system and persuaded others to ques¬
tion whether international law should be treated as law at all.5 Addi¬
tionally, international society exhibits a comparative lack of the division
of labor among individual members that has become pervasive in most
domestic societies. States typically endeavor to function as generalists at
the international level, maintaining a sense of self-sufficiency rather
than becoming specialists in the manner of individuals in domestic
society.6 In Durkheim’s terms, therefore, international society can ex¬
hibit only a mechanical social order in contrast to an organic social
order.7 Accordingly, the constraints associated with high levels of mu¬
tual dependence will be less prevalent at the international level than they
are at the domestic level.8
3. For an account that stresses these structural considerations see Kenneth N. Waltz,
Theory of International Politics (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
4. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).
5. For a sophisticated discussion see Anthony D’Amato, “What ‘Counts’ as Law?” in
Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, ed., Lawmaking in the Global Community (Durham: Carolina
Academic Press, 1982), 83-107.
6. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Reflections on ‘Theory of International Politics’: A Response to
My Critics,” in Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1986), 322-345.
7. Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1983/1964).
8. Even so, some observers have taken to stressing the rising level of interdependence
at the international level. See, for example, Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power
and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).
59
Other key differences, according to the orthodox account, pertain to

the units, or members, of international society in contrast to the individ¬
uals who populate domestic societies. Sovereign states are the primary
units of international society. Unlike individuals at the domestic level,
sovereign states are autonomous in that they are not subject to restric¬
tions or constraints articulated and imposed in the name of the common
good.9 Equally important, states are driven by the pursuit of a relatively
narrow form of self-interest defined largely in terms of power. Unlike
individuals, states seldom behave in an altruistic fashion or respond to
the dictates of moral or ethical standards.10 In fact, thev are not even
particularly sensitive to the benefits of enlightened self-interest. For the
most part, sovereign states simply pursue their immediate interests
defined, more often than not, in terms of the accumulation or use of
power.
The significance of these differences, according to the orthodox ac¬
count, is straightforward. Power politics constitute the principal deter¬
minant of collective outcomes in international society in that outcomes
flow directly from interactions among autonomous states, each of which
is attempting to maximize its own power.11 It follows that those who
wish to explain collective outcomes at the international level must en¬
deavor to comprehend the nature of power, the bases of power in
international society, the strategies deployed by those seeking power,
and the dynamics of the interactions among states endeavoring to maxi¬
mize their power.12 Of course, this endeavor encompasses the study of
alliances or coalitions as well as the actions of states operating on an
individualistic basis. Likewise, explanations of major changes in interna¬
tional relations must be sought in analyses of shifts in the configuration
of power in international society.
On this account, institutions are mere surface reflections of underly¬
ing processes that involve the dynamics of power.13 They may serve as
indicators of bargains struck among sovereign states or the ascendance
of a particular state to a position of dominance.14 But they cannot
9. HansJ. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations (New York: Knopf, 1948).

10. But see the interesting observations in Charles P. Kindleberger, “Hierarchy versus
Inertial Cooperation,” International Organization 40 (1986), 841—847.
11. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations.
12. For a review of the conceptual and analytic problems associated with the study of
power consult David A. Baldwin, “Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus
Old Tendencies,” World Politics 31 (1979), 161-194.
13. As Strange puts it, “All those international arrangements dignified bv the label
regime are only too easily upset when either the balance of bargaining power or the
perception of national interest (or both together) change among those states who negoti¬
ate them” (“Cave! hie dragones345).
14. Phis view seems to underpin a substantial portion of the analysis in Robert O.
60
operate as determinants of collective outcomes at the international level

in their own right. Order, if any emerges, in international society arises
either from the operation of an effective balance of power or from the
emergence of a hegemon or dominant power in the system.15 A balance
of power may lend an element of stability to international relations by
providing an effective set of checks and balances.16 Under other circum¬
stances, a hegemon may conclude that its own interests will be well
served by imposing certain patterns of behavior on the other members
of international society.17 In the end, however, we must remember that
order stems from the configuration of power in the system rather than
from any constraints associated with the presence of social institutions.
Where does this leave such international institutions as the postwar
international monetary regime, the liberal regime for international
trade, or the emerging arrangements for the oceans and outer space?18
Whereas students of domestic society regularly speak of institutional
constraints on the actions of individuals, orthodox students of interna¬
tional relations treat institutions as epiphenomena. Given the paradigm
described in the preceding paragraphs, the reasoning underlying this
point of view is easy to describe. States can simply discard existing
international institutions when they become inconvenient or trouble¬
some and replace them with alternative arrangements that are more to
their liking. Since institutions are only surface reflections of underlying
power relationships, there is nothing to stop states from proceeding in
this fashion. What is more, individual states can ignore the dictates of
institutions with impunity, even when it seems convenient to retain
existing arrangements on a pro forma basis. In an anarchical system like
international society compliance is voluntary, and there is nothing to
stop individual members from violating rights or rules whenever the
pursuit of power calls for such a course. It follows that institutions
cannot be important determinants of collective outcomes in interna¬
tional society. This does not mean that international institutions are of
no interest to orthodox students of international relations. Since trans-
Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton:
15. Inis L. Claude, Jr., Power and International Relations (New York: Random House,
1962).
16. Ernst B. Haas, “The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept, or Propaganda?”

World Politics (1953), 442—477.
17. Keohane, After Hegemony, especially chap. 3.
18. For discussions of these regimes consult Krasner, International Regimes; Seyom
Brown, Nina W. Cornell, Larry L. Fabian, and Edith Brown Weiss, Regimes for the Ocean,
Outer Space, and Weather (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1977); and Kenneth A. Oye, ed.,
Cooperation under Anarchy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
61
formations of institutional arrangements generally reflect shifts in the

configuration of power in the system, it is worth keeping track of institu¬
tional changes as a means of gauging the evolution of the structure of
power in international society.19 But those who seek to explain collective
outcomes at the international level will not get far by directing their
attention to international institutions.
The central argument of this chapter begins here. In the following
sections, I endeavor to demonstrate that the orthodox account’s relega¬
tion of international institutions to the status of epiphenomena is mis¬
taken on several counts. Above all, it rests on an erroneous conception of
the circumstances facing individual members of international society
day to day. From the perspective of the individual state, international
institutions are, for the most part, facts of life. States sometimes have the
option of participating or refusing to participate in institutional ar¬
rangements. They may, for example, choose to opt out of institutions
like the international monetary regime or the new regime governing the
deep seabed. In general, however, it is exceedingly difficult to get rid of
international institutions and to replace them with more attractive alter¬
natives. If anything, it is harder to replace international institutions than
to replace institutional arrangements in domestic society. Additionally,
there are usually substantial costs involved in ignoring the dictates of
international institutions, even in the absence of explicit sanctions at the
disposal of authorized enforcement agencies. Like individuals in domes¬
tic society, states generally comply with the rights and rules of interna¬
tional institutions voluntarily if only in the sense that they find that the
benefits of compliance outweigh the benefits of violation, whether or not
formal sanctions figure in their calculations.
It follows, as I shall argue, that the orthodox contrasts between do¬
mestic society and international society are greatly exaggerated, at least
when it comes to evaluating the significance of social institutions. Just as
institutional arrangements appear to be major determinants of collec¬
tive behavior at the domestic level, there is every reason to expect them
to play a similar role at the international level.
The Durability of International Institutions
If the members of international society could simply discard institu¬

tional arrangements that seem inconvenient or troublesome, it would be
difficult to avoid the conclusion that regimes, or international institu-
19. See also Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence, especially pt. 2.
62
tions more broadly, are epiphenomena of little significance as determi¬

nants of collective outcomes. To demonstrate the significance of inter¬
national institutions, therefore, it is necessary to show that the members
of international society cannot get rid of them easily. This, in turn,
requires an examination of institutional dynamics at the international
level.
As in all social systems, institutional arrangements in international
society change continually. Sometimes they even undergo rapid change.
Consider, for example, the transformations in monetary regimes that
have taken us from the gold standard of the early twentieth century
through the era of fixed exchange rates under the Bretton Woods
system to the floating exchange rates that govern relationships among
national currencies today.20 Witness also the breakup of the nineteenth-
century version of colonialism that eventuated in the virtual disap¬
pearance of this institution in the years following World War II.21 Or
recall the rapid transition during the postwar era from relatively unre¬
stricted common-property arrangements for marine areas to regimes
featuring coastal-state jurisdiction in the form of exclusive economic
zones for large areas of coastal waters and regimes featuring the princi¬
ple of the common heritage of mankind for areas remaining in the
international commons.22
In exceptional cases, a dominant state (that is, a hegemon) or a power¬
ful coalition (that is, an international club) can assume leadership by
giving conscious direction to transitions in institutional arrangements.23
Unsettled periods following the disruptions associated with major wars
or world depressions undoubtedly offer striking illustrations of this
phenomenon. We are all familiar with the remarkable role of the United
States in devising new international trade and monetary regimes during
the 1940s in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II.24
But leadership in international-regime formation is not limited to the
aftermath of major disruptions. The twelve original signatories to the
20. Benjamin J. Cohen, “Balance-of-payments Financing: Evolution of a Regime,” in

Krasner, International Regimes, 315—336. For additional details consult Benjamin J. Cohen,
In Whose Interest? International Banking and American Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986).
21. Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
i960).
22. Ross D. Eckert, The Enclosure of Ocean Resources (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,
1979), and Bernard H. Oxman, David D. Caron, and Charles L. O. Buderi, eds., Law of the
Sea: U.S. Policy Dilemma (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1983).
23. On the distinction between leadership and hegemony, as the terms are commonly
used, see the insightful observations in Kindleberger, “Hierarchy versus Inertial Coopera¬
tion.”
24. For a brief account see Keohane, After Hegemony.
63
Antarctic Treaty of 1959 (that is, the Antarctic club) certainly played a
leadership role in the creation of the current international regime for
Antarctica.25 In much the same way, the United States and a few other
like-minded members of international society undoubtedly took the lead
in devising the regime governing international trade in endangered
species, which is now formalized in the 1973 Convention on Interna¬
tional Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora.26
Yet it is misleading to direct attention primarily to these exceptional
situations. In the typical case, international institutions are extremely
difficult to get rid of, or even to adjust in a conscious fashion to changing
circumstances. Interestingly, existing regimes or institutional arrange¬
ments often prove highly resistant even to assaults spearheaded by one
or more of the great powers. Common-property regimes for renewable
resources, for example, are remarkably difficult to change at the inter¬
national level. Even the enclosure movement, which has brought many
resources within the exclusive management authority of coastal states,
has done little to eliminate the common-property character of regimes
for marine fisheries and other renewable resources of marine regions.27
The obvious importance, under contemporary conditions, of moving
toward regimes based on an ecosystems approach or at least a multi¬
species approach at the international level has so far made little headway
against the persistent tendency to develop separate regimes for individ¬
ual species, such as polar bears, fur seals, or halibut.28 The efforts of
those endeavoring to make significant changes in the existing interna¬
tional economic order, such as the various reforms often lumped to¬
gether under the general rubric of a new international economic order,
have met with remarkable resistance despite the fact that the reform
movement probably includes a majority of the members of international
society.29 To be more specific, the Soviet Union failed completely in its
attempt to promote major changes in the international regime govern¬
ing the Svalbard Archipelago during the 1940s.30 Similarly, the efforts
of a large coalition of states to reform the prevailing international re-
25. Philip W. Quigg, A Pole Apart (New York: McGraw Hill, 1983).
26. Lynton Keith Caldwell, International Environmental Policy (Durham: Duke Univer¬
sity Press, 1984), especially 189-192, and Simon Lyster, International Wildlife Law (Cam¬
bridge: Grotius Publications, 1985), chap. 12.
27. Oran R. Young, “The Political Economy of Fish: The Fishery Conservation and
Management Act of 1976,” Ocean Development and International Law 10 (1982), 199—273.
28. For an account of efforts to promote an ecosystems approach see Caldwell. Interna¬
tional Environmental Policy, chaps. 7 and 8.
29. Marvin S. Soroos, Beyond Sovereignty: The Challenge of Global Policy (Columbia: Uni¬
versity of South Carolina Press, 1986), chap. 6.
30. Willy Ostreng, Politics at High Latitudes (London: C. Hurst, 1977), especially chap. 6.
64
gime for Antarctica have met with so much opposition from the mem¬
bers of the Antarctic club that some of the reformers (for example,
India) have decided to join the club rather than to continue pushing for
changes from the outside.31
Perhaps even more striking is the resistance of many international in¬
stitutions to change even when the prevailing arrangements are not only
inefficient but also exceedingly difficult to justify on ethical grounds.
The international food regime, which is based on a system of distribution
through world markets (in other words, of withholding food from those
who lack the money to pay for it), has played a major role in bringing
about the current situation in which millions of people are malnour¬
ished, in some cases to the point of starvation, despite the fact that global
food production is entirely adequate to feed all the world’s people. And
no serious prospects for reforming this regime are in sight at the present
time.32 While some efforts are now being made to protect living re¬
sources in the face of a rising tide of extinctions of species, those who
have tried can attest to the difficulties encountered in efforts to restruc¬
ture institutional arrangements in this area, particularly when it comes to
arrangements for noncommercial species such as oceanic birds, por¬
poises, or sea lions.33 Much the same can be said of the relatively un¬
restricted common-property regimes currently in place for the inter¬
national atmospheric commons. While evidence mounts concerning
threats to the world’s climate system associated with the buildup of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or the depletion of ozone in the
stratosphere, efforts to devise new institutional arrangements at the
international level to cope with these problems are still in their infancy.34
There are several clear-cut reasons why international institutions, like
domestic institutions, are generally difficult to get rid of or to replace
with more appropriate alternatives. Above all, efforts to reform institu¬
tional arrangements on an intentional or planned basis almost always
entail processes of collective choice. The image of a dominant state or a
hegemon playing the role of lawgiver is severely distorted. Even under
the extraordinary conditions that prevailed in the aftermath of World
31. Deborah Shapley, The Seventh Continent: Antarctica in a Resource Age (Washington,
D.C.: Resources for the Future, 1986).
32. See also Raymond F. Hopkins and Donald J. Puchala, “Perspectives on the Interna¬
tional Relations of Food,” International Organization 32 (1978), 581—616.
33. On the problem of disappearing species see Norman Myers, The Sinking Ark: A New
Look at the Problem of Disappearing Species (New York: Pergamon, 1979).
34. The ozone agreement concluded in Montreal in September 1987 is certainly a
significant step. Already, however, a consensus is emerging on the proposition that this
agreement does not go far enough toward controlling the production and emission of
chlorofluorocarbons.
65
War II, the United States had to negotiate with several other major
players to achieve consensus on the monetary regime set forth in the
Bretton Woods agreement. Likewise, the United States found itself
forced to make substantial concessions regarding the international-trade
regime after the collapse of arrangements laid out in the Havana Charter
and the failure to reach consensus on the proposed International Trade
Organization.35 Under more typical conditions, such as those prevailing
today, it is clear that regime formation almost invariably gives rise to
extremely complex processes of collective choice, which will often fail to
produce clear-cut agreement on new or revised institutional arrange¬
ments. Witness recent efforts to devise suitable institutional arrange¬
ments to govern deep-seabed mining, international broadcasting via
satellite, threats to the international climate system, or exploratory ac¬
tivities aimed at assessing the mineral potential of Antarctica.36
The fact that the development of international institutions typically
involves complex collective-choice processes has several important im¬
plications for any effort to understand the significance of institutions as
determinants of collective outcomes at the international level. In many
cases, existing arrangements have vigorous defenders who stand to lose
as a result of institutional change, even if the existing arrangements are
unattractive from the point of view of certain conceptions of the com¬
mon good. It is no cause for surprise, for example, to find the United
States staunchly supporting the existing economic order in many specific
areas, the members of the Antarctic club defending the current regime
for Antarctica, or countries where major polluting industries are based
resisting changes in international environmental regimes designed to
control the long-range transport problems associated with acid deposi¬
tion or Arctic haze.37 What is more, even in cases where all parties
acknowledge the inadequacy of existing institutional arrangements (for
example, international regimes designed to maintain biological diversity
by protecting endangered species), complications arising from collec¬
tive-choice processes can pose severe impediments to institutional re¬
form. In virtually every case, several distinct options are available to
those concerned with the replacement of existing institutional arrange¬
ments. And it is rare that the preferences of the relevant members of
international society fail to differ substantially with regard to these
options. The resultant processes of bargaining over the relative attrac-
35- See Keohane, After Hegemony, pt. 3, for a brief history.

36. On the politics of regime formation see Oran R. Young, “‘Arctic Waters’: The
Politics of Regime Formation,” Ocean Development and International Law 18 (11)87), 101 —
1 14.
37- See also the case studies in Soroos, Beyond Sovereignty, pt. 2.
66
tions of alternative points in a contract zone or zone of agreement are

often protracted and can easily obstruct efforts to revise institutional
arrangements at the international level for considerable periods of time.
The extraordinary bargaining associated with the efforts to devise new
institutional arrangements for marine areas during the 1970s and 1980s
is, of course, still fresh in the minds of most observers.38 But this case may
well come to seem simple by contrast with emerging efforts to devise
institutional arrangements to cope with large-scale ecosystems, climate
change, or the long-range transport of pollutants.
If anything, the difficulties involved in getting rid of existing institu¬
tional arrangements and introducing new arrangements are more se¬
vere in international society than they are in domestic society. This is
so because domestic societies generally have highly developed mecha¬
nisms, in the form of legislatures, whose principal function is to devise
and reform institutional arrangements.39 Of course, legislatures reg¬
ularly encounter serious problems in their efforts to deal with institu¬
tional issues. Witness the recent struggles of the United States Congress
to adjust existing regimes that deal with taxes, welfare, the support of
agriculture, or the control of acid deposition. Conversely, legislative
conferences sometimes prove quite effective in developing new institu¬
tional arrangements at the international level.40 Quite apart from cer¬
tain highly visible cases like the Bretton Woods Conference or the Law of
the Sea Conference, there are many less publicized sessions, such as
the World Administrative Radio Conferences (WARC), the institution-
building sessions for marine pollution held under the auspices of the
International Maritime Organization, and the regime-construction con¬
ferences sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme.41
Nonetheless, it is hard to escape the conclusion that legislatures in
domestic societies typically feature more highly developed procedures
for handling institutional changes and can depend on a greater public
willingness to accept their conclusions than is true of the legislative
conferences that international society relies on to deal with the reform of
existing institutional arrangements. It follows that international institu¬
tions will often be more difficult to get rid of than domestic institutions, a
38. James K. Sebenius, “Negotiation Arithmetic: Adding and Subtracting Issues and
Parties,” International Organization 37 (1983), 281—316.
39. For an insightful development of this proposition see Friedrich A. Hayek, The
Political Order of a Free People, vol. 3 of Law, Legislation, and Liberty (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1979).
40. Soroos, Beyond Sovereignty, especially chap. 3.
41. Caldwell, International Environmental Policy, and R. Michael M’Gonigle and Mark W.
Zacher, Pollution, Politics, and International Law (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1979)-
67
conclusion that surely adds weight to the proposition that institutional

arrangements are important determinants of collective outcomes at the
international level.
We are all aware, as well, that laboriously negotiated revisions in
institutional arrangements often prove difficult to implement, fail to
achieve the results intended, produce unintended by-products that
swamp the effects of the intended results, or are overtaken by changing
circumstances before they can be properly instituted. Surely, no one
would deny this observation with regard to domestic society. And it is
certainly just as applicable at the international level. It is hardly a cause
for surprise, for example, that the regime for the deep seabed laid out in
Part XI of the Law of the Sea Convention of 1982 remains, for the most
part, a paper arrangement. In fact, some observers regard this outcome,
at least in part, as a consequence of the character of the proposed regime
itself.42 Similarly, it remains to be seen whether the arrangements envi¬
sioned in the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine
Living Resources of 1980 will become realities during the foreseeable
future. Accordingly, those desiring to introduce new institutional ar¬
rangements must do more than simply obtain the acquiescence of others
on paper. And this often proves difficult at the international level, just as
it does at the domestic level. Under the circumstances, existing institu¬
tional arrangements may prove resistant to real change because en¬
trenched patterns of behavior are hard to dislodge even in the face of a
pro forma agreement to discard prevailing arrangements in favor of
some superficially preferred alternative.
Then, of course, there are the costs (both monetary and nonmonetary)
of discarding existing institutional arrangements and replacing them
with preferred alternatives. Those who speak confidently about the
ability of the members of international society to abandon institutions
that become troublesome or inconvenient regularly overlook the real
costs of such a course of action. Even dominant states discover again and
again that there are substantial costs of leadership in connection with
regime formation. At best, they are apt to find themselves making
significant concessions or taking on major burdens in order to get others
to acquiesce in their plans for new institutional agreements.43 And
attempts to assert leadership in this realm may prove considerably more
costly if they fail to achieve success, thereby revealing a significant
42. Ross D. Eckert, The Enclosure of Ocean Resources (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.
*979)-
43. See the discussion of burden sharing in Mancur Olson, Jr., and Richard Zeckhauser,
“An Economic Theory of Alliances,” Review of Economics and Statistics 48 (1966), 266—279.
68
erosion in the hegemonic stature of the putative leader. In a sense, this

fate has befallen the United States in the international monetary regime,
despite the fact that it did succeed in precipitating major changes in the
regime through unilateral actions in 1971.44 Even when new institu¬
tional arrangements prove generally successful, moreover, the transac¬
tion costs associated with institutional reform are virtually always con¬
siderable. Witness the time and energy that numerous members of
international society have expended on devising new arrangements to
govern marine pollution, endangered species, international broadcast¬
ing, and human rights. For these reasons, no member of international
society is likely to embark lightly on a campaign to replace institutional
arrangements. This is not to deny that international institutions do
change continually or that the members of international society often
endeavor to nudge the course of change in the direction of preferred
alternatives. But the image of individual members of international so¬
ciety discarding inconvenient institutions and replacing them with new
arrangements on an almost casual basis is surely incorrect.
What are the implications of the argument set forth in the preceding
paragraphs for the significance of institutional arrangements as determi¬
nants of collective outcomes at the international level? For the most part,
the replacement of prevailing arrangements emerges as a protracted,
uncertain, and costly process that involves complex interactions with
other members of international society. Just as powerful groups do
sometimes succeed in exercising considerable influence over the shape
of social institutions at the domestic level, dominant states or coalitions
occasionally play critical roles in the development of international in¬
stitutions. But it is easy to become mesmerized by the image of hege¬
monic power.45 Circumstances in which hegemons succeed in redesign¬
ing international institutions surely constitute the exception rather than
the rule, and even dominant states usually find it necessary to engage in
elaborate collective-choice processes and to assume substantial burdens
of leadership.46 Much more typical is the case of the individual member
that is faced with a choice between participating in prevailing institu¬
tional arrangements or becoming an outcast or pariah state. In this
connection, what seems remarkable is the extent to which even relatively
powerful states espousing radical changes in many international institu¬
tions, such as the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s or China in the
44. Cohen, “Balance-of-Payments Financing,” and Keohane, After Hegemony.

45. See also the argument developed in Duncan Snidal, “The Limits of Hegemonic
Stability Theory,” International Organization 39 (1985), 579—614.
46. On the distinction between leadership and outright dominance see Kindleberger,
“Hierarchy versus Inertial Cooperation.”
69
i 950s and 1960s, have gradually come around to the conclusion that it is
expedient to join the club and conform to the principal rights and rules
of an array of prevailing international institutions.47
Under the circumstances, it seems entirely reasonable to treat institu¬
tional arrangements as important constraints on the behavior of individ¬
ual actors in international society, just as we do in thinking about domes¬
tic society. To be sure, institutions are not actors in their own right
(though the organizations created to administer institutions may some¬
times acquire the attributes of actors). Some analysts have jumped
quickly from this observation to the conclusion that institutions cannot
be significant determinants of collective outcomes in international so¬
ciety.48 But this is surely incorrect. It is not necessary to be an actor to
operate as a determinant of collective behavior at the international or
any other level. To think otherwise would require a wholesale revision of
our understanding of the role of markets, electoral systems, structures of
property rights, and so forth in domestic societies, not to mention our
understanding of the impact of systemic or structural factors at the
international level.49
Compliance in International Society
The preceding discussion licenses the conclusion that the members of

international society cannot easily discard institutional arrangements
when they become inconvenient or troublesome. There remains, how¬
ever, the notion that individual members can simply ignore the dictates
of international institutions in specific situations, even though they may
not find it expedient to get rid of the arrangements altogether. To the
extent that individual members are able to adopt a posture of this sort
toward international institutions, we would once again be forced to
conclude that these arrangements are epiphenomena, lacking real sig¬
nificance as determinants of collective outcomes. It is necessary at this
juncture, therefore, to turn to an investigation of factors governing
compliance with institutional dictates.
Several preliminary observations are in order. Above all, we must
avoid imposing a standard of perfection in assessing compliance. No one
expects perfect compliance with the rights and rules of institutional
47. On the case of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s see F. P. Walters, A History of
the League of Nations (London: Oxford LJniversity Press, i960), especially chap. 30.
48. James N. Rosenau, “Hegemons, Regimes, and Habit-driven Actors,” International
Organization 40 (1986), 849—894.
49. Waltz, “Reflections.”
70
arrangements in domestic society.50 Even public agencies authorized to

operate enforcement mechanisms regularly discover that the marginal
costs of obtaining compliance exceed the marginal benefits well before a
condition of perfect compliance is reached.51 Of course, wholesale non-
compliance can and sometimes does undermine social institutions, ini¬
tiating processes leading to institutional change. But we almost always
regard a certain level of noncompliance as normal, and we do not expect
institutional arrangements to collapse or unravel as a result.52 Surely, the
same situation obtains at the international level. It follows that we should
ask whether most members of international society comply with institu¬
tional dictates most of the time, rather than seize upon specific instances
of noncompliance as evidence for the proposition that institutions are
not effective constraints on the behavior of individual actors at the
international level.53
There is also an important distinction between compliance and en¬
forcement. Enforcement, which involves the actual or threatened use of
sanctions by authorized agents of the community to compel individuals
to comply with rights and rules, is only one of several bases of compliance
from the point of view of the individual members of a social system.54 In
the typical case, in fact, enforcement is a marginal factor in compliance
calculations. Most members of social systems comply with the dictates of
prevailing institutions most of the time for reasons having little or
nothing to do with their expectations regarding the imposition of sanc¬
tions.55 If this were not so, the enforcement mechanisms operated by
public authorities would soon find themselves overwhelmed by the prob¬
lem of compelling reluctant individuals to comply with institutional
dictates. Those who emphasize the underdeveloped nature of enforce¬
ment mechanisms in international society often lose sight of this funda¬
mental observation. Instead of initiating a broader investigation into the
bases of compliance, they exaggerate the contrast between domestic
50. But note that some of those who think in contractarian terms assume perfect
compliance for purely analytic reasons. For a case in point see John Rawls, A Theory of
Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
51. Oran R. Young, Compliance and Public Authority: A Theory with International Applica¬
tions (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), chap. 7.
52. It is worth noting, however, that the rights and rules of social institutions are not of
equal importance to the survival of specific institutional arrangements. That is, levels of
violation that we tolerate with respect to some rights and rules might well seem intolerable
with respect to others.
53. See also the discussion in Roger Fisher, Improving Compliance with International Law
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981).
54. Young, Compliance and Public Authority.
55. For an insightful discussion of the emergence of norms of cooperation see Robert
Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
71
society and international society by placing too much weight on enforce¬

ment as the key to individual compliance with socially defined rights and
rules.56
Why do individual actors ordinarily comply with the dictates of in¬
stitutional arrangements even when they do not expect to face public
sanctions for violations? Broadly speaking, the bases of compliance fall
into two major categories: decision variables, or considerations that
enter into the decision calculus of subjects as unitary actors, and collec¬
tive-choice considerations, or factors in the internal decision-making
processes of the members of international society.
Decision Variables
Many students of international relations have fallen into the habit of

treating the benefits produced by social institutions as well as the institu¬
tions themselves as public goods.57 And it is a short step from this
perspective to the expectation that the individual members of society
will experience powerful incentives to become free riders, enjoying the
benefits produced by institutional arrangements while refusing to com¬
ply with the dictates of the institutions themselves.58 But this line of
reasoning constitutes a severe distortion of reality at the international
level as well as at the domestic level. It turns out, in fact, that many
(perhaps most) institutions produce an array of divisible benefits (as well
as public goods) and that those who fail to play the game by refusing to
comply with institutional dictates must expect to find themselves ex¬
cluded from some or all of these benefits. Consider some concrete
examples of the rewards of participation at the international level.
Those who fail to comply with the dictates of the international monetary
regime must expect the loss of some or all of their drawing rights as
administered by the International Monetary Fund. Members of interna¬
tional shipping regimes who violate the rules pertaining to ship design
or operating procedures must anticipate that their flag vessels will be
excluded from areas under the jurisdiction of other members. Those
who refuse to abide by the rules adopted at WARC sessions cannot
expect to enjoy security of tenure with respect to the use of orbital slots
for satellites or frequency bands in the electromagnetic spectrum. Un-
56. Political ideology certainly plays a role in structuring thought in this realm. Specifi¬
cally, there is a definite link between conservatism and the tendency to stress enforcement
as a critical factor in compliance decisions.
57. See also the insights laid out in Michael Taylor, Anarchy and Cooperation (New York:
Wiley, 1976).
58. Olson and Zeckhauser, “An Economic Theory of Alliances.”
72
der the terms of various international insurance schemes, individual

members who fail to comply with applicable rules regarding safety and
the like may be declared ineligible for the receipt of compensation.
Violators of the rules of the international-trade regime may find them¬
selves losing most-favored-nation status in their dealings with other
members of the system.59 Those who refuse to comply with rules per¬
taining to technology transfer may find that they cannot get others to
accept their claims to exclusive use rights in connection with specific
mine sites under the terms of the regime for deep-seabed mining.60
None of this means that individual members will always comply or never
conclude that the gains from violation exceed the benefits of com¬
pliance. Like their domestic counterparts, however, international in¬
stitutions often take on a distinctly coercive quality in that the pressures
on individual members to comply with their dictates are substantial.
It is fashionable in some circles to describe international society as a
self-help system because it lacks public agencies authorized to enforce
rights and rules on behalf of the community.61 But this circumstance
does not mean that those who violate the dictates of international institu¬
tions can expect to get away with their violations without provoking
reactions from other members of the group. On the contrary, various
forms of retaliation occur regularly at the international level.62 Those
who impose impermissible restrictions on foreign diplomats residing in
their territory must expect others to retaliate in a similar vein against
their own diplomats. Violations of the terms of quotas or moratoriums
in the international whaling regime are often met with restrictions on
the fishing privileges of the offender in the fishery-conservation zones of
other states.63 Individual members who impose tariffs in violation of
their obligations under the international-trade regime must anticipate
tit-for-tat reactions on the part of other members. Violations of arms-
control regimes regularly provoke tit-for-tat retaliations from other par¬
ticipants. Assuredly, retaliation can become a nasty business in de¬
centralized, self-help social systems. In the absence of an effective public
authority, it is easy to touch off action/reaction processes in which each
participant justifies its own behavior as a necessary response to the
59. Kenneth Dam, The GATT: Law and International Economic Organization (New York:
Midway Reprint, 1977).
60. See also Lance N. Antrim and James K. Sebenius, “Incentives for Ocean Mining
under the Convention,” in Oxman, Caron, and Buderi, Law of the Sea, 79—99.
61. Waltz, “Reflections.”
62. For a sophisticated account, which develops a helpful vocabulary for identifying
different types of retaliation, see Axelrod, Evolution of Cooperation.
63. The United States, for example, has cut the fishing quotas of Japan, Norway, and
the Soviet Union within the American Fishery Conservation Zone for this reason.
75
provocations of others. Some may see this as a serious weakness of

international institutions. Nonetheless, this feature of international so¬
ciety is apt to make individual members think twice before they violate
institutional dictates. It takes only a modicum of enlightened self-inter¬
est to realize that the cumulative costs of violations may exceed any
immediate benefits many times over.
As the preceding paragraph implies, violators of the dictates of institu¬
tional arrangements run the risk of touching off uncontrollable pro¬
cesses leading to the disintegration or collapse of complex institutions
whose overall worth greatly exceeds any benefits derivable from specific
violations. In a sense, this concern is particularly severe in decentralized
systems like international society. Those who violate rights and rules in
domestic society can take comfort from the fact that authorized agencies
will ordinarily intervene to control any ripple effects associated with
their violations or to repair the damage by devising new7 institutional
arrangements. In a curious way, they may even approve of the fact that
there is some probability that they will be sanctioned for their own
violations. At the international level, by contrast, actors must confront
the sobering prospect that their violations can lead to the disintegration
of important institutional arrangements. We are all familiar with spirals
within regimes in connection with tariff wars, competitive currency
devaluations, arms races, and escalations of conventional military con¬
frontations. Those who have studied international history or are old
enough to remember the collapse of international institutions during the
1930s can hardly fail to appreciate the dangers associated with spirals of
this sort.64 Moreover, we must recognize the impact of demonstration
effects in the sense of disruptions to other institutional arrangements
arising from the disintegration of specific regimes. It is hard to avoid the
conclusion, for example, that the collapse of the old open-to-entry re¬
gime for continental-shelf areas during the 1940s played a key role in
initiating the subsequent enclosure movement that has transformed a
variety of marine regimes.65 Similarly, a collapse of the international¬
broadcasting regime might well trigger drastic changes in a number of
other regimes that apply to atmospheric resources. Of course, those who
wish to revolutionize prevailing institutional arrangements, whether at
the international level or at the domestic level, will count on exploiting
such demonstration effects to magnify the impact of their efforts to bring
64. Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929—/959 (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1973).
65. Eckert, Enclosure of Ocean Resources, and Anne L. Hollick, U.S. Foreign Policy and the
Imw of the Sea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
74
about change. But most members of social systems, including interna¬

tional society, will treat the prospect of such demonstration effects as a
persuasive reason for exercising considerable caution. In this sense, the
interconnectedness of institutions constitutes a conservative force, espe¬
cially in systems like international society that lack centralized public
authorities.66
A reputation for trustworthiness is one of the most valuable assets that
any member of international society can acquire. Whether we are con¬
cerned with credibility in interactions with various partners at a given
time or with extended reciprocity in dealings with the same set of part¬
ners over time, individual actors will place a high value on maintaining
their reputation for trustworthiness.67 This is particularly true in a social
system like international society in which individual members cannot
count on authorized agents to compel others to live up to the terms of
their agreements or to comply with the prescriptions of regimes they
have accepted in principle.68 Under the circumstances, the costs of
becoming stigmatized by others as a rule breaker may be quite severe, as
many Third World states have discovered in connection with the dictates
of the international monetary and trade regimes. Even a great power,
like the United States, is not immune to such considerations. It seems
undeniable, for example, that the United States is already paying a price
for actions such as its refusal to accept the decision of the International
Court of Justice in the Nicaragua harbor-mining case or its attempts to
put off the impact of the Court’s decision in the Gulf of Maine case on
New England fishers. Nor can members of international society hope to
safeguard their reputation for trustworthiness by moving unilaterally to
change institutional rules as a means of covering up their unwillingness
to comply with existing rules. As the behavior of the United States
toward the international monetary regime during the 1970s demon¬
strates, members of international society do adopt such an approach
from time to time. But it would be hard to deny that the United States
has paid a high price in recent years for this and other unilateral actions,
such as its last-minute withdrawal from the effort to reach agreement on
new institutional arrangements in the law-of-the-sea negotiations.69 For
66. See also the analysis of order in international society developed in Friedrich V.
Kratochwil, International Order and Foreign Policy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1978).
67. Robert O. Keohane, “Reciprocity in International Relations,” International Organiza¬
tion 40 (1986), 1-27.
68. For a seminal account consult Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cam¬
bridge: Harvard University Press, i960).
69. Leigh S. Ratiner, “The Costs of American Rigidity,” in Oxman, Caron, and Buderi,
Law of the Sea, 27—42.
75
their part, lesser members of international society are unlikely even to

perceive such unilateral efforts to alter rules as a live option. Overall,
then, those who become known for their violations of the dictates of
international institutions must expect to pay a substantial price for their
actions in terms of their reputation for trustworthiness, one of the most
important assets that a member of international society can acquire.
What is more, the phenomena of social pressure and conformity are
not limited to the behavior of individuals in domestic society.70 Those
who direct the external behavior of the members of international society
commonly seek acceptance among their peers in other countries. No
doubt, we can identify exceptions to this generalization. It seems proba¬
ble, for example, that Hitler cared little about the reactions he evoked
from other statesmen, so long as he was able to advance his material
agenda for the Third Reich. Unlike some of the other early Soviet
leaders, Trotsky appears to have exhibited little interest in gaining
acceptance among other international leaders. Perhaps the same can be
said of Mao Tse Tung, especially toward the end of his career. But these
cases are surely exceptional. Few leaders feel comfortable in presiding
over policies that produce prolonged adverse publicity for their govern¬
ments or states, must less that eventuate in treatment of their countries
as outcast or pariah states. In fact, few leaders can afford the conse¬
quences of such policies. This is particularly true of statesmen in “new”
states who are concerned to establish their credentials as members of
international society in good standing or in states, like Germany and
Japan in the aftermath of World War II, whose stature in international
society is severely tarnished. In all such cases, leaders experience strong
incentives to demonstrate the respectability of their countries by compil¬
ing outstanding records of compliance with the rights and rules of
international institutions. It is therefore no accident that many Latin
Americans and Indians have become well known for their interest in the
codification and interpretation of international law. And it is revealing
to reflect on the efforts of Soviet leaders to demonstrate their com¬
pliance with the dictates of international institutions in the forum of the
League of Nations during the 1930s as well as the more recent efforts of
Chinese leaders to participate as good citizens in the United Nations. In
short, even members of international society that are relatively self-
sufficient in socioeconomic terms are not immune to the influence of
social pressure. Few leaders find it comfortable or, for that matter,
politically safe, to preside over outcast or pariah states, a condition that
70. For a general account of the literature on conformity see C. A. Kiesler and Sara B.
Kiesler, Conformity (Reading: Addison-Wesley, iq6g).
76
may cause them to refrain from violations of the dictates of international

institutions even in cases where violations may seem attractive in purely
material terms.
Collective-Choice Considerations
Quite apart from these decision variables, the internal decision-mak¬

ing processes of the members of international society often play a role in
producing compliance with the dictates of international regimes.71 One
such factor arises from the pervasive phenomenon of bureaucratic pol¬
itics.72 In essence, individual agencies within national governments
sometimes come to define their roles, at least in part, in terms of admin¬
istering and maintaining the provisions of one or more international
regimes. This is, of course, obvious in the case of foreign ministries,
which regularly become defenders of an array of institutional arrange¬
ments from arms-control regimes to regimes concerned with the conser¬
vation of wildlife or the protection of ecosystems.73 Increasingly, how¬
ever, other agencies have come to acquire similar stakes in the success of
international regimes. In the United States, the National Marine Fish¬
eries Service of the Department of Commerce has much to gain from the
success of the international regime for whaling, and the Fish and Wild¬
life Service of the Department of the Interior has real stakes in the
achievements of a number of international arrangements dealing with
migratory birds as well as endangered species more generally. In such
cases, individual agencies regularly find that their success in protecting
agency turf and in competing for scarce resources depends, in part, on
their ability to portray the regimes they work with as important and suc¬
cessful international arrangements. And this, in turn, generally hinges
on an ability to demonstrate that the level of compliance with the provi¬
sions of such regimes is high. As a result, responsible agencies typically
become staunch advocates for compliance with the terms of various
international regimes in the bargaining processes that occur within
governments as they move toward decisions on specific issues.74
71. For a discussion emphasizing linkages between international regimes and the do¬
mestic politics of the members see Stephan Haggard and Beth A. Simmons, “Theories of
International RegimesInternational Organization 41 (1987), 491—517.
72. For a well-known account of bureaucratic politics consult Graham T. Allison, Es¬
sence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), especially chap. 5.
73. For the details of a variety of international regimes dealing with wildlife see Lyster,
International Wildlife Law.
74. For a seminal discussion of the analysis of governments as arenas for collective
decision making rather than as unitary actors see Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of
Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957), chap. 15.
77
International regimes also commonly give rise to nongovernmental

interest groups committed to defending the provisions of specific re¬
gimes and prepared to press governments to comply with their dictates.
In fact, the establishment of a regime can stimulate the growth of
powerful interest groups in a number of the member states, which then
form transnational alliances in order to persuade responsible agencies to
comply with the requirements of the regime. To illustrate, the transna¬
tional network of marine scientists and ecologists that has emerged in
conjunction with the environmental regime for the Mediterranean Sea
appears to have become an important factor in encouraging govern¬
ments to comply with the terms of the Mediterranean Action Plan and in
triggering a storm of adverse publicity when governments fail to comply
or seek to back down from their commitments under the plan.75 A
similar story emerges from an examination of the watchdog role of a
wide range of nongovernmental organizations that push governments
to comply with the terms of such diverse regimes as the water-quality
arrangements set forth in the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements of
1972 and 1978, the arrangements for endangered species incorporated
in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of
Fauna and Flora, or the arrangements for Antarctica articulated in the
Antarctic Treaty of 1959.'6 Conversely, there are good reasons to doubt
whether responsible agencies will maintain favorable records of com¬
pliance with the requirements of international regimes in the absence of
continuous pressure from nongovernmental organizations to do so. The
comparatively underdeveloped nature of such pressures in the case of
deep-seabed mining, in fact, constitutes one of the major reasons why
many observers are skeptical about the prospects of success for the deep-
seabed mining regime articulated in Part XI of the Law of the Sea
Convention of 1982.77
In some cases, moreover, compliance with the requirements of inter¬
national regimes becomes routinized through inclusion in the standard
operating procedures of responsible agencies.'8 As many observers
75. Peter Haas, “Do Regimes Matter? A Study of Evolving Pollution Control Policies for
the Mediterranean Sea,” paper presented at the 1987 annual meetings of the Interna¬
tional Studies Association.
76. On the case of the Great Lakes see the essays in Alternatives 1 3 (August/September
1986), a special issue entitled “Saving the Great Lakes.” On CITES, consult Lvster.
International Wildlife Law, chap. 1 2.
77. On the sources of this situation, with special reference to the United States, see
Eckert, Enclosure of Ocean Resources, especially chap. 8, and James L. Malone, “Who Needs
the Sea Treaty?” Foreign Policy 54 (1984), 44—63.
78. for a general account of standard operating procedures consult Allison, Essence of
Decision, especially chap. 3.
7*
have noted, agencies are ordinarily confronted with such a large volume
of issues that they cannot begin to deal with the actions expected of them
on a case-by-case basis. Accordingly, they must devise highly simplified
decision rules to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the volume of their
business. In fact, most agencies deal with the great majority of the issues
that come their way through the routine application of such decision
rules in the form of standard operating procedures. It follows that
agencies charged with handling national responses to the requirements
of international regimes are likely to comply with these requirements on
a routine basis to the extent that compliance acquires the status of a
standard operating procedure. There is a good deal of evidence to
suggest that this basis of compliance has come to play an important role
in ensuring high levels of compliance even in cases of highly politicized
international regimes such as those involving arms-control arrange¬
ments.79 It should come as no surprise, therefore, that compliance often
becomes almost entirely routinized in connection with institutional ar¬
rangements that are less sensitive in political terms, like the regime
governing the use of the electromagnetic spectrum or the regime deal¬
ing with marine living resources in the Antarctic region. Of course, this
basis of compliance only becomes more compelling when responsible
agencies come to rely on a metanorm or higher-order standard operat¬
ing procedure that calls on decision-makers to use specific standard
operating procedures routinely in handling their workload.80
What can we conclude from this discussion of the bases of compliance
in international society? Briefly, the absence of authorized enforcement
mechanisms does not justify the conclusion that the members of interna¬
tional society can simply ignore institutional dictates whenever they
seem inconvenient or troublesome. In fact, we can identify a number of
distinct bases of compliance at the international level, and there are
good reasons to expect these considerations to exert effective pressure
on most members of international society to comply with the dictates of
institutional arrangements most of the time. Without doubt, violations
of the rights and rules of international institutions can and will occur
from time to time. But there is nothing remarkable about this. The
occurrence of similar violations in domestic society does not cast doubt
on our assumption that institutional arrangements are significant deter¬
minants of collective outcomes at the domestic level. The fact that
79. See Abram Chayes, “An Enquiry into the Workings of Arms Control Agreements,”
Harvard Law Review 85 (1972), 905-969, and Fisher, Improving Compliance, chap. 7.
80. For a suggestive discussion of metanorms see Robert Axelrod, “An Evolutionary
Approach to Norms,” American Political Science Review 80 (1986), 1100—1102.
79
violations occur from time to time is not incompatible with the proposi¬
tion that the dictates of institutional arrangements operate as major
constraints on the behavior of individual actors in social systems. And
there is no evidence to suggest that compliance levels are, for the most
part, lower in international society than they are in domestic societies.
Conclusion
The implications of the contrasts between domestic society and inter¬

national society outlined in the first section of this chapter are often
exaggerated, at least when it comes to assessing the significance of
institutional arrangements as determinants of collective outcomes. In
the typical case, the members of international society cannot expect to be
able to discard existing institutions whenever they seem inconvenient or
troublesome and they cannot afford to violate the dictates of these
arrangements on a casual basis. Of course, the character of existing
institutions does not explain everything that occurs in international
society. Nor are institutions actors in their own right, capable of direct¬
ing the behavior of the members of international society on an inten¬
tional basis. But, surely, no one would think to advance such arguments
to suggest that institutional arrangements are not significant determi¬
nants of collective outcomes in domestic society. The essential point is
that social institutions, at the international level as well as at the domestic
level, constitute major constraints on the behavior of individual actors
and, as a result, determine a substantial portion of the variance in
collective outcomes within all social systems. It follows that those who
devote a good deal of their energy to the defense of institutions they find
attractive or to the reform of institutions they regard as undesirable are
not wasting their time. They may well underestimate the difficulty of the
task of controlling or directing the course of institutional change in
complex social systems. If institutions were easier to restructure, after
all, they would be less significant as determinants of collective outcomes
in human social systems. Undoubtedly, however, those who realize that
alterations in institutional arrangements are apt to cause substantial
changes in collective outcomes are on the right track, whether they are
operating in domestic societies or in international society.
80
Chapter Four
Regime Dynamics: The Rise and

Fall of International Regimes
Because international regimes are complex social institutions, it is

tempting to approach them in static terms, abstracting away the effects
of time and social change in the interest of getting a clearer fix on the
interactions among the constituent elements of specific institutions.
This practice, drastically simplifying the analysis of regimes, is certainly
justifiable in some contexts. It makes sense, for instance, for those
endeavoring to assess the probable consequences of specific regimes or
to choose from a menu of alternative institutional arrangements. But
this orientation is not sufficient to serve as a basis for a comprehensive
analysis of international regimes. Like all social institutions, regimes
change over time. As a result, we must examine the developmental
patterns or life cycles of regimes. How can we account for the formation
of any given regime? What factors determine whether an existing re¬
gime will remain operative over time? Can we shed light on the rise of
new regimes by analyzing the decline of their predecessors? Are there
discernible patterns in these dynamic processes? Is it possible to formu¬
late nontrivial generalizations about the dynamics of international in¬
stitutions?
Regimes as Human Artifacts
A distinctive feature of all social institutions, including international

regimes, is the conjunction of behavioral regularities and convergent
expectations.1 This is not to suggest that both these elements must
i. See also A. Irving Hallowell, “The Nature and Function of Property as a Social
Institution,” Journal of Legal and Political Sociology 1 (1943), 115—138.
81
ci \ stallize simultaneously for a regime to come into existence! the rise of

beha\ loral regularities sometimes leads to a convergence of expectations
and vice versa. Undoubtedly, mutual reinforcement between these ele¬
ments also plays a role in the development and maintenance of many
social institutions. The existence of such a conjunction, however, com¬
monly produces identifiable social conventions, which actors conform to
without making elaborate calculations on a case-by-case basis.2 It follows
that international regimes, like other social institutions, typically acquire
a life of their own in the form of clusters of widely accepted social
conventions.
This perspective makes it clear that regimes are human artifacts,
which possess no existence or meaning apart from the activities of
human beings (whether as individuals or as members of collective en¬
tities). In this sense, they belong to the sphere of social systems in
contrast to natural systems. This hardly means that regimes will be easy
to construct or simple to reform on the basis of deliberate planning or
social engineering. It does, however, have several other implications.
International regimes do not exist as ideals or essences prior to their
emergence as outgrowths of patterned human behavior. It is therefore
misleading to think in terms of discovering regimes.3 Similarly, there is
no such thing as an unnatural regime; they are all responses to collec¬
tive-action problems among groups of human beings and products of
the emergence of patterns in the behavior of individuals or collective
entities. But this is not to say that it is irrelevant or uninteresting to assess
the performance of specific regimes in terms of well-defined criteria of
evaluation or to strive for the articulation of more appropriate regimes
in concrete situations. Just as alternative language systems may yield
more or less desirable results in terms of criteria such as precision of
communication or richness of description, international regimes can
have a substantial impact on the achievement of allocative efficiency,
equity, ecological balance, and so forth. Accordingly, it makes perfectly
good sense to endeavor to modify existing regimes in the interests of
promoting efficiency, equity, or any other desired outcome.
Note, however, that international regimes, like other social insti¬
tutions, are ordinarily products of the behavior of groups of actors
2. For a suggestive account of the nature and role of social conventions see Russell
Hardin, “The Emergence of Norms,” Ethics 90 (1980), 575-587. and Collective Action
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), chaps. 11-14.
3. This view has much in common with the philosophical tenets of legal positivism as
contrasted with natural law. See the well-known exchange between H. L. A. Hart. “Positiv¬
ism and the Separation of Law and Morals, Hamard Law Review 71 (1958), 593—629, and
Lon L. Fuller, “Positivism and Fidelity to Law: A Reply to Professor Hart,” Harvard Law
Review 71(1958), 630-671.
82
Regime Dynamics
(whether individuals or collective entities). While any given regime re¬

flects the behavior of all those participating in it, individual actors who
operate in an uncoordinated fashion are seldom able to exercise much
influence over the character of the regime.4 This does not mean that
regimes, treated as complex social institutions, never undergo rapid
changes or transformations. As the collapse of the institution of colonial¬
ism in the middle of the twentieth century and the recent disintegration
of the traditional system governing various uses of the oceans demon¬
strate, change can spread rapidly; the linkages among the elements of
institutions may actually accelerate processes of change once they get
started. Nonetheless, it is far from easy to bring about planned or guided
changes in social institutions. Behavioral regularities and convergent
expectations frequently prove resistant to change, even when they pro¬
duce outcomes that are widely understood to be suboptimal or undesir¬
able for all concerned. Existing institutional arrangements, such as the
regimes governing Antarctica or the international coffee trade, are fa¬
miliar constructs, whereas new arrangements require actors to assimili-
ate alternative patterns of behavior and to accept (initially) uncertain
outcomes. Additionally, planned changes in regimes require not only a
dismantling of existing institutions but also the coordination of expecta¬
tions around new focal points.5 Given the extent and the severity of
conflicts of interest in international society, it is fair to assume that the
convergence of expectations around new institutional arrangements will
often be slow in coming. This problem is well-known in connection with
legislative conferences in international society (consider the United Na¬
tions Conference on the Law of the Sea as a case in point). And it is apt to
prove even more severe with respect to coordination arising spontane¬
ously from the day-to-day behavior of individual actors expected to
become subjects of any new or modified regime.
What is more, social institutions commonly encompass an array of
informal as well as formal elements. Deliberate efforts to modify or
reform international regimes, which ordinarily focus on the formal
elements of these institutional arrangements, can therefore easily pro¬
duce disruptive consequences neither foreseen nor intended by those
promoting specific changes. Under the circumstances, there is generally
some risk that ventures in the social engineering of international re¬
gimes will ultimately do more harm than good. The desire to engage in
4. This observation is of course a cornerstone of the analysis of competitive markets in

microeconomics. For a clear exposition stressing this point see Francis M. Bator, “The
Simple Analytics of Welfare Maximization,” American Economic Review 47 (1957), 22-59.
5. On the role of focal points in the convergence of expectations see Thomas C.
Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, i960), chap. 4.
83
social engineering in this realm is understandably strong, and I certainly

do not mean to suggest that all such efforts are doomed to failure.6 Also,
situations sometimes arise (for example, as a result of the collapse of
some preexisting regime) in which it is difficult to avoid conscious efforts
to create or reform specific institutional arrangements. The situation
facing those concerned with international monetary affairs in the after-
math of the Great Depression and World War II is a clear-cut case in
point. But these comments do suggest that naive expectations regarding
the efficacy of social engineering will constitute a serious shortcoming
among policymakers and students of international relations alike.
Regime Formation
What can we say about the origins of international regimes or the

developmental processes through which regimes come into existence?
In the Introduction to this book, I argued that all social institutions are
responses to collective-action problems or situations in which the pur¬
suit of interests defined in purely individualistic terms regularly leads to
socially undesirable outcomes. As the literature on the prisoner’s di¬
lemma, the tragedy of the commons, the security dilemma, and other
well-known collective-action problems clearly indicates, difficulties of
this sort are pervasive at all levels of human activity.7 Among other
things, this observation helps to account for the common emphasis on
the normative character of social conventions and the widespread desire
to socialize those subject to institutional arrangements to conform to the
requirements of social practices as a matter of course. But it tells us little
about the actual processes through which international regimes arise. Is
there a uniform developmental sequence in regime formation or are
there several distinct processes? Though we are not yet in a position to
answer this question definitively, my work on regimes has led me to
conclude that institutional arrangements arise in several different ways
in international society.
Developmental Sequences
Some regimes are properly interpreted as self-generating or spontaneous

arrangements. They are, as Hayek puts it, “the product of the action of
6. See also Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan, The Reason of Rules: Constitu¬
tional Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). And for an anal¬
ysis of strategies available to individual actors seeking to promote changes in prevailing
institutions consult Victor P. Goldberg, “Institutional Change and the Quasi-Invisible
Hand,” Journal of Law and Economics 17 (1974). 461-492.
7. See, among others, Hardin, Collective Action; Mancur Olson, Jr., The Logic of Collec-
84
Regime Dynamics
many men but . . . not the result of human design.”8 Such regimes are
distinguished by the facts that they do not involve conscious coordina¬
tion among participants, do not require explicit consent on the part of
subjects or prospective subjects, and are highly resistant to efforts at
social engineering. Though the terms “self-generating” and “spontane¬
ous” are attributable to Hayek, Lewis covers some of the same ground in
his study of social conventions, Schelling evidently has a similar phe¬
nomenon in mind in his discussion of interactive behavior, and Axelrod
points to analogous processes in the evolution of cooperation.9 In fact,
there are several realms in which the expectations of subjects regularly
converge to a remarkable degree in the absence of conscious design or
even consciousness. Natural markets are an important case in point well-
known to social scientists, and similar processes are at work in many
balance-of-power situations at the international level. Spontaneous ar¬
rangements relating to such things as language systems and social mores
are even more striking in this regard. As those who have tried can attest,
it is extraordinarily difficult to create an effective language by design.
Yet large groups of individuals are perfectly capable of converging on
relatively complex linguistic conventions and of using them proficiently
without high levels of consciousness.
The processes through which spontaneous arrangements arise are
not well-understood.10 Surely, the propositions of sociobiology are not
sufficient to provide a satisfactory account of the formation of institu¬
tional arrangements that take such diverse forms and change so rapidly.
And social psychology offers no comprehensive theoretical account of
interactive learning relevant to the emergence of social conventions.* 11
There are intriguing hints concerning such processes, however, in re¬
cent work on the convergence of expectations and the evolution of
cooperation. Thus, Schelling’s account of tacit bargaining has high¬
lighted the role of what he terms focal points or salient solutions in coordi¬
nating the behavior of interdependent actors in the absence of explicit
communication.12 Perhaps even more suggestive in this context is the
live Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965); and Garrett Hardin and John
Baden, eds., Managing the Commons (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1977).
8. Friedrich A. Hayek, Rules and Order, vol. 1 of Law, Legislation, and Liberty (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1973), 37.
9. David K. Lewis, Convention: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1969); Thomas C. Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior (New York: Norton,
1978); and Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
10. For some suggestive observations, however, see Hardin, Collective Action, chaps. 11 —
14.
11. But consider the research on the norm of reciprocity reviewed in Kenneth J.
Gergen, The Psychology of Behavior Exchange (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1969).
12. Schelling, Strategy of Conflict, especially chap. 4.
85
analysis Axelrod has developed to account for the emergence of norms

in large groups.13 In essence, Axelrod argues that individuals or individ¬
ual actors engage in a learning process based on trial and error coupled
with a form of natural selection.14 Under such conditions, groups of
actors can coordinate their actions around common conventions, or, in
Axelrod’s terms, norms, by discarding comparatively unsuccessful be¬
haviors and retaining more successful ones through a sequence of trials.
Though much of the resultant discussion actually focuses on reasons
why actors are likely to comply with conventions or norms once they
come into existence, Axelrod does provide an interesting account of the
spread of behavioral prescriptions in response to the preferences of
unusually influential actors as well as to the special importance of main¬
taining credible reputations in highly decentralized social systems.15
Whatever the nature of the processes giving rise to such arrangements,
it is easy enough to understand the attractions of self-generating or
spontaneous social institutions. They are capable of contributing signifi¬
cantly to the welfare of the members of any given society in the absence
of high transaction costs or formal restrictions on the liberties of individ¬
ual participants.16 What is more, they obviate the need to construct
fictitious accounts of the negotiation or articulation of social contracts.
A strikingly different developmental sequence can be described under
the rubric of negotiated institutional arrangements. These are regimes
characterized by conscious efforts to agree on their major provisions,
explicit consent on the part of individual participants, and formal ex¬
pression of the results. At the outset, it is worth differentiating among
several types of negotiated regimes in international society. Such re¬
gimes may take the form either of constitutional contracts or legislative
bargains. In constitutional contracts (for example, the regime for Ant¬
arctica) those expecting to be subject to institutional arrangements par¬
ticipate directly in the relevant negotiations.17 Legislative bargains (for
example, the various United Nations efforts to devise a regime for
Palestine), by contrast, occur under conditions in which those expected
13. Robert Axelrod, “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms,” American Political Science
Review 80 (1986), 1095-1111.
14. On learned behavior pertaining to institutional arrangements see also Ernst B.
Haas, “Words Can Hurt You; or, Who Said What to Whom about Regimes,” 23-59 *n
Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983).
15. Axelrod, “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms,” 1008—1009.
16. But note that such institutions may rely on effective, if informal, social pressures.
For a general discussion of social pressure consult C. A. Kiesler and Sara B. Kiesler,
Conformity (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1969).
17. For a general account of constitutional contracts see James M. Buchanan, The Limits
of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), especially chap. 4.
86
Regime Dynamics
to be subject to a regime do not participate directly but are only repre¬

sented in negotiations by others. It is useful, as well, to distinguish
between comprehensive negotiated regimes and those that can be de¬
scribed as partial or piecemeal. Comprehensive regimes (for example,
the emerging arrangements for the deep seabed) sometimes flow from
careful and orderly negotiations. Given the conflicts of interest preva¬
lent in international society, however, it is to be expected that negotiated
arrangements will often exhibit a piecemeal quality, leaving many issues
to be settled through practice and precedent.18 Negotiated regimes are
common at the international level. In fact, there is some tendency to
become so caught up in the analysis of negotiated international regimes
that it is easy to forget that other developmental sequences are also
prominent.
Any effort to understand the formation of negotiated regimes re¬
quires a careful analysis of bargaining. The existing body of theoretical
and empirical work on bargaining can be brought to bear on the study of
regime dynamics.19 For example, this sort of regime formation can be
cast in terms of the theory of A-person, nonzero-sum, cooperative
games or in terms of the microeconomic models that originated in the
Edgeworth box construct and were developed by Zeuthen, Pen, and
Cross.20 Though this work is helpful, it also highlights some of the major
gaps in our understanding of regime dynamics. Theoretical models of
bargaining are well-known for their tendency to yield indeterminate or
conflicting results, and much of the empirical work on bargaining em¬
phasizes the importance of an array of contextual factors. Additionally,
the analytic literature on bargaining tends to abstract away a number of
factors that are important in connection with international regime for¬
mation (for example, incomplete information, unstable preferences).
Among other things, this tendency has resulted in a lack of concern for
factors that can lead to failure to reach agreement on the terms of
negotiated regimes, even when there are feasible options that would
yield gains for all parties. To illustrate, the disruptive potential of strate¬
gic moves, free riding, the absence of suitable compliance mechanisms,
18. This insight is, of course, examined extensively in the neofunctionalist literature on
regional integration. See, for example, the essays in Leon Lindberg and Stuart Scheingold,
eds., Regional Integration: Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).
19. For a review of the major theories of bargaining see Oran R. Young, ed. and
contributor, Bargaining: Formal Theories of Negotiation (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1975)-
20. On the game-theoretic models consult R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa, Games
and Decisions (New York: Wiley, 1957). The microeconomic models are reviewed in Young,
Bargaining, pt. 2.
and so forth is commonly overlooked or deemphasized in the theoretical

literature on bargaining.21
A third category of international regimes entails imposed arrange¬
ments. Imposed arrangements differ from self-generating or spontane¬
ous regimes in that they are fostered deliberately by dominant powers or
consortia of dominant powers. At the same time, such regimes typically
do not involve explicit consent on the part of subordinate actors, and
they often operate effectively in the absence of any formal expression.
In short, imposed regimes are established deliberately by dominant
actors who succeed in getting others to conform to the requirements of
these arrangements through some combination of coercion, cooptation,
and the manipulation of incentives.22 In the classic case, a hegemonic
actor openly and explicitly articulates institutional arrangements and
compels subordinate actors to conform to them. Classical feudal ar¬
rangements as well as many of the great imperial systems exemplify this
pattern.23
As Kindelberger and others have pointed out, such overt hegemony is
almost certainly the exception rather than the rule, even in international
society. What is more common are various forms of leadership in which
an actor (or a small group of actors) that is markedly superior to others
in natural and human resources or other bases of power plays a critical
role in designing institutional arrangements and inducing others to
agree to their terms.24 The leader may exercise influence by threatening
others with negative outcomes (for example, termination of aid or with¬
drawal of trading privileges) or by offering rewards for cooperation (for
example, access to advanced technology or loans on favorable terms).
But leadership differs from overt hegemony in that it involves a distinct
element of negotiation or give-and-take in contrast to processes in which
an obviously dominant actor simply dictates terms to others who have no
choice but to acquiese. In such cases, the distinction between imposed
regimes and negotiated regimes begins to blur, and it is not helpful to
insist on a hard-and-fast separation between the two. In effect, true
hegemony constitutes an extreme case, while leadership encompasses a
range of cases in which one party (or small group) possesses substantially
21. For a discussion of these problems in the context of international bargaining see
Oran R. Young, The Politics of Force: Bargaining daring International Crises (Princeton:
22. See also Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton:
23. A. P. Thornton, Doctrines of Imperialism (New York: Wiley, 1965).
24. Charles P. Kindleberger, “Dominance and Leadership in the International Econ¬
omy,” International Studies Quarterly 25 (1981), 242—254; “International Public Goods
without International Government,” American Economic Review 7b (198b), 1 — 13; and “Hi¬
erarchy versus Inertial Cooperation,” International Organization 40 (198b), 841-847.
88
Regime Dynamics
greater bargaining power than the others. This conception of leadership

undoubtedly applies to the role of Great Britain in the formation of the
nineteenth-century regime for the oceans as well as to the role of the
United States in the development of the postwar international trade and
monetary regimes.25
The dynamics of imposed regimes must be approached in terms of
power, despite the well-known problems afflicting efforts to come to
terms with the phenomenon of power.26 Several observations about the
exercise of power in connection with regime formation are worth em¬
phasizing at the outset. There is no reason to assume that dominant
actors must coerce subordinate actors continuously to ensure their con¬
formity to the requirements of imposed institutional arrangements.
Habits of obedience on the part of subordinate actors regularly arise
over time.27 Most forms of dependence have a strong cognitive compo¬
nent as well as some structural basis. And the recent literature on core¬
periphery relations makes it clear that the methods through which
hegemonic powers acquire and maintain dominance in institutionalized
relationships are often highly complex.28 It should come as no surprise,
therefore, that the most successful imposed regimes have not been
characterized by continuous exercises of overt coercion.29 There are, in
addition, significant costs associated with the role of hegemon. Hege¬
mons frequently find themselves paying off subordinate actors to re¬
main docile, as in the case of the economic benefits the Soviet Union
provides to other socialist states. Similarly, hegemonic actors generally
bear the burden of responsibility for the performance of the regimes
they impose, a fact that almost always forces them to forego positions of
moral or ethical leadership in the social systems in which they operate.
The Route Taken
How can we explain which of these developmental sequences will

govern the formation of specific international regimes? Why were se¬
rious efforts made to reach agreement on negotiated arrangements for
25. See also Gilpin, Political Economy of International Relations, and “The Politics of
Transnational Economic Relations,” International Organization 25 (1971), 398—419.
26. For a review of efforts to conceptualize power in international society consult
David A. Baldwin, “Power Analysis and World Politics,” World Politics 31 (1979), 161 — 194.
27. For an insightful discussion of the role of habits of obedience see H. L. A. Hart, The
Concept of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 49-64.
28. Consult Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1975).
29. For a richly illustrated account emphasizing the role of structural factors see Ste¬
phen D. Krasner, Structural Conflict: The Third World against Global Liberalism (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1985).
the oceans during the 1970s and 1980s when regimes for marine re¬
sources typically took the form of imposed or spontaneous arrange¬
ments in the past? Why have we come to rely increasingly on negotiated
regimes for various commodities when spontaneous arrangements (for
example, natural or unregulated markets) would have seemed perfectly
adequate in the past? The first thing to notice in reflecting on these
questions is that the three developmental sequences I have identified are
not mutually exclusive under real-world conditions. An imposed or
spontaneous regime, for example, is sometimes codified or legitimated
in a formal, constitutional contract; the 1958 Geneva Convention on the
Continental Shelf clearly illustrates this phenomenon. The promulga¬
tion of a negotiated regime will have little effect unless its precepts and
requirements are absorbed into the routine behavior of the participants.
Efforts to translate the terms of regional-fisheries arrangements into
day-to-day management systems, for example, indicate clearly how diffi¬
cult it can be to implement negotiated arrangements in international
society.30 By the same token, imposed regimes are sometimes increas¬
ingly accepted as legitimate with the passage of time, with the result that
it becomes less necessary for dominant actors to coerce others into
conforming with their requirements. A transition of this sort may well
have occurred in recent years in the management authority of adjacent
coastal states over marine fisheries. It follows that any attempt to classify
actual international regimes rigidly in terms of the three developmental
sequences is apt to distort reality and to produce confusion rather than
enhance understanding.
Nonetheless, we are still faced with the problem of identifying the
factors that lead to the predominance of one developmental sequence or
another. There is, in my judgment, a pronounced tendency to exagger¬
ate the role of negotiated regimes in contrast to imposed or spontaneous
regimes at the international level. Such an emphasis on negotiated
arrangements appeals to the conceptions of rational choice and con¬
scious institutional design that pervade the contemporary literature on
public policy and public choice. Additionally, a focus on spontaneous
regimes seems to imply an organic conception of society, an orientation
that is often associated with illiberal political views.31 Yet it is hard to
escape the conclusion that spontaneous regimes are of critical impor-
30. For an account of a number of regional fisheries arrangements see J. A. Gulland,

The Management of Marine Fisheries (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), espe¬
cially chap. 7.
31. But note that some radical thinkers have also espoused organic conceptions of
society. See, for example, Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Revolution (New York:
New York University Press, 1972).
go
Regime Dynamics
tance in international society, just as they are in other social settings.

Even in cases where a new institutional arrangement is articulated in a
treaty or convention, formalization is often better understood as a cod¬
ification of behavioral patterns that have arisen spontaneously than as
the promulgation of a new institutional arrangement requiring dra¬
matic changes in existing behavioral patterns. Many of the substantive
provisions proposed for inclusion in the law-of-the-sea convention, for
example, are properly understood as illustrations of this phenomenon.
A number of those who have contributed to the emerging literature on
the formation and maintenance of international institutions also argue
that powerful leadership, if not overt hegemony, plays a role of great
importance.32
Other things being equal, the incidence of negotiated institutional
arrangements will vary with the degree of centralization of authority in a
society. Negotiated regimes can be expected to be pervasive in societies
in which the state is highly developed and not severely constrained in
functional terms. This proposition would account for the lower in¬
cidence of negotiated arrangements in international society than in
domestic societies as well as for the growing role of negotiated arrange¬
ments in advanced industrial societies.33 At the same time, the promi¬
nence of imposed regimes will vary inversely with the level of interde¬
pendence in a society. The growth of interdependence increases the
capacity of all relevant actors to inflict costs on each other, and this
condition serves to blur (if not to eliminate) the distinction between
dominant and subordinate actors.34 This proposition would explain the
higher incidence of imposed regimes in international society than in
domestic societies, as well as in traditional societies in contrast to ad¬
vanced industrial societies. Curiously, increases in the complexity of
social systems can heighten the importance of spontaneous arrange¬
ments over that of imposed or negotiated arrangements. It is not sur¬
prising that the ability of dominant actors to impose institutional ar¬
rangements generally declines as a function of social complexity. But it
is noteworthy that the capacity of groups of actors to arrive at meaning¬
ful or coherent bargains is apt to decline as the issues at stake become
32. For evaluations of this “hegemonic stability” perspective see Robert O. Keohane,
After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1984), and Duncan Snidal, “The Limits of Hegemonic Stability Theory,”
International Organization 39 (1985), 579—614.
33. For a sophisticated treatment of the distinguishing features of international society
see Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).
34. Oran R. Young, “Interdependencies in World Politics,” International Journal 24
(1969), 726-750.
91
increasingly complex.35 As a result, spontaneous arrangements arising

from interactive behavior are prominent in modern societies, despite
the fact that this phenomenon runs counter to the widespread propen¬
sity to regard such institutions as irrational or illiberal.36 As well, expan¬
sions in the scale of social systems (measured in terms of the size of the
membership) will ordinarily militate against reliance on negotiated re¬
gimes and favor spontaneous or imposed arrangements. In very large
systems, it is hard for the members to play a meaningful role in the
negotiation of institutional arrangements; even the idea of explicit con¬
sent eventually begins to lose significance.37 Of course, it is possible to
offset these problems somewhat through the development of systems of
representation. But the success of any system of representation depends
critically not only on the presence of well-informed constituents but also
on the maintenance of high standards of accountability in relationships
between representatives and their constituents. It should come as no
surprise, therefore, that international regimes exhibiting the superficial
appearance of negotiated arrangements are sometimes better under¬
stood as imposed regimes in de facto terms.
No doubt, there are other approaches to explaining the incidence of
these developmental sequences. Perhaps some of the propositions asso¬
ciated with sociobiology can be brought to bear on this question.38 Some
observers will surely want to argue that there are cultural factors at work
in this context.39 Those familiar with the recent literature on public
choice will have something to say about the difficulties of arriving at
negotiated regimes in constitutional or legislative settings, especially
those in which voting plays an important part.40 However, I am con¬
vinced that structural factors of the sort emphasized in the preceding
paragraph are of central importance in accounting for the incidence of
different developmental sequences.41
35. See also Hayek, Rules and Order, chap. 2.

36. For an account stressing the significance of spontaneous institutional arrangements
in contemporary societies see Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior.
37. Put in other language, the transaction costs of reaching negotiated agreements rise
rapidly as a function of group size. See also E. J. Mishan, “The Postwar Literature on
Externalities: An Interpretive Essay,” Journal of Economic Literature 9 (1967), 21—24.
38. The seminal work on sociobiology is Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New
Synthesis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975). For a selection of critiques of the
major propositions of sociobiology consult Arthur L. Caplan, ed.. The Sociobiology Debate
(New York: Harper and Row, 1978).
39. For a well-known account stressing the role of culture in international relations see
Adda B. Bozeman, Politics and Culture in International History (Princeton: Princeton Univer¬
sity Press, i960).
40. For a survey of this literature see Norman Frohlich and Joe A. Oppenheimer,
Modern Political Economy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1978), especially chap. 1.
41. Students of international relations have employed the terms structure and structural-
92
Regime Dynamics
Does It Make a Difference?
In the light of this discussion, it seems important to ask whether it

makes a difference if international institutions arise in the form of
spontaneous regimes, negotiated regimes, or imposed regimes. Unless
the answer to this question is affirmative, the distinctions I have been
developing in this chapter might well be dismissed as points of no more
than academic interest.
The obvious place to begin in thinking about this question is with a
consideration of outcomes or consequences. Is one type of regime more
likely than another to promote allocative efficiency, equity, peace, eco¬
logical integrity, and so forth in the governance of international ac¬
tivities? As it happens, this is a highly complex matter with respect to
which we are not yet in a position to offer definitive answers. Inter¬
estingly, however, there is a good deal to be said for the virtues of
spontaneous arrangements from this point of view.42 Language systems
that arise spontaneously, for example, produce extraordinary social
benefits in a highly efficient fashion. Much the same can be said of
unregulated markets, at least when certain conditions pertaining to
information, competition, and social costs obtain. And spontaneous
arrangements yield these results in the absence of high transaction costs.
They do not give rise to oppressive procedural requirements or armies
of officials charged with implementing and enforcing the terms of for¬
malized regimes; participants need not even be consciously aware of
their existence. Nor do spontaneous arrangements require elaborate
formal restrictions on the liberty of individual actors, though they or¬
dinarily do give rise to effective forms of social pressure. Negotiated
regimes, by contrast, typically result in high transaction costs and the
progressive introduction of more and more intrusive restrictions on
individual liberty.43 Moreover, the introduction of a negotiated regime
can hardly be said to provide any assurance of the achievement of
allocative efficiency. Imposed regimes are intended to benefit dominant
actors. Otherwise, those occupying dominant positions would have no
incentive to expend resources on the formation of regimes.44 And domi-
ism in a variety of ways. My emphasis here is on the idea that social systems have properties,
such as centralization, interdependence, or complexity, that are attributes of the systems
per se rather than of their constituent members. For further discussion see Kenneth N.
Waltz, Theory of International Relations (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1979).
42. For a suggestive, though overly optimistic, account of these virtues see Flayek, Rules
and Order, chap. 2.
43. Though the neoconservative movement has recently stressed this point, it is worth
noting that it has long been a major theme in the literature of anarchism. See, for example,
Daniel Guerin, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970).
44. See also Gilpin, Political Economy of International Relations.
93
nant actors are often oriented more toward rent-seeking behavior than
toward the pursuit of allocative efficiency—as the history of mercantil¬
ism attests. What is more, imposed regimes may become expensive to
maintain, unless the hegemon or leadership group succeeds in inducing
subordinate actors to accept the arrangements as legitimate.45
Of course, it is true that spontaneous regimes may yield outcomes that
are difficult to justify in terms of any reputable standard of equity.
Unregulated markets certainly exemplify this observation under a wide
range of conditions. Unfortunately, however, negotiated regimes and,
especially, imposed regimes cannot be counted on to yield outcomes that
are more attractive on this account. This proposition is obviously true of
imposed arrangements, which are designed to advance the interests of
one or a few dominant actors. But it is noteworthy that negotiated
regimes offer no guarantee of outcomes that are more defensible in
terms of equity. Bargains struck may be heavily affected by an unequal
distribution of bargaining strength, and it is often hard to foresee the
consequences likely to flow from complex institutional arrangements in
any case. Even if a negotiated regime is equitable in principle, moreover,
there is usually considerable scope for implementing it in ways that
differ greatly with respect to equity.46
By contrast, the situation strikes me as markedly different when we
turn from the question of outcomes to a consideration of the stability of
international regimes or the capacity of institutional arrangements to
adjust to a changing environment in an orderly fashion.47 It is here that
spontaneous regimes often run into more or less severe problems. As
the cases of language systems and moral codes suggest, these arrange¬
ments are particularly well suited to relatively settled social environ¬
ments. The convergence of expectations through spontaneous pro¬
cesses takes time, especially in situations where a multiplicity of opinion
leaders can be expected to direct attention toward divergent focal points
concerning behavioral standards. Rapid social change, therefore, typ¬
ically erodes spontaneous regimes without creating conditions condu¬
cive to the formation of new arrangements.
Imposed regimes and negotiated regimes, on the other hand, or¬
dinarily stand up better in the face of social change. A flexible hegemon
45. For a rich account of the erosion of the legitimacy of British imperialism see A. P.
Thornton, The Imperial Idea and Its Enemies: A Study in British Power (Garden City: Anchor
Books, 1968).
46. I his problem is largely abstracted away by writers like Rawls who assume perfect
compliance with the principles of justice accepted by actors in the original position. See
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). 351.
47. See also Oran R. Young, “On the Performance of the International Polity,” British
Journal of International Studies 4 (1978), 191—208.
94
Regime Dynamics
or leadership group can succeed in manipulating incentives or adjusting

the terms of an imposed arrangement substantially, so long as its own
position of dominance is not severely eroded by social change. Some
students of international relations have been so struck by these consider¬
ations, in fact, that they have developed a conception of hegemonic
stability in which the presence of a dominant actor or group figures
as a necessary condition for the maintenance of institutional arrange¬
ments.48 Parties to negotiated regimes can modify or revise the relevant
arrangements on a deliberate basis in response to social change. In the
case of constitutional contracts, for example, there is ordinarily nothing
to prevent the members from amending or even replacing major provi¬
sions of an existing regime. The ongoing negotiations aimed at adapting
the Antarctic regime to cover the possibility of exploiting commercially
valuable minerals exemplify this prospect.49 It is true, of course, that
such responses will sometimes lead to incoherence in international re¬
gimes, since additions to existing arrangements are not always easy to
square with the original character of a regime. Still, it is easy enough to
see the attractions of negotiated regimes during periods of rapid social
change.
All this poses a dilemma of sorts. Negotiated regimes and even im¬
posed regimes are attractive in periods, like the present, characterized
by rapid social change. Also, negotiated arrangements certainly appeal
to those convinced of the efficacy of social engineering. Yet spontaneous
regimes are not without real attractions in terms of the outcomes they
are likely to produce. Under the circumstances, we find ourselves today
in an era that features a growing emphasis on negotiated regimes at the
international level, though we have only a limited understanding of how
to manage such arrangements in a cheap and efficient way, much less in
a fashion that will ensure equitable outcomes. It follows that we need to
think much more systematically about the extent to which the problems
of negotiated regimes are endemic or, alternatively, subject to allevia¬
tion through the development of suitable management techniques.
Regime Transformation
International regimes do not become static constructs even after they

are fully articulated. Rather, they evolve continuously in response to
their own inner dynamics as well as to changes in the political, economic,
48. See Keohane, After Hegemony, for an extended assessment of this argument.
49. M. J. Peterson, “Antarctica: The Last Great Land Rush on Earth,” International
Organization 34 (1980), 377-403.
95
and social environments. In this connection, I use the term transforma¬

tion to refer to significant alterations in a regime’s structure of rights and
rules, the character of its social-choice procedures, and the nature of its
compliance mechanisms. How extensive must these alterations be to
produce qualitative change in the sense that we would want to speak of
one regime disappearing and another taking its place? Does a shift from
unrestricted common property to a regime of restricted common prop¬
erty for the marine fisheries, for example, entail a qualitative change of
regimes? Answers to these questions must ultimately be arbitrary, and I
shall not attempt to specify any generic threshold of transformation for
international regimes.50 Instead, I propose to focus on major alterations
in existing regimes and to comment on the patterns of change giving rise
to these alterations.
Patterns of Change
It is possible to identify several distinct processes leading to regime

transformation. These processes sometimes revolve around factors that
are endogenous to specific institutional arrangements. Some regimes
harbor internal contradictions that eventually lead to serious failures
and mounting pressure for major alterations. Such contradictions may
take the form of irreconcilable conflicts among the constituent elements
of a regime. For example, a regime that guarantees all participants
unrestricted access to an area’s resources while at the same time granting
sovereignty over the area to a single member (like the regime articulated
in the Svalbard treaty of 1920) is bound to generate serious frictions.51
On the other hand, internal contradictions sometimes exhibit a develop¬
mental character, deepening over time as a consequence of the normal
operation of a regime. Of course, this is the perspective underlying
Marxist analyses of the capitalist international economic order.52 At a
more mundane level, however, the same sort of dynamic occurs in
regimes governing many specific activities.53 To illustrate, it is easy to
trace the impact of evolving contradictions in unrestricted common-
50. Compare the well-known query posed by philosophers: How many Chevrolet parts
added to a Ford automobile would it take to transform the vehicle from a Ford into a
Chevrolet?
51. For a more general discussion of the problems posed by conflicts among rights
consult Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
t977), especially chap. 4.
52. For an illustration, see Immanuel M. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World Economy (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
53- See the essays included in William R. Thompson, ed., Contending Approaches to World
System Analysis (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1983).
96
Regime Dynamics
property regimes for marine fisheries during periods in which increas¬

ing harvest capacities lead to severe depletions of fish stocks.54
Several approaches to the analysis of these internal contradictions
seem worth pursuing. It is relatively straightforward to conceptualize
such phenomena in terms of the stability conditions associated with
equilibrium models. That is, treating any given regime as a system of
action, we can ask how far its central elements can be displaced before
the system blows up rather than moves back toward a point of equi¬
librium.55 Perhaps the best known example of this approach at the
international level involves the reaction-process models devised by Rich¬
ardson for the analysis of arms races.56 Alternatively, it may prove
helpful to examine internal contradictions leading to regime transfor¬
mation in terms of the holistic perspective associated with dialectical
reasoning.57 This approach need not take the form of dialectical mate¬
rialism or of any particular variety of Marxism; rather, its hallmarks are
the analysis of complex institutions as dynamic wholes and a search for
dialectical laws describing patterns of change in these entities.58 It is
worth pointing out that each of these approaches directs attention to the
role of crises in regime transformation, whether such crises are charac¬
terized in terms of the vocabulary of systems going unstable or of some
sort of collapse of an old order. We are now becoming familiar with dis¬
cussions of liquidity crises in monetary regimes, crises of common prop¬
erty in regimes for renewable resources, and pollution crises brought on
by such practices as the use of the air mantle as a sink for the disposal of
residuals or wastes.59 It follows that the recent literature exploring social
applications of catastrophe theory is a promising source of insights into
patterns of regime transformation.60
An alternative type of process leading to regime transformation places
54. For a seminal analysis consult H. Scott Gordon, “The Economic Theory of a
Common Property Resource: The Fishery,” Journal of Political Economy 62 (1954), 124-
l42-
55. For an accessible discussion of the stability conditions associated with equilibrium
models see Anatol Rapoport, Fights, Games, and Debates (Ann Arbor: University of Michi¬
gan Press, i960), pt. 1.
56. See also the more general account of reaction-process models in Kenneth Boulding,
Conflict and Defense (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), especially chap. 2.
57. On the nature of dialectical reasoning see John Mepham and David H. Rubin, eds.,
Issues in Marxist Philosophy, vol. 1 (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1979)-
58. For a thoughtful discussion of the nature of dialectical laws see Bertell Oilman,
Alienation: Marx’s Theory of Man in Capitalist Society, 2d ed. (New York: Cambridge Univer¬
sity Press, 1976).
59. See also Richard A. Falk, This Endangered Planet (New York: Random House, 1971).
60. See also Michael B. Nicholson, Formal Theories of International Relations (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 8.
97
greater emphasis on factors that are exogenous to specific institutional

arrangements. Undoubtedly, shifts in the general structure of power in
international society are often important in this connection. It is perhaps
obvious that imposed regimes, especially those associated with true
hegemony in contrast to more complex forms of leadership, are unlikely
to survive for long in the wake of severe declines in the effective power of
the dominant actor.61 This may well help to account for the erosion in
the postwar international monetary regime that has occurred during the
!97os and 1980s.62 But it is important to recognize that both negotiated
regimes and spontaneous regimes also reflect the prevailing structure of
power in society. Institutional arrangements are never neutral in their
impact on the interests of their members. Accordingly, powerful actors
exert pressure whenever they can to devise constitutional contracts or
legislative bargains favoring their interests.63 And opinion leaders or
pacesetters act in such a way as to move spontaneous arrangements into
line with their own interests. Understandably, therefore, shifts in the
distribution of power will be reflected, sometimes gradually rather than
abruptly, in commensurate alterations in international regimes. In some
instances, these changes are quite direct, involving power shifts in the
immediate issue area covered by a given regime. There can be no doubt,
for example, that recent changes in the regime set forth in the Interna¬
tional North Pacific Fisheries Convention emerged directly from the
expanding influence of the United States over the marine fisheries of the
region. In other cases, the process is less direct in that the character of an
international regime changes in response to broader shifts in the struc¬
ture of power in international society as a whole. Thus, it is difficult to
comprehend many features of recent efforts to restructure regimes for
ocean resources without a sophisticated appreciation of the broader
patterns of change in the distribution of power in international society
that have unfolded in the recent past.64
The analysis of such patterns of regime transformation is hampered
by both empirical and conceptual problems. The principal empirical
limitation arises from the fact that we continue to lack a satisfactory
measure of power, despite numerous efforts to devise a usable metric or
index in this area.65 As a result, while it is easy enough to recognize
61. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Structure of Nations and Empires (New York: Scribner’s, 1959).
62. Gilpin, Political Economy of International Relations, chap. 4.
63. In short, regimes are seldom developed under conditions approximating the Rawls-
ian “veil ol ignorance.” See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, for an account of these conditions.
64. See also Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Ocean Rule-making from a World Perspective,” 221-
244 in Ocean Policy Project, Perspectives on Ocean Policy (Washington, D.C., 1974).
65. For a critical review see David A. Baldwin, “Money and Power,” Journal\of Politics 33
(1970, 578—614.
Regime Dynamics
major shifts in power after the fact, it is exceedingly difficult to pinpoint

the early phases of significant shifts or to monitor such shifts closely as
they unfold. For example, there is no doubt that the ability of the United
States to control the international monetary regime has declined in
recent years, but it is hard to say just how rapidly this trend is progress¬
ing and where it will lead during the near future.66 On the conceptual
level, the central problem arises from a lack of consensus on the defini¬
tion of power. This problem is partly attributable to the complex and
elusive character of the phenomenon of power.67 In part, the problem
arises from the fact that power plays a significantly different role in
various analytic perspectives in common use among social scientists.
Compare, for example, the conceptions of power embedded in the
propositions of those who think in terms of structural bases of depen¬
dence and of those who focus on the behavior of individual actors and
employ the language of interdependence.68 It follows that this type of
regime transformation is not well-understood at present. But this limita¬
tion is hardly a sufficient reason to deemphasize the role that shifts in the
structure of power play in producing major alterations in specific re¬
gimes. Rather, I would agree with those who argue that this situation
calls for a renewed effort to come to terms in a systematic fashion with
power and shifts in the distribution of power.
Beyond this, however, international regimes regularly fall victim to
other exogenous factors. Perhaps the most dramatic examples of such
processes of transformation occur in conjunction with changes in the
nature and distribution of technology.69 To illustrate, the advent of
large stern trawlers and factory ships after World War II decisively
undermined many unrestricted common-property regimes governing
marine fisheries, which had performed at least tolerably for a long time.
Similarly, the rapid growth of satellite-communications technology is
threatening to swamp the existing institutional arrangements that gov¬
ern the use of the global electromagnetic spectrum.70 But other ex-
66. For an account that even raises questions about the decline of American influence
see Susan Strange, “The Persistent Myth of Lost Hegemony,” International Organization 41
(1987k 55!-574-
67. See also Baldwin, “Power Analysis.”
68. To illustrate, compare the ideas set forth in Johan Galtung, “A Structural Theory of
Imperialism,"Journal of Peace Research 2 (1971), 81 —118, with those outlined in Robert O.
Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).
69. For a sweeping view of Western history that stresses the role of technological change
see William H. McNeil, The Rise of the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963).
For a more specific argument relating technological change to many contemporary en¬
vironmental problems see Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle (New York: Knopf, 1971).
70. See also Seyom Brown, Nina W. Cornell, Larry Fabian, and Edith Brown Weiss,
Regimes for the Ocean, Outer Space, and Weather (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1977)’
99
ogenous factors can produce equally far-reaching results in the transfor¬

mation of international regimes. Major shifts in domestic priorities can
make certain types of regimes unworkable at the international level.
There can be no doubt, for instance, that growing attachments to pol¬
icies aimed at full employment and social welfare at the domestic level
have played a significant role in rendering fixed exchange rates unwork¬
able in the international monetary regime. Much the same is true of
major increases in demand for certain renewable resources arising from
overall population growth or sharp shifts in tastes among consumers.
Such developments surely constitute a major factor in recent problems
with common-property arrangements for the marine fisheries or for
pollution control in areas such as the Mediterranean Basin. Significant
changes in one international regime can also trigger pressures for
change in other institutional arrangements. To illustrate, any success in
efforts to modify the existing regime for whaling that have the effect of
encouraging the growth of stocks of great whales will have important
implications for arrangements governing the harvest of renewable re¬
sources, such as krill, in the Southern Ocean.71
The impact of these exogenous factors is certainly difficult to predict
in specific cases. The course of technological development is discon¬
tinuous and hard to foresee.72 The processes through which human
values and tastes evolve are poorly understood. It is even difficult to
make accurate predictions of demographic shifts, despite the availability
of empirical projections based on past trends. And, of course, a clear
understanding of the interactions among changes that affect collections
of international regimes presupposes the growth of knowledge of the
whole issue of regime transformation. Nonetheless, it seems important
to recognize the significance of exogenous factors in thinking about
regime transformation. If nothing else, this recognition reminds us of
the dangers of approaching specific institutional arrangements in isola¬
tion from the broader social setting.
Paths to Transformation
Which of these patterns of change will occur most frequently in

regime transformation at the international level? How can we account
especially chaps. 11-13, anc^ Gregory C. Staples, “T he New World Satellite Order: A
Report from Geneva,” American Journal of International Law 80 (1986), 699—720.
71. On the natural resources of the Southern Ocean see G. L. Kesteven, “The Southern
Ocean,” 467-499 in Elisabeth Mann Borgese and Norton Ginsburg, eds.. Ocean Yearbook, 1
(Ghicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
72. See also Lester B. Lave, Technological Change: Its Conception and Measurement (En¬
glewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966).
IOO
Regime Dynamics
for differences in the incidence of various processes of transformation?

Once again, it is helpful to begin with the observation that the patterns
of change are not mutually exclusive; several of them can occur simulta¬
neously, interacting with each other to produce a complex dynamic.
There is little doubt, for example, that technological developments
severely exacerbated internal contradictions built into the traditional
regimes of unrestricted common property in the marine fisheries. And
emerging contradictions in common-property arrangements that gov¬
ern the disposal of various wastes or residuals have provided a stimulus
for the development of radically different technologies in this area, a
shift that is certain to generate pressures for major changes in pollution-
control regimes. It follows that sophisticated analyses of the transforma¬
tion of specific international regimes will typically require examination
of several distinct processes of transformation together with the interac¬
tions among them. For many purposes, therefore, it will not help much
to concern ourselves with efforts to determine the relative importance or
weight of individual processes of transformation.
It is also worth noting that views regarding the importance of dif¬
ferent processes of transformation commonly correlate closely with
broader philosophical or ideological perspectives. Marxists and others
who think in dialectical terms, for example, can be expected to approach
the problem of regime transformation primarily in terms of the impact
of internal contradictions.73 They will search for dialectical laws govern¬
ing regime dynamics and emphasize the growth of antithetical forces
leading to the collapse or breakdown of existing institutional arrange¬
ments. Those whose thinking reflects geopolitical ideas, mercantilism,
or realism, by contrasts, typically focus on structures of power and
attribute significant changes in international regimes to broader shifts in
the distribution of capabilities at the international level. They regularly
treat existing institutional arrangements as reflections of the structure of
international society as a whole, expecting specific regimes to change in
predictable ways in the wake of shifts in the broader structure of power.
Yet another perspective is characteristic of the thinking of many liberals
who emphasize rational behavior and the mutual benefits of coopera¬
tion rather than dialectical processes or the central role of power.74 They
are inclined to interpret the transformation of regimes as attempts to
achieve reasoned adjustments to exogenous developments such as tech-
73. For non-Marxian analyses of this type see G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History,
trans. by J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), and Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West,
abr. trans. by Charles F. Atkinson (New York: Knopf, 1962).
74. For a thoughtful account of this type see Ernst B. Haas, “Why Collaborate? Issue
Linkage and International Regimes,” World Politics 32 (1980), 357-405.
IOI
nological change or population growth.75 Not surprisingly, they gener¬

ally prefer to think in terms of the articulation of negotiated regimes,
and they are among those most likely to exaggerate the scope for suc¬
cessful social engineering in international society.
Efforts to determine which of these general orientations is correct
seldom yield illuminating results. Not only do the points of view ap¬
proach the problem of regime transformation from radically different
directions, they also rest on incompatible premises, which are difficult to
test in any meaningful way.76 Still, it is useful to bear these divergent
perspectives in mind in exploring the question of regime transforma¬
tion. Doing so is likely to increase the sophistication of our efforts to
understand specific cases of regime transformation as well as to improve
communication among those who share an interest in the problem of
explaining the transformation of institutional arrangements.
It is tempting also to argue that spontaneous regimes, negotiated
regimes, and imposed regimes typically differ with respect to the pro¬
cesses of transformation they undergo. At first glance, it seems reason¬
able to expect spontaneous regimes arising in the absence of human
design to be more prone to internal contradiction than negotiated re¬
gimes, which arise in the form of conscious agreements. Similarly, im¬
posed regimes, tied closely to the structure of power in international
society, would appear to be more sensitive to shifts in the distribution of
capabilities than spontaneous or negotiated arrangements. Yet this line
of reasoning has serious flaws that are readily apparent on reflection.
Major contradictions or elements of incoherence, for example, are com¬
mon in constitutional contracts, which are typically products of political
compromise rather than rational planning.77 Though it is certainly true
that imposed regimes are sensitive to shifts in the distribution of power,
much the same is true of negotiated regimes and even spontaneous
regimes. What is more common, for instance, than efforts to reinterpret
constitutional contracts more or less drastically in the wake of significant
shifts in the structure of power in a social system?78 These observations
75. See Falk, This Endangered Planet, for an analysis reflecting this point of view.
76. For a general treatment of these issues see Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). For an analysis of similar
issues with particular reference to international politics consult Graham Allison, The
Essence of Decision (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971).
77. See the observations on this phenomenon developed in Wolffs critique of Rawls:
Robert Paul Wolff, Understanding Rauds (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
78. For an account that stresses the view that constitutional contracts are, in any case,
little more than interpretations arising from a flow of authoritative decisions see Myres S.
McDougal and Associates, Studies in World Public Order (New Haven: Yale University Press,
i960).
102
Regime Dynamics
do not lead me to rule out the development of nontrivial generalizations

about regime transformation along these lines. But it does seem clear
that such generalizations must await the formulation of more subtle
distinctions among the developmental sequences associated with regime
formation that I introduced earlier in this chapter.
Conclusion
International regimes are human artifacts characterized by a conjunc¬

tion of behavioral regularities and convergent expectations on the part
of their members. While such institutional arrangements are difficult to
alter in a planned or guided fashion, they change continuously in re¬
sponse to both their own inner dynamics and a variety of political,
economic, and social factors in their environments. This fact suggests
the importance of posing two sets of questions regarding regime dy¬
namics. How and why do regimes arise from the interactions of individ¬
ual actors over time? The argument of this chapter is that it is helpful to
differentiate three developmental sequences in connection with regime
formation at the international level. The resultant institutional arrange¬
ments can be labeled spontaneous regimes, negotiated regimes, and
imposed regimes. Additionally, we want to know how and why regimes
change once they become fully established. Here it seems illuminating to
distinguish between endogenous forces involving internal contradic¬
tions of one sort or another and exogenous forces involving shifts in
underlying power structures, prevailing technology, human values or
tastes, and so forth. If we adopt this perspective, the next task in the
study of regime dynamics is to seek a more sophisticated understanding
of the factors governing the incidence of these developmental sequences
and patterns of change.

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Prologue

Much of the growing literature on international regimes consists of

lems but also to structure the character of collective outcomes at the

We live in a world of international regimes. Some of them deal with

It is therefore surprising that it took so long for students of interna¬

The Core Concept

Regimes are social institutions governing the actions of those involved

1. See, among others, Richard N. Cooper, “Prolegomena to the Choice of an Interna¬

rules or conventions governing relations among the occupants of these

5. Even when a regime is articulated formally in a contract or a treaty, informal rules

vately owned airlines. States participating in international regimes must

8. Roger K. Smith, “Explaining the Non-Proliferation Regime: Anomalies for Con¬

objectives in mind.10 It is, however, possible to identify several key

The Substantive Component

The core of every international regime is a cluster of rights and rules.

erals).13 Because of the prevalence of common-property arrangements

follow certain safety rules in using international airspace; those engaged

The Procedural Component

A procedural component of international regimes encompasses rec¬

Social-choice mechanisms are institutional arrangements specialized

Smoothly functioning international regimes are not easy to estab¬

international society, typically rely on them.28 The result is apt to be a

It is possible to argue that some regime must be present in every

Finally, there is an important distinction between the conditions re¬

We turn now to some prominent features of international regimes as

Variation in extent, formalization, direction, and coherence is a prom¬

goal. Various goals are feasible—including economic efficiency, dis¬

Though all regimes, even highly decentralized private-enterprise ar¬

they are by no means confined to societies of this type. For example,

international regimes are less tightly linked together than domestic

Policy instruments are devices subject to deliberate or planned manip¬

may be severely limited. Compliance can also become a major problem

Though there are great variations among international regimes, they

likelihood that it will experience major changes in the foreseeable future?

Adherence to such an agenda should produce a growing body of com¬

Patterns of International Cooperation:

Students of international relations, like most other social scientists,

1. For other statements regarding the importance of distinguishing between institu¬

Institutions and Organizations

Institutions are social practices consisting of easily recognized roles

Association, the National Petroleum Council, the National Rifle Associa¬

covers the marine environment located between Antarctica proper and

cannot use the deep seabed on an open-to-entry basis as in the case of

Figure i. Matrix of institutions and organizations

Under what conditions can regimes perform satisfactorily in the ab¬

Anarchy, as its proponents regularly point out, is not a condition of

dom at some cost in terms of positive freedom.20 Nonetheless, it is

nounced mood of skepticism has set in regarding these prescriptions. As

the assignment of transferable property rights in valued goods to indi¬

mercial shipping) or take place in some international commons (for

typically require organizations to set quotas, decide on moratoriums,

authorities. Of course, exchange systems based on relatively unre¬

38. Eckert, Enclosure of Ocean Resources, chap. 8.

a process in which a complex social practice unravels, is often sufficient

Despite the prominent place of anarchical arrangements in interna¬

responsible for implementing common rules within their own jurisdic¬

41. See Lyster, International Wildlife Law, chap. 11.

distribution of benefits derived from the exploitation of resources, or