Notes on Neoliberal Institutionalist Theory in International Relations

 Slaughter, A. M. (1997) ‘The Real New World Order'.

• Liberal Internationalist thought is flawed b/c it ignores that international organizations, which are powerless to act without the support of their constituent states, face backlash to any attempt to increase their power.
• Hierarchy, centralized authority, and universal membership are not embodied in any single organization.

Waltz, Kenneth. "The Emerging Structure of International Politics". International Security, Vol.18, No.2 (1993): 44-79.

• Learning from the Japanese example, the author notes that free trade is not always the best policy for a nation. While free trade is beneficial to entirely unindustrialized countries and advanced industrial economies, developing nations must protect their infant industry through tariffs and protectionism (56-57).
• Liberal institutionalists continually make claims about democratic peace, but history is actually replete with examples of democracies engaging in war, including the War of 1812, the American Civil War, and the First World War. The 'fact' that at least one belligerent was not a 'true' democracy is decided afterwards to protect the notion of democratic peace (78).

Grieco, Joseph. "Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism". International Organization, Vol.42, No.3 (1988): 485-507.

• "For realists, international anarchy fosters competition and conflict among states and inhibits their willingness to cooperate even when they share common interests. Realist theory also argues that international institutions are unable to mitigate anarchy's constraining effects on inter-state cooperation" (485).
• Realism consists of five propositions: that states are the primary international actors, that states behave as unitary rational agents because the costs of not doing so are so high, the international relations is shaped by anarchy, that anarchy prioritizes security concerns, and that international institutions can only marginally affect cooperation (488).
• The main challenger of Realist theory has been Liberal Institutionalism, which claims that international institutions and organizations can help reduce the barriers between states and foster international cooperation. The iteration of Liberalism in the 1980s agrees with Realist conceptions of anarchy, but also holds that institutions can change inter-state dynamics (486).
• Liberalism challenges several main tenants of Realist IR theory, claiming that both states and international institutions are primary actors, that states are no longer unitary actors, that the nuclear age and the rise of legitimacy linked to welfare states have lessened the importance of security (489), and that international institutions could make major changes in the ability of states to cooperate (490).
• This is not, however, true of all forms of Liberalism in IR. The most recent form of Liberal Institutionalism accepts states as the sole actors in the international arena, and agrees that they are unitary and rational (492, 494).
• The Liberal school of International Relations [IR] theory claims that states are rational actors who seek to increase their own absolute gains, which can be best achieved through institutions. On the other hand, Realists argue that states care most about relative gains vis-a-vis other states (487, 497, 503).
• The author asserts that while Liberal Institutionalism can solve some barriers to cooperation by protecting states from being exploited by free-riders or cheaters, the solutions proposed by Liberalism cannot solve the issue of differences in relative gain between cooperating countries (487).
• The core issues of IR cannot be solved by international cooperation because ultimately states are not as concerned with their absolute gain, but about their relative gains. The primacy of relative gains exists because states are under constant potential threat and therefore care mostly about the strength of possible aggressors (498).
• The benefits of international institutions, according the school of liberal institutionalism, is that they institutional and reward cooperative behavior between states by making interactions iterative, making cooperation easier logistically, and institutionalizing punishments for non-cooperative behavior (495).
• The issue that the Realist school of IR finds with Liberal Institutionalism is that international cooperation is still limited by concerns about relative gains which cannot be solved by institutions. States care more about preventing the relative success of others than about increasing their own absolute success, because those others may attack them in the future (499-500).
• The level to which states are concerned about relative gains will, however, vary based on unique circumstances. States within a security community of shared defense will express less apprehension about unequal gains with an ally than it would about that same gap with an antagonistic state (501).
• The schools of Realism and Liberalism differ in their assumptions about the likelihood of cooperation in a number of different circumstances (505).
•  Liberalism would contend that the longevity of agreements is a primary factor in determining the likelihood of cooperation, whereas Realists would cite the gap in relative gains as the primary determinate (505).
• A smaller number of partners in an agreement would make negotiations less complex and increase the effectiveness of institutional safeguards according to Liberalism, whereas Realism would contend that more partners in an agreement would be beneficial as it decreases the potential for unequal gains from the agreement (506).
• Liberalism would predict that cooperative behaviors with benefits in multiple areas, such as industrial gains which benefit the military, would experience high rates of cooperation because of large absolute gains. Realism, however, would predict low levels of cooperation because the threat of unequal gains is higher (506).

Wendt, Alexander. "Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics". International Organization, Vol.46, No.2 (1992): 391-425.

• While the traditional debate between the Realist and Liberalist schools of international relations [IR] has been over human nature, contemporary arguments between the Neorealist and Neoliberalist schools of IR focus on the importance of structure versus processes in determining IR between states (391).
• Both schools of thought treat states as rational, self-interested actors not affected by identities (392).
• To Realists and Neoliberalists the anarchy -- meaning a system without a central governing authority, rather than one entirely without structure -- in the international arena means that states are locked in a self-help system. Since states cannot predict the behavior of other states in the long-term, they can only depend on themselves for cooperation and security (392).
• The Liberal school of IR theory agrees with Realist observations about the effects of an anarchic world system, but contests that the necessary result is a self-help system. They argue that instead processes of interaction over a long period can lead to patterns of behavior which promote cooperation, helped by international institutions (392-393).
• In this article, the author argues that the increased levels of cooperation facilitated by international institutions in Liberal IR theory can also be explained using Constructivist theory. Rather than economic cooperation and patterns of behavior tying states together, the socially constructed beliefs about partner countries reinforce past cooperation (394).
• Actors acquire their identities through interaction with other actors in the international system, as by their nature, identity is an relative concept. These identities are constructed by state's previous establishment of interests in trying scenarios, and serve to inform states about their interests in new scenarios (397-398).
• An institution is a set of stable identities and interests, recorded through established rules and norms of behavior. They can exist as material bodies -- like the UN or NATO -- or as patterns of established behavior between sets of nation-states. The Cold War was an institution, as is the self-help system (399).
• The self-help system is a socially-constructed institution of norms about how states should interact. It sometimes exists, but the continuum of potential security systems in IR demonstrates that other institutions for interaction exist (400).
• IR security systems can be either competitive, where distrust is rife and states play a zero-sum game; individualistic, where states are preoccupied with their own absolute gains; and cooperative, where states identify security as collective and are thus concerned about the absolute gain of the system as a whole (400).
• States can act within a competitive security community, where the self-help system is engrained, but this implies that states have already learned this behavior of interaction through iterative 'games' where all actors have acquired selfish interests and identities (402).
• "If self-help is not a constitutive feature of anarchy, it must emerge causally from processes in which anarchy plays only a permissive role" (403).
• The existence of joint gains in cases of cooperation can motivate states to interact, but they still need a reason to actual break from traditional self-help molds. Studies have shown that iterative games of the 'Prisoner's Dilemma' can accomplish this transition from competition to cooperation (416).
• The difference between Liberal and Constructivist understanding of this phenomenon is that the Liberal school would argue that behavior would change over time to promote cooperation because the costs are lower, whereas the Constructivist school would argue that perceptions about interaction would shift to favor cooperation (416-417).
• This trend towards cooperation can be undermined by antagonism between two parties. If the relationship between states is competitive, then they may value depriving the enemy of gains more than they care about their own absolute gains, undermining any hope of cooperation (418).
• There is a hope that actors could change their identities, and thus the system of zero-sum interactions, through purposeful self-reflection initiated because the costs of the current system of interaction is too high. A potential example includes thaws in the Cold War because of the threat of nuclear armageddon (419-420).

Keohane, Robert and Joseph Nye Jr. "Review: Power and Interdependence Revisited". International Organization, Vol.41, No.4 (1987): 725-753.

• The essential claim in interdependence that the actions of one state will incur costs of other states creates political challenges, because each country will try to build a system which increases beneficial integration while minimizing the potential fallout from another nation's failures (730).
• The theory of interdependence does not assume that states will cooperate, that power is not essential, nor that the effects will be positive. Instead, interdependence is a new framework with which to understand state action (730).
• Regimes may have a number of possible effects on state policy. The existence of regimes can provide governments clear rules for behavior and expectations, over time states may come to correlate their self-interest with the survival of the regime. Regimes also impose normative penalties for violations (743).
• Clearly defining the effects of international regimes on governmental policy would require an analysis of internal government documents, since it is methodologically difficult to distinguish state interests that match regimes to state interest that are shaped by regimes (743-744).
• The international system has two components: structure, referring to the distribution of capabilities among actors, and process, referring to the modes of interaction between actors. The structure of the system provides states with opportunities and handicaps, whereas the preferences of states affect their favored processes (745).
• A significant amount of international behavior is not explained by the distribution of capabilities, as recognized by the Neorealist school of IR. However, this discipline usually relegates the explanation to unit-level factors, ignoring the role that interdependence and the strength of international institutions play in foreign policy (746).
• The presence of these non-structural international factors in IR mediates the abilities of states to communicate, and produces non-structural incentives for state behavior through norm creation. Certain non-structural conditions will change the costs of actions, as will the existence of different sets of behavioral norms (746).
• A key question identified by the authors for scholars going forward is explaining the reasons and processes spurring the "learning" process of political leaders as they redefine national interests based on domestic and international factors. Regimes, by compartmentalizing and formalizing knowledge and communicating information, likely also produce positive learning outcomes, but the specifics are currently unknown (751).

Deudney, Daniel and G. John Ikenberry. "The Nature and Sources of Liberal International Order". Review of International Studies, Vol.25, No.2 (1999): 179-196.

• The author argues that many of institutions within the Western system cannot be explained by realist IR theory, claiming that the extend of mutual beneficial relationships and interconnectedness within the West will preserve Cold War era alliances despite the lack of outside threat (180).
• This article elucidates the theory of 'structural liberalism', which claims the unique construction of the Western system overcomes traditional objections in Realist and Liberal theory. The cooperative security practices mitigate anarchy, the disarmament of Germany and Japan removes two possible 'spoilers' from the mix, capitalism solves many issues of relative gain, and a shared civic identity discourages intra-group conflict (181, 196).
• The view of the Realist school of IR theory is that state behavior is motivated by anarchy, meaning the lack of central order in the international system. Because intentions cannot be judged in the long-term, states seek to reduce the threat posed by powerful states by developing ad hoc alliances against those powers. This situation, in turn, prevents total hegemony and thus perpetuates the anarchy of the international system (182).
• This view ignores the phenomenon of 'co-binding', in which states lock themselves into institutions which provide major benefits for cooperation, punish defection, and create workplace cultures of cooperation and joint control (182-183).
• Both NATO and EU represent co-binding security and economic communities. By interlocking military command structures and strategically vital industries, these agreements made competition between Western powers much more difficult, and thus encourage continued cooperation (183-184).
• Western states have been shaped by and used the instruments of advanced capitalism to create international systems which favor longevity. The incredibly high profits to be made under advanced capitalism mean that absolute gains are valued over relative gains, encouraging cooperation. Furthermore, free trade has been used strategically so that other nations are forced into accepting advance capitalism, and thus also responding to cooperative instincts (190).
• Realists have proposed two alternative theories for the prevalence of free trade among Western nations. Hegemonic theory dictates that the US installed the regime of free trade because it benefitted the US economy. The expansion of free trade policies where then bolstered by the bipolarity of the Cold War system, where intra-alliance power disparities did not matter as much as inter-alliance power disparities, which encourages cooperation between allies (190).
• "In a world of advanced industrial capitalist states, the absolute gains to be derived from economic openness are so substantial that states have the strong incentive to abridge anarchy so that they do not have to be preoccupied with relative gains considerations at the expense of absolute gains" (191).

Keohane, Robert and Lisa Martin. "The Promise of Institutionalist Theory". International Security, Vol.20, No.1 (1995): 39-51.

• Both the Realist school and the Liberal Institutionalist school of International Relations [IR] theory treat states as rational self-interested actors within a system of international anarchy.  Liberalism does not imagine that states will be irrationally cooperative, nor does it propose a transformational system of IR theory (39).
• The authors object to two interpretations of Liberal Institutionalist theory detailed by Dr. Mearsheimer. The first claims that Liberal theory does not deal with security issues -- a view held by a minority of the Liberal school and not held by Drs. Keohane and Martin -- and the second claims that 'cheating' is the primary impediment to international cooperation, whereas disproportionate relative gains are equally as important (43).
• Dr. Mearsheimer defines the primary issue of international cooperation in security as the lack of information about the intent of other states. Lack of information means that rational states must always assume worst-case scenarios to avoid disaster, leading to low levels of cooperation. The authors hold that international institutions which make information more available can solve this problem, and thus are important in security issue (43-44).
• The author disagree with the Realist claim that relative gains will always be the dominant concern over absolute gains. The Liberal Institutionalist school agrees with Realist theory that when two blocs are in direct competition, relative gains are more important, but absolute gains are most important in almost all other circumstances (44).
• International institutions are important to create the circumstances under which states are more likely to value absolute gains above relative gains. Institutions formalize outcomes and decrease the time, complexity, and costs of cooperation. These arrangements also make relative gains easily to calculate and can be reconfigured to decrease disparities in these relative gains (45-46).
• International institutions are both independent and dependent variables, as they are changed by state policy and change state policy. Institutions are created by states because of their expected effects on state behavior (46). Testing the effects of international institutions is difficult, as there are no laboratory-like conditions from which to measure the effects of institutionalization (47).
• Realist theory sets up a contradict by its explicit rejection of international institutions, as it simultaneously claims that states are rational and that institutions have no real effect on IR. This would imply that states are investing resources in useless organizations, thereby meaning the states cannot be rational (47-48).

Mearsheimer, John. "The False Promise of International Institutions". International Security, Vol. 19, No.3 (1995): 5-49.

• Realist IR theory claims that international institutions do not change the distribution of power in a meaningful way, instead reflecting pre-existing power distributions. This is contrary to the Liberal claim that institutions do change state behavior (7, 13).
• Dr. Mearsheimer defines 'institutions' as "a set of rules that stipulate the ways in which states should cooperate and compete with each other" (8). These rules are prescriptive and accepted by the states that follow them, often through formal legal institutions and permanent organizational structures (8-9).
• Two concerns limit the ability of states to cooperate with each other: relative gains issues and concerns over cheating. The first concern means that even in cases of mutually beneficial deals, states may be so concerned about losing comparatively that they refuse cooperation (12).
• There are three different varieties of institutionalist theories:
• Liberal institutionalists believe that cheating rather than relative gains are the main impediment to cooperation, meaning that institutions can often be effective (14). Liberal institutionalists, however, limit their analysis to non-military issues, as cooperation by directly opposing sides remains impossible (16).
• Liberal Institutionalism has come up with a number of ways to preventing cheating and encourage cooperation. Institutionalized rules make interactions more predictable, tying together issues makes defection more risky, rules make cheating easier to detect, and it reduces the costs of not defecting (18).
• Realism objects to Liberal Institutionalist logic because it does not apply to security. A defection in security affairs could result in state destruction, and therefore trust can never replace security (19). Also that whole relative gains thing, which Realists say applies in every aspect of IR, leaving only unimportant marginal areas covered by international institutions (19-24).
• Collective security theorists take a constructivist view of the global order and stress that the Realist world has resulted from the application of Realist thought, but does not necessarily need to exist. They counter propose a system where all states promise to reject force except when punishing forceful states, thereby countering Realism (14).
• The system of collective security might be fragile and unable to respond to multiple aggressors. The logic assumes the world against one aggressor, while more likely great powers will have to take on multiple noncompliant states, making trust even more important (29-30).
• Collective security faces many challenges, including: difficulty discerning between victims and aggressors, lack of room for humanitarian intervention, other alliances undermining collective action, historic distrust between partners, burden sharing during collective action, coordination issues between partners, accounting for scales of violence escalation, impingement on state sovereignty, and not accounting for reluctance to defend (31-32).
• The alternative backups to full scale collective security intervention are concerts and peacekeeping, but these alternatives do not produce an end to Realist conditions. Peacekeeping is useless against major powers, and international concerts are selective in their intervention; reinforcing Realist balances of power (34-36).
• Critical theory believes that ideas are the primary force in determining the international order and that changing the way in which policy makers behave will ultimately result in peace. They believe that they, as intellectuals, will play a large role in this change (14-15).
• The normative communities that Critical theorists hope to create function along similar lines as Collective Security theory, where violence and force are rejected in favor of internationalized goals of common development. This change will come from a switch away from national interests to communitarianism (39).

Moravcsik, Andrew. "Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of International Politics". International Organization, Vol.51, No.4 (1997): 513-553.

• Both the Realist and Institutionalist schools critique the Liberal claims by arguing that the anarchy of the international systems prevents states from pursuing their actual foreign policy preferences, therefore making preferences essentially unimportant to actual IR practices (522).
• Even if the primary critique was true and international conditions, particularly anarchy, always prevented states from pursuing their preferences, understanding how power works requires determining what the intentions -- or preferences -- of countries are, as expressed by Dr. Robert Dahl's statement that power only exists if A forces B to do something that B would not have done otherwise (543).
• Unlike the Realist or Institutionalist schools, Liberal IR theory incorporates constructivist concepts of socially-mediated relations. This means that Liberalism can explain why some nations are threatening and others are not, something which continues to trouble the other two schools (535).

Slaughter, Anne-Marie. "International Relations, Principles Theories". in Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, edited by R. Wolfram. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011.

• Institutionalist IR theory shares many assumptions with the Realist school, but believes that cooperation between states is actually possible ( ¶ 8).
• According to Institutionalists, like Dr. Keohane, international institutions work because they turn a single interaction into a series of games in which interactions with other states can be understood. The institutions constructed lower the costs of interaction by regularizing it, increase the penalties for cheating by establishing rules and watchdogs, and makes sure that deals between nations are transparent ( ¶ 10-13).

Taliaferro, Jeffrey W. 2001. “Security seeking under anarchy: Defensive realism revisited”. International Security, vol. 25(3), pp. 128–161.

• Defensive realism holds that under certain circumstances, self-interested states in international anarchy can engage in mutually beneficial cooperation without the assistance of international institutions (130-131).

Jervis, Robert. "Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma". World Politics, Vol.30, No.2 (1978): 167-214.

• The sovereign-less anarchy of the international order means that countries are never certain about the behaviors of other states, this means that engaging in mutual beneficial cooperation always involves risk, as considerable costs could be incurred should the partner state suddenly terminate cooperation (167).
• The author compares this situation to the 'stag hunt' game, in which a group of men have assembled to hunt a stag, but can also choose to hunt rabbits. Since capturing a stag requires everyone, a single member hunting a rabbit ruins the game for everyone else. In a situation of such high-risk, it makes sense why people would hunt rabbits instead (167).
• When this 'stag hunt' is placed in the context of international arms races, the stakes and risks are clearly. The 'stag' is achieving disarmament, which is good for everyone, while the 'rabbit' is armament. While disarmament is preferable, a single armed state poses great security risks for all others and undermines the cooperation (167-168).
• The realities of international relations are more complex than the 'stag hunt' in three other ways: the leadership of states change and there is no reason to expect that policy will remain constant (168), areas of common security concerns -- like borders -- exist (168-169), and the security dilemma which prevents distinguishing between defensive and offensive weaponry (170).
• General bilateral cooperation between states is simulated using the 'Prisoner's Dilemma' game, where cooperation eventually becomes the most favorable situation in iterative games as long as trust is maintained between the player (171).
• Cooperation is also encouraged by increasing the incentives for cooperation, imposing more penalties for non-cooperation, and decreasing the costs associated with one-sided attempts at cooperation (171).
• Decreasing the benefits of exploitation through one-sided cooperation is a major way to increase the likelihood of mutual cooperation (178-179).
• When state attempt to encourage cooperation, they engage in a number of tactics to create new systems of bilateral or multilateral relations where the costs for cooperation are greater and the risks diminished. This may be done by reducing their advantages over another state, promising other benefits of cooperation, or threatening increased damages for non-cooperation (179-180).
• Countries do not always value the same objective situations as equally threatening, however. Different states place different values on security, leading to a subjective factor in decision-making, and threats are analyzed different depending on the country they come from (174-175).
• States that are least capable of incurring the costs of being betrayed through non-sided attempts at cooperation are the most likely to defect in either the 'Prisoner's Dilemma' or the 'Stag Hunt', because the higher risk requires an even higher level of trust -- meaning geopolitically they will be the most likely to maintain protectionism or refuse disarmament (172).
• This means that a world of more powerful and secure states results in more cooperation and less insecurity than a world of small, unstable states. This is why diminishing the costs of non-cooperation is important to increasing security by making the potential risks of cooperation more bearable (172-173).
• In cases of high international tension where severe negative costs, like warfare, are associated with mutual non-cooperation in 'Prisoner's Dilemma', the situation shifts to a game of 'Chicken', where states limit the chance of one-sided non-cooperation by threatening escalation to mutual non-cooperation (177-178).
• An aggressive version of 'Chicken' can also occur between strategic partners, with each state threatening to spoil a mutual beneficial relations if the other does not accede to its wishes elsewhere; the historical example provided is de Gaulle's threat to destroy the European Common Market if he did not get his way (178).
• The specific factors of geography, present commitments, domestic politics, and beliefs all influence the aspects of international relations is nuanced ways depending on scenario, and create unique geopolitical situations. A variety of historical examples of European geopolitics are provided (183-186).
• Two conditions determine whether the security dilemma holds as political realities in the international sphere: the ability to distinguish between offensive and defensive weaponry, and whether defensive weapons or offensive weapons are at the comparative advantage (186-187, 211).
• Some positive measures exist to assuage the security dilemma, mainly through proper mutual inspections and surveillance. Additionally, breaking up deals into smaller portions reduces the risk of individual failures, making cooperation more secure overall (181).
• Other step to overcoming the security dilemma comes from increasing empathy between the opposing sides of the conflict. This is especially key in the Cold War, when later analysis reveals that many 'aggressive' Soviet actions were in response to perceived Western aggression (182).

Milner, Helen. 2009. “The assumption of anarchy in international relations theory: a critique”, Review of International Studies, vol.17(1), pp.67-85

• Those international institutions which do exist depend on legitimacy among states for effect (74).
• Order and common norms, represented by regimes, do exercise a significant amount of control over state actions. This order creates regularized systems of behaviour among states (70).

Axelrod Robert and Robert O. Keohane. 1985. “Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions,” World Politics, vol. 38 (3), pp. 226-254.

• Institutions can promote cooperation because they alter the payoff structures in games, lengthen the uncertainty coming from future interactions, and allow complex multiplayer games to be broken down into games with a smaller number of actors (238-239).
• The core issues undermining cooperation between states have traditionally been: providing incentives to cooperate rather than defect, monitoring behaviour to identify cheating, focus rewards on co-operators, and link issues in productive ways (249). These problems are best solved by establishing international regimes/institutions, which provide information to participants and change games so that cooperation is easier (250).
• International institutions almost never have the power to enforce their rules, but participating in them and cooperating well can create a positive and trusting environment in which states are more likely to cooperate (250).
• The success of international organizations is tied to the degree to which they are viewed as legitimate and the degree to which important countries follow their norms. If countries try to subvert the rules, as they did with GATT, then the regime will not be as successful at changing behaviours (251-252).

Hurrell, Andrew. 1993. “International Society and the Study of Regimes: A Reflective Approach,” in Volker Rittberger (ed.) Regime Theory and International Relations. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

• Rational states in an anarchic system are concerned with relative and positional gains, meaning that they will sometimes ensue mutually beneficial cooperation out of concern for relative gains inequalities (58).
• States are not, however, always rational actors obsessed with position and relative gains. They also have a stake in maintaining broader international institutions, particularly those that underpin the capitalist global economy. Institutions, like international law, tie the maintenance of these systems to individual encounters, making it rational and beneficial for states to accept cooperation against their interests (59).
• Weak states, and domestic actors within them, take international law and institutions very seriously because they depend on these structures to maintain state sovereignty (60).
• Powerful states play a key role in creating the international order and its institutions, therefore they have a big incentive to maintain the order which they benefit from. Since the laws and regimes are an outgrowth of their national interests, powerful states will respect and maintain this order (60).

Keohane, Robert. "International Institutions: Can Interdependence Work?". Foreign Policy, No.110 (1998): 82-96.

• International institutions have become increasingly important, as they allow countries to moderate their conduct via general rules which simplify relations. The costs of purely bilateral negotiations would be too high, hence the need for international organizations. Contemporary organizations, however, are diverse and feature many ineffective international bodies (83).
• Despite the gridlock of the UN between several competing blocs, other international organizations still advanced cooperation during the 1960s and 1970s. The body created by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the economic mechanisms created by GATT, and the IMF were all essential in advancing cooperation (84). 
• Realist scholars of international institutions argued that the norms of behavior created in organizations allowed states to understand the preferences and interests of other states, which are normally private and cause uncertainty in international affairs. The transparency and repetitive interaction of international organizations creates the conditions for states to develop more trust as defection is less likely (86).
• The institutionalist arguments of the 1980s brought significant criticism from other scholars. They argued that international organizations were still powerless against states and thus insignificant in the face of actual conflict, that the preference of relative gains over absolute gains would undermine cooperation, and the bargaining nature of cooperation means that joint gains are not assured from any agreement with conflicting interests (87-89).
• The author contends that although international organizations are significantly affected by the realities of state power, these organizations do not just repeat the positions of hegemonic powers. Even the USA has to compromise to achieve results on core issues at the UN (87).
• Relative gains issues are important in certain scenarios, particularly when there are two states in direct competition, but on large multilateral issues without clear winners or losers -- like climate change or economic development -- states seem to prefer absolute gains (88).

Powell, Robert. 1991. “Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory,” The American Political Science Review, vol. 85 (4), pp. 1303-1320.

• The essential contention between neoliberalism and neorealism is that the first maintains that absolute gains trump relative gains, while the latter says the reverse: states will only cooperate when it does not cause problems of relative gains (1303).
• The essential difference in these theories is about how states define their own interests; whether states as actors are primarily interested in relative or absolute gains (1304).
• The reason that neoliberals assume that states will cooperate is that there is a ‘shadow of the future’ over all iterative engagements. This means that even short-term advantages of non-cooperation aren’t rational in the context of long-term advantages of cooperation through iterative games (1306).
• Iterative interactions do not, however, solve the main neorealist challenge of relative versus absolute gains. In conditions where gains are distributed unequally, relative gains concerns will still stop cooperation in iterative games (1310-1311).

Powell, Robert. 1994. “Anarchy in International Relations Theory: The Neorealist-Neoliberal Debate,” International Organization, vol. 48 (2), pp. 313-344.

• States will only be concerned about relative gains over absolute gains in situations of high tensions and low trust – when they face the potential of being destroyed if they lose out. Therefore, institutions that increase trust can make states more likely to value absolute gains and thus cooperate (335-336).

Keohane, Robert O. 1991. “Cooperation and International Regimes”, in Richard Little & Michael Smith (eds.) Perspectives on World Politics. London: Routledge.

• The claim of achieving international cooperation made by Dr. Keohane is very explicitly restricted to situations where state policies can be mutually beneficial, but there is also reason to defect. He does not discuss situations where states with divergent interests could ever cooperate through institutions (103-104).
• Past behaviours in international institutions are important, as they affect future behaviours in relations to those institutions – degrading or strengthening them. This is true because states are reactive actors (107).
• Moreover, conceptions of self-interest are changeable. This means that participation in institutions can change notions of self-interest, even if those institutions were originally created out of national self-interest, they become reified in the minds of politicians (113).

Keohane, Robert O. & Joseph S. Nye. 2001. Power and Interdependence. 3rd ed. New York: Longman.

• International organizations serve many purposes internationally: setting agendas and priorities, lower transaction costs and administrative barriers to cooperation, and allow weak states to link issues to increase their bargaining power (30-31).
• International organizations are not just pure outcomes of state power, but over time develop their own internal logics based on set-up and voting rights. This can mean that power within organizations changes in different ways than power in global politics: see UNGA and UNSC (48).
• Clearly the history of UNCLOS demonstrates that international organizations can affect state behaviour: Britain lost the Cod Wars to Iceland, USA and USSR were both on defence in new UNCLOS negotiations (127).
• The USA could have enforced its claims against those of the African and South American majorities at the UNCLOS conference, but it did not because using military force would have hurt American interests in other areas where it depended upon cooperation with those same states – through the inclusive UN, the issues were linked (130).

Adler, Emaniel and Michael Barnett, eds. 1998. Security Communities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Neoliberalism is fundamentally incorrect in its assumption of states as rational actors. Most importantly, participation in international organizations, particularly security organizations and alliances, can result in changes in perceptions of national interests that create a ‘security community’ that shares an identity and believes that the wellbeing of others in the community also benefits it (58-59, 200-201).

Cohen, Benjamin V. “The Impact of the United Nations on United States Foreign Policy”. International Organization, Vol. 5 (1951): 274–281.

• The placement of the issue of Indonesian independence before the UNSC made it a priority issue in the agenda and prompted a strong US response against the Netherlands. Without the UN, it likely would have remained an issue on the backburner (277).
• The UN has raised the profile of American actions and made Americans more aware of the importance of international public opinion. In this sense, they act in more democratic ways than they might otherwise have (280), as in turning over trusteeship of Taiwan and Italian colonies to a UNGA decision (275-276).

Stein, Arthur. “Coordination and Collaboration: Regimes in an Anarchic World”. In International Regimes, edited by Stephen D. Krasner, 115–40. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983.

• Regimes and international institutions exist when states cannot achieve their most favoured outcome by making independent decisions, meaning that best outcome requires cooperation: collaboration for dilemmas of common interests (117).
• These institutions exist to identify cheating and punish it, so that no one gets fucked over through the cooperation (128-129).
• International institutions also come into being when there is a possibility of an outcome that no one wants. These institutions then form to make sure that the worse outcome does not occur: coordination for dilemmas of common aversions (125).
• The institutional response to this problem is usually standardization. While everyone wants their own outcomes, they really don’t want to worse outcome so they compromise on a middling option that is then standardized (130-131).

Krasner, Stephen. “Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier”. World Politics, Vol. 43 (1991): 336–366.

• Cooperation will not occur under situations of perfect harmony – because there is no need – nor under absolute zero-sum situations – where the rational choice is always to not cooperate (338).
• Instead, international organizations exist to help solve collective action problems (361).
• International organizations do change and respond to changes in national powers, especially in terms of enforcement. Simply, more powerful states are less able to be policed and have more influence in making the rules (363). This is especially important is scenarios when certain regimes give some states a relative advantage (365).

Hasenclever, Andreas, Mayer, Peter and Volker Rittberger. 1997. Theories of International Regimes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Robert Keohane and Michael Taylor claim that states are egoists, meaning they only care for their own gains. This means that will not be envious of other’s gains (29).
• Keohane also argues that states will only cooperate in situations where they have common concerns, explicitly not in security, and that institutions facilitate this cooperation whereas it might not occur without them (30, 32).
• The main purpose of international institutions/regimes is to help spread information so that states are more trusting and cheating is more risky. Second, they link issues so that defection on one issue results in the collapse of important and beneficial agreements, and by making games iterative to encourage future cooperation (34).
• Their main function, according to Keohane, is to build trust so that joint membership in organizations allows states to cooperate without worry knowing that an institutional arrangement exists. Good behaviour in this way is encouraged because bad reputations hurt opportunities for cooperation with anyone (35).
• There are actually four other types of game theory situations to consider besides Prisoners’ Dilemma: Coordination, Collaboration, Assurance [Staghunt], and Suasion [Rambo, willing to hurt self to get cooperation]. They all can benefit from regimes. The last one by creating mechanisms for hegemonic states to buy off or crippling punish small states threatening to Rambo a deal. This list is the work of Michael Zuern (53).

Krasner, Stephen D., ed. 1983. International Regimes. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

• Scholars like Susan Strange argue that regimes/international institutions have no effect on state behaviour and are simply representations of things that would have happened anyway due to power dynamics (6).
• Other scholars say that regimes do have a real effect on state behaviour, but only under certain circumstances. Robert Jervis claims there are not, for example, institutions that help security issues because those are zero-sum games (8).
• Not all interactions between states are zero-sum games, as was often assumed in the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, there exist situations of potential mutual benefit (356).
• International institutions provides lags and feedback in inter-state relations and dynamics. Even when interests change, regimes stay the same for at least a little while because actors are afraid of the potential fallout of destroying a regime in toto and unsure of their ability to create an improved regimes, with the old version being preferred to nothing (359-360).
• Regimes give feedback to state action in four ways:
• Alter calculations to maximize interests by changing costs, especially by jeopardizing sunk costs to encourage continued participation – similar to lag (361-362).
• Participation in regimes causes changes, including in domestic politics, by empowering new groups, thus changing national interests (363).
• Regimes can provide power to certain states because they are in privileged positions in terms of decision-making and agenda setting; e.g., France on UNSC. Therefore, weaker states can leverage past power through institutions (364-365).
• Institutions affect the economic and military power of countries, thereby changing their capabilities and interests. The global economic system, for example, limits the capabilities of the Global South, thus affecting its ability to negotiate (365-367).

Perkins 1958, ‘Sanctions for Political Change: The case of Indonesia’.

• Despite winning a military victory against Indonesian separatists, the Netherlands was forced to withdrawal from the territory and allow an independent Indonesia (26). This decision was strongly opposed by the majority of the Netherlandish population (27).
• Netherlandish government considered UN intervention to be totally illegal and beyond the scope of the Charter, since they did not believe that Netherlandish actions violated it (34).
• The involvement of the UNSC prompted the Netherlands to recognize a major threat [increased cost] of not listening to the UNSC since they had the power to use legitimate and overwhelming military force against Netherlands (35).

Martin, Lisa. “Interests, Power, and Multilateralism”. International Organization, Vol. 46 (1992): 765–792.

• Four types of games outlined: coordination [Battle of the Sexes], cooperation [Prisoners’ Dilemma], assurance [Staghunt], and suasion [Rambo] (768).
• In Cooperation games, institutions must control incentives to defect. They do this by exchanging information and implementing monitoring to secure against defection, and by creating formal organizations to ‘extent the shadow of the future’ so that continued future cooperation is always more beneficial than immediate reward for defection (770).
• In Coordination games, players must decide which one of the okay situations will happen. This is solved by creating formal institutions so that everyone already pre-agrees on what will happen and what rules to follow (776). Powerful states have a major stake in setting these formal rules [see English as international airplane language] (777).
• In Suasion games, one actor must convince others to cooperate even though their best option is to defect; often through freeriding. Institutions usually respond to this by linking issues so that defection is more costly for the defection-prone state [see COCOM and Marshall Plan funds linkage] (779).
• In Assurance games, states all benefit from cooperation, but the costs of defecting are high. Institutions will thus introduce transparency into decision-making so that all states are sure others will cooperate (782).
• Rules which are enforced only through hegemonic degree are liable to change when the power of the hegemon wanes. If institutionalized, however, these rules will endure and outlast hegemonic power because other countries will be too scared/lazy to make new ones. This is why even hegemons might prefer international institutions (784).

Robert Keohane, "Institutionalist Theory and the Realist Challenge After the Cold War," In Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate, edited by David Baldwin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

• International organizations only enforce rules when it is the rules of the strong against the weak, like in the IMF. Most of the time they just reduce transaction costs and risk, making mutually beneficial cooperation more likely (274).
• Keohane argues that Grieco’s critique of relative gains is only true under those circumstances where states care about relative gains. Those circumstances are only when dyadic non-cooperation is beneficial, mostly in separate security communities. Since cooperation is beneficial overall, totally non-cooperative countries lose out in the long-term relative to their neighbours. This means that some cooperation is rational even under relative gains. States tend to form communities for cooperation, then only care about relative gains between these communities (275-277).
• There are situations where states encourage relative gains, like in the USA and USSR supporting their allies in East Asia and Europe (279).
• Relative gains are certainly important in some circumstances, like USSR and USA relations during the Cold War (281).

Keohane, Robert, “After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy”. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

• Even though American hegemony and enormous power – combined with the threat of Soviet invasion – was important for the creation of international regimes, they have remained despite substantial relative gains in East Asia and Europe relative to the USA (49, 85).
• Regimes can trap even powerful actors in lag, although ultimately actions are not totally restrained. This is demonstrated by the years of American participation in the Bretton-Woods system despite going against its interests, and its eventual destruction by the Nixon administration (98).
• This is largely because making new regimes is both difficult and risky. So rational governments will often defer it or just stick with the old order instead (107).
• The creation of regimes often takes place behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ because countries do not know whether they will be the weaker or stronger party in the future or what future interests will be. This means that all states are more likely to remain participants in even relatively unfair agreements because it makes them even more risk adverse (107-108).