Conflict can occur when a body of law regulating one aspect of international activity does not correspond with the rules of another. This book uses trade in cultural products to illustrate that, rather than being a question of accidental overlap, such conflicts stem from different regimes having fundamentally different goals.
This book is a comprehensive study of cooperation among the advanced capitalist countries. Can cooperation persist without the dominance of a single power, such as the United States after World War II? To answer this pressing question, Robert Keohane analyzes the institutions, or "international regimes," through which cooperation has taken place in the world political economy and describes the evolution of these regimes as American hegemony has eroded. Refuting the idea that the decline of hegemony makes cooperation impossible, he views international regimes not as weak substitutes for world government but as devices for facilitating decentralized cooperation among egoistic actors. In the preface the author addresses the issue of cooperation after the end of the Soviet empire and with the renewed dominance of the United States, in security matters, as well as recent scholarship on cooperation.
In this volume, fourteen distinguished specialists in international political economy thoroughly explore the concept of international regimes--the implicit and explicit principles, norms, rules, and procedures that guide international behavior. In the first section, the authors develop several theoretical views of regimes. In the following section, the theories are applied to specific issues in international relations, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and on the still-enduring postwar regimes for money and security.
Following the end of the Second World War, the creation of regional organizations in Europe provided niche functions to help ensure regional stability through security and transition. Yet, as the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union dissolved, each of these organizations evolved to have a post-Cold War role in the region. Since then, the level of convergence of norms, interests and objectives between these main regional organizations has increased considerably. Is there a common agenda in Europe? Does Europe still need so many organizational elements to tackle the major challenges? This book examines the way the EU, NATO, OSCE, and Council of Europe relate to and interact with each other, identifying the areas of positive convergence and divergence as well as areas of negative cooperation and conflict. By tracing the institutional development and regional integration in Europe, the book questions to what degree do European organizations maintain separate identities and most importantly do these organizations still offer a unique and useful service to regional stability. In developing this argument, policy areas analysed include: "
International regimes have been a major focus of research in international relations for over a decade. Three schools of thought have shaped the discussion: realism, which treats power relations as its key variable; neoliberalism, which bases its analysis on constellations of interests; and cognitivism, which emphasizes knowledge dynamics, communication, and identities. Each school articulates distinct views on the origins, robustness, and consequences of international regimes. This book examines each of these contributions to the debate, taking stock of, and seeking to advance, one of the most dynamic research agendas in contemporary international relations. While the differences between realist, neoliberal and cognitivist arguments about regimes are acknowledged and explored, the authors argue that there is substantial scope for progress toward an inter-paradigmatic synthesis.
Leading scholars of international law and international relations explain the wave of regional disputes that arose in the 1990s over fish stocks that straddle both national waters and the high seas.
The end of the Cold War has changed the shape of organized violence in the world and the ways in which governments and others try to set its limits. Even the concept of international conflict is broadening to include ethnic conflicts and other kinds of violence within national borders that may affect international peace and security. What is not yet clear is whether or how these changes alter the way actors on the world scene should deal with conflict: Do the old methods still work? Are there new tools that could work better? How do old and new methods relate to each other? International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War critically examines evidence on the effectiveness of a dozen approaches to managing or resolving conflict in the world to develop insights for conflict resolution practitioners. It considers recent applications of familiar conflict management strategies, such as the use of threats of force, economic sanctions, and negotiation. It presents the first systematic assessments of the usefulness of some less familiar approaches to conflict resolution, including truth commissions, "engineered" electoral systems, autonomy arrangements, and regional organizations. It also opens up analysis of emerging issues, such as the dilemmas facing humanitarian organizations in complex emergencies. This book offers numerous practical insights and raises key questions for research on conflict resolution in a transforming world system.
Although transnational actors are not new on the world stage the number and type of these international entities expanded dramatically after World War II. This set examines both the rise of these new transnational actors and their effect on international politics and policies.
Neither rational choice theory, with its emphasis on interest calculation, nor sociological institutionalist theory, with its emphasis on identity-defined rule following, indicates how governments determine which of their multiple interests or identities are at stake in a particular situation or how they develop mutual comprehension of each other's goals. International Regimes for the Final Frontier addresses these gaps by tracing how governments approach an unfamiliar issue—in this case, international agreements regulating human activity in outer space between 1958 and 1988—and examines three ways situation definitions channel governments' approaches to issues or problems.
