Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions

TLDR

Cooperation and conflict in international relations are largely shaped by mutual interests, the future horizon, and the number of actors, while perceptions, strategies, and multilevel issue linkages—along with institutional contexts—determine whether reciprocity can be effective. Decision makers actively reshape their operating context by linking issues, influencing perceptions, creating institutions, and fostering new norms. The study highlights the need to integrate strategic theory with regime theory.

Abstract

Cooperation and discord in world politics are explained to a considerable extent by the three factors discussed in the Introduction: mutuality of interest, the shadow of the future, and the number of players. Yet the context of interaction, perceptions, and strategies is also important. Issues are linked to one another through multilevel games, which may be compatible or incompatible. Whether reciprocity constitutes an effective strategy depends both on linkages among issues and on the institutions within which negotiations take place. Perceptions are always significant and often decisive. Decision makers often actively seek to change the contexts within which they act by linking issues, trying to alter others' perceptions, establishing institutions, and promoting new norms. This finding suggests the importance of linking the upward-looking theory of strategy with the downward-looking theory of regimes.