Coordination and collaboration: regimes in an anarchic world

TLDR

Regimes are defined as an intermediate concept between international organizations and all international relations, grounded in realist theory where self‑interested states in an anarchic environment may prefer joint decision making to avoid suboptimal outcomes, leading to coordination or collaboration regimes with distinct characteristics. The study investigates how states must coordinate or collaborate to resolve dilemmas of common interests or aversions, and elucidates the assumptions of an interest‑based regime approach, integrating alternative explanations and outlining implications for regime maintenance and change. The article presents an interest‑based framework that assimilates alternative explanations and specifies the mechanisms of coordination and collaboration that sustain and transform regimes.

Abstract

The study of regimes can contribute to our understanding of international politics only if regimes represent more than international organizations and less than all international relations. The conceptualization of regimes developed here accepts the realist image of international politics, in which autonomous self-interested states interact in an anarchic environment. Yet there are situations in which rational actors have an incentive to eschew unconstrained independent decision making, situations in which individualistic self-interested calculation leads them to prefer joint decision making (regimes) because independent self-interested behavior can result in undesirable or suboptimal outcomes. These situations are labeled dilemmas of common interests and dilemmas of common aversions. To deal with these, states must collaborate with one another or coordinate their behavior, respectively. Thus there are different bases for regimes, which give rise to regimes with different characteristics. Coordination is self-enforcing and can be reached through the use of conventions. Collaboration is more formalized and requires mechanisms both to monitor potential cheating and to insure compliance with the regime. The article elucidates the assumptions of such an interest-based approach to regimes, assimilates alternative explanations into this framework, and develops the implications for regime maintenance and change.