Anarchy and Social Choice: Reflections on the International Polity

Abstract

The concept “social choice” provides a means of injecting new life into systemic analyses of the international polity. Bargaining, organized warfare, and coercive diplomacy are the most important mechanisms of social choice in the international polity. Third-party settlement is of lesser importance, though not irrelevant. Each of these mechanisms is evaluated in terms of criteria such as decisiveness, efficiency, justice, and the production of externalities. Systems of rights and rules serve to constrain processes of social choice, but they are also apt to become focal points of such processes themselves.