Regime Theory In International Relations

International regime theory suggests that power is dispersed among many different agents, including states, international organizations, multi-national companies, and so on, that operate as tacit coalitions under similar understandings of procedures and desirable outcomes. It was at the heart of a dispute that raged among mainstream scholars of international relations (IR) during the 1980s and early 1990s. The intense debate surrounding it sowed some of the seeds of social constructivism in IR, a current that was to emerge in the mid-1990s. Although not always recognized as such, power in world politics was at the heart of the discussion.

Stephen Krasner formulated a now widely used definition of an international regime: principles, [Page 560]norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given issue area. For example, the international trade regime was long guided by the principle of maximizing global wealth, supported by the norm of free trade, the principle of reciprocity, and the practice of granting most favored nation status; and sustained by multilateral diplomacy in the form of interstate trade talks organized by the World Trade Organization and lasting many years, resulting in a massive, comprehensive package deal.

The concept of international regimes, introduced by John Gerard Ruggie, originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the wake of the emerging dissatisfaction with classical realism's dominance over IR. Realism was criticized for (among many other things) ignoring the global economy and nonstate actors such as transnational corporations (TNCs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). In 1977 Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye put forward their framework of complex interdependence as the major alternative to realism. International regimes were an essential ingredient of their approach. Keohane and Nye emphasized a pluralist perspective in which, across different international issue areas, power might be dispersed among many different actors rather than concentrated in the hands of a few major states. International regimes were the governing structures regulating interdependence within such an issue area. International regime theory thus started as an alternative to realism and served as an instrument to help describe the specific distribution of power and recognize relevant actors within a global issue area. Over the next two decades, international regime studies became quite popular, describing developments in specific issue areas related to the environment, finance, human rights, security, and technology, as well as trade.