The Design and Performance of Regional Institutions

Abstract

collaborative attempt by a group of well-known scholars to use their in-depth knowledge of particular cases to evaluate, challenge, and expand upon a conceptual framework known as the rational design of international (RDII) research program (Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidai 2001). The Achaiya and Johnston volume takes as its jumping off point the observation that there is significant variation both in the design and performance of regional economic and security institutions across the globe. The collaborators seek to describe and explain variation in design, and then to evaluate the effects of design choices on institutional efficacy. Achaiya and Johnston explain in their introductory chapter to the volume that while they build heavily on the RDII research program, they find three limitations in existing work: (1) a lack of focus on the effect of variance in institutional design on the effectiveness of cooperation; (2) a lack of focus on ideational variables; and (3) a lack of study of non-Western regional institutions (p. 13). By expanding the focus of RDII in these three ways, they hope to advance understanding of the design and effects of international institutions. The organization of the case studies is primarily by region, with chapter on institutions in southeast Asia, in Latin America, in Africa, and in the Arab world, plus two focusing on primarily European institutions - on NATO and on the EU. This is a very different organizational focus than was used in the Koremenos et al. (2001) volume, where contributors analyzed the design of institutions in particular issue areas. Achaiya and Johnston report that while they provided chapter writers with a list of potentially important independent variables, they explicitly decided against testing deductive hypotheses. The editors conclude that one of the strengths of the project [is] its inductive richness' ' (16). This inductive focus is apparent in the resulting case studies, which provide historical descriptions of the emergence, development, and general success of a wide range of regional organizations and cooperation. The conclusion reached by Achaiya and Johnston from their contributors' case studies is that identity and domestic political (in) security are much more important in explaining variance in both the design of institutions and the effect of institutional design on cooperation than are the types of cooperation problems confronted. Since the explicit focus is on regionally delimited institutions (not on the many institutions that cross regional boundaries), and the case studies mix together institutions aimed at different problems in drawing conclusions about a region's institutions, it is perhaps not surprising that a primary finding of the study is that regional identity shapes these institutions and that the effect of the type of cooperation problem is less apparent.