Neoliberal Institutionalism Research Articles

Governance and politics in the upper Limpopo River Basin, South Africa

Everyday international political economy (EIPE) offers an opportunity to rethink the role of individuals and citizenry in shaping governance of natural resources. In South Africa, significant progress has been made by government in re-shaping water governance since the end of apartheid in the early 1990s. The role of government in water governance and water politics has thus been emphasised to a large degree. This study looks at historical material to assess the role that water politics and EIPE has played in shaping the use and management of water resources in the country. Case studies are analysed of two quaternary catchments, A63E and A71L in the Limpopo River Basin, to show how everyday actions by different actors has shaped the current waterscape in the basin. Four events, namely, the politics of the Middle Iron Age State at Mapungubwe; the development of the Mapungubwe National Park and World Heritage Site; the management of water for the De Beers Venetia Diamond Mine; and the establishment of the Coal of Africa Limited colliery are discussed in terms of the agential power at play during each event. The conclusions of the study are that EIPE and reflexive agential power are important factors in water governance that can sometimes be ignored through neoliberal institutionalism. In the current and future governance of water in South Africa they can offer an alternative view of the role and importance of actors and pathways for development.

Politics of Space Law in a Post Cold War Era: Understanding Regime Change

A pattern exists whereby U.S. domestic space law has exhibited a tendency of setting commercialization and privatization trends. Over time, commercialization and privatization processes became the norm for satellite telecommunications, remote sensing, space transportation & launch services, space stations and spaceports. This paper provides an overview of space law from its beginning, through its changes, and today’s new increased private-sector participation. The position taken herein is that something akin to legal precedent is in the process of being established with respect to private space tourism, private space trips, space exploration and other related space activities. Considering this legal trend - from the formation and purpose of the COMSAT Corporation to the recent political and legal issues surrounding the U.S. Orbit Act - this paper entertains possible emerging legal trends which have begun to spark. This includes possible legal implications of the New Vision for Space Exploration Policy, and for space tourism, space mining and space settlements as humankind journeys out to develop the final frontier. This dissertation sets forth the argument that a Gramscian analysis provides a more adequate explanatory framework than the mainstream theories of realism or neoliberal institutionalism as applied to the study of the outer space development regime. Neither theory explains why new actors and new actions are distinctly occurring in outer space development in the post cold War era. It also traces how the legitimation of norms is linked to free market ideology and capitalism’s dominance in the Post Cold War era. A pattern of space lawmaking exists wherein laws are created to support new industries. This situation may be contrary to the purpose of international law.

Rising Regional Powers and International Relations Theories: Comparing Brazil and India's Foreign Security Policies and Their Search for Great-Power Status

This article explores Brazil and India's alternative paths in their search for great-power status. It examines the competing expectations of alternative IR theories regarding the conditions for great-power status in the post-Cold War era and their limited explanatory and predictive power. Although constructivism offers a more sophisticated approach, one also needs insights from realism/neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism, and globalization theory to understand the possibilities and limitations of the Brazilian and Indian strategies to be admitted to the great-power club. The article compares Brazil and India's foreign policies and nuclear diplomacy and challenges the idea that India's status as a nuclear weapon state enhances its prospects for joining the great-power club. Brazil does not possess nuclear weapons, but it has successfully created a consensual hegemonic regime in South America, which allows it to use a regionalist project (Mercosur, UNASUR) as a launching pad to gain admission to the great-power club. In contrast, despite possessing nuclear weapons, India has been unable to establish a consensual hegemonic regime in South Asia, and its “Pakistan problem” holds back her prospects for joining the great-power club. The article argues that a US blessing may not help India to gain entrance to the “board of the world” if other board members, such as China, resist India's admission. The conclusion examines the implications for IR theory of Brazil and India's alternative pathways to great-power status, and the impact of progress—or lack of progress—in global nuclear disarmament negotiations on both countries' possible admission to the great-power club.

Theory as Thought: Britain and German Unification

Inspired by Rudra Sil and Peter Katzenstein's call for analytic eclecticism and making use of newly available, previously classified archival documents, we distill the essential logics of realism, neoliberal institutionalism, and constructivism and examine their role in shaping the debates amongst British policymakers in the context of German unification in 1989-90. We find that, although all the theoretical logics help shape the policymaking surrounding unification, none stands alone as a basis for understanding social reality. Indeed, all functioned together as British policymakers thought in terms of theory to make sense of German unification. The logic of realism clearly played an important role in shaping the perceptions of top British leadership, particularly Margaret Thatcher, of German unification as a problem. But realism did not determine the solution to the "problem." Instead, British policymakers drew on the logic embedded in neoliberal institutionalism, turning to institutions to manage the unification process. The reason for this can be found in the role of constructivist logics-particularly identity and rhetorical entrapment-that constrained British policymakers to cooperative policy options. By taking this approach, this article makes several important contributions. First, it sheds light on British policy during a critical historical moment. Second, it significantly improves understanding regarding Germany's historical and current place in Europe. Third, it ties major theoretical traditions together through a foreign policy analytical approach, and in the process suggests that many of the theoretical boundaries separating scholars are overdrawn. Finally, the article pushes international relations scholars to keep in mind the complex relationship between reality and theory. In the final analysis, bringing to bear these three perspectives highlights the complexity of the processes that produced British policy-and by extension those that shaped German unification-as well as the importance of breaking free of the strictures of the ideas versus materiality debate.

Regional Institutionalism in Southeast Asia

Abstract. This article demonstrates how regional institutions in Southeast Asia help solving common problems (political, security, economic, environmental, social, cultural, ect.), form common rules, norms and customs for cooperation, create the agreed agendas for regional issue management. In the article, using a neo-liberal institutionalism approach, it has been ascertained what factors influence the effectiveness of the selected intergovernmental regional institutions in Southeast Asia, facilitate the regional response and reaction to common regional (economic, security, political, social) challenges. Regional agenda usually depends on actors, regional order (power structure within the region) as well as on regional identity. Institutions legitimate the region, but on the other hand, regional identity legitimates institutions. Theoretical paradigm in the article is neo-liberalism. Two requirements should be fulfilled in order for neo-liberal institutionalism to be aplicable: (1) there should be common interests (as gains are achieved through cooperation), (2) it is required that variations in the degree of institutionalization would exert substantial effects on the state’s policy. The article analyzes how regional institutions in Southeast Asia form the possibility for the region to emerge as a single actor in the international system. Analysis of multi purpose regional institutions in ASEAN demonstrates how organization serves the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of transactions among states, but the ambiguity in them also functions as a tool to manage distribution of power.

The Reasons of Non-Institutional Character of the Early Visegrad Cooperation in the View of Neorealist and Neoliberal Theories in International Relations

This article examines the reasons for adopting a non‑institutional character of the Visegrad cooperation in the years 1991‑1992. Its focus concerns two causes of the initial reluctance to institutionalise the Visegrad Group: the high level of unpredictability in Central Europe after the collapse of Communism and the symbolic role the Group was expected to play outside the region. These issues are considered through the prism of two theories in International Relations: neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism. Both provide theoretical grounds to support the research hypothesis which assumes that the informal character of the Visegrad cooperation was a pragmatic choice of its founding members. However, neorealist and neoliberal explanations of how the political background and security issues could have influenced their decision vary. The article concludes that the neorealist approach holds more explanatory power in this regard, suggesting that the choice of the Visegrad states was dictated by the preservation of their national interests and subjected to external limitations, rather than motivated by a common intention to facilitate their regional cooperation.

The Rise and Decline of the Summit of the Americas

This article analyzes the rise and decline of the Summit of the Americas (SOA). It explores the reasons for the SOA's decline, the prospects for its recovery, and indeed whether a recovery is desirable in the current juncture. Four theoretical perspectives are applied in order to answer these questions: neoliberal institutionalism; power dimensions (realism); constructivism; and the political economy of regionalism. Theoretically, the analysis suggests that all four approaches provide useful insights into why the SOA finds itself in its current predicament, and accordingly underlines the utility of a synthetic perspective on multilateralism in the Western Hemisphere. The article concludes that the SOA will continue to serve an important role as a forum for engagement and dialogue between the United States and Canada on one side and Latin American and Caribbean countries on the other. Nonetheless, contrary to its previous unparalleled importance, the SOA is now but one among numerous summits on the agenda of leaders in the hemisphere.

The Arctic: A new region of conflict? The case of oil and gas

Neorealist and neoliberal institutionalist explanations for the state and future of the Arctic region dominate the Arctic debate in international relations. While both schools focus on different aspects concerning the current and future state of Arctic affairs – neorealism evokes a confrontational rush for the Arctic’s resources, whereas neoliberal institutionalism propagates the necessary reform of the institutional system governing Arctic issues – both share the underlying assumption of significant and rising stakes towards Arctic commodities. However, this article argues that this debate has hitherto failed to substantiate the actual stakes of the main actors involved. Consequently, many studies make grandiloquent statements about prospects of cooperation and conflict and the appropriate institutional framework for the Arctic region, based on only limited empirical support. This article aims to fill this gap by analysing the Arctic oil and gas interests of the five Arctic littoral states (Russia, USA, Canada, Norway and Denmark/Greenland). The analysis shows greatly different levels of interests towards the High North among the Arctic states. The findings make it possible to make more credible statements about the likelihood of confrontation over Arctic resources and necessary institutional adjustments. The evidence shows that the often-evoked issue of geopolitical rush for Arctic resources is unlikely to eventuate. Nonetheless, there remain institutional challenges for the protection of the fragile Arctic ecosystem.

IMF reform after the crisis

The global financial crisis moved the International Monetary Fund (IMF) back to the center stage, after some years of disengagement by major emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs). Neo-liberal institutionalism predicts that crises in a highly interdependent world induce states to strengthen multilateral institutions. In the case of the IMF, many observers believed that a more effective IMF was contingent on giving EMDCs a larger voice. However, the 2010 Quota and Governance Reform at the IMF fell below expectations in this regard. On the basis of an analysis of the ex ante preferences and power relations of the major players, we show that this should not come as a surprise and that the 2010 reform agreement has reached the boundaries of the politically possible. Hence, this empirical case study brings in power and preferences to qualify the more optimist neo-liberal institutionalist accounts against the backdrop of an increasingly multipolar world.

The Élysée Treaty and European Integration Theory

According to neoliberal institutionalism, states create international institutions to limit information asymmetries, monitor compliance, and ensure the credibility of commitments to agreed-upon policies-in short, to minimize transaction costs. Although this view can help explain the delegation of powers to supranational bodies such as the European Commission, it cannot account for the signature of the Élysée Treaty between France and Germany in January 1963, which reversed the logic of supranational delegation. Understanding the causes and the consequences of this apparently anomalous event is therefore a major challenge facing scholars of international organizations, European integration, and German foreign policy alike. To start addressing the issue, this article develops an explanation based on incomplete contracts theory. In a nutshell, I argue that the Élysée Treaty aimed at securing the equal treatment of French and German interests in the process of European integration, thereby allowing the deepening of European integration.

Illiberal Ends, Multilateral Means: Why Illiberal States Make Commitments to International Institutions

Why do illiberal states make commitments to multilateral international institutions? The existing literature on multilaterali sm has been dominated by neoliberal institutionalism and liberal-minded constructivism and needs a reality check. This article suggests an eclectic explanation of illiberal states’ commitment to multilateral international institutions by combining neoclassical realist and constructivist views on state behavior. I argue that illiberal states join

Capacity, not constraints: A theory of North-South regulatory cooperation

While neoliberal institutionalists argue that treaties facilitate collective action, many North-South regulatory treaties focus on largely national problems in developing countries. As such, these treaties present a puzzle: why a global treaty to address national regulatory problems? We argue that while activists in industrialized countries often promote regulatory treaties, these treaties garner political support among developing countries because they allow governments to enhance their national regulatory capacity. Developing countries are often not interested in banning practices such as trade in hazardous waste. Instead, developing countries want to increase their ability to control them. We test the argument against data on the global regime for hazardous waste trade. Contravening the conventional wisdom, we find that weak regulatory capacity is a powerful predictor of ratification of the Basel Convention, a treaty that does not ban hazardous waste trade but allows regulatory enhancement. By contrast, other treaties in the regime that do aim at banning hazardous waste trade receive little support among developing countries.

The New Regional Order and Transnational Civil Society in Southeast Asia: Focusing on Alternative Regionalism from below in the Process of Building the ASEAN Community

Since the end of the Cold War and in the context of the recent spread of economic globalization, Southeast Asian regionalism has steadily deepened and expanded, centering on ASEAN. The concept of the ASEAN Community is one of the most important aspects of this regionalism, and there have been hopes that this will be realized by 2015. The mainstream theories such as neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism, and social constructivism have offered competing explanations of this transformation. However, recently, a new phenomenon that cannot be fully explained by these state-centric theories has arisen—the movement toward constructing a regional order from below by transnational civil society actors. By adopting the analytical viewpoint of the New Regionalism Approach, which has maintained a keen interest in civil society in the process of regionalization, this study attempts to empirically analyze still largely unexplored activities undertaken by transnational civil society actors, in particular who has promoted the “alternative regionalism” against the “neoliberal regionalism” in the course of the formation of the ASEAN Community. It also seeks to examine the embryonic change toward the establishment of a new regional order in Southeast Asia from the bottom-up perspective. In conclusion, the article proves that by engaging with transnational civil society actors, ASEAN is gradually moving from an “elite club” to a “people-centered” organization. However, given the predominance of neoliberal discourse, “alternative regionalism” has not had enough influence for this to be fully realized. Nevertheless, the growing number of transnational civil society actors is resulting in improved potential to transform the persistent sovereign state system.

The European Regional Integration in the IR Literature:A Review of Scholarly Support and Opposition

Most of what has been written on the ECSC/ EEC/ EC/ EU, has not been done by international relations (IR) theorists, but by comparativists, sociologists, historians, anthropologists, legal scholars, and many others. These writings are in general classified as intergovernmentalist, federalist, and supranationalist (functionalist and neo- functionalist) in most accounts of the theoretical perspectives on the EU (Webb 1983, Rosamond 2000). Wiener and Diez 2004 add a rational choice institutional category, as well, as they think that the policy analysis within the polity developed into an autonomous brand of literature. It is only Andrew Hurrell in his chapter in Fawcett and Hurrell 1995, who makes an attempt to present the EU, as a regional integration, from the point of view of diverse IR approaches. Drawing on his classification scheme, I conduct an inquiry of the IR theories about European unification from the point of view of whether they allow for the iteration of the European experience in other parts of the world or not. The basic conclusion is that almost all IR work on Europe falls in the inter- governmentalist category, which tends to conceptualize the European Union as representing an n of 1. (Inter- governmentalism is the choice of realism and neo-realism, English School, and neoliberal institutionalism.) Within the liberal IR paradigm, there is a tension between law-focused and security-focused approaches, on the one hand, and economic approaches, on the other. The first believe in the possibility of multiple integrations, while the latter does not think that they are desirable. Critical theories are also hindered by divergent normative commitments, though the class-based theorizing is very clear about pursuing the social control of markets.

Duties beyond Borders

Duties Beyond BordersA via media approach to morality in international politics?Is there a place for moral and ethical action in international politics? And if yes, what is the proper scope and place of those concerns in the making of states' foreign policy? What are the obstacles and possibilities for the realization of ethical foreign policy? Where do ethical concerns stem from, i.e., what is their origin? What are the target and agency of an ethical foreign policy? In his now-classical Duties Beyond Borders - the 1982 winner of Le Prix Adolphe Bentick for its contribution to the unity and cause of peace in Europe - Stanley Hoffmann gives an affirmative answer to the first question and elaborates on the others.1 Though he is driven by a staunch commitment to liberal values and the advancement of moral cause in international affairs, Hoffmann is sharply aware of the reality of international life characterized by power politics. Thus, in his endeavour to open up space for morality in the game of politics, he lays out a moral politics, paying attention to pragmatic and realist constraints in international affairs. In elaborating his notion of an ethical foreign policy, Hoffmann gives us important clues about his understanding of international relations, especiaUy insofar as world society, its basic features, and the role of the states and individuals within that society are concerned. It is upon those latter aspects that this article intends primarily to focus.THE BOOK IN CONTEXT: MORALITY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONSIn Duties beyond Borders, consisting of five lectures delivered at Syracuse University, Hoffmann takes on an age-old controversy, the place of morality in international politics. Although traditional Machia veUian statecraft did not place ethical concerns high on the agenda of international politics, there existed a stream of thought that gave priority to advancing nonmaterial aspects of international relations - for example, the just war tradition or the Kantian project of cosmopolitanism. Yet the burgeoning discipline of international relations in the post- Second World War period pushed those considerations to the margins ofthe academic study of world politics. Above all, realism, the dominant paradigm of postwar international relations, defined itself vis-a-vis the moralism, or idealism, of the interwar period, which was blamed for causing the calamities of a great war. Second, the methodological debates within the discipline, which ended with the triumph of a scientific or behaviouralist approach over a traditionalist one, contributed to the isolation of international politics from the contaminating effects of moralism. Indeed, it proved to be rather difficult to study elusive moral issues with scientific rigour in a positivistic research agenda. Moreover, a strict commitment to MachiaveUian ethics, with its heavy emphasis on the primacy ofthe state, the survival ofthe state, and advancing states' interests, complemented the tendency to exclude ethical dimensions of international politics. In an age of superpowers equipped with nuclear weapons, how could one dare pursue any moral end other than the survival ofthe nation? Even the (neo)liberal institutionalist theories that mounted the major challenge against mainstream realism by emphasizing the cooperative and non-power aspects of international relations could not escape this tendency. Not only did they construct their theories by mirroring (neo)realist assumptions on the nature of international politics within a positivist paradigm, but they also took great pains to emphasize that their notion of cooperation was not based on assumptions about normative motivations on the part of the states, but rather convergence ofthe common interests of essentiaUy selfish actors.2However, on the fringes of mainstream international relations, attention was paid to the ethical dimensions of foreign policy. Traditionalist international relations scholars were mostly concerned with the place and nature of morality in international politics. …

Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia & the Middle East

For those who live in the American International Relations community, Etel Solingen's Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia & the Middle East undoubtedly represents a stunning success of the study of nuclear proliferation. In 1994, Solingen published an influential article in this field of research, ‘The Political Economy of Nuclear Restraint', in International Security, and argued that countries with ruling coalitions pursuing economic liberalization have stronger incentives to refrain from developing nuclear weapons than those with ‘inward-looking, nationalist, and radical-confessional coalitions'. Based on the review of cases in South Asia, on the Korean Peninsula, in the Middle East, and in Latin America, she concluded that the former are internationalist in nature and are unwilling to damage international trade and investment by going nuclear, whereas the latter are more likely to pursue nuclear weapons because they care much less about the economic costs of nuclearization. In Nuclear Logics, Solingen expands such findings of her 1994 article and argues even more persuasively that ‘internationalizing models of political survival make the development of nuclear weapons less likely than inward-looking models’ (p. 46). Starting from ‘the puzzle of contrasting historical trajectories’ across East Asia and the Middle East since the late 1960s (p. 4), Solingen conducts the first ever ‘systematic efforts’ (p. 11) to explain why East Asia has largely moved toward denuclearization while the norm among the core Middle East powers has been nuclearization. Criticizing four alternative theories of nuclear choices of states, i.e. neorealism, neoliberal institutionalism, constructivism, and ‘theories about democracy and foreign policy', as insufficient to solve her puzzle, Solingen insists that the study of nuclear proliferation must pay more attention to the effects of internationalization on domestic politics and nuclear policy. According to Solingen, ‘[w]hereas inward-looking models might have regarded nuclear weapons as assets in the arsenal of building regime legitimacy, outward-oriented ones regarded them as liabilities’ (p. 277) and the two distinct patterns of nuclear choices in the Middle East and East Asia during the ‘second nuclear age’ can be well explained by the heavy regional concentrations of respective models in respective regions. In East Asia, the concentration of leaders who stake their political survival on economic growth through integration into the global economy reinforced individual, domestic incentives of leaders to avoid nuclearization across the borders. In the Middle East, the concentration of leaders who resist internationalization by trade protection, import substitution, and state entrepreneurship had the opposite effect. In fact, Solingen's careful case studies of four ‘nuclear aspirants’ in East Asia and five in the Middle East successfully demonstrate that ‘[t]he nuclear choices of all pertinent cases’ in the two regions since the 1960s ‘are compatible with domestic survival models’ (p. 277).

Blurring regime boundaries: uneven legalization of non‐trade concerns in the WTO

PurposeThe regulatory reach of the international trade regime beyond its own boundaries is attracting increasing scholarly and political attention as the World Trade Organization (WTO) is expected to reconcile free trade with concerns related to public health, environmental and labour issues or intellectual property rights. This paper aims to investigate to what extent and why the degree of legalization of non‐trade concerns in the WTO varies across issue areas.Design/methodology/approachThe paper first assesses the degree of legalization (in terms of obligation, delegation and precision) for technical (phyto) sanitary, environmental, intellectual property and labour standards. It then adopts a neoliberal institutionalist perspective to account for the uneven legalization across issue areas.FindingsThe paper shows that legalization is strong for intellectual property rights, moderate for public health and environmental matters and weak for labour issues. It is argued that legalization is uneven because of members' (divergent) preferences regarding the regulation of non‐trade concerns and because of certain institutional aspects of the WTO.Originality/valueThe paper shows that it cannot be assumed that the WTO is a highly legalized trade regime, implying an even legalization across issue areas. It hopes to contribute to three strands in international relations literature: standard setting, legalization and “regime complexity”, a debate which deals with the interaction between partially overlapping, not hierarchically ordered international regimes.

Relative Gains, Uncertainty, and Cooperation under Anarchy: Beyond Neorealism and Neoliberal Institutionalism

Relative Gains, Uncertainty, and Cooperation under Anarchy: Beyond Neorealism and Neoliberal Institutionalism

The Power of International Institutions: An Examination of U.S. Policy towards East Timor and Kosovo in 1999

This article looks at American foreign policy towards Kosovo and East Timor in 1999 using the extant literature, internal Administration documents, as well as elite interviews. I then test these cases against a structured focused comparison of two competing hypotheses. The first is realism. Secondly, I develop a hypothesis of institutional agenda setting, based on constructivism and neo-liberal institutionalism. I contend that the best explanation for both cases lies in the second hypothesis. Institutional identity shapes state preferences, not only in decisions to intervene but in shaping the size and scope of the mission. Institutions matter in complex human emergencies.

The USA and arms control in space: An IR analysis

After years of international stalemate talks on space arms control were finally initiated in Geneva in 2009. The position of the new US administration, however, is still waiting to be defined. This article assesses the advantages and disadvantages of different arms control proposals by looking at them from the perspectives of interdependence theory, neoliberal institutionalism and neo-realism, respectively. They all come to similar conclusions as far as conventional military power and security are concerned: any formal or informal ban on debris-producing activities in space would be highly advantageous to the USA and its allies. When the analysis also takes into account US missile defense policy, however, a neo-realist perspective shows rather mixed results.