Stephen D. Krasner

Structural causes and regime consequences: regimes as intervening variables

International regimes are defined as principles, norms, rules, and decisionmaking procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area. As a starting point, regimes have been conceptualized as intervening variables, standing between basic causal factors and related outcomes and behavior. There are three views about the importance of regimes: conventional structural orientations dismiss regimes as being at best ineffectual; Grotian orientations view regimes as an intimate component of the international system; and modified structural perspectives see regimes as significant only under certain constrained conditions. For Grotian and modified structuralist arguments, which endorse the view that regimes can influence outcomes and behavior, regime development is seen as a function of five basic causal variables: egoistic self-interest, political power, diffuse norms and principles, custom and usage, and knowledge.

State Power and the Structure of International Trade

The structure of international trade, identified by the degree of openness for the movement of goods, can best be explained by a state-power theory of international political economy. This theory begins with the assumption that the nature of international economic movements is determined by states acting to maximize national goals. Four goals—aggregate national income, political power, social stability, and economic growth—can be systematically related to the degree of openness in the international trading system for states of different relative sizes and levels of development. This analysis leads to the conclusion that openness is most likely to exist when there is a hegemonic distribution of potential economic power. Time-series data on tariff levels, trade proportions, regional concentration, per capita income, national income, share of world trade, and share of world investment are then presented. The first three are used to describe the degree of openness in the trading system; the last four, the distribution of state power. The data suggest that the state-power theory should be amended to take into consideration domestic political constraints on state action.

Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective

Contemporary social science analysis is dominated by utilitarian or functional approaches in which institutional structures are assumed to adapt in an optimal fashion to changing environmental conditions, and the preferences and capabilities of individual actors are ontologically posited. In contrast, an institutional perspective insists that past choices constrain present options; that the preferences and capabilities of individual actors are conditioned by institutional structures; and that historical trajectories are path dependent. Institutional structures persist even if circumstances change. In a world of nuclear weapons and economic interdependence, any adequate analysis of the nature of sovereignty operationalized with regard to transborder controls and extraterritoriality must be informed by an institutional perspective.Contemporary social science analysis is dominated by utilitarian or functional approaches in which institutional structures are assumed to adapt in an optimal fashion to changing environmental cond...

Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier

Regime analysis has focused on issues of market failure, the resolution of which depends upon knowledge and institution building. Global communications regimes, however, have been concerned either with issues of pure coordination or with coordination problems with distributional consequences. Outcomes have been decided by the underlying distribution of national power. In those areas where power was asymmetrically distributed and there was no agreement on basic principles and norms—radio broadcasting and remote sensing—no regime was formed. In those areas where distributional issues could not be unilaterally resolved—allocation of the radio spectrum and telecommunications—regimes were created, although both principles and rules changed with alterations in national power capabilities.

Structural conflict : the Third World against global liberalism

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Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States

eignty assumes a world of autonomous, internationally recognized, and wellgoverned states. Although frequently violated in practice, the fundamental rules of conventional sovereignty—recognition of juridically independent territorial entities and nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states—have rarely been challenged in principle. But these rules no longer work, and their inadequacies have had deleterious consequences for the strong as well as the weak. The policy tools that powerful and well-governed states have available to “ax” badly governed or collapsed states—principally governance assistance and transitional administration (whether formally authorized by the United Nations or engaged in by a coalition of the willing led by the United States)— are inadequate. In the future, better domestic governance in badly governed, failed, and occupied polities will require the transcendence of accepted rules, including the creation of shared sovereignty in speciac areas. In some cases, decent governance may require some new form of trusteeship, almost certainly de facto rather than de jure.1 Many countries suffer under failed, weak, incompetent, or abusive national authority structures. The best that people living in such countries can hope for is marginal improvement in their material well-being; limited access to social services, including health care and education; and a moderate degree of individual physical security. At worst they will confront endemic violence, exploitative political leaders, falling life expectancy, declining per capita income, and even state-sponsored genocide. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), for example, civil wars that have persisted for more than two decades have resulted in millions of deaths. In Zimbabwe the policies of President RobSharing Sovereignty

Regimes and the limits of realism: regimes as autonomous variables

Two distinct traditions have developed from structural realist perspectives. The first, the billiard ball version, focuses purely on interaction among states. The second, the tectonic plates version, focuses on the relationship between the distribution of power and various international environments. It is the latter tradition that suggests why regimes may be important for a realist orientation. However, it also opens the possibility for viewing regimes as autonomous, not just as intervening, variables. There may be lags between changes in basic causal variables and regime change. There may be feedback from regimes to basic causal variables. Both lags and feedback suggest an importance for regimes that would be rejected by conventional structural arguments.

Problematic sovereignty : contested rules and political possibilities

Preface, by Stephen D. KrasnerProblematic Sovereignty, by Stephen D. KrasnerSovereignty: The Practitioners Perspective, by Abraham D. Sofaer and Thomas C. HellerSovereignty from a World Polity Perspective, by John BoliThe Issue of Sovereignty in the Asian Historical Context, by Mchel OksenbergOne Sovereign, Two Legal Systems: China and the Problem of Commitment in Hong Kong, by James McCall SmithThe Struggle for Sovereignty between China and Taiwan, by Robert MadsenThe Sovereignty Script: Red Book for Russian Revolutionaries, by Michael McFaulBelarus and the Flight from Sovereignty, by Coit Blacker and Condoleezza RiceCompromised Sovreignty to Create Sovereignty: Is Dayton Bosnia Futile Exercise or an Emerging Model?, by Susan L. WoodwardThe Road to Palestinian Sovereignty: Problematic Structures or Conventional Obstacles?, by Shibley TelhamiExplaining Variation: Defaults, Coercion, Commitments, by Stephen D. Krasner

Hegemonic stability theory: an empirical assessment

to test alternative theoretical explanations. The basic contention of the hegemonic stability thesis is that the distribution of power among states is the primary determinant of the character of the international economic system. A hegemonic distribution of power, defined as one in which a single state has a predominance of power, is most conducive to the establishment of a stable, open international economic system.1 In the mid-1970s Charles Kindleberger, Robert Gilpin and Stephen Krasner presented similar descriptions and explanations for patterns of international economic relations since the nineteenth century.2 All viewed Britain in the late nineteenth century as a hegemon that provided stability and encouraged liberaliza tion in the international economy, and saw the United States as holding a similar status and performing similar functions in the first decades after the Second World War. All interpreted the instability and closure in international economic relations in the inter-war period as a result of the absence of a hegemon; Britain had lost the ability and willingness to act as a hegemon, while the United States was unwilling to assume the role of hegemonic leader. Finally, all three warned that the United States had lost its hegemonic status by the mid-1970s, and predicted the erosion of inter national economic liberalization and the emergence of greater instability. This paper is an attempt to assess the empirical validity of the hegemonic stability thesis as an explanation for trends in the international political economy since 1945. A decade and a half have passed since the initial statements of this thesis were first published. Many studies of the international political economy informed by (or written in reaction against) the hegemonic stability thesis have been published in the interim. We will draw on some of these, but this is not a literature review. It is a study of trends in the international political economy at a high level of aggregation. We examine first the power capabilities of the United States, and then look in some detail at developments in the areas of international trade and finance. With regard to the independent variable, power capabilities, the position of the United States weakened from 1945 until about 1970, but has stabilized since. In aggregate terms the capabilities of the United States remain formidable compared to any other state in the international system, and compared with Britain in the nine teenth century, although in some specific issue areas its position has clearly deteriorated.

The Case for Shared Sovereignty

Abstract:Three leading areas of democratic studies today are 1) the quality of democracy, 2) the “gray zone,” (regimes that combine features of authoritarianism and democracy in previously unfamiliar ways), and 3) post-conflict democracy-building. The latter deals with failed or war-torn states that would seem to be the least promising candidates for democratization. Why, then, has state-building or political reconstruction in these cases come to be identified with democracy-building? The most important reason is the unrivaled legitimacy that democracy today enjoys as a form of governance. Those international organizations and countries that have taken the lead in responding to postconflict situations cannot easily evade their public commitment to democracy.