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Words can hurt you; or, who said what to whom about regimes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Ernst B. Haas
Ernst B. Haas
Affiliation:
A version of this paper was read at the 30 August 1980 meeting of the American Political Science Association in Washington, D.C. The paper would not have been written without the very energetic encouragement of Hildegarde Haas, Peter Haas, and John Ruggie. It also owes a large debt to the outstanding comments received from the other contributors to this volume.
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Extract

Much of the confusion in the current literature on regimes is due to the fact that two very different metaphors about nature, science, and culture inform the discussion. The two metaphors—the organic and the mechanical—imply six different approaches to world order studies, and hence to the analysis and advocacy of regimes. Each of the six—eco-environmentalism, eco-reformism, egalitarianism, liberalism, mercantilism, and mainstream views—advances different arguments about the origin of regimes, the structural principles that explain their growth and decay, their functioning, and the values they serve. Yet each approach uses the same basic vocabulary: system, structure, process, costs-and-benefits, public goods, management, learning, organization, hegemony, and collaboration. Clarity about each argument, and a possible synthesis of views, can be achieved only if we understand the semantic and philosophical contexts in which the terminology is embedded. This article attempts the task of terminological and contextual explication in the setting of evolutionary epistemology and of contending theories of international relations. It opts for a synthesis of the analyses of regimes offered by mainstream views and by a normative view of world order represented by the eco-reformist approach. The discussion is illustrated with references to the Law of the Sea negotiations.

Type
Overviews
Information
International Organization , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , Spring 1982 , pp. 207 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1982

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References

1 The term and the associated concepts come from Campbell, Donald T., Descriptive Epistemology: Psychological, Sociological, and Evolutionary (preliminary draft of the William James Lectures, Harvard University, spring 1977)Google Scholar. I have used the 1979 version of the manuscript kindly shown me by Professor Campbell and widely circulated by him. Portions were published as “A Tribal Model of the Social System Vehicle Carrying Scientific Knowledge,” Knowledge 1, 2 (12 1979)Google Scholar.

2 Campbell, , Descriptive Epistemology, p. 76Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 13.

4 Keohane distinguishes between two other forms of regime: control and insurance. While any specific regime might make use of both forms (and many do) controlling behavior approximates Stein's “collaboration” and insuring against some loss in a setting of varying actor utilities sounds like “coordination.” Arrangements that only insure against a loss, therefore, do not meet my definitional conditions, though they do meet the lawyer's notion of regime.

5 Homeostasis refers to processes that disturb systemic equilibrium temporarily; after the perturbation, the system reverts to its original state. Homeorhesis refers to the continuation of a process that changes a system despite temporary setbacks and interruptions. The term was coined by C. H. Waddington to capture morphogenetic evolution.

6 Russett, Cynthia Eagle, The Concept of Equilibrium in American Social Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), p. 10Google Scholar.

7 My terminology reflects the general confusion documented by Russett, Concept of Equilibrium. My juxtaposition seeks to capture how writers on regimes use the concepts; it does not do justice to the variety of meanings and imputations in the natural sciences in which the terms originated and in which they remain controversial now. See Russett, ibid., chap. 10 for instances of this. She also shows, pp. 157ff., that economists continue to disagree as to what they mean by the terms “static” and “dynamic” equilibrium.

8 The term was coined by Emery, F. E. and Trist, E. L., Towards a Social Ecology (London: Plenum, 1973)Google Scholar, from which this quotation comes.

9 Wilson, Edward O., On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978)Google ScholarPubMed.

10 Fuller, Buckminster, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969)Google Scholar. Evolution, following the formulation apparently pioneered by Herbert Spencer, means “an orderly unfolding from simple to complex”; it implies progress and maturation. The organic view of evolution is distinctly morphogenetic; the trajectory is progressive unfolding in the realization of a diverse genetic and an equally diverse cultural-adaptive potential. See Gould, Stephen Jay, Ever Since Darwin (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977)Google Scholar.

11 Laszlo, Ervin, The Systems View of the World (New York: Braziller, 1972), p. 52Google Scholar. Emphasis added.

12 Boulding, Kenneth E., Ecodynamics (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage, 1978), pp. 269ffGoogle Scholar.

13 Laszlo, , Systems View, p. 75Google Scholar.

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17 Maruyama, Magoroh, “Toward Cultural Symbiosis,” in Jantsch, Erich and Waddington, Conrad H., eds., Evolution and Consciousness (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1976), p. 209Google Scholar. Emphasis in original.