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Regimes and the limits of realism: regimes as autonomous variables

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Stephen D. Krasner
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Extract

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.

Type
Conclusions, Con and Pro
Information
International Organization , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , Spring 1982 , pp. 497 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1982

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References

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7 This debate in the international relations literature parallels a current debate in the literature on domestic explanations of foreign, especially foreign economic, policy. For a conventional structural analysis with economic sectors as the exogenous variable see Kurth, James R., “The Political Consequences of the Product Cycle: Industrial History and Political Outcomes,” International Organization 33, 1 (Winter 1979)Google Scholar. For an analysis that sees both economic interests and political institutions as independent variables see Gourevitch, Peter A., “International Trade, Domestic Coalitions, and Liberty: Comparative Responses to the Crisis of 1873–1896,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8, 2 (Autumn 1977)Google Scholar. For two articles that emphasize the interactive and autonomous roles of institutions once they are firmly implanted see Katzenstein, Peter J., “Capitalism in One Country? Switzerland in the International Economy,” International Organization 34, 4 (Autumn 1980)Google Scholar, and Katzenstein, Peter J., “Problem or Model? West Germany in the 1980s,” World Politics 32, 4 (07 1980)Google Scholar; for the same conceptualization in a Marxist framework see Duvall, Raymond D. and Freeman, John R., “The State and Dependent Capitalism,” International Studies Quarterly 25, 1 (03 1981)Google Scholar.

8 Lags and feedback do not present puzzles for various Grotian orientations illustrated in this volume by Haas's discussion of organic theories emphasizing turbulent fields with multiple feedback loops.

9 Arthur Stein's contribution to this volume, p. 322.

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19 See Finlayson, Jock A. and Zacher, Mark W., “The GATT and the Regulation of Trade Barriers: Regime Dynamics and Functions,” International Organization 35, 4 (Autumn 1981), p. 601Google Scholar, for an elaboration of this point in the context of the international trade regime.

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