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Structural causes and regime consequences: regimes as intervening variables

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Stephen D. Krasner
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Extract

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.

Type
Overviews
Information
International Organization , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , Spring 1982 , pp. 185 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1982

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References

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15 Vinod K. Aggarwal emphasizes this point. See his “Hanging by a Thread: International Regime Change in the Textile/Apparel System, 1950–1979, Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1981, chap. 1Google Scholar.

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