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Regime norms as ‘implicit’ third parties: explaining the Anglo-Argentine relationship*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Extract

[L]ittle research has addressed whether, and in what ways, regimes ‘matter’. Do regimes have Independent influence on state behaviour and, if so, how?

One of the more surprising features of the emerging literature on regimes is the relative absence of sustained discussions of the significance of regimes . . . as determinants of collective outcomes at the international level . . . The ultimate justification for devoting substantial time and energy to the study of regimes must be the proposition that we can account for a good deal of the variance in collective outcomes . . . in terms of the impact of Institutional arrangements. [H]owever, this proposition is relegated to the realm of assumptions rather than brought to the forefront as a focus for analytical and empirical investigations.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1991

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References

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32 As noted by Young, analysts of regimes usually fail to discriminate between different types of regimes that may result in incorrect conclusions about the processes responsible for regime formation and the consequences associated with a specific ‘order’. Young identifies three categories of regimes: spontaneous, negotiated and imposed. Oran Young, ‘Regime Dynamics: The Rise and Fall of International Regimes’, in Krasner, Stephen D. (ed.), International Regimes (Ithaca, 1983).Google Scholar

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41 Disagreements, which are not limited to politicians, also extend to international courts and international lawyers. James Gravelle, in his analysis of the Falklands/Malvinas sovereignty dispute, identifies twelve different ‘modes’ recognized in international law for territorial claims: discovery, occupation, accretion, erosion, avulsion, cession, conquest, prescription, abandonment, revolution, succession and annexation. Gravelle, Major James Francis‘The Falkland (Malvinas) Islands: An International Law Analysis of the Dispute Between Argentina and Great Britain’, Military Law Review, 107 (1985), p. 19.Google Scholar Further complicating the assignment of title, the relative weight accorded any of these modes by international courts and lawyers has varied over time.

42 Nardin, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States, p. 167.

43 There was a period of time, however, during the Labour Government of the 1960s, when a commitment to anti-colonialism may have led to British willingness to cede sovereignty to Argentina. See Charlton, Michael, The Little Platoon: Diplomacy and the Falklands Dispute (Oxford, 1989), pp. 89.Google Scholar

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46 American Admiral Harry Train, in ‘debriefing’ Argentine Admiral Anaya, reports that Anaya thought ‘he was just “giving a nudge to diplomacy” by landing five hundred troops in Port Stanley’. Quoted by Charlton, The Little Platoon, p. 119.

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60 G. M. Dillon, The Falklands, p. 1. This interpretation received support from Lord Alun Chalfont, Foreign Office Minister in the late 1960s who stated in an interview: ‘The idea was that, sooner or later, we would have to discuss with Argentina the question of sovereignty. It was also accepted that sooner or later, sovereignty would have to be transferred to Argentina’. Quoted by Charlton, The Little Platoon, p. 19.

61 Dillon, The Falklands, p. viii.

62 See Peter Beck, The International Politics of Antarctica, Michael Charlton, The Little Platoon, and G. M. Dillon, The Falklands for detailed discussions of this issue.

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66 An earlier exercise of brinksmanship apparently succeeded. According to Beck, in 1976 an Argentine challenge to a British ship, done to ‘record its claim to the islands and to persuade Britain to negotiate about their future’, led the British Government to engage in serious negotiations. Beck, , The Falkland Islands, p. 4.Google Scholar

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68 Because the Thatcher Government took no official position, no discussions were held in 1979.

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71 Several of Charlton's interviewees lamented the lack of effort expended in educating the Islanders into the realities of their situation. For example: ‘What I said in my reports, which I still feel was the trouble with the Falkland Islanders, was this: the real alternatives which lay before them were never really put to them . . . The difficulty was that the Falkland Islanders did not realize that there was no way in which they could carry on as they had in the 1960s and ’70s, because things were going to change’. Sir Williams, Anthony, quoted by Charlton, , The Little Platoon, p. 131.Google Scholar

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101 Quoted by Heymann, Philip, ‘The Problem of Coordination: Bargaining and Rules’, Harvard Law Review, 86 (1983), p. 827.Google Scholar

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