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International relations theory and multilateralism: the search for foundations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

James A. Caporaso
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Extract

Why has the concept of multilateralism not played a more prominent role in theories of international relations? The prima facie case for the importance of multilateral activity in the international realm would seem great. The world, we constantly tell ourselves, is increasingly drawn together. The Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck argues that most external effects of production and consumption are external not only to the household but also to the country in which they occur. According to many different indicators, interdependence is on the increase in nearly all parts of the world. International political economists talk about global indivisibilities, ranging from peace to pollution. Most important international problems-including pollution, energy, managing airline traffic, and maintaining rules for trade and investment-intrinsically involve many countries simultaneously. What makes a problem international is that often it cannot be dealt with effectively within the national arena. Costs and benefits spill into the external arena. These external effects are frequently so great that domestic goals cannot be accomplished without coordinated multilateral action.

Type
Symposium: Multilateralism
Information
International Organization , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , Summer 1992 , pp. 599 - 632
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1992

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References

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74. This is not a trivial point. It is one that is passed over too quickly in the collective action literature. This literature, of which hegemonic stability theory is one expression, generally assumes some form of mixed-motive game in which outcomes (payoffs) can be improved through coordination of behavior. That is, it assumes the existence of some contingent pairs of strategies which, if played, will yield better outcomes than the noncoordinated solution would provide. If the structure of interests is zero-sum, a hegemonic distribution of power would have markedly different consequences.

75. Ruggie has made this point numerous times. See Ruggie, John Gerard, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), pp. 379–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ruggie, “Multilateralism.”

76. Institutional approaches need not be methodologically holist, however. They may be committed to the view that individuals are the ultimate units of society and still treat complex social structures and institutions as describing important emergent effects. In this sense, the ontological argument may be misleading in that it is easy to glide from the ontological position that individuals are the ultimate units to the theoretical position that all causation has an individual locus. I am indebted to discussions with Ronald Jepperson for this point; see his article entitled “Institutions, Institutional Effects, and Institutionalism,” in Powell, and DiMaggio, , The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, pp. 143–63Google Scholar.

77. In “International Institutions,” p. 384, Keohane stresses that institutions constrain activity, shape expectations, and prescribe roles.

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