Keohane: International Institutions: Two Approaches

Keohane, R., 1988. International Institutions: Two Approaches. International Studies Quarterly, 32(4), 379-396.

“To understand international cooperation and discord, it is necessary to develop a knowledge of how international institutions work, and how they change” (380).

Starts out with the claim that general theories of IR are not plausible or probably possible.

“’Cooperation’ is a contested term. As I use it, it is sharply distinguished from both harmony and discord. When harmony prevails, actors’ policies automatically facilitate the attainment of others’ goals. When there is discord, actors’ policies hinder the realization of others’ goals and are not adjusted to make them more compatible. IN both harmony and discord, neither actor has an incentive to change his or her behavior. Cooperation, however, ‘requires that the actions of separate individuals or organizations’…be brought into conformity with one another through a process of policy coordination’” (380). Cooperation and discord stand in a dialectical relationship; to see one you have to see the other. Cooperation doesn’t necessarily have to happen because of altruism, etc. Also, while order is a value, it is not the only value in international relations (see Bull and order/justice discussions).

Institutions are overdetermined. There is an odd dialogue between rationalism and post-rationalism discourses. He’s committed to the former, but also keen on the later (calls them interpretive scholars).

“My chief argument in this essay is that students of international institutions should direct their attention to the relative merits of two approaches, the rationalistic and the reflective. Until we understand the strengths and weaknesses of each, we will be unable to design research strategies that are sufficiently multifaceted to encompass our subject-matter, and our empirical work will suffer accordingly” (383).

There is then a discussion of the diverse kind of usages for the term institution. It can be seen as a kind of pattern, ala sovereignty. It can be more specific, like the UN.

Rationalist approaches are good for doing certain things, but they do not endogenously treat interest: preferences are exogenous and fixed. “Reflective” theory can be used to explore preferences. We need a theory that can at least partially help us understand how interests change.

“…the greatest weakness of the reflective school lies not in deficiencies in their critical arguments but in the lack of a clear reflective research program that could be employed by students of world politics” (393).