The Politics of International Regime Complexity

Author(s): Karen J. Alter and Sophie Meunier

Source: Perspectives on Politics , Mar., 2009, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Mar., 2009), pp. 13-24
Published by: American Political Science Association

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Symposium

The Politics of International Regime

Complexity
Karen J. Alter and Sophie Meunier

The increasing density of international regimes has contributed to the proliferation of overlap across agreements, conflicts among
international obligations, and confusion regarding what international and bilateral obligations cover an issue. This symposium
examines the consequences of this "international regime complexity" for subsequent politics. What analytical insights can be gained
by thinking about any single agreement as being embedded in a larger web of international rules and regimes? Karen Alter and
Sophie Meunier s introductory essay defines international regime complexity and identifies the mechanisms through which it may
influence the politics of international cooperation. Short contributions analyze how international regime complexity affects politics
in specific issue areas: trade (Christina Davis), linkages between human rights and trade (Emilie Hafner-Burton), intellectual prop-
erty (Laurence Heifer), security politics (Stephanie Hofmann), refugee politics (Alexander Betts), and election monitoring (Judith
Kelley). Daniel Drezner concludes by arguing that international regime complexity may well benefit the powerful more than others.

number, level of detail, and subject matter of Following David Victor and Kal Raustialas analysis of
international agreements have grown exponentially"regimes complexes," we call this growing phenomenon
in recent decades. From peacekeeping to telecom- "international regime complexity."1 International regime
munication standards, from the monitoring of electionscomplexity refers to the presence of nested, partially over-
to the protection of endangered species, it seems that everylapping, and parallel international regimes that are not
policy issue is nowadays the subject of multiple trans- hierarchically ordered. Although rule complexity also exists
border agreements. The proliferation of international agree-in the domestic realm, the lack of hierarchy distinguishes
ments multiplies the number of actors and rules relevantinternational regime complexity, making it harder to resolve
for any given decision of international cooperation. The where political authority over an issue resides.2
Inter-American Development Banks spaghetti bowl of We are not the first to point out the need to think of
Trade Agreements, shown in Figure 1 captures, perhaps ininternational cooperation as a complex system.3 But while
the extreme, this emerging density and complexity of inter-this need is readily admitted, few studies and even fewer
national governance. theories are available to guide scholars in thinking about
the consequences of this complexity. The state-centric bias
of international relations, combined with a tendency to
focus on the origin rather than the implementation of
Karen J. Alter is Associate Professor of Political Science at
formal rules, leads political scientists to focus overwhelm-
Northwestern University ([email protected]).
ingly on the causes of international regime complexity.
Sophie Meunier is Research Scholar in Public and Inter-
We are, however, more interested in its consequences.
national Affairs at Princeton University (smeunier@
How is the sheer complexity of international gover-
Princeton.edu). They thank the Niehaus Center for Global-
nance today, with its multiple set of rules and institutions,
ization and Governance at Princeton University and the
affecting international politics? Does international regime
Northwestern University Institute on Complex Systems for
complexity impact decision-making and political strat-
funding their project meetings. Thanks to David Dana,
egies, as well as empower some actors and interest groups?
Gary Goertz, Jim Mahoney, Jacqueline McAllister, Uri
How does complexity enhance or undermine the effective-
Wilensky, and the participants of meetings at Princeton,
Northwestern, and American Political Science Association ness of international regimes? More generally, what ana-
lytical insights can be gained by thinking about any single
conventions for their challenges and feedback. Thanks to
agreement as being embedded in a larger web of inter-
David Steinberg for his research support, and Nancy Bar-
national rules and regimes? These questions, and others,
thélémy, David Steinberg, and the Roberta Buffet Center
are raised by the reality that, increasingly, international
for International and Comparative Studies for administra-
governance occurs via a multitude of nested, partially over-
tive support. Thanks also go to three anonymous reviewers
lapping, and parallel trans-border agreements.
for their useful comments.

doi: 1 0. 1 01 7/S1 537592709090033 March 2009 | Vol. 7/No. 1 13

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Symposium | International Regime Complexity

Figure 1 It is not our ambition to make strong causal claims

The Spaghetti Bowl: Trade agreements about unidirectional effects from complexity. Rather, the
signed and under negotiations in the symposium provides scholars with insights from multiple
Americas disciplines to help them investigate the role of inter-
national regime complexity in areas they care about, in
the hope that doing so will save others time and spur
more research on this topic.

What We Know about International

Regime Complexity
Political scientists have studied the issue of why and how
international commitments proliferate and overlap under
the rubrics of "nested institutions" and "complex inter-
dependence." Scholars have pointed out that sometimes
agreements overlap because conversation about one topic
leads to discussion about a related topic, creating spillover
across issues.4 Sometimes international agreements are
intended only as a starting point, to be followed up by
subsequent agreements.5 Or sometimes sub-groups of states
desire different or deeper cooperation than the whole, thus
they create additional agreements.6 Sometimes linkages
Source: "The Spaghetti Bowl of Trade Liberalization" in Latin
American Economic Policies, Vol. 19, 2002. across agreements are crafted to create packages that col-
lectively are more attractive to various participants.7 And
sometimes second or third agreements are negotiated to
This introduction draws from a wide set of literatures
create "strategic ambiguity" about how to interpret any
to think about how the complexity of international gov-
single agreement8 or to create redundancies that allow for
continued cooperation should any single agreement fail.
ernance may be shaping international politics. We locate
These ideas are about the origins of international regime
this research question in existing and emerging literatures
on complexity studies. Next we provide concrete ways to
complexity: where it came from, why it arose, and what it
think about how regime complexity may influence looks the like today.
politics of international cooperation. We end by consid- By contrast, this symposium is interested in the conse-
ering the implications of incorporating international regime
quences of international regime complexity. With this focus
complexity into quantitative and qualitative approaches
we are connecting to an emerging field of complexity stud-
ies. A complex system is a system with a large number of
to studying the politics of any single trans-border issue.
The symposium then proceeds with issue-specific con-elements, building blocks or agents capable of interacting
tributions. We asked a set of scholars to reflect on how
with each other and with their environment. Scholars who
international regime complexity may be causally impor-
study complexity note that within complex systems, knowl-
tant for the issue they study. The contributions address
edgea of the elementary building blocks - a termite, a neu-
range of international issues - trade, military interven-
ron, a single rule - does not even give a glimpse of the
behavior of the whole, and may lead to faulty understand-
tion, election monitoring, refugee politics, intellectual prop-
erty policy, and human rights protection - and represent
ings of the building blocks themselves.9 Scientists offer as
an original, though tentative, rethinking of an existingan example the human brain. Researchers can discover a
body of scholarship undertaken by each author. lot Theabout neurons, but knowing about neurons in isola-
insights gleaned, like the causal effects identified in tion
this does not add up to comprehending consciousness, let
introduction, do not point in a single direction. Some- alone how the brain works as a whole. Similarly, we can
times complexity empowers powerful states actors, while study the dynamics of the Kyoto Protocol, but doing so
at other times NGOs and weaker actors gain from the will not ultimately help us understand how global warm-
overlap of institutions and rules. Sometimes overlap intro-
ing gets addressed.
duces positive feedback effects that enhance cooperation The interdisciplinary field of complexity studies has
thus far primarily focused on mathematical and compu-
and the effectiveness of any one cooperative regime. Some-
times, however, complexity introduces unhelpful compe- tational techniques to chart the relationships among actors
tition across actors, inefficiencies, and transaction costs
and to analyze the evolutionary tendencies within com-
that end up compromising the objectives of internationalplex systems.10 Moving beyond the observation that
cooperation and international governance. most people are connected by six degrees of separation,11

14 Perspectives on Politics

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complexity scholars have created tools to map actor rela- The result is that treaty implementation involves actors
tionships to reveal nodes of relationships and dynamic who played little to no part in crafting the original agree-
interactions that may not be apparent to the naked eye. ment. These differences do not mean that agent-based
Political scientists are beginning to think about how approaches cannot be useful - complexity scholars are
relationships within complex systems matter. For exam- developing modeling tools for different types of situa-
ple, a group of scholars are mapping networked security tions. These differences do, however, suggest limitations
relationships in the Commonwealth of Independent States, for models that rely on interactions among a single set of
and asking more broadly if creating nested security insti- actors - e.g., states or NGOs.
tutions is a new alliance strategy.12 The more we learn We see the core insight of complexity studies as helpful -
about the role of transnationally networked actors in inter- the ideas that understanding units does not sum up to the
national politics,13 the more helpful political scientists may whole and that the dynamics of the whole shape the behav-
find network mapping techniques. ior of units and sub-parts. We believe that the first step is
But these social network maps also have limitations, as to develop some theoretical hunches about how inter-
sociologists have realized. Roger Gould cautions that social national regime complexity matters. In the next section
network analysis contributes to intellectual progress mainly we build on research from a variety of disciplines to pro-
where there is a pre-existing body of theory which can vide insights into the ways the international regime com-
shape the questions and relationships investigated through plexity may be causally important.
network analysis.14 In other words, we must first develop
expectations about how regime complexity influences net- The Politics of International
worked relationships and makes them causally important Regime Complexity
before we can know which relationships to map and what
Many scholars believe that the formal relationships within
the mapping might mean.
and across international institutions are defining of the pol-
Complexity scholars also use agent-based modeling to
itics that follow, thus they invest in mapping and explain-
examine how the interactions of actors come to shape
ing differences in how international agreements relate to
strategies and cooperation outcomes. For example, Rob-
each other. Clearly the situation of parallel regimes (where
ert Axelrod employs agent-based modeling to show how
there is no formal or direct substantive overlap) differs from
cooperation can emerge from actors using tit-for-tat reci-
overlappingregimes (where multiple institutions have author-
procity in their interactions,15 and how norms, cultures,
ity over an issue, but agreements are not mutually exclusive
and conflicts can interact to create ethnic conflict and
or subsidiary to another) and nested regimes (where institu-
global polarization.16 By changing decision-rules and mak- tions are embedded within each other in concentric circles,
ing controlled assumptions about interactive effects dur-
like Russian dolls).20 One could map out even more nuances
ing organizational development, complexity scholars are
in how regimes connect to each other, but it isn't clear that
able to estimate when organizations will evolve linearly
such distinctions causally shape the politics that follow. Not
(in path-dependent, punctuated equilibrium, or cyclical
all overlaps will be causally significant, nor is it clear that
ways), versus when they will develop in non-linear chaotic
nested regimes have fundamentally different politics com-
or random ways.17 Sociologists consider organizational
pared to overlapping regimes in large part because the default
dynamics within groups such as the development of rep- situation is that international law does not establish hier-
utation and trust, and how factors like bounded rational-
archy across treaties or regimes.
ity or preference affinities shape interactive outcomes within
Maps of international regime complexity are helpful in
complex systems.18
identifying the actors and institutions involved in an issue.
Agent-based modeling is useful when agents are auton-
But we believe that international regime complexity is
omous yet interdependent, when agents follow simple
causally important in how it affects the strategies and
rules (like tit-for-tat reciprocity), when agents are adap-
dynamic interactions of actors. We identify five different
tive and backward-looking, and when rules and norms
pathways through which international regime complexity
emerge from bottom-up interactions rather than to top-
changes the strategies and dynamic interactions of actors.
down political imposition.19 But international regime com-
These pathways present both opportunities and chal-
plexity does not bubble up from below, nor do the politics
lenges for the goal of developing effective and legitimate
of international regime complexity evolve purely through
solutions to international problems.
the interaction of the actors who negotiated the agree-
ment. International agreements are negotiated by govern-
ments, transformed into domestic implementing legislation The Implementation Stage Is Defining of
Political Outcomes
by legislative bodies, actually implemented by sub-state
actors (administrative agencies, state governments, local Most international cooperation scholars focus on the nego-
police, contracted firms, NGOs, etc.)» whose actions get tiation of agreements, and in particular on the formal
reviewed by domestic and sometimes international courts. rules that influence politics. But political deals often get

March 2009 | Vol. 7/No. 1 15

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Symposium | International Regime Complexity

redefined during implementation because the actors who interpretations come to dominate over time? Which actors
implement agreements have different priorities and are are able to influence interpretations and prioritization
subject to different pressures than are the policy-makers across agreements? When does a rule or an interpretation
who designed the deal in the first place. International harden and become difficult to shift through refraining
regime complexity adds a new twist to implementation or reinterpretation?
politics: international regime complexity reduces the clarity
of legal obligation by introducing overlapping sets of legal International Regime Complexity Enables "Chessboard
rules and jurisdictions governing an issue. Lawyers refer to Politics" - Cross Institutional Political Strategies. We asked
this problem as the "fragmentation" of international law.21 our contributors to consider the counterfactual question -
Where state preferences are similar, lawyers overcome frag- what would have been a likely outcome if parallel and
mentation by crafting agreements that resolve conflicts overlapping institutions did not exist? From this exercise
across regimes, and thus legal ambiguity is transitory. Where we could see that even where decision-makers do not
preferences diverge, states block attempts to clarify the actively reference other institutions, parallel regime poli-
rules and thus ambiguity persists, allowing countries to tics could sometimes explain the timing and content of
select their preferred rule or interpretation. the policies adopted. In some cases, the greatest action
With the rules themselves or the hierarchy across rules took place outside of the central institution of focus.
remaining fundamentally ambiguous, agreements get We use the concept of "chessboard politics" as a more
defined and redefined across time and space. In her con- open way of explaining how international regime com-
tribution to our symposium, Emilie Hafner-Burton finds plexity alters the strategic playing field. Once a density
that during the implementation stage, opponents of human threshold is reached,22 the existence of multiple institu-
rights linkages to trade agreements have used the Vienna tions with authority over an issue allows moves made in a
Convention on the Law of Treaties to strip out the human single international institution to reposition pawns, knights,
rights requirements demanded by the European Parlia- and queens within other institutions. Sometimes reposi-
ment. But this strategy is only used when the human rights tioning is done intentionally, and sometimes it occurs
linkages become a barrier in bilateral relations, and thus incidentally.
for many agreements the linkage remains. In Stephanie A number of our contributors identified forum-shopping
Hofmann's study of European Defense and Security Pol- strategies where actors select the international venues based
icy (ESDP), preference divergence created significant ambi- on where they are best able to promote specific policy
guity in the "Berlin Agreements," which affected operations, preferences, with the goal of eliciting a decision that favors
creating delays and confusion on the ground. In the case their interests. In her contribution to this symposium,
of refugee policy analyzed by Alexander Betts, United Judith Kelley analyzes a case where governments shopped
Nations policy became redefined over time to take into for election monitors they believed would render the most
account developments in parallel domains - migration and favorable declaration for them. In Hafner-Burton's study
security policies. In all of these cases, the formal texts of trade and human rights, forum shopping was a means
remained the same. Only in examining implementation for voices excluded from one venue (the European Parlia-
were the transformations, either made possible or compli- ment has no role in World Trade Organization negotia-
cated by international regime complexity, revealed. tions) to impose their preferences in a different venue (the
European Parliament must approve bilateral trade agree-
Implementation Politics Lessons ments between the EU and individual countries). Not
Lesson 1. International regime complexity contributes to only did the European Parliament gain a voice, but the
international law fragmentation and rule ambiguity. Where different bargaining context for the bilateral agreements
state preferences are similar, states will coordinate to cre- limited the ability of weaker recipient states to veto the
ate a clear set of rules. Where preferences diverge, ambi- linkage between trade and human rights. In her study of
guity will persist, allowing countries to select their preferred the trade regime, Christina Davis explains the reasons why
interpretation. different forums have different politics, and thus the fac-
tors that shape actor choices and outcomes in different
Lesson 2. Because states can select which rules to follow forums.
and because each international venue allows a different set We also identified cross-institutional political strategies
of actors to be part of the political process, implementa- where actors promoted agenda across multiple inter-
tion politics will end up defining which international agree- national institutions to influence policy outcomes. Whereas
ments become salient, and the meaning of international forum-shopping is focused on achieving a desired out-
agreements. come within a given regime (a favorable decision, for exam-
ple), regime-shifting is designed to reshape the global
Next steps. The next question to ask is from the sea of structure of rules.23 According to Larry Heifer, when devel-
overlapping agreements, which agreements and which oping countries were out-maneuvered within the World

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Trade Organization, they regime-shifted - they turned to understand how common it is for regime complexity to
parallel regimes where alternative priorities existed. Devel- generate choice of forum opportunities, while identifying
oping countries encouraged regimes, such as the World the other ways in which trans-institutional strategies
Health Organization, to speak to the balance of protect- operate - such as cross-institutional strategizing, and cre-
ing intellectual property and promoting other goals - ating strategic inconsistency across agreements. We also
such as public health. Developing countries then invoked need to give equal focus to non-strategic systems effects -
these statements and rules in the World Trade Organiza- that is, changes in the chessboard of international politics
tion, negotiating to have exceptions crafted in parallel ven- that are not the result of state strategizing (see our discus-
ues written into the global rules. Alexander Betts discusses sion of feedback effects).
a similar strategy. European states created parallel multi-
lateral venues focused on migration and internally dis-
placed people where they arranged to keep potential Complexity Forces Bounded Rationality on Actors
refugees from reaching their territory. These alternative The web of international rules, agreements, and regimes is
venues created both a mechanism and a language to trans- so complex, with so many moving pieces, that it may well
form a person fleeing persecution into a person seeking be impossible to keep track of changes within all institu-
economic migration, and thus a way to avoid European tions, and thus to strategize globally. Scholars who focus
obligations under International Refugee rules. on organizational dynamics find that complexity inspires
Strategic inconsistency is another cross-institutional strat- a strategy of incremental decision-making, where small
egy observed by Raustiala and Victor; contradictory rules , steps are taken tentatively to minimize risk and where
are created in a parallel regime with the intention of under- characterizations of the problem decisively shape out-
mining a rule in another agreement.24 Heifer notes that comes.26 Scholars building on the insights of political psy-
developing countries also sought to create Intellectual Prop- chology find that complexity leads to selective information
erty interpretations that were inconsistent with TRIPs rules. processing and a reliance on relations and heuristics to cut
Hofmanns contribution reveals a slightly different strat- through what is an overwhelming amount of informa-
egy, what one might call strategic ambiguity: the British tion. This reliance affects politics because what constitutes
desire to make NATO the primary security institution the "rational" choice is far less clear, and because the time
clashed repeatedly with the French desire that the ES DP horizons of politicians may be out of sync with the time
be the primary security institution shaping the positions needed for cause-effect outcomes to become clear. Where
these states took in a variety of political debates over spe- bounded rationality prevails, we are also likely to find
cific substantive policies - cooperation agreements between unintended consequences and an important role for feed-
NATO and ES DP, decisions on the common resources for back effects in shaping outcomes.27
the ESDP, and decisions regarding specific interventions. Our contributors are looking at issue-areas rather than
These clashes ended up shaping the policies adopted in the behaviors of specific actors, thus they did not investi-
each institution, making them vaguer than originally gate how bounded rationality operates. Still, a few impli-
intended. cations can follow from the reality that complexity increases
the prevalence of bounded rationality. First, we may well
Chessboard Politics Lessons. Lesson 1 . International regime find that complexity contributes to making states and IOs
complexity enables cross institutional political strategies more permeable, creating a heightened role for experts
including: forum-shopping, regime-shifting, and strategic and non-state actors which over time can dwarf in causal
inconsistency. In forum-shopping, the shopper strategi- import the influence of governments.28 In this respect,
cally selects the venue to gain a favorable interim decision this analysis cuts against the grain of international rela-
for a specific problem. In creating strategic inconsistency, tions scholars who enthusiastically embrace the principal-
the actors intentionally create a contradictory rule in a agent metaphor where the world is circumscribed to include
parallel venue so as to widen their latitude in choosing only state principals and IO agents.29 Second, we may
which rule or interpretation to follow. In regime-shifting, also find that networks of experts coordinate transnation-
actors may use forum-shopping, strategic inconsistency, ally to define the "problem" and the needed solution.30 In
or other strategies with the ultimate goal of redefining the this way, non-state and sub-state actors can end up monop-
larger political context so as to ultimately reshape the sys- olizing the information that governments receive, driving
tem of rules itself. cross-national interest convergences or policy change.31
Or, as Drezner suggests in his concluding piece, we
Next steps. Forum-shopping is the most oft-discussed may find that the reality of bounded rationality further
though not necessarily the most common consequence of advantages the rich and powerful-be they the most
international regime complexity.25 Christina Davis sug- resourced states, firms able to hire expensive lawyers, or
gests that the possibility to shop among forums may well the most organized activists. These actors would be advan-
be less common than scholars imagine. We need to better taged because they are the best placed to hire expert

March 2009 | Vol. 7/No. 1 17

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Symposium | International Regime Complexity

advice, and to fund and encourage the types of activities opposed to collectivities of individuals, develop expecta-
undertaken to influence problem framings and solution tions, norms, shared goals, and differentiated roles for mem-
descriptions. bers.33 International regime complexity contributes to
creating small group environments by multiplying the
number of international venues, and thus the occasions
Bounded Rationality Lessons. Lesson 1 . International
regime complexity can create a heightened role for for state representatives to interact. Because international
informers - experts, lawyers, and NGOs - which help agreements are technical, diplomacy is a skill, and lan-
states manage rule and institutional confusion. guage knowledge is useful for international bargaining, it
is increasingly the case that a single office and even a single
individual will handle multiple portfolios. The more valu-
Lesson 2. International regime complexity can increase
able expertise becomes, the more we will find that the
actors' reliance on heuristics. Therefore, the way to influ-
same individual is crafting a country's policy for multiple
ence actor behavior is to create problem framings and
institutions. Indeed, over the arc of an individual career,
problem answers for governments. Because international
the same person may well serve in multiple capacities -
regime complexity contributes to rule ambiguity and allows
for instance as a state representative, a member of a non-
for cross-institutional strategies, complexity creates oppor-
governmental organization, and an IO official.
tunities for political actors to shift framings.
Scholars have studied small group environments to
understand how repeated interactions shape creativity, risk
Lesson 3. Causal complexity makes it harder to identify
taking, and trust across actors. Complexity scholars focus
clear cause and effect relations, complicating the task of
on the nature of networked connections, examining how
identifying optimal policies and assigning accountability
differences in the connections (degrees of separation or
for problematic decisions. Feedback effects, because they
other types of differences) affect outcomes.34 For example,
play out over time, are more likely to become defining of Brian Uzzi finds that firms that create "small world" net-
policy and politics where bounded rationality is present.
works, where producers and suppliers are connected by
few degrees of separation, behave differently than firms
Next steps. We need to study further the roles, influence
that do not create small world supplier networks.35 Soci-
and behavior of the actors who help states and IOs find
ologists focus on how sub-cultures develop within small
their way through complex terrains - the lawyers, NGOs,
groups, and how familiarity of members shapes informa-
and sub-contractors, with awareness of what is going on
tion processing, decision-making, and behavior of actors
at the ground level. We need to better understand within the group.36 Political analysts have imputed policy
heuristics - informal methods, ideologies, ideas, and rules
styles and outcomes to small group dynamics.37
of thumb. How are heuristics generated and changed?
All of these literatures argue that smallness creates deeper
When and how do heuristics shape decision-making? How
connections among actors, providing multiple advan-
do heuristics vary across states, cultures and time? Once
tages. Small groups can be imbued with trust, which leads
we know more about the heuristics states use, the formal
to a willingness to solve problems collectively and makes
approaches of complexity studies can help us think about
taking risks less costly. These factors facilitate innovation
how heuristics play out over time, and about how chang-
and also increase the value of reputation. Yves Dezalay and
ing heuristics and assumptions may alter outcomes.
Bryant Garth show how small group dynamics help explain
the development and rapid spread of the "Washington
International Regime Complexity Generates Small Consensus" (a set of economic best practices) within
Group Environments multinational institutions and individual states to create
We tend to assume that international cooperation will be rapid policy change across a number of developing coun-
the opposite of a small group environment because of the tries.38 Antonin Cohen and Mikael Rask Madsen have
large number and heterogeneity of states involved. The shown how small group dynamics were also behind the
typical assumptions in international relations analysis - explosion of supra-national agreements and legal mecha-
that states are the unit of analysis, that "where you stand nisms in Europe in the 1950s.39 In this symposium, Davis
depends on where you sit" (that title or nationality defines suggests that the small group dynamic of trade negotia-
the perspective the actor brings into the room)32 - also tions may increase the value of reputation across agreements.
obscure the extent to which small groups are shaping inter- Small group environments can also present potential
national cooperation. By focusing on the names as well as dangers - group think, in-group/outgroup rivalry, and a
titles of actors, network analysis can reveal the small groups failure to fully monitor and respond to what goes on
operating in international policy domains. outside of embedded networks. The dangers can gener-
Small groups involve face-to-face interactions where the ate the types of decision-making pathologies Michael Bar-
group is small enough and interaction is sufficient for nett and Martha Finnemore observe within multilateral
40
institutions.
members to develop perceptions of each other. Groups, as

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Small Group Dynamics Lessons. International regime com- Kelley and Hofmann identify ongoing competition
plexity contributes to creating small group environments between IOs and NGOs: competition for constituents,
by multiplying the number of international venues, and resources, and projects, so as to demonstrate their effec-
thus the occasions for states representatives to interact. tive organizational capacity. Some scholars expect compe-
tition to yield efficiency gains and to increase state control
Lesson 1. The more technical an issue, and the more exper- of IOs since states can forum shop.42 Both Kelley and
tise is valuable, the more likely small group environments Hofmann find that where organizations are competing,
will exist. Small group environments make it easier for actors lack an incentive to coordinate their efforts, thereby
relationships based on trust to emerge, and they increase generating the types of persistent inefficiencies frequently
the willingness of actors to solve problems collectively, to lamented, such as repetitive efforts, turf battles, and unco-
experiment, and to take risks. ordinated policy that has achievements by one organiza-
tion later undermined or erased. Kelley highlights that
Lesson 2. The more insular a small group, the greater the states did not want the UN to be the premier institution
risk of the down sides of small group dynamics/group overseeing election monitoring. Instead, NGOs and
think, in-group/out-group rivalry, and a failure to fully regional organizations developed their own monitoring
monitor and respond to what goes on outside of embed- capacity. These organizations then competed for visibility,
ded networks. which led election monitoring organizations to concen-
trate on capitals (where the press congregates) instead of
Next steps. Once we have found out which actors guide spreading their resources throughout the countryside. Com-
states through international regime complexity, we can petition also allowed recipient states to strategize - to select
then investigate if and how repeat interactions across a and encourage friendly IOs and NGOs, and to make it
small number of closely and multiply connected actors extremely hard for unfriendly IOs and NGOs to effec-
shape their interpretation and behavior. We can identify tively monitor the elections. States were then able to spin
which issues are more likely to be influenced by small and manipulate divergent monitoring reports to justify
group dynamics, and we can begin to contrast domains suspect elections.
characterized by small group politics with domains lack- In the case of European Defense and Security Policy,
ing such politics, and to study how widening the small Hofmann finds that competition limited the imagination
group changes political behavior and outcomes. of policy-makers - the ESDP largely replicated NATO
because it was what most European actors knew. Contin-
We also need to better understand what "access for non- ued competition between the two security institutions fur-
state actors" means. The many calls for greater "democ- ther replicate the similarities, even though it would have
racy" in IO policy-making suggest that further increasing been more efficient if the organizations developed com-
the role of stake-holders will make IOs more responsive plimentary as opposed to substitutable capacities.
and thus more popular. But given that international regime Beyond this symposium, Clifford Bob argues that com-
complexity engenders both small group dynamics and petition for resources among NGOs creates a market
bounded rationality, increasing stakeholder access could for morality, where fund raising and credit taking incen-
end up mainly increasing the influence of already con- tives as opposed to need determine which causes NGOs
nected actors. How do small group dynamics shape access embrace. R. Charli Carpenter finds that important
and voice? What works to incorporate the voice of out- causes can fail to gain attention because they cross the
groups, and thus how do different techniques of provid- domains of too many NGOs, which makes the cause
ing access create différent political outcomes? unattractive for specific NGOs because they cannot cre-
ate a unique brand association between themselves and
the cause.44
Feedback Effects: Competition and Reverberation Competition need not be wholly negative. Kelley finds
International cooperation enthusiasts tend to stress the that having multiple election monitors increases the
positive feedback effects from cooperation: learning and resources available and provides ways to escape deadlock
coalition building leading to critical masses of support, within single institutions. Indeed she suggests that if the
and the spillover-like expansion of international coopera- UN had managed to make itself the premier election
tion.41 Yet positive spillover is not the only possible feed- monitoring body, we might find fewer states willing to
back effect from international cooperation. When we asked allow in election monitors. Competition can also spread
our contributors to consider the counterfactual - what the the risks since failure by one actor will be less catastrophic
politics they were studying would look like if overlapping if there are multiple service providers. Competition can
and parallel institutions did not exist - they identified a also promote productive experimentation as different actors
number of incidental systems effects caused by the reality use différent approaches, and it can force organizations to
of international regime complexity. become better performers.

March 2009 | Vol. 7/No. 1 19

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Symposium | International Regime Complexity

In addition to strategic efforts to shift multiple inter- alence of legal and illegal exit - non-compliance, regime
national game boards, our contributors found that changes avoidance, or withdrawal from an IO. International regime
within one institution could reverberate across parallel insti- complexity can also make it easier for states to abandon an
tutions. The international cooperation game board may inconvenient obligation. Betts finds that international
shift as actors meet and are informed by their experiences regime complexity combines with ambiguity to allow states
in multiple forums (leading to changes in their policy to escape the inconvenient UN refugee institutions. Hafner-
preferences) and because events in one arena can reverber- Burton shows how the Vienna Convention for Treaties
ate in ways that states cannot fully anticipate or control. was used to strip away the bilateral human rights provi-
In Betts' analysis, the seemingly unrelated issue of security sions inserted by the European Parliament. And if parallel
and migration came to define what was possible when it regimes provide substitutable benefits, states will also lose
came to dealing with refugees, leading the United Nations less by giving up any one agreement.
High Commission on Refugees to reinterpret how it under-
stood its mandate. In Davis' contribution, regional and Feedback Effects Lessons. Lesson 1. International regime
issue specific trade agreements were not per se designed to complexity creates competition among institutions and
undermine multilateral trade deals, but nonetheless such actors. Competition can have negative effects - turf bat-
agreements sapped support for World Trade Organization tles and a failure to coordinate efforts. Competition can
(WTO) talks because in removing the easier issues, multi- also have positive effects - increasing total resources,
lateral negotiations became harder and fewer actors had a spreading risk, allowing experimentation. Competition
direct stake in their success. also increases the options of aid recipients, allowing them
Accountability politics is another sort of systemic feed- to pick and choose which organization can service their
back effect. On the one hand, international regime com- needs.
plexity blurs which institution is authoritative, and thus
makes it harder to assess which actors or institutions to Lesson 2. International regime complexity increases the
hold accountable. On the other hand, international regime chances of unintentional reverberations - changes in one
complexity can create access for more actors, and thereby institution having effects in parallel domains.
be a force for greater political accountability. For the issue
of Intellectual Property, it was clear that the TRIPs agree- Lesson 3. International regime complexity makes it harder
ment did not meet the needs and desires of developing to locate which institution or actor is responsible for an
countries to have access to inexpensive medicines and to issue, and thus it can undermine accountability.
protect indigenous technologies. Heifer's discussion of how
regime-shifting ended up altering global intellectual prop- Lesson 4. International regime complexity can increase
erty rules can be read as an example of international rules the value of loyalty, because what states do in one arena
being adjusted to take greater account of the interests of will affect perceptions of others (e.g., states, citizens, firms)
developing countries. While the requirements of TRIPs in other arenas.
were not relaxed in any fundamental ways, developing
countries were able to lock in more flexibility than Amer- Lesson 5. International regime complexity facilitates exit
ican and European IP interests may have preferred, and via non-compliance, regime shifting, or withdrawal from
they were thus able to resist aspects of U.S. pressure to IOs.
adopt TRIPS-plus bilateral agreements.
It is also possible for popular accountability politics to Next steps. When is competition beneficial, and when is
redefine state preferences. Betts found that governments it pathological? Where is non-compliance a form of
responded to popular concerns about influxes of foreign- accountability politics, part of maintaining a fragile equi-
ers by strategizing to keep refugees from entering their librium? Where is non-compliance destructive of the nor-
territories, and by finding ways to avoid classifying a per- mative order or an indication of regime failure?
son as a refugee. One result was that states end up sending
individuals back to contexts where their safety cannot be This discussion has identified a number of ways in which
assured. Another result is that the UNHCR developed the reality of international regime complexity can alter in-
new strategies to prod states to address the issue of inter- ternational politics. We do not expect the abovementioned
nally displaced people. factors to matter when there is a general consensus on an
Albert Hirschman famously identified three forms of issue, since consensus will either be reflected in overlap-
political behavior - exit, voice, and loyalty.45 Davis hypoth- ping, nested and parallel agreements, or rules will quickly
esizes that international regime complexity could increase be coordinated to resolve ambiguities and contradictions
loyalty, in Hirschmans sense of the term, by increasing across agreements. Thus, when the problem is diagnosed
the reputation costs of breaking any one agreement. Inter- the same way by diverse actors and the understanding of
national regime complexity also arguably increases the prev- the solution is similar and agreed upon, international regime

20 Perspectives on Politics

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complexity will not meaningfully affect international coop- nizational theory, and political psychology provide ways
eration. But where there is significant political disagree- forward.
ment, we are both more likely to find international regime Even if scholars are not interested in this challenge, the
complexity and to find that this complexity is causally arguments advanced in this symposium have implications
important. for quantitative and qualitative methods of studying inter-
Not all of the pathways we identified may be employ- national cooperation and international phenomena. Quan-
able by actors seeking to promote their own specific titative studies need to rule out the possibility that politics
agendas. Also, the above set of expectations can push in occurring in overlapping or parallel domains are centrally
multiple directions. Thus we cannot develop a general defining the relationships they are studying, and thus schol-
theory of how international regime complexity will man- ars should as a matter of course include variables from
ifest itself or shape international politics. We can, how- other agreements and probe for multi-step interactive effects
ever, say that where actor preferences diverge and a across issues and agreements. Qualitative studies should
threshold of international regime complexity occurs, expla- also as a matter of course check to see if choices and behav-
nations involving the behavior of actors or the outcomes iors of actors are shaped by larger chessboard politics - is
of cooperation politics will be more "fuzzy" - there will be the timing or framing of an issue shaped by politics occur-
multiple paths to an outcome, involving linked sets of ring in overlapping and parallel regimes where states and
behaviors and events. If the "fuzzy" nature of causal rela- even individuals also operate? Qualitative studies should
tions are ignored - e.g., the more analysts make assump- also ask the counterfactual - if the overlapping and paral-
tions about homogeneity of actors, interests, and lel domains did not exist, would the politics we are study-
institutions, and the more analysts ignore the relevance of ing be different? Would the actors' preferences, analyses,
parallel venues - the less accurate and insightful the analy- and strategies be different if the parallel regimes did not
sis will be.46 exist? Would the way the issue is defined and understood
be different?

The findings of this symposium also suggest a signifi-

Methodological Implications of cant reorientation in how one thinks about multilateral-
International Regime Complexity ism and the politics of international cooperation. Most
International relations and comparative politics scholars international relations analyses start with the "problem
are well versed in studying international cooperation, glob- structure" of cooperation and state interests to understand
alization, and international organizations. But we tend to international regime dynamics. The main implication of
study these phenomenon in discrete ways, focusing on this symposium is that in the present era of international
pieces (institutions, policy issues, actors) and ignoring or regime complexity, viewing cooperation in terms of states
defining as exogenous to our study the larger context. To de novo coming together to pursue collective interests, may
think in terms of international regime complexity is to be highly misleading. Most new cooperative endeavors
study interactive relationships and analyze how the whole and most efforts to include new actors will need to be
shapes the pieces. Doing so leads us to consider how the located within a structure that already has a lot of actors,
same people and groups reappear in and navigate multiple interests, and hardened beliefs. Creating a fully new
dimensions, and how life in the multiple dimensions shapes institution - a solution advocated, for example, by those
strategies and preferences. Considering individual issues who see the United Nations as beyond repair - may tem-
and institutions as being embedded in a larger whole of porarily escape these forces. But over time the same fac-
cooperation regimes can help us uncover new politics and tors that have generated international regime proliferation
identify new questions. will create new means for chessboard politics, and the
After surveying the literature and investigating the con- systemic reverberations across agreements will mean that
sequences of international regime complexity, we have come even new institutions will be shaped by the existence of
to conclude that the nature of connections across inter- parallel and overlapping institutions. Given this reality,
national regimes themselves - whether regimes are nested understanding international agreements and institutions
versus overlapping or parallel to each other - is probably as a piece of a larger structure may provide greater insight
not causally salient. Rather, international regime complex- into actor behavior and international political outcomes.
ity has a causal influence primarily by creating a political We may well find, as Dan Drezner suggests, that the
environment that alters the behavior and political salience more things change, the more they stay the same.
of states, IOs, and sub-state actors. While we do want to International regime complexity may empower new
understand the origins of regime complexity, we urge inter- actors - informers who help states navigate international
national relations and comparative politics scholars to give complexity and actors who have access in one forum but
equal weight to analyzing the consequences of regime com- not another - but it does not change the fact of great
plexity for issues they care about. We hope that the insights power international dominance. Indeed complexity in some
we have culled from complexity studies, sociology, orga- respects may advantage the most well-endowed actors who

March 2009 | Vol. 7/No. 1 21

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Symposium | International Regime Complexity

have the resources to work more easily through maze of this fragmentation. Their reports are available on-
rules and players. But because complexity creates open- line: http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/guide/ l_9.htm
ings for non-state actors to influence outcomes, and because 22 Pierson 2004, 83-87.
not all chessboard politics can be calculated or controlled, 23 Heifer 2004, 14.
international regime complexity matters even for power- 24 Raustiala and Victor 2004, 301.
ful states. The lack of any ordering principle for inter- 25 Abbott and Snidai 1998; Helfer 1999; Alter and
national legal obligations means that no deal is supreme, Vargas 2000; Diehl, Ku, and Zamora 2003;
and no multilateral outcome inherently more authorita- Walders and Pratt 2003; Heifer 2004; Hafner-
tive. Furthermore, powerful actors will still be interacting Burton 2004; Jupille and Snidai 2006; Busch 2007;
with actors who participate in and are shaped by politics Davis 2007.
in other domains, so that over time powerful actors will 26 Jones, Boushey, and Workman 2006, 57-9.
have to deal with the reality of parallel institutions that 27 Pierson 2004, 38-40; Jacobs and Teles 2007.
they cannot control. 28 Hawkins and Jacoby 2006.
29 Hawkins et al. 2006.
30 Newman 2008.
Notes 31 Haas 1992; Dezalay and Garth 2002; Sikkink 2003;
1 Raustiala and Victor 2004, 279. Slaughter 2004.
32 Alison
2 Alter and Meunier 2006, 365, 377. The lack of hier- 1969,711.
33 Harrington and Fine 2000, 313.
archy comes from the reality that there is no agreed
upon supreme international authority - in fact or 34 in
Amaral and Ottino 2004, 151-7.
35 Uzzi 1997a, 1997b.
law. International law has "conflict of law" rules of
36 Harrington and Fine 2000, 2006.
thumb that can resolve unintentional conflicts among
37 Janis 1972; Katzenstein 1985.
rules, but these conventions do not resolve the prob-
lem of no supreme international legal authority, 38 Dezalay and Garth 2002.
39 Cohen and Madsen 2007; Madsen 2007.
which is why conflict of laws conventions are unable
to establish a international law hierarchy when 40 Barnett and Finnemore 1999; Barnett and
Finnemore 2004.
states fundamentally disagree about which rule or insti-
41 Haas 1964; Haas 1990.
tution they prefer. International lawyers worry about
this problem; see Kingsbury 1999. 42 Cojan 2008.
3 Young 1996; Aggarwal 1998; Snyder and Jervis 43 Bob 2002.
44 Carpenter 2007.
1993; Putnam 1988; Evans, Jacobson, and Putnam
1993; Waltz 1979. 45 Hirschman 1970.
4 Haas 1964. 46 Ragin 2000, 120-145.
5 Young 1996; Abbott and Snidai 2003.
6 Young 1996; Mansfield and Reinhardt 2003.
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