Gravitational redshift

Realists in the 1980s sometimes recognized the existence of cooperation in world politics, but minimized its significance, emphasizing that it takes place within the context of power realities that fundamentally shape and limit it. In replying to Robert Keohane’s criticisms in 1986, Kenneth Waltz crisply stated this view:

Some states sometimes want to work together to secure the benefits of cooperation. Cooperative projects in the present may lead to more cooperation in the future. But self-help systems do make the cooperation of parties difficult. As Gilpin puts it, “the traditional insights of realism ...

help us to explain ... the ongoing retreat from an interdependent world.”³² Joanne Gowa and Stephen Krasner made similar arguments, recognizing the insights of institutional theory but arguing that it failed to account adequately for the role of power. Gowa praised Robert Axelrod’s book, The Evolution of Cooperation, for its insights into “the

may be negative, even if institutionalization itself has had positive effects.

Fortna, “A Peace that Lasts.”

32. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Critics,” in Keohane, Neorealism and Its Critics, p. 336; citing Robert G. Gilpin, “The Richness of the Tradition of Political Realism,” in Keohane, Neorealism and Its Critics, pp. 301–321.

rationality of cooperation for mutual gain in the long run,” but viewed his analysis as “more narrowly bounded than is apparent at first glance.”³³ Krasner criticized the argument offered by Keohane in After Hegemony for de-emphasizing the role of power even while nominally recognizing its importance:

Neoliberal speculations about the positive consequences of greater information are fascinating.... But they obscure considerations of relative power capabilities, which draw attention to ... ultimately who wins and who loses.³⁴

In effect, the minimization critique claimed that the insights of institutional theory could be accommodated within a somewhat broadened version of realism: that institutional theory did not violate realism’s hard core. At the Scottsdale conference, this also seemed to be Kenneth Waltz’s position. More critical realist arguments attacked key assumptions of institutionalist theory. In 1986, Gowa quoted Waltz as arguing that insecure states, facing the possibility of cooperation for mutual gain, “must ask how the gain will be divided. They are compelled to ask not ‘Will both of us gain?’ but ‘Who will gain more?’”³⁵ Joseph Grieco pushed this point further.³⁶ He noted that any cooperative arrangement would give rise to joint gains that could be divided in a multitude of ways among the cooperating parties.

Division of these gains would be a matter of intense concern. In any setting, bargaining about the distribution of gains in order to increase

33. Joanne Gowa, “Anarchy, Egoism and Third Images: The Evolution of Cooperation and International Relations,” International Organization, Vol. 40, No.

1 (Winter 1986), p. 185; Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation.

34. Stephen D. Krasner, “Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier,” World Politics, Vol. 43, No. 3 (April 1991), p. 366.

35. Gowa, “Anarchy, Egoism and Third Images,” p. 177; quoting Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 105.

36. Joseph Grieco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,” International Organization, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Summer 1988), pp. 485–507.

one’s absolute gain was to be expected.³⁷ But in the international arena, the dilemma went even deeper. Because inequalities in the distribution of gains could be transformed into increased inequality in power resources, and because the use of military force was always a possibility in international relations, the deniers argued that states would never engage in cooperation that increased their absolute gains if it meant a relative loss.³⁸ Once again, the extremely risk-averse nature of states assumed by realism led to a prediction that cooperation would be shallow and infrequent. However, the causal logic that limited cooperation was now specified to be concern for relative gains and losses that could be transformed into a disadvantage during a military confrontation.³⁹

In 1991, Robert Powell showed that concerns about relative advantages can be stated in standard absolute-gains terms. There is no need to include a separate term for relative gains that violates the core presumptions of rational-choice approaches. Powell showed that the importance of relative gains was conditional on the system creating

“opportunities for one state to turn relative gains to its advantage and to the disadvantage of the other state,” particularly through the use or threat of force.⁴⁰ The critics who had raised the issue of relative gains

37. Jack Knight, Institutions and Social Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

38. Grieco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation,” p. 499.

39. See John J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,”

International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 5–49.

40. Robert Powell, “Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 85, No. 4 (December 1991), pp.

1303–20, reprinted in David Baldwin, ed., Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 1315. It has become very clear over the last decade that it would be a mistake to characterize security issues as necessarily more conflictual than economic ones.

Empirically, security relationships between the United States and Japan, or the United States and Germany, have often been less conflictual than their economic relations. Based on institutional theory, we should expect more conflict in economic areas characterized by oligopolistic competition and first-mover advantages than in economic areas characterized by fragmented

were correct that such competition could impede cooperation, but they had overgeneralized their argument. After Powell’s clarification, the key question became the empirical one of identifying conditions under which one party could use asymmetrical gains to change the structure of the game to the disadvantage of its partner. Later work by George Downs and his colleagues pointed out that concerns about noncompliance could render cooperation shallow, relative to what would have been optimal in the absence of such concerns.⁴¹

While the relative-gains debate gave rise to much unproductive argument and research, it did lead to some clarification and development of institutional theory. Although institutional theory depends on common interests, it had never assumed that these interests must be equal or symmetrical.⁴² The relative gains debate forced institutional theorists to recognize explicitly that substantially unequal distribution of the benefits of cooperation could provide one partner with the wherewithal to fundamentally change the nature of the game, for example by starting a war. Insofar as this possibility exists, a model such as iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma could be faulty.

The probability that one partner could fundamentally reshape the nature of the situation must be incorporated into each state’s utility function. However, as institutional theory emphasized, the probability that unequal gains would lead to a fundamental restructuring of the game varies; it is often low. Whether actors weigh others’ gains positively or negatively is also a variable. Hence the extent to which concerns about others’ gains might undermine cooperation must therefore also be treated as a variable—precisely as institutional theory had always prescribed.⁴³ Institutional theory also responded by noting that an important function of international institutions might be to mitigate relative-gains concerns by assuring a fairly equitable markets, and we should expect more conflict between potential adversaries than in security communities.

41. George W. Downs, David M. Rocke and Peter N. Barsoom, “Is the Good News about Compliance Good News about Cooperation?” International Organization, Vol. 50, No. 3 (Summer 1996), pp. 379–406.

42. Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence.

43. Keohane, After Hegemony, p. 123.

distribution of the gains from cooperation, particularly where a highly asymmetrical distribution of gains could undermine support for existing institutions by changing the structure of the game. Thus, in spite of some dead ends and fruitless debates, the relative-gains conceptual challenge strengthened institutional theory. In Lakatosian terms, this strengthening occurred because institutional theory was able to respond effectively to the relative gains challenge without altering its hard core.⁴⁴

Some realists also presented an empirical challenge to institutional theory, based on predictions about the future of international institutions in Europe after the Cold War. John Mearsheimer quickly and boldly used Waltz’s neorealist theory and Grieco’s argument about relative gains to predict increased conflict and even war in Europe.⁴⁵ Mearsheimer’s logic emphasized that states’ concern with security in an anarchic world compelled them to put little confidence in international institutions. Post–World War II institutions rested on the power realities of the Cold War: U.S. dominance of a Western alliance confronting a hostile Soviet bloc. Once these power realities were transformed with the end of the Cold War, intense patterns of conflict among European states would resume, he argued, increasing the chances of major crisis and war in Europe. NATO and the European Community would both be victims of these changes: “It is the Soviet threat that provides the glue that holds NATO together. Take away that offensive threat and the United States is likely to abandon the Continent, whereupon the defensive alliance it has headed for forty years may disintegrate.”⁴⁶ With the departure of American forces,

“relations among the EC [European Community] states will be fundamentally altered. Without a common Soviet threat and without the American night watchman, Western European states will begin viewing each other with greater fear and suspicion.”⁴⁷

44. The convergence that resulted from this debate supports the call of this volume’s editors for tolerance as well as tenacity.

45. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future.”

46. Ibid., p. 52.

47. Ibid., p. 47.

Empirical evidence in the subsequent period did not support Mearsheimer’s predictions. The EU has become wider and deeper, and is in most respects stronger than ever, despite struggles associated with the inauguration of European Monetary Union (EMU) and with the

“democratic deficit” implied by the weakness of the European Parliament compared to the Council of Ministers and the European Commission. Since international cooperation always arises from discord—and is never harmonious—institutionalists are not distracted by bargaining conflict, but focus on the institutional deepening of the EU during the 1990s.⁴⁸ The EMU itself transforms traditional state sovereignty and is entirely inconsistent with the realist vision of a collapsing European Union. NATO, while it experienced wrenching debates and a genuine crisis over intervention in the former Yugoslavia, played a decisive role in bringing the Bosnian war to an end in 1995.⁴⁹ In seeking to protect Albanian Kosovars, it extended its scope to offensive warfare, taking on new responsibilities and engaging in a high-risk transformation. Whether NATO’s actions were wise or not, this institution is certainly a force to be reckoned with.

Thus, institutional theory has responded effectively to realism, with responses that are theoretically and empirically productive. Its response to the relative gains attack has led to an increased focus on distributional impediments to cooperation, without requiring any changes in the hard core of institutional theory. The response to the empirical challenge did not require even modest changes in the focus of institutional theory. Instead, institutional theory’s long-standing claim that established institutions should become especially valuable in the face of increased uncertainty has been borne out by events in Europe. The membership and operating procedures of European institutions have undergone important changes that allow them to respond more effectively to the new realities of European politics.

These changes have taken place within the context of well-established, long-lived institutions, which have proven their worth in enhancing

48. See Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998).

49. Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998).

security and providing economic assurances in an increasingly uncertain environment. Thus, by the early 1990s, institutional theory had established itself as a respected “generic approach” to issues of international cooperation.⁵⁰ Its key insights about the functioning of international institutions concerned their role in providing information and their reliance on reciprocity as the mechanism for sustaining cooperation.