Can states achieve cooperation in the international system? - publié le 24/07/2006

Résumé du document

“International cooperation is a subject of manifesting importance for anyone concerned about the prospects for world peace and order” because today cooperation is everywhere: in economics with the WTO, in politics with the UN and even in security issues with the NATO. International cooperation is a “voluntary adjustment by states of their policies so that they manage their differences and reach some mutually beneficial outcome” and it has been influenced by liberal institutionalism ideas since the post war time. Cooperation must be analyzed as a long term engagement with the aim of creating an international regime that can impose rules on states, provide them with standard of behaviors, induce transparency and confidence in the relations and guide or solve problems between them. This liberal development has a more optimistic view on the international system than the theory it challenges: Neo¬realism. Both theories' definitions of the international system are based on the same principles: The anarchy reigning the system – anarchy being the reason for the absence of a central government –makes states the main, unitary and interest maximizing actors. Neo¬realism and liberal institutionalism also focus on solving problems existing in the international system: They study the behavioral regularities in order to explain why the balance of power and the status quo has evolved. However, they still differ in their approach to cooperation and the effect of anarchy on state's willingness to cooperate. Cooperation takes place on different levels of the international life but it also affects many small parts of the world: For instance in the EU, cooperation is pushed way further when compared to the international level of cooperation between states. And therefore, liberals and realists do not focus on the same actors when they study it: While the former has a more global approach by taking the existing international organizations and explaining why they are relevant, the latter starts with a point of view of the state and explains why cooperation is really hard and even impossible. So how does anarchy really affect states' willingness of cooperation? First, one must understand the pessimistic point of view of realists, then analyze the liberal's Utopian idea of globalization. But in this case, both theories stick to their idea so that's why I wish to see if a more realist possibility of cooperation is possible mainly through the analyses of a regionalization of the world.

Extraits

[...] Some academics seem to think that regionalism is a state the world has to go through in order to achieve globalisation later on: in the future, different regions will blend together to form a 'global village'. On the contrary, other scholars insist that regionalism is the farthest form of cooperation we can achieve and later on we will have to go on with 'inter-regional globalism' Bibliography Baylis J. and Smith S., The globalization of world politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford Fawcett L. [...]

[...] Can states achieve cooperation in the international system? “International cooperation is a subject of manifest importance for anyone concerned about the prospects for world peace and order” because today cooperation is everywhere: in economics with the WTO, in politics with the UN and even in security issues with NATO. International cooperation is a “voluntary adjustment by states of their policies so that they manage their differences and reach some mutually beneficial outcome” and has been influenced by liberal institutionalism ideas since the post war time. [...]

[...] So how does anarchy really affect states' willingness of cooperation? First one must understand the pessimistic point of view of realist, then analyse the liberal's utopian idea of globalisation. But in this case, both theories stick to their idea so that's why I whish to see if a more realist possibility of cooperation is possible mainly through the analyse of a regionalisation of the world. “Minds can be changed, new leaders can come to power, values can shift, new opportunities and dangers can arise” . [...]

[...] Besides states' main preoccupations are power and security so they adopt a 'defensive positionalism' . According to this idea, states adopt different policies according to other state's position: a state will try and always maintain the same balance and equity. The new distribution of gains given by a decision has to maintain the same balance of capabilities. For example, Switzerland will always take its decision in relation to its current allocation of capabilities: they will not be offensive in an aim of increasing them directly but they will be defensive as not to 1 lose them. [...]

[...] Since conflict and competition are 'normal' in the international system, cooperation is hard even when states have common interests. Common interests, if they exist, are inhibited by something else: states' worse fear, as unitary actors in the system, is for their survival. A state's first goal is to survive in the system and secure its political independence. This is harder for smaller states as they are always threatened by 'bigger' states. In order to achieve these goals, Switzerland, for instance, at its creation declared it will always remain neutral. [...]