Regime theory emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s as scholars sought to explain why states cooperate even under anarchy. Stephen Krasner's edited volume International Regimes (1983) offered the canonical definition: regimes are "sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations."
The theory sits largely within the liberal institutionalist tradition. Robert Keohane's After Hegemony (1984) argued that regimes persist even when the hegemon that created them declines, because they reduce transaction costs, provide information, and lengthen the "shadow of the future," making defection costly. This challenged realist claims that cooperation requires a dominant power.
Three main schools are usually distinguished:
- Neoliberal / interest-based approaches (Keohane, Axelrod) treat regimes as rational solutions to collective-action problems.
- Realist / power-based approaches (Krasner, Susan Strange) emphasize that regimes reflect underlying distributions of power and serve dominant states' preferences. Strange's 1982 essay "Cave! hic dragones" criticized regime analysis as a passing fad.
- Cognitivist / knowledge-based approaches (Ernst Haas, Peter Haas) stress the role of ideas, learning, and epistemic communities in shaping regimes—seen for example in the ozone regime.
Classic examples studied in the literature include the Bretton Woods monetary regime, the GATT/WTO trade regime, the nuclear non-proliferation regime centered on the 1968 NPT, and the ozone regime built around the 1985 Vienna Convention and 1987 Montreal Protocol. Later work extended the framework to climate change, human rights, and internet governance.
Critics argue the concept is fuzzy—the boundary between a "regime" and a treaty or an institution is often unclear—and that constructivists have largely absorbed its concerns into broader work on norms and institutions. Still, regime theory remains a foundational vocabulary for analyzing issue-specific cooperation.
Example
Scholars frequently cite the 1987 Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances as a successful international regime, in which states, scientists, and industry converged on binding phase-out rules for CFCs.
Frequently asked questions
Stephen Krasner, in the 1983 edited volume *International Regimes*, defined regimes as principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actor expectations converge.
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