International Organization 

About: International Organization is an academic journal published by University of Cambridge. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): International relations & Politics. It has an ISSN identifier of 0020-8183. Over the lifetime, 2020 publications have been published receiving 241875 citations. The journal is also known as: IO.

Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games

Abstract: Domestic politics and international relations are often inextricably entangled, but existing theories (particularly “state-centric” theories) do not adequately account for these linkages. When national leaders must win ratification (formal or informal) from their constituents for an international agreement, their negotiating behavior reflects the simultaneous imperatives of both a domestic political game and an international game. Using illustrations from Western economic summitry, the Panama Canal and Versailles Treaty negotiations, IMF stabilization programs, the European Community, and many other diplomatic contexts, this article offers a theory of ratification. It addresses the role of domestic preferences and coalitions, domestic political institutions and practices, the strategies and tactics of negotiators, uncertainty, the domestic reverberation of international pressures, and the interests of the chief negotiator. This theory of “two-level games” may also be applicable to many other political phenomena, such as dependency, legislative committees, and multiparty coalitions.

Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination

Abstract: The growing technical uncertainties and complexities of problems of global concern have made international policy coordination not only increasingly necessary but also increasingly difficult. If decision makers are unfamiliar with the technical aspects of a specific problem, how do they define state interests and develop viable solutions? What factors shape their behavior? Under conditions of uncertainty, what are the origins of international institutions? And how can we best study the processes through which international policy coordination and order emerge? While a variety of analytic approaches have been used to address the problems of international cooperation, the approaches have yielded only fragmentary insights. At its core, the study of policy coordination among states involves arguments about determinism versus free will and about the ways in which the international system is maintained and transformed. Among the overlapping topics of debate are whether national behavior is determined or broadly conditioned by system-level factors, unit-level factors, or some complex interplay between the two; whether state policymakers can identify national interests and behave independently of pressures from the social groups they nominally represent; and whether states respond consistently to opportunities to create, defend, or expand their own wealth and power, to enhance collective material benefits, or to promote nonmaterial values.' A related question of

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Abstract: Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Abstract: One of the first of the specialized agencies of the United Nations to become active, the Food and Agriculture Organization has elicited interest beyond the specialized field of agricultural economists. Attempting as it does to solve one of the very basic problems of the world, that of an adequate food supply, the organization represents a significant and hopeful international attempt to create a world in which there may actually exist “freedom from want.” The objectives of FAO, as formally expressed in the preamble to the constitution, read as follows:“The nations accepting this constitution being determined to promote the common welfare by furthering separate and collective action on their part for the purpose of raising levels of nutrition and standards of living of the people under their jurisdiction, securing improvements in the efficiency of the production of all food and agricultural products, bettering the conditions of rural populations, and thus contributing toward an expanding world economy, hereby establish the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.”

Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics

Abstract: The debate between realists and liberals has reemerged as an axis of contention in international relations theory.’ Revolving in the past around competing theories of human nature, the debate is more concerned today with the extent to which state action is influenced by ‘structure’ (anarchy and the distribution of power) versus ‘process’ (interaction and learning) and institutions. Does the absence of centralized political authority force states to play competitive power politics? Can international regimes overcome this logic, and under what conditions? What in anarchy is given and immutable, and what is amenable to change?