Competing Theories: 2. The Realist Approach

From a liberal institutionalist perspective, realism has little to contribute to the understanding of regimes. The traditional realist emphasis on the inherently competitive nature of the international system is seen to inhibit rather than facilitate any explanation of how and why states collaborate to achieve the mutually advantageous benefits derived from the establishment of regimes. Indeed, the growth of regimes would seem to confirm that the realist perspective is becoming increasingly anachronistic. Unsurprisingly, realists contest such an evalution. Two problems are identified with the liberal institutional approach. First, realists attack the liberal institutional assumption that the activities of a hegemon in the international system can be compared to the role of the state when dealing with cases of market failure. Second, realists deny that regimes emerge as the result of states endeavouring to overcome the pressure to compete under conditions of anarchy. Regimes form, realists argue, in situations when uncoordinated strategies can interact to produce suboptimum outcomes. So from the realist perspective, the influence of micro­economics has encouraged the liberal institutional­ises to advance an unsound assessment of regime formation. There is an irony here, because it was the neo-realists (Waltz: 1979) who first drew the anal­ogy between the market and the international sys­tem. The common starting point, however, can lead in very different directions.

Power and Regimes

Realists, like liberal institutionalists, were very aware in the 1970s and 1980s that the hegemonic status of the United States was being questioned. But they did not conclude that this development might lead to an anomic world. Instead, they focused on Third World demands for a new set of principles and norms to underpin the regimes asso­ciated with the world economy. Existing regimes were seen to work against the interests of Third World states, opening them up to unfair competi­tion and malign economic forces. Realists took the case presented by the Third World seriously, but argued that the principles and norms demanded by the Third World would only come into operation if the balance of power moved against the West (Tucker 1977; Krasner 1985). This line of analysis runs directly counter to the image, presented by the liberal institutionalists, of the United States as a benign benefactor, underwriting a set of regimes which allowed the members of the anarchic inter­national system to escape from a suboptimum out­come and into a position of Pareto optimality. In its place, it was necessary to view the United States as a hegemon using its power to sustain a regime which promoted its own long-term interests. Closer inspection of the liberal institutional position reveals a tacit support for the way that public goods have been defined by governments in the West. It may appear axiomatic to liberal institutionalists that states should wish to promote economic regimes built on liberal norms and principles. And the same argument applies to the promotion of human rights, the elimination of pollution, and all the other goals advanced by liberals in the West. But this position disregards the fact that it is by no means universally agreed that liberal norms and principles should be underpinning the regimes that are emerging in the international system.

From the realist perspective, therefore, the United States helped to ensure that regimes were underpinned by a particular set of principles and norms, but a full appreciation of the realist's position also requires the recognition that a hegemon can effectively veto the formation of a regime. For example, in 1972, when the United States launched its first remote sensing satellite, the event caused concern amongst a large range of countries. These satellites have the capacity to gather important and sensitive commercial and strategic data about countries all around the world. Not only can the satellites identify where military equipment is located, but they can also identify the size of a crop yield and the location of minerals. There were sev­eral attempts to establish a regime which would limit the right of states to acquire data without the permission of the State under surveillance (Brown et al. 1977). Many states have considered that they would benefit from such a regime. But because the balance of power was tilted in favour of the states which possessed these satellites and they were clear that such a regime would not work to their benefit they vetoed the proposed regime.