Lecture 5 - Cooperation, Collective Action, and Institutions

Cooperation

policy coordination in which actors adjust behavior to the preferences of others to reach a mutually preferable outcome

• actors usually have harmonious and conflicting interests

• cooperation makes everyone better off, but requires concessions

makes everyone better off but requires concessions 

Why is cooperation difficult in international poltics?

• cheating and the prisoner’s dilemma

• mistrust and the stag hunt

• collective action and free riding

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

• cooperation is mutually beneficial 

• but there is a temptation to cheat (and a risk of being cheated on)

• this is because the individually desirable outcome is to cheat

The Stag Hunt

• no benefit to cheating

• but cooperation requires trust

• cooperate = bigger gains

• non-cooperation = safer yet small gains

Tragedy of the Commons

• public good: non-rival and non-excludable

• generates incentive to free ride in production (once something is good enough, others can not contribute; national security example - public good)

• …or to over consume the public resource (tragedy of the commons) - pasture problem

• analogous to a many-player prisoners’ dilemma (individual incentive to free-ride even though best social outcome is to not free-ride)

• governments can tax to solve this issue of free-riding (and provide the public good - ex: taxes, new drugs)

How do we overcome the problem of cheating?

Shadow of the Future: repeated interactions and the possibility of punishment

• target of cheating can punish by withholding cooperation subsequently (if you don’t cooperate now, you don’t get my cooperation in the future)

• Cheater: best off first round, bad there after

• Cooperator: worse off first round, better there after

How do we increase the shadow of the future?

• promote regular interactions

• limit the benefits of cheating

• make agreements about what counts as cheating (and what a legitimate punishment for that is)

• Make an inability to disguise cheating

• link international issues which facilitates side payments (concession or benefit offered to make an agreement acceptable to both sides)

• make leaders care about the future (shadow of the future)

How do we overcome collective action problems?

There are limited options under anarchy

• could impose a tax (domestic level it works —> harder at international level)

• Rules/regulations like taxes are hard to enforce under anarchy (how much cheating is too much; who imposes the punishment)

• biggest/strongest actor could provide the public good unilaterally; i.e. U.S. maintaining open trade routes (requires biggest actor to care and pay costs alone; doesn’t give optimal level of good as some benefit for free and level of public good might not meet everyone’s needs)

How can institutions promote cooperation?

• they can articulate clear rules and rights

• they can promote regular interactions which makes a bigger shadow of the future

• they can adjudicate/facilitate agreements

• they can monitor states to make it harder to cheat without the other states knowing (i.e. nuclear monitors)

How do institutions treat the powerful?

• they must exercise legitimacy (constraining powerful)

• they must exercise engagement (get the powerful states to participate)

• must have special rules for the powerful

• must make it so they don’t abuse these rules

What are some limits to institutions?

• they are inherently imperfect

• their power if limited and there is no direct enforcement (countries must enforce; powerful states ignore decisions)

• the shadow of the future cannot work with issues of life and death

• states are concerned about relative gains endangering them

• success could be difficult to see (i.e. health partnerships that stop death)

• even imperfect institutions can help solve problems

What is the institutionalist persepctive?

• it’s as bad as realists say

• yes, anarchy produces conflict and hinders cooperation

• …and power is an inescapable feature of International politics

• BUT, repeated interaction (shadow of the future) facilitates cooperation

• AND, institutions are the ones who help facilitate the shadow of the future and create other things that help with cooperation

• thus, in a world of institutions, powerful states can get what they want without fighting, in return for a degree of restraint