ABSTRACT
Interest in multilateral institution-building in the Pacific region has surged since the end of the Cold War. Since the present enthusiasm threatens to become as monolithic as the previous official scepticism, it is worth posing a series of questions about institution-building in the Pacific, past and present, in an abbreviated and provocative way. Neorealist and cultural explanations offer different accounts for the institutional history of the Pacific during the Cold War. Institutionalist arguments rely in part on the interests of key regional actors in particular institutional forms. The international environment and the conflicting goals of the major actors imparted a fuzziness to most regional schemes. A European benchmark for institutionalisation may be inappropriate for a region that includes both industrialised and developing countries. The underlying pattern of strategic interaction among states influences both the likelihood of cooperation and the requirements of institutional design.
