ABSTRACT
A politico-economic regime is a cluster o f institutions that regulate social
behavior, build consensus, implement compromises, and manage conflict. A
regime or regulating system is political because it applies to territorially
bounded and collectively binding processes. And it is economic because it
deliberately affects economic decision-making and the outcome o f economic
behavior. Yet, politico-economic regimes do not only hold sway over
territorial states but also among them, in the form o f international regimes
(Krasner 1983; Keohane 1984). The “world market,” for example, did not
emerge spontaneously, but is essentially a social construct consisting o f a
variety o f regulating systems in the framework o f the world political economy
(see chapter 3).
