ABSTRACT

This chapter identifies the principal models or streams of analysis embedded in the existing literature on regime formation. It employs the alternative model to derive some hypotheses about the determinants of success in institutional bargaining and uses these hypotheses, in a preliminary way, illuminates the process of regime formation in international society. The chapter draws on evidence pertaining to institutional arrangements for natural resources and the environment. As appealing as the resultant constructs may be in analytic terms, they are of limited value in helping us comprehend the politics of international regime formation. The identity of the relevant participants in the negotiations is seldom cast in concrete. While the vision of negotiation incorporated in the mainstream utilitarian models emphasizes self-contained interactions, institutional bargaining of the type involved in the formation of international regimes almost always features a rich array of linkages to other events occurring in the socioeconomic or political environment.