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Driving with the Rearview Mirror: On the Rational Science of Institutional Design

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2003

Alexander Wendt
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Abstract

The Rational Design project is impressive on its own terms. However, it does not address other approaches relevant to the design of international institutions. To facilitate comparison I survey two “contrast spaces” around it. The first shares the project's central question—What explains institutional design?—but addresses alternative explanations of two types: rival explanations and explanations complementary but deeper in the causal chain. The second contrast begins with a different question: What kind of knowledge is needed to design institutions in the real world? Asking this question reveals epistemological differences between positive social science and institutional design that can be traced to different orientations toward time. Making institutions is about the future and has an intrinsic normative element. Explaining institutions is about the past and does not necessarily have this normative dimension. To avoid “driving with the rearview mirror” we need two additional kinds of knowledge beyond that developed in this volume, knowledge about institutional effectiveness and knowledge about what values to pursue. As such, the problem of institutional design is a fruitful site for developing a broader and more practical conception of social science that integrates normative and positive concerns.

Type
The Rational Design of International Institutions
Information
International Organization , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , Autumn 2001 , pp. 1019 - 1049
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2001

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References

For their helpful comments on a draft of this article, I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers, the IO editors, Michael Barnett, Deborah Boucoyannis, Martha Finnemore, Peter Katzenstein, and especially Jennifer Mitzen.

1. I thank an anonymous reviewer and the IO editors for emphasizing this point to me. For ease of exposition, however, when I say “rational-design theory,” I shall mean the particular theory offered in this volume.

2. See Wendt 1999; and Fearon and Wendt forthcoming.

3. Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, this volume, 762.

4. On functionalism in design theory and its alternatives, see especially Pierson 2000b.

5. For good introductions to this extensive literature, see Powell and DiMaggio 1991; Hall and Taylor 1996; and March and Olsen 1998.

6. Lakatos 1970, 115 and passim.

7. Wilson 1994.

8. For example, North and Thomas 1973.

9. Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, this volume.

10. Jackman 1999.

11. See especially Hargreaves-Heap 1989.

12. Jackman 1999.

13. Morrow, this volume.

14. Mitchell and Keilbach, this volume.

15. Kratochwil 1989.

16. See Richards, this volume; Meyer et al. 1997; and Boli and Thomas 1999. For a good overview of sociological institutionalism in IR, see Finnemore 1996.

17. Understood here in the objectivist sense of rational-expectations theory in economics, not in the subjectivist sense of rationality discussed earlier.

18. March and Olsen 1998.

19. Wendt 1999, 289–90.

20. Tannenwald 1999.

21. Wendt 1999.

22. The Meyer School being an important exception.

23. See, for example, Pogge 1997; and Dryzek 1999.

24. Mitchell and Keilbach, this volume, 914.

25. Nadelmann 1990.

26. Rosendorff and Milner, this volume.

27. Mitchell and Keilbach, this volume, 910.

28. Krasner 1999.

29. Pahre, this volume.

30. Mitzen 2001.

31. Mattli, this volume.

32. Buckley and Chapman 1997.

33. See Bull 1977; and Wendt 1999.

34. Kydd, this volume.

35. Legro 1996.

36. For more on the ambiguous relationship between these traditions, see March and Olsen 1998, 952–54; and Fearon and Wendt forthcoming.

37. Clark 1998.

38. For an interesting discussion relevant to this problem, see Pettit 1995.

39. Also see Koremenos 2001.

40. Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, this volume, 779.

41. Knight 1921.

42. For example, Abbott and Snidal 2000, 442.

43. The literature here is extensive. See, for example, Davidson 1991; Vercelli 1995; and Dequech 1997.

44. Beckert 1996, 819.

45. For a good discussion of alternative conceptualizations of probability and the problems of the subjectivist view in particular, see Weatherford 1982.

46. Which may presuppose a nonsubjectivist view of probability.

47. Heiner 1983.

48. Ibid.

49. Of the remainder, one (Mitchell and Keilbach) does not address uncertainty much at all, and another (Kydd) does so in a somewhat idiosyncratic way due to the problem being addressed.

50. On the chemical weapons case, see Price 1995.

51. See Beckert 1996; and Lawson 1993.

52. On animal spirits, see Dow and Dow 1985; and Marchionatti 1999.

53. For further discussion of this idea, see Wendt 1999, chap. 7.

54. Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, this volume, 778.

55. See Risse-Kappen 1996; and Williams and Neumann 2000.

56. Oatley, this volume.

57. Mitchell and Keilbach, this volume, 906.

58. See especially Ashley 1988; Campbell 1998; and Weber 1998. For critical discussion, see Laffey 2000.

59. For discussion of this distinction, see Wendt 1998 and 1999, 77–88.

60. Wolf 1984, 99.

61. Ashley 1988.

62. Although it may nonetheless have useful things to say about them; see Fearon and Wendt forthcoming.

63. Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, this volume, 768.

64. For suggestive treatments of these issues, see MacIntosh 1992; and Stewart 1995.

65. No relation to “constructivism” in IR. For introductions to this debate, see Hayek 1973; Ullmann-Margalit 1978; Prisching 1989; Hodgson 1991; and Vanberg 1994.

66. See especially Hayek 1973; and Scott 1998.

67. Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, this volume; Mattli, this volume; and Mitchell and Keilbach, this volume.

68. Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, this volume, 766.

69. Mattli, this volume, 923–24.

70. Mitchell and Keilbach, this volume, 906.

71. For good discussions of these issues, see Ullmann-Margalit 1978; and Jackson and Pettit 1992.

72. For a provocative defense of a more laissez-faire approach to international institutions, see Gallarotti 1991.

73. See Wendt 1999, 126, and the references cited there.

74. Pierson 2000b; see also Pierson 2000a.

75. Ibid.

76. This alternative is raised by Robert Goodin. Goodin 1996, 26.

77. Cf. Meyer et al. 1997; and Boli and Thomas 1999.

78. See, for example, Wright 1976; and Allen, Bekoff, and Lauder 1998.

79. Cf. Wendt 2001.

80. At least on realist interpretations of quantum mechanics; the Copenhagen interpretation takes a more instrumentalist or epistemological view.

81. On the difference between prediction and forecasting, which are rooted in explaining, and “making” as ways of thinking about the future, see Huber 1974.

82. Carr [1939] 1964.

83. Ibid., 11.

84. Ibid., 10; emphasis added.

85. Ibid.

86. I defend the possibility and importance of social science in Wendt 1999, chap. 2.

87. Young 1994 and 1999. A few of the volume's contributors discuss effectiveness, but this is not their primary focus.

88. For a good discussion, see Young 1999, 108–32; also see Pierson 2000b.

89. Pettit 1996.

90. On the design implications of the theory of second best, see Goodin 1995; and Coram 1996.

91. Risse 2000.

92. On “thinking like a team,” see Sugden 1993.

93. Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal, this volume, 781.

94. On different design rationalities as constitutive choices, see Dryzek 1996.

95. Cf. Stewart 1995.

96. See Johnson 1991; and Mitzen 2001, chap. 2.

97. Kratochwil 1989. Also see Haslam 1991.

98. See Salkever 1991; Cochran 1999; Buchanan 1990; and Linklater 1998, respectively. Given its rationalist basis, the absence of the Buchanan tradition in this volume, as represented in the journal Constitutional Political Economy, is particularly noteworthy.

99. For a classic discussion, see Wight 1966.

100. Schweller 1999.

101. Mearsheimer 1990.