Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T16:10:25.760Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Conclusion: epistemic communities, world order, and the creation of a reflective research program

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Get access

Extract

Studies in this issue show that the epistemic communities approach amounts to a progressive research program with which students of world politics can empirically study the role of reason and ideas in international relations. By focusing on epistemic communities, analysts may better understand how states come to recognize interests under conditions of uncertainty. According to this research program, international relations can be seen as an evolutionary process in which epistemic communities play meaningful roles as sources of policy innovation, channels by which these innovations diffuse internationally, and catalysts in the political and institutional processes leading to the selection of their shared goals. The influence of epistemic communities persists mainly through the institutions that they help create and inform with their preferred world vision. By elucidating the cause-and-effect understandings in the particular issue-area and familiarizing policymakers with the reasoning processes by which decisions are made elsewhere, epistemic communities contribute to the transparency of action and the development of common inferences and expectations and thereby contribute to policy coordination. International cooperation and, indeed, the development of new world orders based on common meanings and understandings may thus depend on the extent to which nation-states apply their power on behalf of practices that epistemic communities may have helped create, diffuse, and perpetuate.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

We thank Robert Keohane, Kalypso Nicolaïdis, and M. J. Peterson for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

1. See Keohane, Robert O., International Institutions and State Power (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1989), p. 173Google Scholar. This quote is drawn from Keohane's 1988 presidential address to the International Studies Association.

2. See Lapid, Yosef, “The Third Debate,” International Studies Quarterly 33 (09 1989), pp. 235–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. See Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979)Google Scholar; and Keohane, , International Institutions and State Power, chap. 3.Google Scholar

4. See Lakatos, Imre, “Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,” in Lakatos, Imre and Musgrave, Alan, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge: Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London, 1965, vol. 4 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 91196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Regarding this point, see in particular the following articles in this issue of IO: Peterson, M. J., “Whalers, Cetologists, Environmentalists, and the International Management of Whaling”;Google Scholar Peter M. Haas, “Banning Chlorofluorocarbons: Epistemic Community Efforts to Protect Stratospheric Ozone”; and Ethan Kapstein, “Between Power and Purpose: Central Bankers and the Politics of Regulatory Convergence.”

6. See, for example, Hardin, Russell, Collective Action (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar; Oye, Kenneth A., ed., Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Snidal, Duncan, “The Limits of Hegemonic Stability Theory,” International Organization 39 (Autumn 1985), pp. 491517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. See Kratochwil, Friedrich and Ruggie, John G., “International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State,” International Organization 40 (Autumn 1986), pp. 753–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Haggard, Stephan and Simmons, Beth A., “Theories of International Regimes,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987), pp. 491517.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. See Stein, Arthur A., Why Nations Cooperate (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Jervis, Robert, “Realism, Game Theory, and Cooperation,” World Politics 40 (04 1988), pp. 317–49;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Nicolson, Harold, Diplomacy, 2d ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 2427.Google Scholar

9. Grieco, Joseph M., “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation,” International Organization 42 (Summer 1988), p. 486CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Keohane, , International Institutions and State Power, chaps. 1 and 7.Google Scholar

10. See Haas, Ernst B., Beyond the Nation State (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar; and Ruggie, John Gerard, “International Responses to Technology,” International Organization 29 (Summer 1975), pp. 557–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. See the following works of Haas, Ernst B.: “Why Collaborate? Issue-Linkage and International Regimes,” World Politics 32 (04 1980), pp. 357405CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and When Knowledge Is Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).Google Scholar

12. For an alternative view, see Keohane, Robert O., “Neorealism and World Politics,” in Keohane, Robert O., ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 11.Google Scholar

13. See Ashley, Richard K., “The Poverty of Neorealism,” International Organization 38 (Spring 1984), pp. 225–86;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAshley, Richard K. and Walker, R. B. J., “Speaking the Language of Exile: Dissident Thought in International Studies,” International Studies Quarterly 34 (09 1990), pp. 259–68;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Derian, James Der and Shapiro, Michael J., International/Intenextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989).Google Scholar

14. See Augelli, Enrico and Murphy, Craig, America's Quest for Supremacy and the Third World (London: Pinter, 1988), chap. 6Google Scholar. See also Ellul, Jacques, The Technological Society (New York: Knopf, 1964)Google Scholar; Galbraith, John Kenneth, The New Industrial State, 3d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978)Google Scholar; and Mumford, Lewis, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963).Google Scholar

15. Purely national assessments of the “correct” form of regulation play a role in policy coordination as well, but these are treated below.

16. March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” American Political Science Review 78 (09 1984), pp. 734–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Adler, Emanuel, “Cognitive Evolution: A Dynamic Approach for the Study of International Relations and Their Progress,” in Adler, Emanuel and Crawford, Beverly, eds., Progress in Postwar International Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), p. 47.Google Scholar

18. Subsequent invocations of these ideas are subject to historically contingent factors applying at the time of their use. See, for instance, Hall's discussion about the variety of Keynesian interpretations and Haas's discussion about the variety of forms of nationalism and the different ways in which they are applied over time in the following works: Hall, Peter A., ed., The Political Power of Economic Ideas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Haas, Ernst B., “What Is Nationalism?International Organization 40 (Summer 1986), pp. 707–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. See Adler, “Cognitive Evolution”; David, Paul A., “Clio and the Economics of Qwerty,” Economic History 75 (05 1985), pp. 332–37;Google Scholar and Krasner, Stephen D., “Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective,” Comparative Political Studies 21 (04 1988), pp. 7780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. For an earlier description of this approach, see Adler, , “Cognitive Evolution,” pp. 5060.Google Scholar

21. Putnam, Robert, “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games,” International Organization 42 (Summer 1988), p. 434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Ikenberry, G. John and Kupchan, Charles A., “Socialization and Hegemonie Power,” International Organization 44 (Summer 1990), p. 289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. There are two prominent features, identified by Waltz, which help ground expectations. According to Waltz, “In itself a structure does not clearly lead to one outcome rather than another. Structure affects behavior within the system, but does so indirectly. The effects are produced in two ways: through socialization of the actors and through competition among them.” See Waltz, , Theory of International Politics, p. 74.Google Scholar

24. See Goldstein, Judith, “The Political Economy of Trade,” American Political Science Review 80 (03 1986), pp. 161–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Destler, I. M., American Trade Politics: System Under Stress (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1986)Google Scholar; Bhagwati, Jagdish, Protectionism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989)Google Scholar; and Ruggie, John Gerard, “Embedded Liberalism Revisited: Institutions and Progress in International Economic Relations,” in Adler and Crawford, Progress in Postwar International Relations, pp. 201–34Google Scholar. Other strong explanations for persistent trade behavior, largely relating it to particularistic interests, are offered in the following works: Krasner, Stephen D., “The Tokyo Round,” International Studies Quarterly 23 (12 1979), pp. 491531CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Destler, I. M. and Odell, John S., Anti-Protection: Changing Forces in United States Trade Politics (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1987)Google Scholar; and Milner, Helen V., Resisting Protectionism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. However, these works fail to capture the institutional resistance to challenges to free trade.

25. See Rosenau, James N., “Hegemons, Regimes, and Habit-Driven Actors,” International Organization 40 (Autumn 1986), pp. 849–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26. For related treatments, see Baumgartner, Tom et al. , “Meta-Power and the Structuring of Social Hierarchies,” in Burns, Tom R. and Buckley, Walter, eds., Power and Control: Social Structures and Their Transformation (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976), pp. 215–88;Google Scholar and Gaventa, John, Power and Powerlessness (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980).Google Scholar

27. Regarding perceptions of pollution, see Douglas, Mary, “Environments at Risk,” in Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 230–48Google Scholar. Regarding changes from 1972 to 1982 in leaders' responses to physical evidence of environmental degradation, see Tolba, Mostafa Kamal, ed., Evolving Environmental Perceptions from Stockholm to Nairobi (London: Butterworths, 1988).Google Scholar

28. See Rublack, Susanne, “Controlling Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste: The Evolution of a Global Convention,” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 13 (Winter 1989), pp. 113–26;Google Scholar and Hilz, Christopher and Radka, Mark, “The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal,” in Susskind, Lawrence E., Siskind, Esther, and Breslin, J. William, eds., Nine Case Studies in International Environmental Negotiation (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program, 05 1990), pp. 7598.Google Scholar

29. Cowhey, Peter F., “The International Telecommunications Regime,” International Organization 44 (Spring 1990), pp. 169200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. See Dell, Sidney, “Economists in the United Nations,” in Coats, A. W., ed., Economists in International Agencies (New York: Praeger, 1986)Google Scholar. For a slightly different view that stresses the variation with which Prebisch's ideas were received in different Latin American countries, see Sikkink, Kathryn, Ideas and Institutions: Developmentalism in Brazil and Argentina (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991)Google Scholar. See also Rothstein, Robert L., Global Bargaining: UNCTAD and the Quest for a New International Economic Order (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

31. Frankel, Otto H., “Genetic Resources: Evolutionary and Social Responsibilities,” in Kloppenburg, Jack R. Jr, ed., Seeds and Sovereignty: The Use and Control of Plant Genetic Resources (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1988), pp. 1946.Google Scholar

32. See, for example, Socolow, Robert H., “US–Soviet Collaboration in Energy Conservation, Research and Development,” in Proceedings of the Conference on Technology-Based Confidence Building: Energy and Environment (Los Alamos, Calif.: Los Alamos National Laboratory, 11 1989), pp. 402–8.Google Scholar

33. In the case of ozone, as with environmental issues in general, the unexpected onset of environmental degradation generated concern about the unanticipated consequences of human action and the search for new advice. See Brooks, Harvey and Cooper, Chester, Science for Public Policy (New York: Pergamon Press, 1987), p. 8;Google Scholar and Enloe, Cynthia, The Politics of Pollution in a Comparative Perspective (New York: David McKay, 1975), p. 21.Google Scholar

34. Cowhey, , “The International Telecommunications Regime,” p. 172.Google Scholar

35. This occurred in the case involving pollution control in the Mediterranean, as the ecological epistemic community created an agenda for a program sufficiently rich that other groups could benefit from supporting the program. See the following works of Haas, Peter M.: “Do Regimes Matter? Epistemic Communities and Mediterranean Pollution Control,” International Organization 43 (Summer 1989), pp. 384–87;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Saving the Mediterranean: The Politics of International Environmental Cooperation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

36. Oran Young differentiates between integrative bargaining, which is possible during the period of discovery, and zero-sum bargaining, which occurs during the period of actual negotiations over distributional consequences of management. See Young, Oran R., “The Politics of International Regime Formation: Managing Natural Resources and the Environment,” International Organization 43 (Summer 1989), pp. 349–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37. See Raymond Hopkins, “Reform in the International Food Aid Regime: The Role of Consensual Knowledge,” in this issue of IO.

38. See the following works of Sebenius, James K.: “The Computer as Mediator: Law of the Sea and Beyond,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, vol. 1, 1981, pp. 7795CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Negotiation Arithmetic,” International Organization 37 (Spring 1983), pp. 281316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. Odell, John S., “From London to Bretton Woods: Sources of Change in Bargaining Strategies and Outcomes,” Journal of Public Policy 8 (0712 1988), pp. 287315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. Kahler, Miles, “International Financial Institutions and the Politics of Adjustment,” in Nelson, Joan M. et al. , eds., Fragile Coalitions: The Politics of Economic Adjustment (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1989), pp. 139–59.Google Scholar

41. See Cowhey, “The International Telecommunications Regime”; Ayres, Robert L., Banking on the Poor (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Ascher, William, “New Development Approaches and the Adaptability of International Agencies,” International Organization 37 (Summer 1983), pp. 415–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. See Ayres, , Banking on the Poor;Google Scholar and Ascher, “New Development Approaches and the Adaptability of International Agencies.” For a more critical view that dismisses any policy learning which does not promote individual health and equality, see Gran, Guy, “Beyond African Famines,” Alternatives 11 (04 1986), pp. 275–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. Odell, “From London to Bretton Woods.”

44. See Goldstein, Judith, “The Impact of Ideas on Trade Policy,” International Organization 43 (Winter 1989), p. 71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. See Adler, , “Cognitive Evolution,” pp. 5054Google Scholar. For other learning approaches, see Haas, “Why Collaborate?”; Nye, Joseph S. Jr, “Nuclear Learning,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987), pp. 371402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Haas, , Saving the Mediterranean, pp. 5863.Google Scholar

46. See Kruglanski, Arie E. and Ajzen, Icek, “Bias and Error in Human Judgment,” European Journal of Social Psychology 13 (0103 1983), pp. 144CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Peter M. Haas, “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” in this issue of IO.

47. Reynolds, Charles, The Politics of War: A Study of the Rationality of Violence in Inter-State Relations (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989), p. 263.Google Scholar

48. Hall refers to these as “administrative learning, driven by a concern to find technical solutions to policy problems; and political learning, characterized by the evolution of collective moral visions.” See Hall, Peter A., Governing the Economy: The Politics of State Intervention in Britain and France (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), p. 275.Google Scholar

49. Katzenstein, Peter J., “International Relations Theory and the Analysis of Change,” in Czempiel, Ernst-Otto and Rosenau, James N., eds., Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1989), p. 295Google Scholar. While Katzenstein was characterizing the poststructural arguments offered by Richard Ashley in that volume, the point is more general.

50. Haas, , Saving the Mediterranean, chap. 8.Google Scholar

51. See Kaplan, Fred, “Warring Over New Missiles for NATO,” The New York Times Magazine, 9 12 1979, pp. 46, 55, 57, 84, 86, 88, and 90.Google Scholar

52. See Ruggie, John Gerard, “Changing Frameworks of International Collective Behavior,” in Choucri, Nazli and Robinson, Thomas W., eds., Forecasting in International Relations (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1978), p. 386.Google Scholar

53. See Habermas, J., The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, McCarthy, T., trans. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984).Google Scholar

54. Innis, Judith E., Knowledge and Public Policy, 2d ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1990), p. 34.Google Scholar

55. A power is legitimate to the degree that, by virtue of the doctrines and norms by which it is justified, the power-holder can call upon sufficient other centers of power, as reserves in case of need, to make its own power effective. See Sinchcombe, Arthur L., Constructing Social Theories (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).Google Scholar

56. See Adler, , “Cognitive Evolution”; and Emanuel Adler. Beverly Crawford, and Jack Donnelly, “Defining and Conceptualizing Progress in Postwar International Relations,” in Adler and Crawford, Progress in Postwar International Relations, pp. 142.Google Scholar