Regime theory in the post-Cold War world

This book offers a compelling study of the analysis of international regimes in the post-Cold War era. In refreshing contrast to other volumes, attention is concentrated on connecting regime debates to current discussion of the status of theory in the discipline of International Relations as a whole. Particular emphasis is placed on neoliberal accounts of regime dynamics, a set of approaches that dominates regime thinking, but fails adequately to investigate theoretical problems apprehended more readily outside the largely American 'mainstream' of the discipline. The author is especially critical of the tendency to marry regime analyses and other ostensibly liberal/idealist variants of international theory to the moribund, but ever-present, paradigm of realism, an enterprise that does not merely contradict the essentially dualistic and dialectical character of international thought, but fails on its own explicitly neorealist terms. This study is clearly destined to become compulsory reading for students of international organization and international relations theory.