international cooperation

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International Cooperation:The Extents and Limits of Multilateralism

A number of new approaches to the subject of international cooperationwere developed in the 1980s. As a result, further questions have arisen,particularly with regard to the methods and limits of cooperation and therelationship between cooperation and the debate over multilateralism.International Cooperation considers these questions, identies furtherareas for research, and pushes the analysis of this fundamental conceptin international relations in new directions. Its two parts address thehistoric roots andmodern development of the notion of cooperation, andthe strategies used to achieve it, with a conclusion that reaches beyondinternational relations into new disciplinary avenues. This edited collec-tion incorporates historical research, social and economic analysis, andpolitical and evolutionary game theory.

I. William Zartman is the Jacob Blaustein Distinguished ProfessorEmeritus of International Organization and Conict Resolution at thePaul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the JohnsHopkins University. He is the author of a number of books, includingCowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities for Preventing Deadly Conict andState Collapse (2005) and Negotiation and Conict Management: Essayson Theory and Practice (2008), and editor of Imbalance of Power: USHegemony and InternationalOrder (2009) and Peacemaking in InternationalConict: Methods and Techniques (2005). He is recipient of the LifetimeAchievement Award of the International Association for ConictManagement.

The late Saadia Touval, former professor and Dean at Tel AvivUniversity, taught at Johns Hopkins Universitys Paul H. Nitze Schoolof Advanced International Studies from 1994 to 2007.Hewas the authorof a number of books including The Peace Brokers: Mediation in theArabIsraeli Conict, 19481979 (1982) and Mediation in the YugoslavWars (2001).

International Cooperation:The Extents and Limitsof Multilateralism

Edited by

I.William Zartman

and

Saadia TouvalThe Nitze School of Advanced International Studies,The Johns Hopkins University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESSCambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,So Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo

Cambridge University PressThe Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

First published in print format

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ISBN-13 978-0-521-13865-9

ISBN-13 978-0-511-78935-9

Cambridge University Press 2010

2010

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To the late Saadia Touval,warm friend, close colleague, twin

Contents

List of gur es page ixList of tables xiList of contributors xiiAcknowledgements xv

1 Introduction: return to the theories of cooperationi . william zartman and saadia touval 1

Part 1 Multilateral meanings of cooperation

2 Debating cooperation in Europe from Grotiusto Adam Smithalexis keller 15

3 The two sides of multilateral cooperationcharles doran 40

4 Deconstructing multilateral cooperationfen osler hampson 60

5 Negotiated cooperation and its alternativessaadia touval 78

Part 2 Multiple strategies of cooperation

6 Synthesizing rationalist and constructivist perspectiveson negotiated cooperationp. terrence hopmann 95

7 The shadow of the past over conict and cooperationallison stanger 111

8 Chicken dilemmas: crossing the road to cooperationjoshua s. goldstein 135

vii

9 Conict management as cooperationi . william zartman 161

10 Status concerns and multilateral cooperationdeborah welch larson and alexei

shevchenko 182

11 Asymmetrical cooperation in economic assistancejean-claude berthlemy 208

12 Conclusion: improving knowledge of cooperationsaadia touval and i. william zartman 227

Bibliography 238Index 266

viii Contents

Figures

3.1 Mult ilatera lism page 466.1 Absolute versus relative gains in a mixed motive game 1007.1 Traditional v. suspicious TFT, 2 DK, 256 players 1227.2 Traditional v. suspicious TFT, RWR, 256 players 1237.3 Traditional v. suspicious TFT, FRN, 256 players 1237.4 Traditional v. suspicious TFT, FRN, 10,000 players 1247.5 Traditional TFT, DC v. DB learning, 2DK 10,000 players 1277.6 Traditional TFT, DC v. DB learning, RWR 10,000 players 1277.7 Traditional TFT, DC v. DB learning, FRN 10,000 players 1287.8 Traditional TFT, DB v. DC learning, FRN 256 players 1287.9 Suspicious TFT, DC v. DB learning, 2DK 10,000 players 1297.10 Suspicious TFT, DC v. DB learning, RWR 10,000 players 1307.11 Suspicious TFT, DC v. DB learning, FRN 10,000 player 1308.1 The structure of Chicken 1378.2 The bargaining sequence in Chicken 1428.3 Transition from PD to Chicken in bargaining 1438.4 Trends in cooperation in iterated Chicken and PD psychology

experiments 14611.1 Comparison by region of multilateral aid with bilateral aid net

of the bilateralism effect 21911.2 Comparison within Asian region of multilateral aid with

bilateral aid net of the bilateralism effect 21911.3 Comparison within sub-Saharan African region

of multilateral aid with bilateral aid net of thebilateralism effect 220

Grid snapshot 1 Traditional TFT, 2DK, 256 players, randomseed 1, tick count 1 118



ix




x List of gures

Tables

11.1 Sum mary of es timati on results ( nal equatio n) page 21411.2 Multiplier effect of bilateral variables on aid received by

recipients 21511.3 Implicit shift of aid resources due to bilateralism: the

bilateralism effect (US$ billion per year) 21611.4 Implicit shift of aid resources due to geopolitical factors

(US$ billion per year) 21711.5 Correlation between the two components of bilateral aid

and multilateral aid 21811.6 Correlation between the bilateralism effect and growth

(averages over 1980s and 1990s) 220

xi

Contributors

JEAN-CLAUDE BERTHLEMY is Professor of Economics at the Universityof Paris 1 Panthon-Sorbonne, where he received his PhD in 1984. Hewas Director of the CEPIII (Centre dEtudes Prospectives et dInformationsInternationales), the leading French think tank specializing ininternational economics, from 1998 to 2000. Before holding thatposition he had worked for about seven years for the Organization ofEconomic Cooperation and Development, where he was Head ofDivision at the Development Centre. He has also collaborated withother international organizations such as the World Bank, theInternational Monetary Fund, the African Development Bank, theUnited Nations Development Programme, and The World Institutefor Development Economics Research. He has published numerousarticles on development economics in referred journals, as well aseleven books, related to a variety of subjects such as economic growthanalysis, development nance, and peace economics. Among otherprofessional afliations, he is a member of the European DevelopmentResearch Network, of which he was elected vice-president in 2004. Inrecognition of his signicant contributions to development economics,he was in November 2003 awarded the Luc Durand-Rville prize by theFrench Acadmie des sciences morales et politiques.

CHARLES DORAN is AndrewW.Mellon Professor of International Relationsand Director of the Global Theory and History and Canadian StudiesPrograms at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced InternationalStudies, The Johns Hopkins University. His recent books are PowerCycle Theory and Global Politics (2003, special issue of InternationalPolitical Science Review), Democratic Pluralism at Risk: Why CanadianUnity Matters and Why Americans Care (2001) and Systems in Crisis:Imperatives of High Politics at the Centurys End (1991). His doctorate isfrom The Johns Hopkins University. [email protected]

JOSHUA S. GOLDSTEIN is Professor Emeritus of International Relationsat the American University inWashington. He is author of International

xii

Relations (9th ed., 2010), How Gender Shapes the War System and ViceVersa (2001), and Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age(1988). His doctorate is from the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology. [email protected]

FEN OSLER HAMPSON is Chancellors Professor and Director of theNorman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University,Ottawa. His recent works are Nurturing Peace: Why Peace SettlementsSucceed or Fail (1996) and Multilateral Negotiations: Lessons From ArmsControl, Trade, and the Environment (1999). He holds a PhD fromHarvard. [email protected]

P. TERRENCE HOPMANN is Professor of International Relations andDirector of the Conict Management Program at the Paul H. NitzeSchool of Advanced International Studies, The Johns HopkinsUniversity. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at BrownUniversity, where he also served as Director of the Global SecurityProgram in the Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute of InternationalStudies. His recent research has focused on conict management byregional security institutions, especially the Organization for Securityand Cooperation in Europe. His major book is The Negotiation Processand the Resolution of International Conicts (1996). His doctorate is fromStanford. [email protected]

ALEXIS KELLER is Professor of History of Legal and Political Thought atthe University of Geneva. He is a former fellow of the Carr Center forHuman Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, HarvardUniversity. Most recently, he has edited What is a Just Peace? (2006)and Counterterrorism: Democracys Challenge (2008). He is currentlyworking on a book entitled Defending Justice among Nations (16501850). His doctorate is from the University of Geneva. [email protected]

DEBORAH WELCH LARSON is Professor of Political Science at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles. Her research draws oncognitive social psychology to explain foreign-policy decision making,as in Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation (1985). She isthe author most recently of Anatomy of Mistrust: U.S.Soviet Relationsduring the Cold War (1997) and Good Judgment in Foreign Policy: Theoryand Application (2003, with Stanley Renshon). She holds a StanfordPhD. [email protected]

ALEXEI V. SHEVCHENKO is Assistant Professor at the Department ofPolitical Science, California State University Fullerton. His research

List of contributors xiii

interests include international relations theory and the foreign policiesof China and Russia. His previous work appeared in No More States?Globalization, National Self-Determination, and Terrorism, ed. RichardN. Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein (2006), Communist and Post-Communist Studies, and International Organization. His doctorate isfrom UCLA. [email protected]

ALLISON STANGER is the Russell Leng Professor of International Politicsand Economics, chair of the Political Science Department, and Directorof the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs at Middlebury College.Her most recent book is One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing ofAmerican Power and the Future of Foreign Policy (2009). A mathematicsmajor as an undergraduate, she received her PhD in political sciencefrom Harvard University. [email protected]

The late SAADIA TOUVAL was Adjunct Professor and Associate Directorof the Conict Management Program at the Paul H. Nitze School ofAdvanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University. Hewas former Professor and Political Science Department Chair andDean at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of The Peace Brokers(1982) and Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars (2002) among others. Hisdoctorate is from Harvard.

I . WILLIAM ZARTMAN is the Jacob Blaustein Distinguished ProfessorEmeritus at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies(SAIS) of The Johns Hopkins University, and member of the SteeringCommittee of the Processes of International Negotiation (PIN)Program at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis(IIASA) in Vienna. He is author of Cowardly Lions: MissedOpportunities to Prevent Deadly Conict and State Collapse (2005) andNegotiation and Conict Management: Essays on Theory and Practice(2007) among others. His doctorate is from Yale and his honorarydoctorate from the Catholic University of Louvain. [email protected]

xiv List of contributors

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to SAIS and the US Institute of Peace for their generoussupport for this project and to Isabelle Talpain-Long for carefully shep-herding the manuscript through to completion. Thanks too to JuliaLendorfer for indexing. I am above all grateful for the chance to workwith my friend, colleague, and twin Saadia Touval on this work, our lastand lasting of a long list of collaboration.

xv

1 Introduction: return to the theoriesof cooperation

I. William Zartman and Saadia Touval

Cooperation among states is much more common than war. Yet there ismuch less conceptualization about cooperation than there is about thecauses of and behavior in war, and the study of international cooperation attempts to understand the phenomenon has produced much debate.Conict seems very natural, and it is easy to understand, . . . Cooperation,however, appears as a phenomenon that requires subtle explanations(Hammerstein 2003, pp. 12).Cooperation is dened here as a situation where parties agree to work

together to produce new gains for each of the participants unavailable tothem by unilateral action, at some cost. Its constituent elements are work-ing together, agreement to do so (not just coincidence), cost, and newgains for all parties. (This denition is not too far from, but a bit morespecic than, Websters: an association of parties for their common bene-t; collective action in pursuit of common well-being. Cf. Smith 2003;Clements and Stephens 1995; Dugatkin 1997). By gains we mean notonly material gains, but also perception of progress toward goals, such asimproved security, status, or freedom of action for oneself and the impo-sition of constraints on other actors, and so on. Thus, cooperation is usedhere to meanmore than simply the opposite or absence of conict, as somebinary codings indicate. It is a conscious, specic, positive action.Some denitions require that at least one party in the cooperating

group be worse off, at least in the short run, by cooperating than by notcooperating (Bowles and Gintis 2003; Richerson et al. 2003), but thisdenition is illogical. The party in question would only cooperate if itscalculations are other than material and/or short run; it must get either(non-material) satisfaction or long-run gains of some sort to makecooperation worthwhile. The opposite of this condition of cost withoutgain is the free-rider problem of gain without cost. But this in its turndepends on the establishment of cooperation by those who both payand gain.

1

Conicts in meaning

But differences in the use of the term in reference to the dynamics ofcooperation and its reection in multilateralism still abound, and arereected in some of the following chapters. Both terms cooperationand multilateral carry pairs of meanings in popular usage, developingdifferent implications from different meanings. They raise new questionsand suggest areas for further inquiry.Cooperation sometimes refers to actors strategy aimed at resolving

particular issues, and sometimes to a pattern of interactions in otherwords, to a relationship, as explored in the chapters by Doran andHampson. The rst, resolving specic issues, can take place betweenstates that are antagonistic, even hostile to each other. Like the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union during the Cold War or Israel and Hizbollahin their prisoner exchange, antagonists, even enemies, cooperate on occa-sions to resolve specic concerns, without addressing the broader con-ict in other words, to manage but not to resolve their conict (George,Farley, and Dallin 1988; Kanet and Kolodziej 1991). Descriptions ofstrategies available to competing players in various game theory modelsoften use the term cooperation in the same sense of agreement toresolve particular issues.The second meaning of the term, describing a relationship, refers not

only to specic interactions but also implies a desire on the part of theactors to maintain and foster those interactions through joint problemsolving. It also implies a certain basic empathy between them, and amutual sense that each partys well-being depends on the well-being ofthe other. It does not preclude occasional conict, or competitionbetween the parties. But it presupposes a security community, where aresort to violence and war is unthinkable (e.g. United StatesBritain,United StatesCanada, the European Union, NATO).Multilateral, too, has two forms, developed in the following chapters.

One is the noun, multilateralism, in the sense of a diplomatic strategyemployed by states in order to coordinate policy among three or moreactors or cooperation in its second meaning (Ruggie 1993). It is some-times described as a pattern of behavior that contributes to world peace,and therefore is intrinsically moral. The other, multilateral as an adjec-tive, without the ism, is often used to refer to an ad hoc tactic (orstrategy) adopted by a state or group of states in pursuit of a denedobjective, in the rst denition of cooperation. Such a strategy may beaimed at resolving or reducing conict among the participating parties,but it may also be used to compete against others who are excluded fromthe group, to put pressure on them, even to ght them.

2 I. William Zartman and Saadia Touval

Multilateralism as a foreign policy principle has been attributed byRuggie and Ikenberry to the United States in certain historical periods,primarily the latter half of the twentieth century, as discussed in theLarson and Shevchenko chapter. The other, a multilateral strategy, hasbeen attributed to coalitions, such as military alliances and trade blocs,and to great power concerts, as discussed in the chapter by Zartman. Therst is inclusive, and tends toward universal membership; the second isexclusive. It is sometimes called minilateralism, plurilateralism, orbilateralism a strategy of coordinating with single or small numbers ofpartners, through separate arrangements with each of them, as Touvalnotes. Since mutilateral strategies are exclusive,they can have contradic-tory purposes multilateral cooperation to act and multilateral coopera-tion to block action. Hampson andDoran in their chapters refer to furthervariations in the meaning of the term.Such different meanings attached to terms can hinder communication

and hamper effective research. Mere recognition that terms can meandifferent things is a step forward. Rather than invent new terms, thefollowing discussion will explore differences while trying to keep thedifferent uses and their implications explicit.

Conict and cooperation

While there is conict without cooperation, it appears that there is nocooperation without conict. Cooperation is dependent on these beingconict to overcome. Indeed, attempts at cooperation may create conict(to be overcome), since the parties attempt to work together brings outdiffering interests to be tailored to t the costs of cooperation. Byconict we do not mean war or violence, but rather perceptions ofincompatibilities. Cooperating nations generally perceive both commonand conicting interests. They may thus disagree about some of theirgoals, their respective contributions, the burdens they carry, and thebenets they derive in the common enterprise. This produces a richeld for inquiry on why states cooperate, how they arrive at cooperation,how they practice cooperation, and how cooperation is sustained.If so, then the rst step in understanding cooperation is to take stock of

the current understanding of conict.While the term is frequently usedas shorthand for violent conict, the violent form of conict cannot beunderstood without addressing rst its broader form, which is simply anincompatibility of goals (Bernard 1949; 1957, p. 38; Coser 1956, p. 8). Ofcourse, incompatibility is scarcely signicant if it is taken lying down; it iswhen value incompatibility leads to some escalation of action or conictbehavior that it becomes an object of concern, both practical and

Introduction: return to the theories of cooperation 3

analytical. A focused form of this notion sees frustration over the inabilityto attain blocked goals as the source of conict, based on a clear under-standing of the component incompatibilities.However, recent studies have focused on the misperception and fear of

conict behavior as the basis of perceived incompatibilities, rather than onthe substance of the incompatibilities themselves. Conict comes fromthe security dilemma, where a party seeking to assure even minimalsecurity is perceived as acting threateningly toward another party, whotakes measures to assure its own security and thereby threatens the othereven more (Jervis 1978; Posner 1993). The current focus of analysis is oninformation, bypassing the substance of the incompatibility. If partiescould accurately communicate both their intentions and their capabilities,they would not venture into conict, which would be either unnecessaryor unwise (Fearon 1995).On this basis cooperation is achieved by overcoming the tendency

toward conict, whether that tendency is based on objective incompati-bilities or on erroneous information about them. However, the remedy isdifferent in the two views of conict sources. If the conict lies in real goalincompatibility, that clash must be dealt with by lowering the incompat-ibility or at least its salience. Various means are available: one party canbow to the other, the two can negotiate concessions or compensation orcan construct a new set of goals that reframes them in such a way that theybecome compatible or are subsumed under superordinate values, or,nally, the parties can agree that the incompatible goals are unimportantand table them without actually dropping them. More importantly, thesemeans of reducing the conict borne of incompatibilities can be exercisedon a case-by-case basis or extended more lengthily and generically. Evenad hoc resolution builds norms and precedents that inuence futurecooperative settlements, whereas longer-term or more institutionalizedmeasures and mechanisms address generic elements explicitly.If unreliable information is the problem, the answer is easier in concept:

get it right! But because it is suspicion about information that is thedifculty, more information is as suspect as less; cooperation comeswith the installation of trust. (Yet mechanisms for inducing trust, suchas provisions for verication and punishment or for third parties as trust-holders, usually require cooperation in order to produce cooperation: acircular argument.)

Nature and cooperation

The analytical questions then become, why, when and how do partiesagree to pay the cost of working together to produce new gains? and how


do they then apportion the gains so as to maintain their cooperation? Acommon reason for cooperation is interdependence. States are not polit-ically or economically autarkic; they are not alone. They need the active orpassive help of others in order to achieve their goals. They need others asallies to help assure their security, they need them for establishing rules ofinternational behavior, they need them for commerce and as partners inmanaging international economic relations, and they need them to helpprotect from public bads such as environmental risks. Calculations ofefciency accompany the needs generated by interdependence: statesmay believe that it would cost them less to achieve their goals by cooper-ating with others than to act alone.Social scientists debate whether cooperation is innate or learned,

whether it is genetic or social, related to fairness (whats best for all ofus) as opposed to justice (whats best for me, and what you deserve),hence whether it is based in inherent tendencies toward unselsh or selshbehavior. Some scholars believe that states are defensive, self-identifying,and self-interested entities, whose leaders are responsible only for theirpopulations security and welfare, and are therefore in competitive orconictual relation with other states. They must have done something,however, to overcome this natural condition of conict and produce theprevailing cooperation. This action is extraordinarily successful, given thepervasiveness of cooperation over conict, yet relatively little is knownabout it conceptually. This work aims at expanding that knowledge.Notions of inherently selsh behavior or cooperation for me include

elements of acquisition, effectiveness, and efciency (Lax and Sebenius1986). Acquisition refers to the need to create value where the desiredends are unavailable to the individual party. Effectiveness refers to theneed to work with other parties to create that value and accomplish certaingoals, when parties cannot achieve their ends unilaterally. Efciencyrefers to the need to reduce costs primarily transaction costs in workingwith other parties, so that the wheel of concerted action does not need tobe reinvented each time. These three needs elusive ends, scarce means,reducible costs drive parties to work together over a short or longer time,depending in turn on their estimates of the other parties proclivities to dothe same thing.Other scholars, however, question the view that interstate relations are

characterized by a Hobbesian state of nature and are inherently con-ictual. The notion of innate sociability runs through Grotius, Pufendorf,and Montesquieu to Adam Smith, where it forms the basis of mutualregulation and gains through trade, as Keller discusses in the next chapter.Notions of inherently unselsh behavior or cooperation in me includeexpectations such as requitement, reputation, and fairness (Vogel 2004;


deWaal 1992; Sober andWilson 1998). Requitement is the expectation ofreciprocity, negative and/or positive, an inherent quality in social relationsand in most ethical systems. Reputation refers to the expectations partiescreate about themselves, operating in two directions in support of coop-eration: as images that parties tend for purposes of self-esteem, and asbases for others actions. Fairness, a loose form of justice, involves theexpectation and behavioral norm that parties are due to receive treatmentcorresponding to some universal notion of equality, either as numericalindividuals or as deserving actors (Zartman et al. 1996; Albin 2001).These three qualities, and perhaps others in support, provide a networkthat lies at the base of claims of inherency in the tendency to cooperate.Since the debate continues over whether cooperative behavior is innate

or learned, the search for the etiology and the means of cooperation musttake both into account. But the difference between the two assumptions isnot as great as is often assumed. For those who see cooperation as innate itis the avoidance of conict, whereas for those for whom it must be learnedit is a defense against conict. Either way, cooperation is the antidoteto conict. The two approaches differ, however, on the durability ofcooperation.

Schools and cooperation

The key to cooperation is reciprocity, that is, an assurance of similar,benecial return behavior in the future. Selsh states bury conict if (aslong as) the other party does so too, and unselsh states bury conictbecause the other party does so too; again, the grave is shallower for therst than for the second. Thus the various schools of international rela-tions (IR) differ only in their perspective: Realists take a short-term andLiberals a long-term view. The former believe that cooperation is notsustainable but occurs only on a momentary basis, as long as benetsare present and up to date. Parties have a tendency to cheat and free-rideas soon as they can gain greater benets from doing so than from coop-erating. Problems of information cannot be overcome reliably, since stateswill cheat when it is in their interest to do so; all that can be done is tounderstand when cheating is likely and to take appropriate safeguards.Indeed, Realism, by its short-term rational tendency to defect, actuallyreduces the benets of cooperation, by enhancing fear of defection(Bowles and Gintis 2003, p. 433, implicitly equate Realists withsociopaths).Liberals believe that states cooperate in the expectation of benets from

future cooperation, as well as current payoffs. In addition they hold thatanticipated reciprocity provides benets from reputation and relationship


that are not only less precise but tie states into patterns of behavior.Information can play a role in sustaining this expectation, since the greaterthe reliable information on future reciprocity, the greater the chances ofcooperation lasting. Since it is inefcient to negotiate the terms of reci-procity each time, states institutionalize their cooperation throughregimes, laws, and organizations. Thus Realists take measures to guardagainst foreseeable defection, whereas Liberals emphasize measures toprolong foreseeable cooperation.Yet cooperation is more than just about defection and reciprocity,

despite much of the current focus; it is about benets their creationand their allocation. The mechanisms by which cooperation is establishedcarry high transaction costs; it is always quicker to act by oneself and,beyond that, costs rise in proportion to the number of parties, as discussedby Touval below. Theoretically, however, costs should fall in relation tothe number of issues, since more issues provide more trade-offs and agreater chance to attain comparative advantage deals at the Nash Pointaccording to HomansMaxim (1960) The more the items at stake canbe divided into goods valued more by one party than they cost to the otherand [the reverse], the greater the chances of a successful outcome.Thesenegotiations deal with the twin aspects of cooperation, value-making andvalue taking, referring to integrative and distributive negotiations.Cooperation, as noted, occurs to create benecial outcomes that theparties cannot create alone, but it is also needed to allocate those benets;there is always a distributive as well as an integrative aspect to cooperation.Beyond creation and allocation of costs and benets, cooperation is also

about underlying or overarching values as an element that separatesRealists from Liberals. For cooperation to be more than a single engage-ment, as Realists see it, it must rest on and contribute to a community ofvalues, as Hampson discusses. Thus negotiations on cooperation relatenot only to the specic stakes and measures of the encounter but also tothe pact-building relationship and reiteration that is, to shared decision-making.These two aspects of cooperation can be dealt with instance by instance

or on a more prolonged basis through the establishment of regimes, boththrough negotiation (Spector and Zartman 2003). The advantages of eachare straightforward: successive, essentially ad hoc negotiations are lessefcient, since the wheel of cooperation has to be reinvented each time,whereas regimes are established and corrected by negotiated principlesthat do not have to concern themselves with the immediate details ofindividual cases. Essentially, regimes establish formulas for cooperation,leaving the details to their application, while reinvented cooperationneeds to negotiate both formula and details. In reality, the two necessarily


overlap, since even ad hoc cooperation in an area not governed by pre-viously negotiated regimes does not occur in a vacuum, but in a context ofnorms, expectations, and precedents that act as a proto-regime. Thephilosophy of multilateral cooperation, termed multilateralism, conferslegitimacy as one of its benets, more so than unilateralism or bilateral-ism, although it does so at the expense of efciency and possibly even ofeffectiveness.There is also an external problem to cooperation: how to legitimize it to

those outside, whether those rejecting the action or those not invited tojoin it. Cooperation has an outside shell, involving cooperation with thosewho are not enemies but nonetheless are external to the cooperating core.It is in the interest of the cooperators not to arouse conict with those leftout, lest they make common cause with the conictors. This area liesoutside the normal conceptual concerns of cooperation but is of crucialimportance to practitioners. Bilateral cooperation is also a means to dealwith other states that are not involved in the core multilateral cooperativeenterprise, but it may compound the problem. An alliance between twomay be perceived by others as impacting on their security, bilateral tradeaffects the commercial prospects of others, and so on. This is why coop-eration requires consideration of its wider impact, and why it oftenassumes multilateral form. Again, Liberals handle the problem betterthan Realists, who seem to assume conict in any case. For Liberals,regimes and extended, forward-looking, even institutionalized coopera-tion sets the stage for at least substantive, if not procedural, inclusion ofthe outer shell, leaving them free to join later or to approve without directinvolvement. Yet handling that gray area of cooperation, the subject ofZartmans chapter, is a major practical as well as conceptual challenge.As in so many aspects of international relations (and probably other)

theory, error lies in an insistence on exclusivity. It is important both toprolong foreseeable cooperation and to protect against defection, sincethe latter fosters the former. Cooperation is not self-implementing; onehas to work at it, because of the danger of conict. Even the proponents ofinherently unselsh behavior would agree. On this basis, this book turnstoward an examination of ways of accomplishing these two goals ofcooperation.

New understandings of cooperation

The contributions to this book address these questions, harking back tocentral issues in these debates and to the group of seminal works thatlaunched the subject over a ten-year period beginning two decades ago(Axelrod 1984; Taylor 1987; Young 1989; Stein 1990; Stein and Pauly


1993). As much as possible, this collection seeks to ll holes left by theinitial studies, often where the holes were explicitly acknowledged.One group of essays deals with the various ambiguities and implications

inherent in the meanings of cooperation itself. The historic basis of thedebate is developed by Alexis Keller, following on the philosophical sideof the argument developed by Taylor in 1987. He shows how an alter-native understanding of interstate relations, contrasted to the post-Westphalian view of formal and hierarchical legal relations law grewup grounded in commerce as cooperation. The approach replaced themodel of international anarchy with a model of the market, which, thoughself-ordered, implies norms of cooperation and specic actions to main-tain it. Charles Doran discusses the question of how many it takes tocooperate. Both bilateral and multilateral arrangements take a state particularly a hegemonic state away from unconstrained unilateralismbut with very different implications, the two being conicting alternativesto each other. Cooperation provides resources, legitimacy, and approval,to create value or benets. It raises problems, however, over the allocationof those benets and the appropriate size to claim that legitimacy, as wellas problems arising from transaction time.Fen Osler Hampson develops further subdivisions with the typology of

multilateral cooperation. In a second level of debate beyond the initialquestions about cooperation itself, institutionalized cooperation raisesprocedural questions about the allocation of role as well as substantivequestions about the allocation of payoffs and benets. Saadia Touvalexamines many of these characteristics from the angle of multilateralnegotiation, in both symmetrical and asymmetrical situations, a subjectleft over from Youngs study of regime formation. Multilateral coopera-tion requires negotiation because parties have to come together to estab-lish the norms and principles they wish to institute and to coordinate theirpolicies. However, cooperation among unequal parties can work twoways to lock in norms and principles that either assure the complianceof the weaker parties and/or promise the compliance of the stronger partywere it later to lose its hegemony.A second group of essays addresses strategies of cooperation and their

implications. P. Terrence Hopmann examines structural and motiva-tional factors that lead to negotiation and cooperation; negotiation as acooperative process that creates the terms of a more prolonged coopera-tion has not received the attention its importance merits from theorizationover international politics. Focusing on the process of negotiating coop-eration, he reaches beyond the RealistLiberal debate to link cooperationto the constructivist approach and to IR theory more broadly. Picking upon the game theoretic images in the previous chapter, Joshua Goldstein


develops the unsung side of the classical dilemmas, the Chicken DilemmaGame (CDG) discussed by Taylor (1987), which receives less attentionthan its Prisoner (PDG) cousin. Yet CDG is a muchmore frequent imageof interstate problems of cooperation, its two equilibria posing a coordi-nation rather than a collaboration problem. While double defection thePrisoners second worst, but the Chickens worst, outcome is avoided, ittakes strategies of creativity to arrive at cooperation. Chicken shows theperception of the situation that pushes the parties to create a new gamereecting such strategies. Allison Stanger, starting off from Axelrods1984 study on the evolution of cooperation, examines the impact of pastexperience upon learning to cooperate through interaction. To theShadow of the Future, she adds the Shadow of the Past and to thesevertical shadows she adds the horizontal shadows of current relations.Taking up a topic that Stein (1990, pp. 18898) left as context-dependent, I. William Zartman examines the relation between coopera-tion and two different types of conict management cooperation as astrategy of dealing with conict with another party, and cooperation as astrategy for managers of conict among third parties. While the rstrepresents a major shift in policy, it is found that it depends on the second,termed the playback effect or the alliance dilemma (Stein 1990, p.188) and not just on estimates of success and of cost-benets.At the end, two contributions use specic case studies to examine the

role of asymmetry in multilateral cooperation. Deborah Larson and AlexiShevchenko employ social psychology to look at asymmetrical coopera-tion in a hegemonic system, by examining ways by which the UnitedStates can persuade states that are not allies to cooperate. By addressingstatus concerns, the greater power can lessen the attraction of competitionand conict strategies and attitudes on the part of second-level powers.This means avoiding conict and competition strategies on the part of thehegemon, and making cooperation rather than convergence a basis ofpolicy. The analysis focuses on functional identity enhancement as abasis for building cooperation in place of conict. Jean-ClaudeBerthlemy examines the effects of asymmetric cooperation through theangle of development aid policies. Allocation favors the stronger partysproximate interests in bilateral aid relations, and tends to be more altru-istic (i.e., favoring more distant interests) in the case of multilateral aid.But since the chosen recipients of self-interested bilateral cooperationtend to be open economies that are favored by the underlying tradelinkages between the two sides, the ostensibly one-sided interest is reba-lanced. On the other hand, weaker economies, which cannot attract self-interested bilateral cooperation, benet from multilateral cooperation,however asymmetrical.


The concluding chapter brings in an additional literature that waspresent but not as salient during previous work on cooperation thestudy of cooperation and related altruism in evolutionary studies. Whilemuch of this work dates from previous decades (Hamilton 1964; Trivers1971), it has not been applied to international relations or used as a guidefor research. The nal chapter will do so, in drawing out of the previouschapters their answers to the initial question, why (and when) do statescooperate? and how do these answers relate to related theoretical work?These contributions do not aspire to end the debate over cooperation, sobadly needed conceptually and practically, as the editors conclusionemphasizes, but they will open further discussion, patch holes in theprevious analyses, and carry on the debate to create better understandingsof the complexities of cooperation.


Part 1

Multilateral meanings of cooperation

2 Debating cooperation in Europe fromGrotius to Adam Smith

Alexis Keller

Following the irrevocable success of the Reformation in northern Europe, anew, secular theory onwar and interstate relationswas needed at the dawnofthe seventeenth century. In many ways, it was the Peace of Westphalia(1648) that ushered in what Carl Schmitt (1950) termed the Jus PublicumEuropaeum. The treaties introduced a secular notion of relations betweenstates and reinvigorated the law of nations (jus gentium). They also enshrinedthe principle of state sovereignty, which had been gradually gaining forcesince the fourteenth century (Skinner 1978).1 The law of war, treaties andembassieswas all part of the practical and theoretical response tonewpoliticalchallenges.Diplomacywas shapedby thegrowingneed for enduring relationsamong states. The balance of power idea was built as a counterweight tostate sovereignty, to rein in the dangers inherent in universal monarchy.The nature of international society since 1648 has been the subject of an

extensive literature. However, international relations theorists have oftenstrayed on a number of key issues. First, their use of terms such asWestphalian system, Grotian tradition, and society of states isbased on a narrow interpretation of thinking on the advent of an interna-tional political and legal order.2 In many ways, their interpretation isahistorical. Hugo Grotius is thus more renowned for having advocatedthe existence of an international society than actually analysing its make-up and elucidating how it works.3 As explained by Edward Keene,

1 The Peace ofWestphalia, also known as the Treaties ofMnster and Osnabrck, refers to theseries of treaties that ended the Thirty Years War. They ofcially recognized the UnitedProvinces and the Swiss Confederation. The idea of the Holy Roman Empire dominatingthe entire Christian world was denitely broken, thus giving the sovereigns the right to choosethe religion of their state. Recent works have disputed the very existence of a Westphaliansystem, or have at least highlighted its limits within the context of international relations. See,e.g. Brown 2002; Strange, 1999; Kegley and Raymond 2002; Lyons and Mastanduno 2001.

2 For a recent discussion of the problems that ow from conceptualizing modern world historyin terms of the idea of a states-system, see the very inspiring study of Edward Keene (2002).

3 In general, historians of legal and political thought have avoided this oversimplication.For an excellent analysis of Grotius, see Tuck (1977, 1999); see also David Kennedy,(1986, vol. 27, pp. 198).

15

[O]ver the last thirty years or so, the historical analysis of Grotianism by theoristsof international relations has moved away from debates about the sources, contentand scope of international law within a societas gentium, and has instead concen-trated on debates about the nature of international politics within a states-system.(Keene 2002, p. 40)

Furthermore, their blinkered interpretation has led these theorists tocategorize conicting views on international politics. Hedley Bull, forexample, drew on Martin Wight to suggest what has become a classicdistinction between three rival intellectual traditions: the Hobbesian orrealist tradition, which sees international politics as a state of war; theGrotian or internationalist tradition, which presents international politicsas a cornerstone of international society; and the Kantian or universalisttradition, which argues that international politics has the potential toembrace humanity as a whole (Wight 1991, especially ch. 2; Bull 1977).Similarly, other authors have referred to the Machiavellian or Hobbesiananthropological pessimism, or Kants optimism (Boucher 1998).4 Whilethese categories are useful and valid in their own right, they provide anincomplete picture of early modern international legal thought. Theysqueeze Grotiuss, Hobbess, or Kants extremely eclectic account of thelaw of nations into a small box that was historically constructed in the earlynineteenth century for the specic purpose of defending the independ-ence of dynastic monarchs against the French Revolution andNapoleonicimperialism.5

Moreover, these categories offer a historical narrative of the develop-ment of the legal and political order in the modern world that excludesone of the eighteenth centurys agship approaches to analyzing interstaterelations: the idea of the market.6 Throughout the seventeenth century,the legal notion of contract was central to political and legal theories. Itaccounted for the very existence of society, which was founded on apolitical pact. The fundamental question at the time was how to thinkabout the development of society and politics without resorting to external

4 David Boucher organizes his book around three traditions of thought, which he termsempirical realism, universal moral order, and historical reason.

5 Hedley Bull himself recognizes that, in practice, Kant advocates a society of states ratherthan a World state. Conversely, he contends that even within what he calls the Grotiantradition,Grotius has a solidarist vision heavily inuenced by the medieval or Christianidea of universal community, rather than the strictly interstate approach described byVattel and his successors. For an attempt at moving beyond such classication, seePangle and Ahrensdorf 1999.

6 There is a notable exception in the work of KennethN.Waltz. In his Theory of InternationalPolitics (1979), he uses an analogy with microeconomic theory, and especially with the twoconcepts of economic units and of the market, to conceive an order where formal organ-ization is lacking. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the role of the market in Waltzs theoryis purely analogical.

16 Alexis Keller

props, primarily from religious circles. However, natural law theorists,including Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, came up against a series oftheoretical hurdles, one of which is particularly relevant here. Althoughsocial contract theories posited the principle of civil peace, they weresomewhat disappointing in their analysis of war and peace between states.Social contract in society tted the denition of a non-zero-sum game(improved security and civil peace make everybody a winner), butdealings between states were stuck in a zero-sum loop (one party winswhat the other loses).In the eighteenth century, the idea of depicting civil society as a market

offered some theorists a way over that hurdle. A theory of exchange madeit possible to grasp that, unlike military interaction, economic relationsbetween states constituted a winwin situation. It also paved the way forinterstate cooperation to be analyzed in non-legal terms, outside thelanguage of rights. This new understanding of international relationscame into its own in France and, above all, in Scotland through thework of Adam Smith. It broadened the idea of the market beyond thatof a mere technical mechanism structuring economic activity, andembraced a deeper sociological and political purpose. As such, AdamSmith was not somuch the father of political economy as the proponent ofa new interpretation of politics proper. Instead of being an economisttinkering with philosophy, he was a philosopher who described hisapproach to politics as political economy.7

In the rst part of my chapter, I shall explore how natural law theoristssuch as Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, and Locke addressed the issue of thesociety of nations (societas gentium). I will concentrate on their conceptionsof the law of nations (jus gentium), with its roots in natural law, and take aclose look at their attempts to codify the norms governing a new interna-tional order. The legal nature of this order will be agged as well as theimportance of the concept of the state of nature in dening interstaterelations.8 Ultimately, diverging from the classications suggested bymany international relations scholars, I shall argue that Grotius andHobbes were thinking along very similar lines. In the second part of mychapter I shall seek to show how a number of eighteenth-century

7 For an excellent treatment of Adam Smiths conception of politics, seeWinch 1991, 1992;see also Winch 1996, parts I and II.

8 It must be underlined that, in early modern Europe, the expression law of nations wasgiven various meanings. Broadly speaking, it applied to the relations between humansocieties. The law of nations was not solely limited to public international law, as it alsodealt with the issues of trade, colonies, and the status of foreigners. To limit its scope solelyto the relations between states is to misunderstand an entire philosophical movement,which in the eighteenth century argued against this very restriction.

Debating cooperation in Europe from Grotius to Adam Smith 17

philosophers, using arguments from the natural law theorists, furnishedan alternative analysis of interstate relations. Building on the ideas ofcommerce and market, they posited a political model, which broke withboth the formal and hierarchical structures of authority and the topicsexpounded in civic humanism and republicanism (Pocock 1975, 1985;also Hont and Ignatieff 1983). The idea of the market enabled them todepict a new type of international order based on free trade amongnations.

Constructing the modern law of nations: Grotiusand his successors

In the seventeenth century, there were several attempts at crafting asystem of international relations that reected Europes religious divideand the new balance of power between states. Theory at last caught upwith fact, as Europe was no longer deemed a Christian republic.Although the dream of universal peace lived on, states merely coexistedand, if necessary, resorted to war to enforce their claims.9 In the eyes of hiscontemporaries, Hugo Grotius played a crucial role in redrawing thepicture. He viewed the legal relations between nations as a reection ofmans innate sociability. Man is, to be sure, an animal, but an animal of asuperior kind, Grotius wrote in his De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625).

Among the traits characteristic of man is an impelling desire for society, thatis, for the social life not of any and every sort, but peaceful, and organizedaccording to the measure of his intelligence, with those who are of his own kind;this social trend the Stoics called sociableness. . . . The mature man in fact hasknowledge, which prompts him to similar actions under similar conditions,together with an impelling desire for society, for the gratication of which healone among animals possesses a special instrument, speech. He has also beenendowed with the faculty of knowing and of acting in accordance with generalprinciples. Whatever accords with that faculty is not common to all animals, butpeculiar to the nature of man. (Grotius 1925, II, pp. 1112).

By championing mans intrinsic sociability, Grotius counters the argu-ments of theGreek philosopher Carneades and, through him, the Skeptics(Tuck 1983, 1987).10 It is with this in mind that he alludes to the Stoics inhis writing. His faith in sociability enables him to assert that our behavioris not solely driven by self-preservation (amor sui). Concern for others ispossible. The Grotian rule of sociability is also extrapolated to the

9 The discovery of the American continent in 1492 had a signicant impact in redeningthe rights of war and peace (Tuck 1999; Pagden 1995).

10 This view has recently been challenged by Thomas Mautner (2005).

18 Alexis Keller

international arena provided there are a number of states linked by morethan war. Where a state seeks sole dominion, Grotius shares Carneadessview that universal justice is nothing more than window dressing forpower. States on an equal footing, however, can get along. This was theline that Grotius held in De Jure Praedae Commentarius (1604) in a bid towin Spanish support for unfettered access to the seas.Sociability implies that war does not lead to the cutting of all legal ties

between states. But it leads to the idea that the law of nations is forged.Unlike natural law, it is a compendium of human rules and conventionsshaped through human will. As such, our understanding of it is notpreordained, but rather gleaned through jurisprudence. It is with this inmind that Grotius uses historical and biblical illustrations to substantiatehis arguments. Drawing on an analogy involving the individual, Grotiusdescribes states as the sole guardians enforcing the law of nations (Grotius1625, book I, ch. 3, 7, 12). Natural law applies to all beings, but althoughit stems from human reason, men baulk at it deep down in the absence of apublic facet.11 Like men, it is the willingness of states to subjugate their willto pacts that lies behind all contracts, pledges, and duties. Pacts signedbetween states are just as binding on them as promises made betweenindividuals. The law of nations has a moral core which is binding onindividual parties and can be summed up in one formal requirement:pacta sunt servanda, treaties must be respected.12

The linchpin here is the principle of good faith, des, which is centerstage in the nal six chapters of De Jure Belli ac Pacis. The rst of thosechapters Chapter 19 of Book 3 bears the telling title of De de interhostes and expounds the central theme of the sanctity of agreementsbetween enemies: des et hosti servanda est.13 It makes no differencewhether enemies are heretics or indels, they are all human beings.Likewise, it does not matter if they violate the agreement (they areperdus) or even if they are pirates, brigands, tyrants or usurpers.

11 On Grotiuss conceptions of natural law, see Dufour 1984, pp. 1541.12 The origin of the principle can be traced back to the expression in Ulpian in D. 2, 14, 7, 7:

Ait praetor: Pacta conventa [ . . . ] servabo, turned into a general maxim by the canonlawyers, for example in the Decretals of Gregor IX: Pacta quantumcunque nuda ser-vanda sunt (Decretales Gregorii P.IX, Lib. 1, Tit. 35, Cap. 1), and thusmaking informalcontractual agreements enforceable. See Zimmermann 1990, esp. pp. 54344, 57677.See also Lesaffer 2000. Randall Lesaffer rightly stresses that until the seventeenth or eveneighteenth centuries, treaties have more to be considered as private pacta or conventionesbetween rulers than as public foedera between political entities (Lesaffer 2000, p. 182).For an overview see also Wehberg 1959.

13 Grotius, extensively quoting Roman contract law and Romanmoralists, considers des asthe basis of justice (1925, book II, ch. 11, 45). A similar bond between faith, justice andtreaties is also to be found a few years earlier in Bodin (1576, book V, ch. 6, on treatiesbetween princes). On the idea of bona des in international law see Kolb 2000.


A pledge made to them should always be upheld, even in the face of fear orconstraint. Like international order in general, the Grotian law of nationsis rooted in good faith, the vital ingredient in all human relations. It is thevery crux of the society of men and states. Grotius was well aware that thissociety was often plunged into anarchy, but he still maintained that statesand people were united by shared norms and cultural ties.14

Thomas Hobbes incorporated many of Grotiuss arguments on the lawof nations (Tuck 1999). His theoretical starting point on the state ofnature was, however, very different. In his major work Leviathan (1651),he describes the state of nature as one of perpetual war between all.15 Itoffers no refuge and, since all men are driven by the same goals, they seekto attack rst and thereby protect their own interests and reputation.Hobbes compares interstate relations to dealings between men in a stateof nature. Among states, each republic is free to act in its own bestinterests (Hobbes 1996, ch. 17).Whilemen can discard the state of natureto embrace a new social contract, states cannot. Hobbes is rm on thispoint. No higher authority or political mechanism ranks above states.Anarchy is at the heart of international relations and is very difcult toshake off. Each state acts as it sees t and casts a suspicious eye on thedoings of others. Whenever power is yielded in return for specic pledgeson the conduct of others, it is on a self-serving, transient, and cklebasis.16

Hobbes has often been accused of putting conict at the heart ofinternational politics. According to this viewpoint, states are always think-ing about defence or attack. His thinking should, however, be analyzedcarefully. While it is true that Hobbes sees states as fundamentally selsh,they do not exist in a vacuum and without any form of relationshipbetween them. The Hobbesian state of nature is one in which interactionis necessary, frequent, chaotic, and, at times, violent. States need eachother and may even end up joining forces to serve their own short-terminterests. Hobbes may have presented international society as anarchical,

14 It is hardly surprising that Hugo Grotiuss theory of the laws of nations gained its colossalpopularity. His account was practically tailor-made for the main Protestant powers in theThirty Years War, in the sense that it justied their prosecution of the war against Spainand the Habsburgs without providing their own subjects with a rationale for rebellion.

15Hereby it is manifest,writes Hobbes, that during the timemen live without a commonPower to keep them all in awe, there are in that conditionwhich is calledWarre; and such awarre, as is of every man, against every man. (Hobbes 1996, p. 88).

16 In all times,Hobbes said in 1651, Kings, and persons of Soveraigne authority, becauseof their Independency, are in continuall jealousies, and in the state and posture ofGladiators; having their weapons pointing, and their eyes xed on one another; that is,their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns upon the Frontiers of their Kingdomes; and continuallSpyes upon their neighbours, which is a posture of War (Hobbes 1996, p. 90).

20 Alexis Keller

but his actual message was that there is no such thing as morality betweenstates. Each of them has an intellectual and emotional identity, whichsteers its action. With a nod to the Skeptics, Hobbes agrees that there arenomoral absolutes enabling us to determine right andwrong for all, whichmeans that we cannot break out of the cycle of war through a betterunderstanding of the situation at hand.Grotius had envisaged the possibility of an international community

responsible for enforcing agreements. Hobbes, on the other hand, seessovereignty as uncompromising independence from outside inuenceand, as such, questions the very existence of such an international com-munity. The idea of international order is meaningless and all eyes areon states and their internal affairs. Hobbess reasoning is watertight,uncontested even by Rousseau. It was Hobbess views on passions andthe state of nature that were reworked and which became a lightning rodfor the dissenting premises of both Pufendorf and Locke, albeit in verydifferent historical contexts.Pufendorf drew on Grotiuss arguments to posit sociability as the

keystone of any society of men and states. He differed, however, in hisexposition of it in his De Jure Naturae et Gentium (1934 [1672], II,pp. 20708). Grotius had mapped a link between justice (justum) andutility (utile), but Pufendorf went much further, making sociability andutility almost indistinguishable. He does not refute the inconsistencyfound in Hobbess thinking, since conict is inevitable once utility ispitted against equality. He does, however, question the robustness of atheory rooted solely in self-interest or self-preservation, one which dis-regards the ultimate usefulness of personal motives. Sociability opens thatdoor. Mans inherent sociability is not based on altruism alone, but alsostems from the fact that it is in his interest to be sociable (Pufendorf 1934,II, p. 214). Pufendorf rates interest as a positive side effect of mans desirefor preservation, something that Hobbes sees as largely negative. Society,the precursor to government, is therefore driven by interest rather thanfear. In socialitas, self-regarding and other regarding motives are not inopposition but form a distinctive combination.According to Pufendorf, states are legal entities and, as such, enjoy the

same rights as individuals in the state of nature. The principle of soci-ability is circumscribed by the right to act in ones own best interests in theabsence of a mutual sovereign arbitrator. The international order is there-fore powered by the interests of the states. No nation is irrevocably boundby international agreements if they clash with that states interests. Theoverarching principle is absolute and indivisible sovereignty. Pufendorfdevelops his theory in his historical works, in particular in his Introductionto the History of the Principal Realms and States as they currently exist in


Europe (1682). He distinguishes between several types of interests,amongst which are imaginary and real interests. The nature of theimaginary interests is such that they must only be pursued in cases ofserious wrong or in pursuit of a legitimate universal claim. Real interestspertain to what is specic to a country: its constitutional history, itsnational character, or its situation. Paradoxically, although this elementis the basis for the absolute autonomy of the sovereign, it also opens thedoor to a vision of the law of nations, which is less aggressively interven-tionist. Colonization and imperialist ambitions are thus viewed as con-trary to themorality ofmodern nations involved in commerce a view thatwould be endorsed by Kant later on (Tuck 1999, pp. 14065).John Locke later broke with Hobbes and Pufendorf to resurrect

some Grotian arguments on the purpose of the law of nations. Like hiscontemporaries, the author of Two Treatises of Government (1690) had tograpple with the territorial acquisitions of European states. He sought torework Grotian rationale on international society and contribute towardsthe debate on the appropriation of unoccupied land.Lockes vision of the law of nations rests upon a fresh take on the state of

nature, which is characterized by equality and freedom, with natural lawprevailing. As such, the state of nature is not all that different from the civilsociety, in that it already has a social dimension. Natural law and reasonprovide a moral compass, rooted in self-preservation (Locke 1988,p. 271). The state of nature is, however, constantly poised on the brinkof war, as there is no recognized judge to stamp out violence. In otherwords, Lockes state of nature is unstable, oscillating between war andpeace. Since everyone is his own judge, everyone is in danger, givenmanspropensity to let passion override reason. Civil society emerges whenmensurrender their executive right and adopt a constitution based on thedeclaration of their natural rights and assigning the job of safeguardingthose rights to society alone.Lockes views on the state of nature include a new historical account of

the rise of property. By describing property as the product of labour,Locke denes property as an extension of the individual. Property existsin the state of nature because labor does (Second Treatise, Chapter V, 44).Locke turns property into something autonomous, private, and personal.Consequently, he makes no distinction between self-preservation and thepreservation of property. Clearly, society is formed to uphold civil peaceand safeguard property.Locke maintains that the state of nature exists among nations because

there is no higher authority to which states can yield their executivepowers. He advocates a law of nations that binds nations in the sameway that the declaration of natural rights binds individuals in society, by

22 Alexis Keller

providing a legal bond to uphold peace. As such, his conception ofinternational society is not at all different from that of his predecessors.However, his account of individuals property rights leads him to developone core proposition: since civil societies are established to foster anunmitigated defence of natural rights, the law of nations is equallybound by the need to protect property and should be construed as ameans of safeguarding the states possessions. Locke goes even furtherto work out a set of arguments that paves the way for the colonial settle-ment of vacant lands and that endorses the English expansion.17 Hebuilds the Grotian idea of occupatio into a theory of appropriation thatstresses the importance of making improvements to the land as anecessary condition for ownership.18 Therefore dealings between statesboil down to cooperation between European states and allow for theappropriation of the great tracts of ground to be found and which liein common (Locke 1988, ch. 5, 45).Despite their theoretical variances, Grotius and his successors analyzed

the foundations of the international order by drawing a distinctionbetween the state of nature and civil society. Nations signed treaties forthe same reasonmen turned their backs on the state of nature. The societyof nations, the social contract binding nations, was a work in progress.By the eighteenth century, the building blocks of international society

were no longer being called into question. Instead, attention was focusedon how best to regulate such a society. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713)marked the end of the Spanish war of succession and sparked widespreaddebate on how to bring peace to Europe and where the limits of the societyof nations lay. The challenge was to analyze harmony between nations andespouse a vision of solidarity in international affairs. This was the back-ground to the economic conception of society which emerged in thewritings of several authors around 1730. This new idea of the marketprovided a fresh insight into international relations, especially concerningthe issue of war and peace.Most of the natural law theorists had found thatthe concepts used to describe civil society could not be stretched enoughto include cooperation among states. The idea of social contract offered

17 For example, according to Locke, the indigenous people have property rights that arelimited to the result of their labor. They own the fruit and nuts they collect, the wildwheat that they harvest, the meat they hunt, but in no way do they own the land on whichthey live. Conversely, people who belong to civilization live under a government and farmthe land are entitled to wage war against the Indians and to impose severe peaceconditions in retribution for damages incurred (Locke 1998, ch. 5, 3738, 4143, andch. 16).

18 Several scholars have underlined the afnities between Grotiuss thinking here and thesubsequent arguments of Locke and other liberal political theorists (Arneil 1996,pp. 4654; also Tully 1993a, pp. 13778; 1993b, pp. 25382).


no guarantee of peace among nations. War was averted through agree-ments and mutual pledges, as exemplied in Abb Saint-Pierres famousMmoire pour rendre la paix perptuelle en Europe (Project to bring perpetualpeace in Europe) (1712), in which he set out his doctrine on collectivesecurity.By 1730, many authors had subscribed to the view that economics

could replace politics to create a new international order. Frances ega-litarian liberals went up against mercantilist forces and the absoluterule of Louis XIV, using economic rationale to reinvigorate the Stateand champion their vision of solidarity between nations (Meyssonnier1989). The Physiocrats (Quesnay, Dupont de Nemours, Mercier de laRivire, and Gournay), who drew heavily on natural law theorists,pushed to its limits the boundaries of this new perception of politicaldealings between nations (Larrre 1992). Similarly, in Scotland, DavidHume and the Scottish historical school (Adam Ferguson, WilliamRobertson, and John Millar) building on Mandevilles social theory allagreed that international relations needed a fresh start, with zero-sum(power play) rationale giving way to a winwin philosophy based oncommerce. Two authors take centre stage in this debate: Montesquieuand Adam Smith.

Rethinking international order in eighteenth-centuryEurope: Montesquieu and Adam Smith

When addressing the issue of relations between states, Montesquieuunequivocally acknowledges his intellectual debt to natural law theorists.In his Penses, he explicitly says that he is [paying] tribute to MessrsGrotius and Pufendorf for having accomplished in exemplary fashionsomething that part of this work [The Spirit of the Laws] required of me,with a touch of genius to which I could never have aspired (Montesquieu1991, Penses no. 1537 and no. 1863 (my translation)). In keeping withthis debt, he levels erce criticism against the Hobbesian view of the stateof nature in The Spirit of the Laws (Book I, Chap. 2), drawing onPufendorfs arguments on inherent sociability and the Stoic perceptionof justice espoused by Cicero.19

A man in the state of nature would have the faculty of knowing rather thanknowledge. It is clear that his rst ideas would not be speculative ones; he wouldthink of the preservation of his being before seeking the origin of his being. Such aman would at rst feel only his weakness; his timidity would be extreme: and as for

19 On the relations between Montesquieu and Stoicism see Larrre 1999.

24 Alexis Keller

evidence, if it is needed on this point, savages have been found in forests; every-thing makes them tremble, everything makes them ee. In this state, each feelshimself inferior; he scarcely feels himself an equal. Such men would not seek toattack one another, and peace would be the rst natural law. Hobbes gives menrst the desire to subjugate one another, but this is not reasonable. The idea ofempire and domination is so complex and depends on so many other ideas, that itwould not be the one they would rst have. . . . Besides feelings, which belong tomen from the outset, they also succeed in gaining knowledge; thus they have asecond bond, which other animals do not have. Therefore, they have anothermotive for uniting, and the desire to live in society is a fourth natural law. (Mon-tesquieu 1989, book I, ch. 2, pp. 67)

His belief in mans innate sociability in the state of nature did not stopMontesquieu from recognizing that nations are prone to war when menform societies. On that score, he moved closer to Hobbes. The thirst forstrength and power puts states at loggerheads. International politics isall about war moving on from past wars and facing up to impendingwars and efforts to forestall war (Montesquieu 1989, book I, ch. 3).Nevertheless, Montesquieu rejects out of hand the solutions furnishedby his contemporaries. While he shares their distaste for universal mon-archy, with its anarchical, power-hungry bent, he refutes their conclu-sions. International order should not be forged through a system ofbalance of power, and sustaining the balance does not safeguard peaceamong nations.This view guided Montesquieu when, in 1724, he wrote his Rexions

sur la Monarchie universelle en Europe (Reections on universal monarchyin Europe).20 The term balance only appears in one footnote(Montesquieu 1951, II, p. 37, note a), and is referred to in the body ofthe text as sum of all against all [cet tat deffort de tous contre tous], aparaphrase which leaves the reader in no doubt that it refers to the ux ofwar rather than the stability of peace. Efforts to maintain the balance sparkan arms race, keeping the risk of conict alive and ultimately wreaking justas much havoc as actual warfare. The mix of universal monarchy andbalance is not enough to check the downward spiral into war or forge agenuine relationship between states.21 What makes Montesquieus ideasgroundbreaking is that his answer to military conquest is not balance ofpower, but commerce. Like Melon, who published his Essai politique sur lecommerce (Political essay upon commerce) in 1734, Montesquieu sees

20 This thirty-one page document remained unpublished until 1891, althoughMontesquieudid incorporate most of the text in his (The) Spirit of the Laws.

21 Montesquieus critique of the Abb de Saint-Pierres vision for peace and of LiebnizsEuropean republic must be viewed in this context. For Montesquieus critique of theideas of Leibniz see Montesquieu, 1998, n352.


commerce as more than a means to power, something that Colbert,Leibniz, and many others before him had clearly grasped. Commerce isa different type of power, a counterweight rather than a mainstay ofconquest.22

The thesis Montesquieu began outlining in his Reections is eshedout in full in The Spirit of the Laws (1748) (Larrre 2001, pp. 33573).The works fourth section (Books 2023) specically addresses theissues of commerce, currency, and population. While the rst nineteenbooks also refer to trade, the comments are more focused on the activ-ities of merchants and their role as private individuals. Book 20 marksthe start of an extensive study of the international dimension to com-merce. Montesquieu does not seek merely to counter the advocates ofmercantilism or the French egalitarian liberals. If that were all, he wouldhave expounded a full-blooded economic theory in The Spirit of the Laws,like Quesnay or Adam Smith. Instead, he was more interested in show-ing commerce in a political light, portraying it as the new bedrock ofcooperation between trading nations, a point he himself stresses at thestart of Book 20 (ch. 4), commerce is related to the constitution.The passage in Book 20 (ch. 2) setting out his thinking has gone down

in history:

The natural effect of commerce is to lead to peace. Two nations that trade witheach other become reciprocally dependent; if one has an interest in buying,the other has an interest in selling, and all unions are founded on mutual needs.(Montesquieu 1989, p. 338)

It was not a new idea in Europe. The entire eighteenth century was astandoff between the opposing views of commerce as a civilizing force andas a craven, warmongering venture, between age-old virtues and modern-day corruption (Pocock 1975, 1985).23 Merchants gradually came torepresent the values of sociability which the Enlightenment movement

22 During the eighteenth century the term commerce applied to more than the exchangeof merchandise. Besides referring to the exchange of goods, Daniel Roche explains that italso referred in the broadest general sense . . . to the agent of the reciprocal relationshipbetween men, a key element of sociability (Roche 1993, p. 39). This coincides with thedenition found in the 1694 edition of the Dictionnaire de lAcadmie franaise:Commerce signie aussi communication et correspondance ordinaires avec quelquun,soit pour la socit seulement, soit aussi pour quelques affaires. Decades later, thephysiocrat Vron de Forbonnais will similarly state in his article on commerce of theEncyclopdie (1753), On entend par ce mot, dans le sens gnral, une communicationrciproque. Il sapplique plus particulirement la communication que les hommes sefont entre eux des productions de leur terre et de leur industrie.

23 We should, however, point out that eigtheenth-century French political thought does notfeature prominently in the analysis put forth by Pocock. Rousseau andMably are scarcelymentioned, as well as Montesquieu, whose seminal work The Spirit of the Laws is proof

26 Alexis Keller

in France in particular held up as an antithesis to the blue-bloodedveneration of warfare. Commerce put morality into perspective andhelped overcome prejudice.Although it was not new, Montesquieus vision of commerce had by no

means garnered broad consensus. At the time, foreign trade was perceivedalmost exclusively as leverage used by governments in their dealings withother states. The Rexions politiques sur les nances et le commerce (Politicalreections upon nance and commerce) (1738), by Charles-Henri Dutot,is a perfect example of the wave of writing that portrayed war and com-merce as two sides of the same political coin. Montesquieu does not justunderscore the inter-reliance of states, but also their shared interests:

Europe is now a nation of nations; France and England need the prosperity ofPoland andMuscovy just as their own provinces need each other. Similarly, statesseeking to consolidate power by destroying their neighbours tend to weaken theirown position in the process. (Montesquieu 1951, II, p. 34 (my translation))

Since a country can only sell its produce to others if they too are in aposition to sell and thus acquire wealth, one states prosperity cannot bebuilt on others poverty. A countrys trading system can only be sustain-able if commerce is balanced (Montesquieu 1989, book 20, ch. 23).Commerce cannot remain unilateral. Factories in other countries pro-duce the resources needed to satisfy the demand that domestic outputcannot meet (Montesquieu 1991, Penses, no. 343).The logical conclusion of recognizing that states need each other to

acquire wealth is an acceptance of free trade, albeit subject to conditions.Montesquieu does not countenance unbridled freedom of trade, allclearly demonstrated by his detailed views on border taxes:

Where there is commerce there are customs houses. The object of commerce is toexport and import commodities in favor of the state, and the object of the customshouses is a certain duty on that same exporting, also in favor of the state.Therefore, the state must be neutral between its customs houses and its commerceand must arrange that these two things never thwart one another; then one enjoysthe liberty of commerce there. (Montesquieu 1989, book 20, ch. 13)

On this score, commerce is unmistakably subject to a measured degree ofstate control. To ensure that customs and commerce never thwartone another, states must resign themselves to adopting prudent policiesthat do not ultimately sap this source of income. Free trade is indeed thenorm, but it remains connected to a higher imperative, that of the statesinterests.

that the future ofmodern societies was the object of extensive debates in France. Formoreon these debates in France see Spitz 1995. More generally, on the benets beyond peacethat commerce brings in the eighteenth century, see Neff 1990.


While rejoicing in the fact that rising commerce brought nationstogether, Montesquieu was aware of the pitfalls. Despite their sharedinterests rooted in trade, states still desired power and this exacerbatedeconomic rivalry. In his own words, the avarice of nations disputes themovables of the whole universe (Montesquieu 1989, book 20, ch. 23).Hence his reservations about the English model, set out in Chapter 27 ofBook 19. The entire chapter focuses on the general spirit of the Englishnation and is written in the conditional tense, as if Montesquieu weredescribing a unique, fragile, and inimitable model, which did not matchany of the forms of government he had outlined (Baker 1990, ch. 8). Hedwelt on the power of this nation, which could assert against its enemiesan immense ctional wealth that the trust and the nature of its governmentwould make real (Montesquieu 1989, book 19, ch. 27, p. 327), yet heused the example of England to undermine the idea of doux commerce:

A commercial nation has a prodigious number of small, particular interests; there-fore, it can offend in an innity of ways. This nation would become sovereignlyjealous and would nd more distress in the prosperity of others than enjoyment inits own. And its laws, otherwise gentle and easy, might be so rigid in regard to thecommerce and navigation carried on with it that it would seem to negotiate onlywith enemies. (Montesquieu 1989, book 19, ch. 27, p. 328)

Basically, Montesquieu is torn. Although trade should in theory bringnations together around shared interests, the lack of any checks on humanpassions such as hatred, envy and jealousy and the increase in prosperityspark fresh conict. States still crave glory and seek to dominate othercountries. The only difference is that their methods have changed: wealth,not arms, is their leverage.Furthermore, although the spread of commerce tended to ease the

power play between civilized nations, Montesquieu recognized thatthe struggle was merely shifted to dealings between European powersand their colonies. Interdependence gave way to full-blown reliance,and commerce reserved its benets for European nations alone(Montesquieu 1989, book 21, ch. 21). This view shaped his critique ofimperial ideology. In his Considrations sur les causes de la grandeur desRomains et de leur dcadence (Considerations on the causes of the greatnessand decadence of the Romans) (1734),Montesquieu expands on the well-known tale of the conquering Romans shedding their civic virtues as theybuilt their empire. He rejects the idea of turning armies into a PraetorianGuard following victory and questions the deployment of occupyingforces when troops are needed to protect home territory. Let there be nomistake, however. His criticism of empires or what David Hume namedenormous monarchies (Hume 1985, p. 340) is driven by economic

28 Alexis Keller

rationale, the pioneering vision of social relations based on commerce(Pagden 1995, especially pp. 15677). His censure of the colonial systemstems from its perversion of the true spirit of commercewhich should berooted in mutual recognition and gain.Montesquieu never equated this true spirit of commerce with mere

trade in goods. He viewed it chiey as a relationship between people. Ascommerce spread, so too did knowledge, not least knowledge of the worldaround us. Mindful of this fact, Montesquieu did not share the disdain ofmerchants travel writings shown by many of his contemporaries, includ-ing Diderot and Rousseau. The innite spread of commercial networkscreates an arena in which nations come together without erasing polit-ical borders. Montesquieu is categorical on this point. Any move to focuson commercial ties to the exclusion of state borders would once againraise the spectre of universalism. Complementarity is the byword. HenceMontesquieu was fundamentally opposed to the idea of completely cut-ting all ties between commerce and state, which became the holy grail ofpolitical economy after 1750. His rationale did, however, help to pave theway for the market to be perceived as a mechanism regulating relationsbetween states. Instead of marking a transition from one reference systemto another, The Spirit of the Laws tackled a fresh subject, one later taken upand nalized by Adam Smith when he merged the political concept ofnation with the economic idea of the market.Even more strikingly than in France, the eighteenth century heralded a

return to brass tacks in Britain. In a sense, the Act of Union with Scotlandin 1707 ushered in an era of extensive debate on the inner workings of civilsociety.24 Scotland embraced a historical and comparative approach tophilosophy putting into broader perspective the hardcore Whiggismspawned by Englands 1689 revolution (Hont and Ignatieff 1983;Pocock 1993, especially part III).25 Constitutional advances were deemedpart and parcel of progress in society. Civil freedom was equated withcommercial success and civic virtue or public-mindedness, inextricablylinked to a series of favorable social and economic conditions. No singlepublication acts as standard-bearer for the comparative approach, butelements can be found in Adam Smiths long unpublished Lectures onJurisprudence (1761 and 1766), Adam Fergusons Essay on the History ofCivil Society (1767), William Robertsons View of the Progress of Society inEurope from the Subversion of the Roman Empire to the Accession of Charles V

24 For the political background see Riley 1978; Robertson 1995.25 On the intimate continuity between earlier natural law theories and the Scottish

Enlightenment, see Haakonssen 1996. On the renewal of civic virtue in Scottish culture,see Sher 1985.


(1769), John Millars Observations Concerning the Distinction of Ranks inSociety (1771), and nally, in a book which embraces and transcends thetrend, Adam Smiths Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth ofNations (1776). Opposition to despotic rule and absolute monarchymay have been imbued with a greater sense of urgency in France, butScotland was more receptive to an innovative perception of politics.Notwithstanding this, the differences should not be overplayed, giventhe regular exchanges of views across the English Channel.26

Adam Smith devotes an entire chapter to the law of nations in Lectureson Jurisprudence (1766), systematically examining the various underlyingrules (Smith 1982, pp. 54554), but it is in The Theory of Moral Sentiments(1759) that he lays the theoretical foundations for his attack on the tradi-tional conception of relations between states.27 In the opening passagesof his Theory of Moral Sentiments, he posits his fundamental claim thatsympathy is prevalent among men.

How selsh soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles inhis nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happinessnecessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery ofothers, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner.That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact tooobvious to require any instances to prove it. (Smith 1984, p. 9)

To substantiate his arguments, Smith draws on Mandeville, Hutcheson,andHume;Humes 1739Treatise of HumanNature portrayed sympathy asthe natural bridge between self-interest and the interests of society as awhole. Smith, however, goes one step further and explicitly describes hisbook as the pinnacle of moral philosophy. Commenting on Hobbes,Pufendorf, and Mandeville, h

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