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Theories and Empirical Studies of International Institutions Theories and Empirical Studies of International Institutions The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Martin, Lisa L., and Beth A. Simmons. 1998. Theories and empirical studies of international institutions. International Organization 52(4): 729-757. Published Version http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/002081898550734 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:3382862 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Theoriesand EmpiricalStudies of International Institutions Lisa L.Martin and Beth A.Simmons Therole of internationalinstitutions has beencentral to thestudy of worldpolitics at leastsince the conclusion of WorldW ar II. Muchof thisresearch was, andcontinues tobe, pioneered in the pages of InternationalOrganization .Inthis article we take stockof pastwork on internationalinstitutions, trace the evolution of majorthemes inscholarship over time, and highlight areas for productivenew research. Our cen- tralargument is that research should increasingly turn to thequestion of howinstitu- tionsmatter in shaping the behavior of importantactors in world politics. New re- searchefforts shouldemphasize observable implications of alternative theories of institutions.W eadvocateapproaching international institutions as boththe object of strategicchoice and a constrainton actors’ behavior, an ideathat is familiarto schol- ars ofdomestic institutions but has been neglected in much of the debate between realistand institutionalist scholars of internationalrelations. Thearticle is organized into three major sections. The rst sectionprovides an analyticalreview of the development of studies of international institutions. From thebeginning, the pages of IO havebeen lledwith insightful studies of institutions, insome cases asking questions consistent with the research agenda we proposein thisessay. But the lack of a disciplinaryfoundation in the early years meant that manygood insights were simplylost, not integrated into other scholars’ research. Withthe professionalization of the discipline since the late 1950s, scholarship on internationalinstitutions has become more theoretically informed, and empirical re- searchhas begun more often to conform to social-scienti c standardsof evidence, withresults that provide both caution and inspiration for futureresearch. One of the mostconsequential developments for ourunderstanding of internationalinstitutions camein the early 1970s, when a newgeneration of scholarsdeveloped insights that openedup inquirybeyond that of formalorganizations, providing intellectual bridge- headsto the study of institutionsmore generally. Ourthanks for comments onpreviousversions go to Marc Busch,Peter Katzenstein, BobKeohane, SteveKrasner, andparticipants in the IO ftiethanniversary issue conference. InternationalOrganization 52,4, Autumn 1998, pp. 729– 757 r 1998by The IO Foundationand the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology 730 InternationalOrganization Thesecond section explicitly addresses a themethat arises from thereview of scholarshipon institutions: whether international politics needs to be treated as sui generis, withits own theories and approaches that are distinct from other eldsof politicalscience, or whether it fruitfullycan draw ontheoriesof domesticpolitics. As ourreview shows, developments in studies of Americanpolitics, such as studies of votingand coalitional behavior, have often in uenced the way that scholars ap- proachedinternational institutions. Most of these efforts did not pay off withmajor insights.The functionalist approach to institutions adopted in the1980sowed little to theoriesof domesticpolitics, drawing more on economicmodels. T oday,we seethe pendulumswinging back, as more scholars turn to modern theories initially devel- opedto studydomestic political phenomena (see HelenMilner’ s articlein this issue). Here, we assesswhether these new attemptsare likely to be anymore successful than previousefforts. Thethird section turns to theproblem of researchagendas. Where does scholar- shipon international institutions go next? Our primaryargument in this section is thatattention needs to focus on how, not just whether,internationalinstitutions mat- terfor worldpolitics. T oooften over the last decade and a halfthe focal point of debatehas been crudely dichotomous: institutions matter, or theydo not.This shap- ingof the agenda has obscured more productive and interesting questions about variationin thetypes and degree of institutionaleffects, variations that were infact welldocumented in theless theoretical but well-researched case studies of thejour- nal’s earliestyears. Of course,we donotsuggest a returnto idiographicinstitutional analysis.Rather, we suggesta numberof linesof theoretically informed analysis that maylead to researchthat both asks better questions and is more subject to empirical testing.These paths include more serious analysis of the distributional effects of institutions,the relation between international institutions and domestic politics, the problemof unanticipatedconsequences, and a typologyof institutionaleffects. The Evolutionof anIdea: Institutions in International Politics EarlyStudies of theInstitutionalization of the Postwar W orld The‘ ‘poles’’ ofrealism and idealism— ofwhich much is madein graduateseminars— hadlittle to dowith the highly practical organizational analysis that dominated the pages of IO inthe rst decadesafter the war. Thefocus of attentionwas onhowwell thesenewly established institutions met the problems that they were designedto solve.On this score, few scholarlyaccounts were overlyoptimistic. Overwhelmed bythe magnitude of the political and economic reconstruction effort, few judged postwarorganizations as upto the task. Central to this debate was ahighlyrealistic understandingthat international politics would shape and limit the effectiveness of postwarinstitutions; virtually no one predicted that these would triumph over poli- InternationalInstitutions 731 tics.The UN, 1 theGeneral Agreement on T ariffs andTrade (GA TT), 2 theInterna- tionalMonetary Fund 3 —allwere thesubject of highlycritical review . Anumberof importantstudies grappled explicitly with the impact of theseinstitu- tionson thepolicies of the major powers and the outcomes for thecentral political andmilitary competition between them. The answers, predictably, were derivedfrom littlemore than informed counterfactual reasoning, but theydisplayed a sensitivityto thebroad range of possibleimpacts that institutions such as the League and the UN couldhave on themajor powers. In their examination of theideal of collective secu- rity,Howard C. Johnsonand Gerhart Niemeyer squarely inquired into the role that norms,backed by organizations such as theUN, playin affecting states’ behavior. Theyasked whether states were ‘‘preparedto use force or thethreat of forcefor the sakeof publiclaw and order rather than for thesake of theirnational advantage in relationto that of otherstates. ..How hasthe behavior of statesbeen affected by thesestandards?’ ’4 Thoughultimately more con dent in thebalanceof powerthan in normsembodied in the rule of law,these scholars were correctto pushfor amecha- nismthat might explain the effects of institutionson behavior:‘ ‘Wecannotclaim to havelearned much about the League experiment until we know how ithasaffected theproblem of harnessingand controlling the factors of forceand their role in the relationsof power.’’5 Aurryof studies in the early 1950s suggested possible answers. Pointing to the U.S. rolein decolonization and military aid for Korea,collective institutions were saidto raise U.S. ‘‘consciousnessof broader issues’ ’ thatmight affect American interestsand thereby make the U.S. moreresponsive to worldopinion. 6 By subject- ingpolicies to globalscrutiny— amechanism not unlike those of transparency and reputationcentral to theliterature in the1980s— the UN was viewedas having had an(admittedly marginal) effect on some of the most central issues of worldpolitics. Thoughlacking the elaborate theoretical apparatus of currentresearch, early stud- iesof postwarorganizations had many of the sameinsights that have informed ‘ ‘mod- ern’’ institutionalism.Paralleling much contemporary argument on the form ofcoop- eration,7 onestudy as early as 1949 argued that multilateralism was precludedin caseswhere there were signicant bargaining advantages and discrimination advan- tagesof proceedingbilaterally. 8 Foreshadowingmore theoretically sophisticated treat- mentsof informal versus formal agreements, 9 studiesof GA TTasearly as 1954 recognizedthat some agreements gain strength through their informal nature, and 1.See Goodrich1947, 18; Fox 1951; Hoffmann 1956; Claude 1963; and Malin 1947. But for the optimisticview, see Bloomeld 1960. 2.Gorter 1954. 3.See Knorr1948; and Kindleberger 1951a. 4.Johnson and Niemeyer 1954,27. 5.Niemeyer 1952,558 (italics added). 6.Cohen 1951. For a parallel analysisof institutionaleffects onSoviet behavior, see Rudzinski1951. 7.See Oye 1992;and Martin 1992b. 8.Little 1949. 9.Lipson 1991. 732 InternationalOrganization prescientof theregimes literature viewed the value of GA TTas‘‘afocalpoint on whichmany divergent views on appropriatecommercial policy converge.’ ’10 Lack- inga theoreticalhook on whichto hang these observations,
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