Power and Strategies of Rule - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 64

duce the policy autonomy of other states. 25 In return, states use commitments to reduce their
own policy autonomy as incentives to get other states to work within a set of rules and insti-
tutions that in fact limits their policy autonomy. When a state makes an institutional commit-
ment, it is agreeing to reduce its policy autonomy. Ideally, a state might want to remain un-
encumbered by international rules and institutional commitments, while operating in a global
system in which all other states are bound to rules and institutions. But in order to get other
states to make institutional commitments, states need to negotiate and offer restrictions on
their own policies so as to achieve agreement. 26
Thus, when deciding whether to sign a multilateral agreement, a state faces a trade-off.
In agreeing to abide by the rules and norms of the agreement, the state must accept some
constraints on its freedom of action—or independence of policymaking—in a particular area.
But in exchange it expects to get other states to do the same. The multilateral bargain will be
attractive to a state if it concludes that the benefits that flow to it through the coordination of
policies achieved through rule-based constraints on policy choice are greater than the costs
of lost policy autonomy.
A state's willingness to agree to a multilateral bargain will hinge on several factors that
shape the ultimate cost-benefit calculation. One is whether the policy constraints imposed on
other states (states B, C, D) by the multilateral agreement really matter to the first state (state
A). If the unconstrained behavior of other states is judged to have no undesirable impact on
state A, state A will be unwilling to give up any policy autonomy of its own. It also matters
if the participating states are actually able to credibly restrict their policy autonomy. If state
A is doubtful that states B, C, and D can actually be constrained by multilateral rules and
institutional agreements, it will be unwilling to sacrifice its own policy autonomy. Likewise,
state A will need to convince the other states that it, too, will be constrained. These factors
are all continuous rather than dichotomous variables—so states must make judgments about
the degree of credibility and the relative value of constrained policies.
When multilateral bargains are made by states with highly unequal power, the considera-
tions can be more complex. The more a powerful state is capable of dominating or abandon-
ing weaker states, the more the weaker states will care about constraints on the leading state's
policy autonomy. This is another way of saying that they will be more eager to see some lim-
its and restraints placed on the arbitrary and indiscriminate exercise of power by the leading
state. Similarly, the more the powerful state can actually restrain itself in a credible fashion,
the more the weaker states will be interested in multilateral rules and norms that accomplish
this end. When both these conditions hold—when the leading state can use its unequal power
to dominate and abandon weaker states and when it can restrain and commit itself—the weak-
er states will be particularly eager for a deal. They will, of course, also care about the positive
benefits that accrue from cooperation. From the perspective of the powerful state, the less
important the policy behavior of weaker states, the less the leading state will offer to limit