Power and Strategies of Rule - Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order - page 80

bell, Unlikely Allies: Britain, America, and the Victorian Beginnings of the Special Relationship (London: Hamble-
don and London, 2008); and Ferguson, Colossus , 216-17.
16 For a discussion of these alternatives logics, see John Gerard Ruggie, “Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an
Institution,” in Ruggie, ed., Multilateralism Matters , 3-47.
17 See Galia Press-Barnathan, Organizing the World: The United States and Regional Cooperation in Asia and
Europe (New York: Routledge, 2003).
18 On the creation of America's informal empire of hub-and-spoke client states in the Middle East, see Marc J.
O'Reilly and Wesley B. Renfro, “Evolving Empire: America's 'Emirates' Strategy in the Persian Gulf,” Internation-
al Studies Perspective 8, no. 2 (May 2007), 137-51.
19 The classic statement of this functional view of institutions is Keohane, After Hegemony . For arguments that
institutions help states cope with situations of uncertainty, see Barbara Koremenos, “Contracting Around Interna-
tional Uncertainty,” American Political Science Review 99 (November 2005), 549-65; and Peter Rosendorff and
Helen Milner, “The Optimal Design of International Trade Institutions: Uncertainty and Escape,” International Or-
ganization 55, no. 3 (Autumn 2001), 829-58.
20 For useful summaries of this approach to institutions, see Andreas Hasenclever, Peter Mayer, and Volker
Rittberger, Theories of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), chap. 3; and Lisa
L. Martin and Beth Simmons, “Theories and Empirical Studies of International Institutions,” International Organiz-
ation 52, no. 4 (Autumn 1998), 89-117.
21 Terry M. Moe, “Political Institutions: The Neglected Side of the Story,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Or-
ganization 6 (Special Issue 1990), 213.
22 The notion that institutions can be used by states as mechanisms of political control starts with the neo-institu-
tional view of the causal mechanisms at work. That is, institutions shape and constrain state behavior by providing
value in terms of commitment and reduction of uncertainty or transaction costs. Political control is exerted through
the manipulation of these causal mechanisms, which alter the distribution of gains from institutional agreements.
23 This argument is developed in Lloyd Gruber, Ruling the World: Power Politics and the Rise of Supranational
Institutions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
24 For a debate on the role and limits of international institutions, see Randall L. Schweller, “The Problem of In-
ternational Order Revisited: A Review Essay,” International Security 26, no. 1 (Summer 2001), 161-86; and corres-
pondence by Robert Jervis, Henry R. Nau, and Schweller, “Institutionalized Disagreement,” International Security
27, no. 1 (Summer 2002), 174-85.
25 In making binding international agreements, a state is reducing its freedom of action—and in this sense, such
agreements are costly to states. Abbott and Snidal describe this reduction of policy autonomy as “sovereignty costs,”
noting that the “costs involved can range from simple differences in outcome on particular issues, to loss of authority
over decision making in an issue-area, to more fundamental encroachments on state sovereignty.” Kenneth Abbott
and Duncan Snidal, “Hard and Soft Law in International Governance,” in Goldstein et al., Legalization and World
Politics , 52.
26 The classic statement of the strategic use of commitment, in which states seek to “constrain the other's choices
by affecting his expectations,” is Thomas Schelling, Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1960), quotation at p. 122. Schelling has recently restated the basic insight: “Commitment is central to promises and
threats, to bargaining and negotiations, to deterrence and arms control, to contractual relations. I emphasize the para-
dox of commitment—to a relationship, to a promise or a threat, to a negotiating position—entails relinquishing some
options, giving up choices, surrendering opportunities, binding oneself. And it works through shifting the expecta-
tions of some partner or adversary or even a stranger of how one will behave or react.” Thomas Schelling, Strategies
of Commitment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), vii.
27 Moe, “Political Institutions,” 227-28.
28 Michael Crozier, The Bureaucratic Phenomenon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964).
29 See the discussion by Thomas Schelling of “the power to bind oneself.” Schelling, Strategy of Conflict , 22-28.