State cooperation, challenges and theoretical perspectives from realism and regime analysis - Essay Example

While the theorists ascribed to the school of realism view conflict as a norm between interactions by countries, the proponents of international regime hold that cooperation is the defining factor to their school of thought. Those ascribed to the theory assumes that countries cooperate in various instances such as within trade, international security as well as within the scope of human rights among other issues (Hercl, 1994, p. 64-66). The existence of international trade necessitate that the participating states as players within the trade to be unified in some manner of cooperation (Litta, 2012, p. 45). Global trade blocks are good examples to these relations between the individual countries who constitute the players in international trade.

Besides trade, some common interest lead to cooperation between countries, which are such as the international environmental conservation, practices as well as the international collaborations in security issues. It is therefore the instances of cooperation that by definition allude to regimes (Buzan, 1993, p. 328-330). Despite the theory being inclined more onto the liberal view, hybrid definitions brings out another aspect of the theory as realist approach puts into perspective the neoliberal aspect in understanding the regimes.

According to Drezner (2009), “The primary goal of neoliberal institutionalism was to demonstrate that even in an anarchic world populated by states with unequal amounts of power, structured cooperation was still possible” (65). The international humanitarian organizations such as the UN and others, which are tasked with confirming the correct institutions of rights to human beings. Other regimes, well known across the globe, focus on the areas that the cooperating states would resolve. Another definition to regimes refers to them as partnered behavior, where they are explained by regularity of behaviors, common rules or norms as well as similar principles (Hasenclever, et al, 2000, p. 3). Nevertheless, existence in singular, of such aspects as regular behaviors does not always indicate the existence of a regime.

The general definition fails to confine the understanding of regimes to wholly regularized rules or patterns of behavior between states. The convergence of individual actors expectations describe the implicit regimes with an example of a regime being the ‘oil regime’ of the period between 1945 to 1970 which composed of common activities of oligopolistic interdependent organizations which were bound together by national procedure as well as rules and had the intervention of the United States as a sovereign authority.

Common regulations and rules dictated the cooperation of the countries involved while exploring, producing as well as marketing of the petroleum products, which formed the point of consensus in the regime. National regulatory frameworks as well as market structures illustrated terms and conditions of supply that defined this particular regime (Haggard and Simmons, 1987, p. 491-495). Countries hesitant to assent to frameworks that govern other states within a regime would not form part of this regime.

However, the