The limits of hegemonic stability theory

International Organization

Volumn 39, Issue 4, 1985, Pages 579-614

  Snidal, Duncan ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84974081599     PISSN: 00208183     EISSN: 15315088     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S002081830002703X     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965).
2. The public goods interpretation is central in Kindleberger's writing. Robert Keohane, who has given the theory both its name and its prominence through his criticisms and revisions of it, also bases his use of the theory (explicitly in some places, implicitly in others) on public goods or collective action assumptions. His most relevant works include “The Theory of Hegemonic Stability and Changes in International Economic Regimes O. Holsti, R. Siverson, and A. George, eds., Change in the International System (Boulder: Westview, 1980); “The Demand for Regimes” and After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). Although Keohane (in correspondence useful in the revision of this article) feels it misrepresents his position, I argue below that he shares fundamental assumptions with Kindleberger even as he introduces important modifications and qualifications that accord with arguments in this article. But perhaps our positions differ most pointedly in how we approach the deficiencies of the theory. Keohane's solution is to demote the theory to a nonfalsifiable “interpretive framework,” useful for description but not for explanation (After Hegemony, pp. 39, 195). He uses this framework as part of an often compelling account of postwar international cooperation, but the theory itself is left in limbo: Neither right nor wrong, just available. I am more concerned with understanding the assumptions and hence the range of the theory, and how a revised, nontautological theory might better explain international politics.
3. For a succinct discussion and demolition of Friedman's wrongheaded “irrelevance of assumptions” argument, see Mark Blaug, The Methodology of Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 104–28. Even those who still cling to the irrelevance argument will surely agree that it is nevertheless important to know which assumptions are being used, what their logical implications are, and whether modifications of them provide more accurate predictions.
4. See Keohane, “Demand for Regimes,” pp. 348–50. For a more detailed elaboration based on the distinction between regime start-up and maintenance costs, see Charles Lipson, “The Transformation of Trade: The Sources and Effects of Regime Changes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982). Both Lipson and Keohane show the limitations of “leadership lag” arguments.
5. Stephen Krasner, “State Power and the Structure of International Trade,” World Politics 28 (April 1976).
6. Ibid., p. 335.
7. Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation (New York: Basic, 1975).
8. Tom Baumgartner and Tom Burns, “The Structuring of International Economic Relations,” International Studies Quarterly 19 (June 1975).
9. This symbiosis between hegemony and cooperation is reflected in Keohane's assessment of the beneficiaries of postwar U.S. hegemony. Secondary states in the system have benefited greatly, probably more than the hegemonic power. Evaluating the benefits to smaller and less developed states (which are not really full members of international economic regimes) is harder, but the tentative conclusion is that they fared better than they would have done under feasible alternatives. See After Hegemony, pp. 45, 252–57.
10. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Stein points out related similarities between A. F. K. Organski's power transition model and hegemonic stability theory in “Hegemon's Dilemma.”
11. Keohane, After Hegemony, McKeown, “Tariffs.”
12. Of course, it is possible that a regime will be a “public” good to a subset of states and that the theory only concerns the provision of a regime benefiting a more restricted set of states. Domestic analogies would include higher union wages as a public good to union workers but not to employers and nonunion workers, or oligopoly profits as a public good to colluding oligopolists but not to consumers. However, the claims for the virtues of hegemonic order do not follow from an analysis of such “restricted public” goods, and the implications of such a revised theory would be very different and less attractive. For different but related critiques of the centrality of “order” in the hegemonic stability and regimes literature, see Susan Strange, “Cave! Hic Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), pp. 486–88, and Richard Ashley, “The Poverty of Neorealism,” ibid. 38 (Spring 1984), pp. 245–48.
13. I use nonexclusion in terms of the inability to control exclusion. See Duncan Snidal, “Public Goods, Property Rights and International Organizations,” International Studies Quarterly 23 (December 1979).
14. Kindleberger, “International Economic Organization,” p. 37. Keohane in After Hegemony parts company with Kindleberger in arguing that collective action is possible under certain circumstances.
15. This is only the briefest summary of major points in the rapidly growing literature on international cooperation. The arguments here reflect a perspective shared by such recent analyses of international cooperation as Keohane, After Hegemony, Kenneth Oye, ed., Cooperation under Anarchy (forthcoming as a special issue of World Politics, October 1985); and Duncan Snidal, “International Cooperation: A Game Theory Analysis of Regimes and Interdependence” (book manuscript).
16. For a discussion of solution theory in n-person games, see Martin Shubik, Game Theory in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982).
17. Thomas Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehavior (New York: Norton, 1978).
18. Ibid., and Hardin, Collective Action. Hardin demonstrates how Olson's argument confuses the size of the overall group with the minimum-size group that can be effective in collective action. Schelling (Micromotives, p. 221) also has some interesting observations on how it is not always “k” but often its relation to “n” that is most important. But for the case of public goods, k alone is the most relevant criterion for successful cooperation.
19. Shubik, Game Theory.