International institutions vary widely in terms of key institutional features such as membership, scope, and flexibility. Barbara Koremenos, Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal argue that this is so because international actors are goal-seeking agents who make specific institutional design choices to solve the particular cooperation problems they face in different issue-areas. Using a Rational Design approach, they explore five important features of institutions--membership, scope, centralization, control, and flexibility--and explain their variation in terms of four independent variables that...

This 2007 volume is intended to help readers understand the relationship between international law and international relations (IL/IR). As a testament to this dynamic area of inquiry, new research on IL/IR is now being published in a growing list of traditional law reviews and disciplinary journals. The excerpted articles in this volume, all of which were first published in International Organization, represent some of the most important research since serious social science scholarship began in this area more than twenty five years ago. They are important milestones toward making IL/IR a...

These essays originally appeared as a special issue of the journal International Organization (59, 4, Fall 2005). The collection represents a shift in research on international institutions, from a preoccupation with showing that institutions mattered in world politics to a more recent exploration of the processes, mechanisms, and conditions under which they matter. The emphasis is resolutely eclectic. Rationalism is the social theory of choice for some contributors; others are more comfortable with social constructivism. Still others combine the two. Employing numerous theories, methods, and...

This 2007 volume is intended to help readers understand the relationship between international law and international relations (IL/IR). As a testament to this dynamic area of inquiry, new research on IL/IR is now being published in a growing list of traditional law reviews and disciplinary journals. The excerpted articles in this volume, all of which were first published in International Organization, represent some of the most important research since serious social science scholarship began in this area more than twenty five years ago. They are important milestones toward making IL/IR a...