Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Perspective [Hardcover]

This book compares the design and effectiveness of regional international institutions.Regional institutions are an increasingly prominent feature of world politics but their characteristics and performance vary widely. Studying a range of international institutions, including the EU, NATO and the Arab League, a group of leading scholars of regional institutions examine the relationship between their design and their performance.Regional institutions are an increasingly prominent feature of world politics but their characteristics and performance vary widely. Studying a range of international institutions, including the EU, NATO and the Arab League, a group of leading scholars of regional institutions examine the relationship between their design and their performance.Regional institutions are an increasingly prominent feature of world politics. Their characteristics and performance vary widely: some are highly legalistic and bureaucratic, while others are informal and flexible. They also differ in terms of inclusiveness, decision-making rules and commitment to the non-interference principle. This is the first book to offer a conceptual framework for comparing the design and effectiveness of regional international institutions, including the EU, NATO, ASEAN, OAS, AU and the Arab League. The case studies, by a group of leading scholars of regional institutions, offer a rigorous, historically informed analysis of the differences and similarities in institutions across Europe, Latin America, Asia, Middle East and Africa. The chapters provide a more theoretically and empirically diverse analysis of the design and efficacy of regional institutions than heretofore available.1. Comparing regional institutions: an introduction Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston; 2. Hanging together, institutional design and cooperation in Southeast Asia: AFTA and the ARF Yuen Foong Khong and Helen E.S. Nesadurai; 3. International cooperation in Latin America: the design of regional l‰