En-/Discouraging International Cooperations. Benefits and Drawbacks of International Organizations (PDF)

Scientific Study from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: International Organisations, grade: 4.0, University of Reading, language: English, abstract: This paper will discuss to what extent do domestic politics impact inter-state cooperation, specifically, whether regime type affects whether states will cooperate over security issues or not. Domestic politics constitute a wide range of subfields under which one can see education, businesses, energy, health care and other sectors of the political apparatus which are determined by the state apparatus. Different regime types approach domestic politics differently and consequentially also have different forms in which they execute foreign policy and behave internationally. The question proposed is meant to assess the extent to which domestic politics affect inter-state cooperation, i.e. to which extent does it matter whether the domestic regime is democratic, autocratic, or fascist regimes affect how the state formulates its foreign policy and engages in agreements with other states.

International cooperation is not a new phenomenon, yet it has been heavily understudied throughout the first and second world wars and only gained importance in the cold war period, where cooperation and alliance formations with the increasing number of newly independent states and the bipolar atmosphere of the global arena advocated for the importance of cooperation between states. This research is of importance because the ever-changing atmosphere of global shocks, ranging from security issues to civil wars and internal instability, have all affected how states behave internationally.

This study, however, will focus on how inter-state cooperation is independent from domestic regime structures and is rather driven by the Gross National Product (GNP) i.e. the financial strength of the country and Human Development Index (HDI) ranking of the state. The study is expected to unravel the importance of the financial capabilities to increase inter-state cooperation in the lack of an overarching global governance system. Different theoretical frameworks have approached the issue of regime types and their effects on international cooperation differently. This will be discussed in the literature review and the theoretical arguments sections.