Institutional Divergence in International Society

Abstract

This thesis draws lessons from institutional analysis in domestic society and puts forwards a new perspective for our understanding of international institutional effects. Using the concept of international institutional divergence as a connecting thread, this thesis explicates the origins, forms, mechanisms and consequences of the predominating style of institutional politics in 21st century international society. This new perspective of international institutional divergence is used to shed new light on some old institutional questions, namely states’ compliance with international rules and international institutional change. Preliminary study is also made of the under-explored issue on states’ withdrawal from international institutions. In the context of institutional divergence, the working mechanisms of international institutions at the structural level reveal some hitherto unnoticed characteristics. The thesis does not put forward a theory of international institutions; instead it proposes a new viewpoint from which to study how international institutions matter. A basic mechanism for explaining international institutional effects is also put forward under the assumption of institutional divergence. This mechanism is a snapshot of institutional interaction that challenges the existing explanations of institutions’ roles that are static and monolithic at the international level. The thesis uses China’s institutional choices on sovereignty and intervention to analyse the interaction between international formal and informal institutions, and the international whaling governance is studied as an example of various states’ institutional choices and patterns of international institutional change. Interactions in the cracks of international institutions blur the borders between them. International institutions continually develop tensions through their interactive dynamics. Besides expanding our understanding of the ecology of international institutions, this thesis also identifies social relations as the motivating power for institutional choice at the agent level and institutional change at the structural level. The relational power hidden beneath the social relations among states is the real source of the political processes of international institutional divergence.