International "Standards" and International Governance

Kenneth Abbott and Duncan Snidal

No 18, Working Papers from Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago

Abstract: "Standards" are central mechanisms of international governance, but have different roles in various circumstances. These can be analyzed in terms of a simple typology. One key distinction is analytic: contrasting the Prisoners' Dilemma structure of traditional Pigovian externalities with the Coordination structure of network externalities. The second distinction is substantive: contrasting physical or technological externalities with externalities that arise in the creation of public policy. The four resulting circumstances are typically addressed by alternative governance arrangements: varying combinations of private and public governance - according to the respective interests and competencies of the two spheres - and varying levels of governance - national, regional or global - according to the scope of the problem and the capacity of institutions. Our analysis of these choices is primarily positive, but the comparative institutional framework we develop is equally useful for addressing the associated normative question - how should international standards be set?

Keywords: standards; international governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/about/publication ... ers/pdf/wp_00_18.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to harrisschool.uchicago.edu:80 (nodename nor servname provided, or not known)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:har:wpaper:0018

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Eleanor Cartelli ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).