Getting It Done: Post-Agreement Negotiations and International Regimes

From NAFTA to NATO, from the WTO to the WHO, a vast array of international regimes manages an astounding number of regional and global problems. Yet the dynamics of these enormously influential bodies are barely understood. Scholars have scrutinized international regimes, but that scrutiny has been narrowly focused on questions of regime formation and regime compliance. Remarkably little attention has been paid to the crucial question of how regimes sustain themselves and evolve. This pioneering work sets about correcting that neglect. As its title suggests, Getting It Done explores how international regimes accomplish their goals—goals that constantly shift as problems change and the power of member-states shifts. In a series of conceptually bold opening chapters, the volume editors emphasize that successful evolution depends above all on a process of continuous negotiation—domestic as well as international—in which norms, principles, and rules are modified as circumstances and interests change. The second part of the volume takes this framework and applies it to four case studies, two regional, two global. Each case study presents the aims, achievements, and structure of a regime and demonstrates how it adjusts its course through negotiation. A final chapter draws both theoretical and practical lessons for the future.

See Introduction, Front Matter and Index. 

• Regimes and Negotiation: An Introduction - Bertram I. Spector and I. William Zartman

Part l: Framework

• Negotiating the Rapids: The Dynamics of Regime Formation - I. William Zartman

• Deconstructing the Negotiations of Regime Dynamics - Bertram I. Spector

• Norms and Principles as Support to Postnegotiation and Rule Implementation - Gunnar Sjùstedt

Part ll: Case Studies

• Regional Cases

• The Mediterranean Action Plan - Lynn Wagner

• The Challenges of Regime Adjustment and Governance in the OSCE: From Cold War Confrontation to Democratization and Preventive Diplomacy - Janie Leatherman

• Global Cases

• The Ozone Depletion Regime - Pamela S. Chasek

• The Regimes Against Torture - Anna R. Korula

Part lll: Analysis

• Regimes in Motion: Analysis and Lessons Learned - Bertram I. Spector and I. William Zartman

Bertram I. Spector is president of the Center for Negotiation Analysis and editor-in-chief of International Negotiation: A Journal of Theory and Practice.

I. William Zartman is the Jacob Blaustein professor of international organization and conflict resolution and director of the African Studies and Conflict Management programs at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.