Abstract
“International cooperation is a subject of manifesting importance for anyone concerned about the prospects for world peace and order” because today cooperation is everywhere: in economics with the WTO, in politics with the UN and even in security issues with the NATO. International cooperation is a “voluntary adjustment by states of their policies so that they manage their differences and reach some mutually beneficial outcome” and it has been influenced by liberal institutionalism ideas since the post war time. Cooperation must be analyzed as a long term engagement with the aim of creating an international regime that can impose rules on states, provide them with standard of behaviors, induce transparency and confidence in the relations and guide or solve problems between them. This liberal development has a more optimistic view on the international system than the theory it challenges: Neo¬realism. Both theories' definitions of the international system are based on the same principles: The anarchy reigning the system – anarchy being the reason for the absence of a central government –makes states the main, unitary and interest maximizing actors. Neo¬realism and liberal institutionalism also focus on solving problems existing in the international system: They study the behavioral regularities in order to explain why the balance of power and the status quo has evolved. However, they still differ in their approach to cooperation and the effect of anarchy on state's willingness to cooperate. Cooperation takes place on different levels of the international life but it also affects many small parts of the world: For instance in the EU, cooperation is pushed way further when compared to the international level of cooperation between states. And therefore, liberals and realists do not focus on the same actors when they study it: While the former has a more global approach by taking the existing international organizations and explaining why they are relevant, the latter starts with a point of view of the state and explains why cooperation is really hard and even impossible. So how does anarchy really affect states' willingness of cooperation? First, one must understand the pessimistic point of view of realists, then analyze the liberal's Utopian idea of globalization. But in this case, both theories stick to their idea so that's why I wish to see if a more realist possibility of cooperation is possible mainly through the analyses of a regionalization of the world.
