The Role of Regimes in Post-War Europe

Abstract

International regimes continue to develop in international politics across different issue areas ranging from trade to the environment, human rights and security. In IR scholarship international regimes have been described as a ‘hot topic’ (Donnelly 1986) and a ‘growth industry’ (Levy et al. 1995). Recent work identifies the ‘emerging density and complexity’ of international regimes (Alter and Meunier 2009, p.13). In this chapter we situate our case study within the rich and fairly complex international regimes literature and the extensive European integration literature. First, we discuss the debates in the scholarly literature to clarify what we mean by an international regime. Second, we turn to explore the genesis of our case which is arguably found in the human rights regime established in post-war Europe. Third, we discuss the shift from human rights to minority rights following the end of the Cold War. This shift heralded the formation of the European minority rights regime. Fourth, in order to help explain the formation of the regime we return to the theoretical literature to consider the main causal factors set out in regime analysis: interests, power and knowledge. We suggest that while these three perspectives provide some insights for the formation of our case, they go only so far. In particular, we argue that these three causal factors have limited utility in explaining the operation of the European minority rights regime.