International Relations. A self-Study Guide to Theory

System, 1943), federalism (the work of C.J. Friedrich in the 1960s) and 
neofunctionalism (the standard works being Ernst Haas’ The Uniting of Eu-
rope (1958) and Beyond the Nation State. Functionalism and International 
Organization (1964) ). However, as theories of regional integration, the fo-
cus was essentially on the role and function of institutions in regional, espe-
cially European, processes of integration. This focus also extended to the ef-
fects of integration and the establishment of institutions on the prospect of 
peace, stability and the future of the nation-state.
It was not until the mid-1970s that an attempt was made to formulate a 
general theory of International Relations on the basis of an institutionalist 
perspective and with a clear explanatory approach following the dominating 
(positivist) perspective of IR as a “science”. In the academic discipline of In-
ternational Relations, the advent of this new or neoinstitutionalism (the prefix 

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144 
“neo” indicating a “revival” or new “wave” of institutionalism in IR) is asso-
ciated with the publication of the works Power and Interdependence. World 
Politics in Transition by Robert O. Keohane and Joseph Nye (1977) and 
Keohane’s After Hegemony. Cooperation and Discord in the World Political 
Economy (1984). In the late 1980s and 1990s, interdependence analysis and 
the neoinstitutionalist regime theory formulated in After Hegemony were sub-
sequently developed into a complex and influential institutionalist research 
program within IR. The concept of interdependence was an important build-
ing block in regime theory, which has been broadened into what is now 
called neoliberal institutionalism. However, it should be noted that the termi-
nology used in connection with the neoinstitutionalist theory can sometimes 
be confusing. For instance, the terms “neoliberal institutionalism” and “ne-
oliberalism” are used in the literature interchangeably. In the theoretical de-
bate on neorealism in the 1990s “neoliberalism” was a common term (Bald-
win 1993). 
The “revival” of the study of institutions in IR since the mid-1970s and 
1980s again reflects the more or less parallel advent of neoinstitutionalism in 
all social and political sciences, as well as in economics. In sociology, for ex-
ample, the advent of neoinstitutionalism is associated with the works of John 
Meyer and Brian Rowan (1977), and of DiMaggio and Powell (1983); in 
economics a similar connection can be made to the work of Douglas North 
(1973, 1990). With the advent of new institutionalism in the social sciences, 
the previous focus on institutions in a formal and often legal and descriptive 
way has now been overcome. Apart from this commonality, institutionalist 
theory is so diverse that it has proved almost impossible to provide a system-
atic introduction to this multi-faceted theoretical strand. In Political Science 
and the Three New Institutionalisms (1996) Peter Hall and Rosemary Taylor 
facilitate a better understanding of new institutionalism by differentiating be-
tween rational choice institutionalism, sociological institutionalism and his-
torical institutionalism (Hall/Taylor 1996). 
Within the academic discipline of IR, neoinstitutionalist theory as devel-
oped by Robert Keohane belongs to rational choice institutionalism: a “utili-
tarian” or interest-based neoinstitutionalism found at the heart of regime the-
ory and its subsequent development into neoliberal institutionalism. Regime 
theory and neoliberal institutionalism are the results of a critical engagement 
with Waltz’ neorealist theory of international politics. It may come as a sur-
prise to learn that the outcome of this critical engagement is a modified struc-