Jay Ulfelder pushes back against David Bosco and Anne-Marie Slaughter's optimistic claims of a future governed through international cooperation:
As observers of institutional development have repeatedly shown, the prospect of mutual gains from better governance does not lead inexorably to the development of new regimes or the strengthening of existing ones. Disagreements over exactly what the rules ought to be and how to share the costs and benefits of enforcing them have a tendency to scuttle or cripple most integrationist projects. Institutions may be useful as solutions to problems of cooperation, but demand does not lead automatically to supply.
Right now, globalization probably is broadening and deepening possibilities for mutual gains from international cooperation, but obstacles to collective action may be strengthening as well, as America’s and Europe’s relative power declines and new powers arise. I think we’ve seen this dynamic at work in the failures of the Doha round of talks on new rules for global trade and the Copenhagen conference on climate change in 2009. In both cases, there was no lack of mutual interest; instead, it was the shifting balance of power that impeded deal-making. In Doha and Copenhagen, rising powers demanded larger concessions than established powers were willing to make.
Previous coverage on the future of foreign relations here.
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