Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables

Neha Saxena

Abstract

In a specific issue-area, player expectations converge around certain principles, norms, regulations, and decision-making processes, which are referred to as international regimes. Regimes have first been viewed as intervening variables that stand between fundamental causative causes and associated consequences and behaviour. There are three perspectives on the significance of regimes: conventional structural orientations dismiss them as at best ineffective; grotian orientations see them as an integral part of the international system; and modified structural perspectives see them as important only under specific constrained circumstances. The development of a regime is viewed as a function of five fundamental causal factors in Grotian and modified structuralist arguments, which support the idea that regimes can affect outcomes and behaviour: egoistic self-interest, political power, diffuse norms and principles, custom and usage, and knowledge.