The usefulness of Neoliberal Institutionalism. Establishment of international organizations (PDF)

Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Politics - International Politics - General and Theories, grade: 1,7, LMU Munich (GSI), course: Contemporary debates in Political Science, language: English, abstract: Since the 1970s, institutions are in a renaissance within the social sciences and neoliberal institutionalism, founded and championed by political scientists as Robert Keohane, Joseph Nye, Robert Axelrod, Ronald Coase, Volker Rittberger and others.The relevance of international institutions for social behavior matters in the sense of international relations theories. Within the schools of thought in political sciences, neoliberal institutionalism is in a conflict with especially neorealist theory.

In this work, the concept of neoliberal institutionalism will get discussed in the sense of the establishment of international organizations. The work shall show, that neoliberal institutionalism may explain this establishment in the way of the actors motives (why are international organizations establishing?), but has some problems to explain, how (in which way concrete it comes to international organizations?). The rational preferences of the actors explain the motivation to establish international organizations, not the interaction to establish them.