Increasing the Incentives for International Cooperation

Abstract

I am happy to respond to the invitation to comment on Bruce Russett's and John Sullivan's most useful and sensible article. The concept of collective goods must play a starring role in any adequate theory of international organization and cooperation so there is every reason to encourage work of this kind. Russett's and Sullivan's article is, moreover, worthy of extension and criticism on many specific points. On some of these points I have minor technical (or in some cases expositional) criticisms. But relevant as such technical issues can be, they attract only a specialized interest and are of far less practical importance than Russett's and Sullivan's central concern with the conditions under which more international collective goods can be obtained. They ask, in effect, how patterns of international organization and cooperation that could help to improve the inefficient, and at times even chaotic and violent, international system could in practice be attained.