The Life Cycle of Regimes: Temporality and Exclusive Forms of International Cooperation

In three important areas of international cooperation—global trade, nuclear security, and climate change—states are shifting away from inclusive multilateralism toward more exclusionary forms of interstate cooperation. In this article, we offer a historical institutionalist account of this change. We propose that the maturation of the existing multilateral regimes changed the payoff structure, creating incentives for states to establish alternative institutions centered on the principles of selective and discriminatory cooperation. Our findings suggest that the growth in exclusive forms of cooperation in trade, nuclear nonproliferation, and climate change should not be considered aberrations but are rather part of a process of regime maturation.