The central theme of this chapter has been that international rules, regulations, and organizations may help induce cooperative behavior, but they cannot be counted on to do so. International organizations almost inevitably face collective action problems arising out of the tension between solving distributional inequities, information asymmetries, and the benefits from coordination. Excludability and rivalry over the consumption of benefits provide incentives for member-states to cheat on their agreements or free ride on the efforts of others. Rules, regulations, and structure are likely to be the product of strategic maneuvering intended to address these difficulties. As such, international organizations are more likely to reflect national or individual interests as defined at a given moment than they are to be the factor that shapes national or individual interests. Still, organizations are sticky. Once created, they are hard to get rid of, so they can help tie the hands of leaders or increase the costs of deviant behavior.

A high level of compliance with an organization’s rules and regulations should not be mistaken for evidence that the organization is effective in altering behavior. The level of compliance is likely to be endogenous. Organizations are unlikely to pass rules that members are unwilling to follow unless the organization does not bother with effective means to monitor compliance and punish deviant behavior. As a consequence, many organizational decisions are shallow, making compliance easy. Decisions that would effectively alter behavior undoubtedly exist, but they may be relatively rare.

Compliance may be seen as a way to establish a national reputation. A reputation for cooperative behavior may make it easier for a state to reach cooperative arrangements with other states in the future. However, reputational concerns often are insufficient to promote international cooperation. Organizations, by acting as information disseminators, can help overcome incentives to free ride on promises or cheat. The biggest difficulty in designing successful international organizations is balancing their inclusiveness to reduce the collective action problem and not restricting their membership so much that they cannot meaningfully influence the policy problems they are designed to solve.