INTRODUCTION

International Organization 1986–91: The Rise of Norms and Domestic Politics

I was editor of International Organization from 1986 until the first part of 1991. The two most widely cited articles ever to appear in International Organization, Robert Putnam’s “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games” and Peter Haas’s “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” which was the lead article for a special issue on epistemic communities, appeared while I was editor.1 These two papers addressed issues that have become ever more important in the study of international relations: the influence of domestic politics on international behavior and systems; and the impact of ideas/norms/identities—the multiplicity of factors associated with nonmaterial considerations—in the study of politics. Our understanding of the relationship between domestic and international factors has grown richer since the late 1980s. But regarding nonmaterial factors, we are still wandering in the wilderness, despite Haas’s paper and a number of other notable contributions that appeared in International Organization before, during, and after the period when I was editor.

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EDITOR BIOGRAPHY

Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Studies at Stanford University. Krasner is also a Freeman Spogli Institute senior fellow, and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution. In 2002 he served as Director for Governance and Development at the National Security Council where he worked primarily on the Millennium Challenge Account. From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. Since 2009 he has been a member of the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace.

He served as the editor of International Organization from 1986 to 1992. Since 2014 he has been a Mercator Fellow at the Free University, Berlin. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

His work has dealt primarily with sovereignty, American foreign policy, and the political determinants of international economic relations. His major publications include Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investment and American Foreign Policy (1978), Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (1985), and Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999). Publications he has edited include International Regimes (1983), Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (co-editor, 1999), Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities (2001), and Power, the State, and Sovereignty: Essays on International Relations (2009).