Trust in International Cooperation
International Security Institutions, Domestic Politics and American Multilateralism

Challenges conventional wisdoms concerning the role of trust in the origins of international cooperation and bipartisanship in US foreign policy.

Brian C. Rathbun (Author)

9781107603769, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 December 2011

274 pages
22.8 x 15.4 x 1.3 cm, 0.45 kg

'How trust explains not only people's attitudes toward multilateralism but the design of international organizations is the subject of this highly original and timely book. It offers an important challenge to rationalist models of institutional creation, and is a must read for anyone interested in questions of world order and global governance.' Deborah Welch Larson, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles

Trust in International Cooperation challenges conventional wisdoms concerning the part which trust plays in international cooperation and the origins of American multilateralism. Brian C. Rathbun questions rational institutionalist arguments, demonstrating that trust precedes rather than follows the creation of international organizations. Drawing on social psychology, he shows that individuals placed in the same structural circumstances show markedly different propensities to cooperate based on their beliefs about the trustworthiness of others. Linking this finding to political psychology, Rathbun explains why liberals generally pursue a more multilateral foreign policy than conservatives, evident in the Democratic Party's greater support for a genuinely multilateral League of Nations, United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Rathbun argues that the post-World War Two bipartisan consensus on multilateralism is a myth, and differences between the parties are growing continually starker.

1. Circles of trust: reciprocity, community and multilateralism
2. Anarchical social capital: a social psychological theory of trust, international cooperation and institutional design
3. The open circle: the failure of the League of Nations
4. Squaring the circle: the birth of the United Nations
5. Closing the circle: the negotiation of the North Atlantic Treaty
6. Coming full circle: fear, terrorism and the future of American multilateralism.

Subject Areas: International organisations & institutions [LBBU], International relations [JPS], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]