Young organizes his assessment around two overarching issues. The first emphasizes the idea that regimes are dynamic systems. An understanding of regime formation is thus a springboard for inquiries into the effectiveness of these arrangements once they become operational and into the processes through which regimes change over time. The second stresses the importance of fostering a dialogue between scholars who espouse distinct ways of thinking about international institutions: the collective-action perspective arising from the fields of economics and public choice and the social-practice perspective associated with the fields of sociology and anthropology.

Within this framework, the book offers cutting-edge contributions regarding the tasks institutions perform, the effectiveness of regimes, institutional