The Importance of Africa to The World System After 9/11 Attacks: War on Terrorism or Integration for Sustainable Development

IPE as the politics of Interdependence and transnational relations;

According to (Gilpin 1975 in Strange 1984: 15) the politics of interdependence and transnational relations is a sovereignty at bay model. Transnationalism assumes a decline of the state and sees an image of the IPE consisting of the multiplicity of actors, the most important of all being the multinational corporation. This is seen as a web of state boundary crossing transnational processes which leads to the interdependence of trade and finance. It is simply the coordination of national policies, to find an agreed and efficient way of managing the world economy Miriam (Camps 1974 in Strange 1994, p. 20). When the rules to the game eroded, it gave way to international regimes. According to (Krasner 1983), international regimes were the dominant problematic of IPE, he define international regimes as a set of explicit or implicit principles or norms, rules and decision making procedures, around which actors expectations converge. He argued regimes were intervening variables between structural powers and outcome.

In a study between US and Canada and US Australian relations, in the issues areas, the management of money and ocean called Power and Interdependence, listed the change in state relative political power that is the political structure to explain regime change that is distinct from economic power and structures, taking into considerations the economic processes (Keohane and Nye 1977 in strange 1994, p. 21). Focus on international organization and the politics of international economic relations give international governmental relations to overshadowed transnational relations between cooperation, banks, religious leaders, universities and scientific communities are all in transnational relations. The principles, norms, rules and decision making processes of any regimes are better than none. Regimes focuses on the market authority nexus and vice versa, in basic value areas of security, wealth, freedom, and justice, affects the outcome of non regime non decision making outcomes. In IPE there are three main approaches to regime theory; the dominant liberal interests based approach, the realist critique of interest based approach and the knowledge based cognitive school of thought approach. The liberal approach to regime theory state that cooperation in anarchy is possible without a hegemon, because there exist a convergence of expectations. Regimes facilitate cooperation by establishing standard behaviour and sustain the probability of cooperation between states.

The liberals believe realist neglect the degree to which countries share interests and the nature of state relations, by implicitly modelling the world using the prisoner‘s dilemma classic play, in which the pay off structure makes defection a dominant strategy for both players. The sum of relatively small cooperative payoffs over time can be greater than the gain from a single attempt to exploit your opponent, followed by endless series of defection or tit for tat strategy (Axelrod 1984). In the prisoner’s dilemma, actors behaviour is determine by the assumptions that states are rational unitary gain maximizing actors living in anarchy and ridden by the security dilemma, that there is future consequences for present action, it is in the interests of states to cooperate in the present because in the future other states will defect on them, that states are concern with absolute gains and do not considers gains or loses of other states in their utility analysis. In contrast the realist argue states are concern with relative gains (Keohane 1984), he argued that international regimes can increase probability of cooperation by providing information, monitoring and reporting about the behaviour of others compliance. By reducing transaction costs, and generating the prospection of cooperation among members. Realist like Grieco proposes power based regime theories using hegemonic stability theory.

They argue, the presence of a strong hegemon is what makes a successful regime. Within regime theory, the liberals believe in cooperation through convergence of state interests through international institutions, while realists believe regimes simply reflect the distribution of power in the international system to serve the security and economic interests of powerful states. Susan Strange in the retreat of state for example argues that the post WW II international organizations such as the WB, GATT, IMF, WTO, are simply instrument of the American grand strategy(Strange 1996) While the cognitive knowledge based approach of regime theory in IPE is basically a critique of the rationalist liberals and realist of the usage of flawed assumptions such as that, nation states are always and forever rational actors, that interests remain static, that different interpretation of interest and power are not possible. They argue that when the rationalist game theory affects present decisions, they ignore a major implication of learning. The cognitivist uses a post positivist methodology which does not believes that social institutions or actors can be separated out of their surrounding socio-political context.