Deteriorated and Hardened International Institutions from Perspectives of Risk and Crisis Management

Abstract

We sometimes find strange but essential facts that some international institutions, with their elapsed time, do not fully function in the international crisis. I explain why institutions including international organizations and agreements cannot quickly and comprehensively respond the huge crisis. In addition, I analyze why the powers (participating states) do not expect that institutions will act in accordance with the changing national interests, causing the deterioration and hardening of institutions. In history of ten decades, inter-war period in the 1920s produced the many institutions like disarmament treaties, detente period in the 1970s enflowered arms talks and the CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, later OSCE), and inter-cold war period in the 1990s promoted lots of international regimes like Kyoto Protocol, CTBT(not coming into effect yet), and NPT's unlimited extension. These produced institutions later faced crisis between the powers, and many of them could not respond to the solution of the crisis, because of deterioration and hardening of the institutions. In order to explain these phenomena, I show typical examples of the CSCE/OSCE regimes in the several crises. At second, I explain a case of the 1.5 track of Ulaanbaatar Dialogue (UBD) for the dialogue of security issues and crisis in the North East Asia region. In my paper, I use institutional analysis and focus on relationship between institutions and powers in the perspective of risks and in the situation of crisis.