Oran R. Young is a key participant in recent debates among international relations scholars about the dynamics of rule-making and rule-following in international society. In this book, he weaves together theoretical issues relating to the formation of international regimes and substantive issues relating to the emergence of the Arctic as a distinct region in world affairs.
Young divides the overall process of regime formation into three stages—agenda formation, negotiation, and operationalization—and argues that each stage has its own particular political dynamics. Efforts to explain or predict developments in specific issue areas, he suggests, require careful attention to each stage in the process.
Empirically, Young examines in detail the events leading to the formation of the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy and the Barents Euro-Arctic Region. Although these cases exhibit the defining characteristics of all international regimes, they broaden our understanding of institutional arrangements that are largely programmatic, rather than regulatory, in nature and that are based on soft-law agreements.