Cave! Hic Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis
Strange, Susan. “Cave! Hic Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis.” International Organisation 36, no. 2 (1982): 479-496.
Strange’s classic critique of regime theory, often used as a touchstone for those regime-theorists wanting to make the point they recognise that there have been criticisms of their approach. As such it has at least a totemic importance. Strange argues for five shortcoming of regime theory: that it is a passing fad, is imprecise, has a value bias, is too static and is too state-centred. As in ‘What is Economic Power, and Who has it?’ (1975) the underlying history of bargains, which condition regimes are emphasised as being crucial to any understanding of the IPE. The rather brief structural power analysis conflates what Strange would come to term primary and secondary structures.
Reprinted in: Authority and Markets: Susan Strange’s Writings on International Political Economy, edited by Roger Tooze and Christopher May. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
Keywords: Foundational Work; Political Economy; Structural Power, Power; Theory; Regime Theory