Description
Why do powerful states resist temptations to withdraw from international regulatory regimes, when they could do so, when tensions with other states are deepening, and when the regulated activity is embroiled in security dilemmas? To examine the question, we consider the case of Britain’s relations with the first international regulatory authority, the International Telegraph Union (ITU), formed in 1865. Having joined late in 1871, in 1901 Britain seriously contemplated leaving the ITU. Britain’s adherence to the 1884 Submarine Cable Convention, the other part of the nineteenth century international telecommunications regime, was with a security reservation. Yet, despite wars of national unification in Europe and imperial conflicts, Britain became ever more closely involved with the ITU and with German and other European countries’ international telegraphy before 1914, even as the country was preparing for cable-cutting in a war with Germany. Because many conventional approaches have proven unsatisfactory (6 and Heims 2018, BIHG stream at BISA), this paper presents a fresh explanation, using neo-Durkheimian institutional theory. Comparing three subperiods, it shows that specific forms of social organisation in government cultivated a particular types of institutional buffering between security and commercial policy for telegraphy, which sustained commitment even as conflict deepened. Resilient commitment is explained with cumulative equifinality in institutional orderings in three subperiods but this does not constitute path dependence. The paper argues that the approach will have wider application in understanding international regimes.
