Decision Preference And International System Behavior Research

International regimes are attached great importance by international community fortheir functional roles. A prominent phenomenon that states are involving more withinternational regimes, is gradually occurred in today’s international society, whichdrives the institutionalization of international relations. In this logic, it’s predictablethat once international regime is established, states would participate in it positively.Nevertheless, states would choose not only positive participation, but also negativeparticipation during their interactions with international regimes, as a matter of fact ininternational society. So it leads to the questions: first, why would these behaviorsoccur when states participate in the regimes? Second, what’s the rationale andmechanism behind states’ change of behaviors?The existing studies provide three analytical approaches to explain. Firstly,System Determinism, which attributes state’s international institutional behavioralchange to a systematic level, includes factors such as power structure, internationalinstitution, and international norms. Secondly, Domestic Political Determinism talksabout bureaucratic decisional-making and domestic power structure to be the deepreasons which influence a state’s international institutional behavioral change. Thirdly,Two-Level Game treats state’s international institutional behavioral change as theresult of international negotiation and domestic game. These three analyticalapproaches all prove their own contribution to the understanding of state’sinternational institutional behavioral change. However, some of their analyticalperspectives may lack of explanatory efficiency, and may face some pragmatic andempirical challenges.The focal point of this article is the decision-making preferences of states. Thearticle tries to uncover state’s international institutional behavioral change byexamining state’s decision-making preferential alteration. The article assumes that thedecision-making preference of a state is the summation of preference of its domesticactors and as the result of the game between those actors. International regime,domestic politics, and the interaction between those two spheres form the decision-making environment which influences the preferences of domestic actors.The changes occur to the preferences of domestic actors will further alter its state’sdecision-making preference, thus, a state will witness its international institutionalbehavioral change. Thus, this article proposes an analytical framework explainingInternational institutional behaviors of states, and focuses on international-domesticinteraction (international-domestic power interaction, international-domestic interestsinteraction and international-domestic normative interaction) which influencesdecision-making of states.Last by not least, the author will test the hypothesis of this article by analyzingCanada’s behavioral changes (From joining in to seceding) in the case of KyotoProtocol, and also Soviet Union’s (later Russia) behavioral changes (From wanderingtill joining in) in the case of GATT/WTO negotiation.