The author reviews the theoretical history of the international regime concept and its deployment within neorealist, neoliberal and institutionalist IR conceptual frameworks. He argues that the five criticisms or ‘dragons’ levelled by Susan Strange at the concept in her 1982 article ‘Cave! Hic dragones’ simultaneously underestimated the concept’s theoretical originality and exaggerated the degree to which it committed theorists to a static, ordered and statist conception of the global political economy. The author shows how the concept, stripped of its neorealist and neoliberal heritage, can be deployed within a critical, neo-Gramscian theoretical framework to analyse meso-level structures and the role that global civil society actors are playing in contesting the normative structures (rights and rules), procedures and compliance mechanisms of existing and prospective international regimes. © 1998 Routledge.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Research Division:	Studies in Human Society
Research Group:	Political Science
Research Field:	International Relations
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society
Author:	Gale, F (Associate Professor Fred Gale)
ID Code:	30786
Year Published:	1998
Web of Science® Times Cited:	17
Deposited By:	Government
Deposited On:	2007-10-17
Last Modified:	2007-10-17
Downloads:	0