MULTILATERAL COOPERATION IN AN ITERATED PRISONERS-DILEMMA

There is a remarkable consensus among scholars of international relati ons that cooperation is easier to achieve than multilateral cooperatio n. This essay proposes a formal model to show that this is incorrect, because a multilateral agreement may achieve what an equivalent series of bilateral agreements cannot. The author explores formally several different enforcement mechanisms, suggesting that the argument is robu st. Throughout the essay, the author uses examples from the Marshall P lan to illustrate the logic of this result. The argument has implicati ons for other substantive topics, such as most-favored-nation clauses in trade agreements, the theory of hegemonic stability, analysis of th e European Economic Community, the politics of linkage, and the study of multilateralist norms.