How can states credibly make and keep agreements when they are uncertain about the distributional implications of their cooperation? They can do so by incorporating the proper degree of flexibility into their agreements. I develop a formal model in which an agreement characterized by uncertainty...

We reply to John Duffield's critique of the Rational Design project, a special issue of <italic>International Organization</italic> that explains the features of international institutions from a game-theoretic perspective. The project was deliberately limited to the analysis of explicit and observable...

Why do international institutions vary so widely in terms of such key institutional features as membership, scope, and flexibility? We argue that international actors are goal-seeking agents who make specific institutional design choices to solve the particular cooperation problems they face in...

In this article we summarize the empirical results of the Rational Design project. In general the results strongly support the Rational Design conjectures, especially those on flexibility and centralization; some findings are inconclusive (in particular, those addressing scope) or point toward a...