International regimes are systems of norms and rules agreed upon by states to govern their behaviour in specific political contexts or `issue areas' whether this be trade policy, proliferation of nuclear weapons, or the control of transboundary air pollution in some region of the world.

In a competitive international society increasingly faced with issues that transcend the physical and political limits of individual states they are an outstanding example of international governance, and central to any analysis of world politics.

In this volume, experts from the USA and Europe join forces for the first time for a rigorous exploration of the concept of international regimes. They discuss the fundamental conceptual and theoretical problems of regime analysis, study how regimes are formed and how they change, examine approaches to explaining the success or failure of attempts to form regimes, and look at the consequences of regimes for international relations.