Fostering cooperation

Coordination of technical standards is probably the most routine sort of international relations. Everyone can agree that it is useful when phone calls and letters can successfully operate across international borders, and that it is useful when roads, rail lines, electrical connections, and other linkages are available and standardized.

The practicality of these tasks aside, it does seem probable that they would help to foster good relations between countries. When engineers from Country X see that engineers from Country Y are a lot like them, it is plausible that they generalize that feeling into a certain sense of general commonality.

It would be interesting to see some data and analysis on the role technical cooperation has played in fostering good relations. Routine work like communication interlinkages could be one topic of study. The same could be true for more exotic undertakings, like joint space missions.

As discussed before, it is also possible that the existing level of cooperation between states could break down if the world became sufficiently unstable.

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. Between 2005 and 2007 I completed an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. I worked for five years for the Canadian federal government, including completing the Accelerated Economist Training Program, and then completed a PhD in Political Science at the University of Toronto in 2023. View all posts by Milan