Cooperation theory has been challenged in several important ways,
especially by disputing whether its underlying assumptions truly apply in
international relations. Possibly states, or their leaders, are not properly
characterized as rational agents with the capacities or inclinations necessary to
maintain decentralized cooperation. An alternative, more realist critique is that
states as rational actors seek goals such as power that are different from the
goals of economic actors who seek wealth. This latter position has been
formalized as the claim that because states seek ‘relative gains’, cooperation is
limited in international affairs (Grieco, 1988), but this argument has been
countered by analyses demonstrating that these limits are not great (Snidal,
1991; Powell, 1991). An alternative and more telling criticism of rational
cooperation as a theory of international organization is that it has at best a very
thin view of institutions. Thus cooperation theory provides a substitute for the
need for international organization as centralized enforcement, but it does not
provide an account of why any substantial international organization is needed
at all.