Authoritarian or tyrannical regimes have little respect for human rights. In such a regime, a “checks and balances system” does not exist that may limit and control the power of the government.

Liberal regimes strive to create a democratic, open, and pluralistic society and to manage differing interests in the society like a neutral arbiter. In a liberal regime, the domestic political power is shared among several non-sovereign institutions. For most liberals, the state reflects the concerns and interests of various interest groups (pressure groups) such as the bureaucracy, the military, political parties, and other powerful elites that attempt to improve their own interests in the society. In other words, the liberal state does not mirror the interests of only one elite group or the dominant social class; it rather acts as the fair and impartial mediator between different interest groups. As such, political power is diffused among a range of institutions and a variety of actors in the society.

• International cooperation is possible, and it is the main feature of international relations. Cooperation can lead to positive changes in the system.
• Because a human being is inherently good and rational, states behaverationally as well. Rational state pursues its own interests, embodies moral principles, and follows the rules of international law.
• The distinction between domestic politics and international politics is not that clear as realists argue. Multiple sets of relationshipsbetween international actors transcend national borders.
• Besides states, humans and other actors such as international organizations are important and have the ability to effect changes in international relations.
• Power should not only be considered as “military power”;economic, social, cultural, and intellectual power also matter.
• Liberals emphasize the importance of concepts such as world society, global governance, international institutions, and interdependence in the contemporary world where boundaries between states become increasingly blurred.
• In a social system where power centralizes, we also observe poor governance. Good governance, however, requires democracy and political pluralism.
• Liberalism believes in the possibility of a universal community of humankind that exceeds the vision of a fellowship of nation states (Shimko, 2016: 38-40).

Liberal institutionalism is a version of liberalism that emphasizes the positive role of international institutions and global governance in promoting peace and cooperation. It holds that both domestic and international institutions are instrumental in ending wars, rivalry, and conflict between nation states. It rejects the idea that world politics is destined to be dominated by powerful states whereas international institutions and global governance are without any power that may effect change in the system.

Both approaches assume that international system is “anarchic.”

1. While neorealists claim that foreign policy is constrained by anarchy, neoliberals argue that international regimes, globalization, and international interdependence are important tools for managing the relations between international actors.
2. Neorealists believe that international cooperation depends on the will and power of nation states; from this perspective, it is difficult to achieve and maintain international cooperation mainly because states strive to achieve their own interests. On the other hand, neoliberals hold that if states have mutual interests in a given issue area of international relations, international cooperation can be achieved in that issue area. 
3. Neorealists emphasize the importance of relative gains (zero-sum game) in international politics. Neoliberals, however, consider that international actors have common interests so that they can cooperate in a given issue area and maximize their absolute gains (non-zero sum game).  Eventually all states can benefit from this cooperation.
4. Neorealists claim that the primary objective of states is survival in the “anarchical international system,” where they are preoccupied with matters related to national security and relative power gains. On the other hand, neoliberals attach greater importance to sustainable development, economic welfare, and non-security issue areas such as international environmental problems.
5. Neorealists argue that international institutions and regimes do not affect the state behavior. In a similar vein, regimes do not have a constraining impact on the anarchical nature of the system. Neoliberals, on the other hand, argue that international institutions and regimes are influential in shaping and structuring international relations, because they facilitate cooperation among states (Baldwin, 1993: 4-8).

1. A zero-sum game is a situation in which one actor’s gain means another actor’s loss. 
2. Non-zero sum (or positive-sum) game is a situation in which actors involved can all benefit or gain at the same time.

For neoliberal institutionalism, international institutions refer to completely developed systems of governance for shared habits and practices of cooperation. They have rules for monitoring international actors’ behaviors

Although the international system is anarchic, states are interdependent.
• All actors (both state and transnational nonstate actors) are rational and their behaviors are driven by strategic calculations of their interests.
• States are not concerned with relative profits and gains. Rather they focus on absolute profits and gains. It is a non-zero-sum game or a win-win situation.
• Institutions have substantial roles. They increase mutual responsiveness and transparency and reduce uncertainty about the intentions and motives of others. Thus, institutions facilitate cooperation among international actors (Hohenstedt, 2017: 3).

Neoliberal institutionalists believe that sustained and more extensive cooperation is possible under the condition of anarchy. In other words, even if there is no world government in the international system, global governance can be achievable.  For neoliberal institutionalists, global governance refers to a network of rules, norms, and institutions that essentially constrain states in the use of armed force to achieve their national interests and that can control competition between states (Wheeler, 2018). Although neoliberal institutionalists underline the competitive nature of world politics, they argue that anarchy’s constraining effects on states can be mitigated through mutual interests and cooperation. They emphasize the significance of issue areas related to low-politics such as human rights, political economy, human security, and the environment.Such transnational issues can be addressed by the management of globalization and complex interdependence. International institutions can be created, maintained and, empowered to regulate issue-areas where states have mutual interests. 

For neoliberal institutionalists, international institutions cannot only influence and shape the foreign policy of states, but also promote a foreign policy agenda by providing expertise and information. Institutions can encourage all actors for more cooperation at local, national, international and global levels and, help them in their policymaking process. They can serve as a catalyst for coalition-building among statees and non-state actors.

As Table 3.1 The Comparison of Liberal Institutionalism with Global Governance on page 67 shows Liberal Institutionalism:

• International 
• Rules of Law, Multilateralism, InternationalRegimes
• Separation of Political and Economic Areas /Orderly Markets
• Internationalism and Interdependence
• Hierarchical Decisions; Coherence between Institutions; Regulation
• Hard Law, Binding Rules, Contracts

On the other hand, Global Governance:

• Transnational
• Transnationalism, Many Sites of Governance, and Sources of Authority
• Globalized Competition
• Trade and investments across the Global Value Chain
• Bottom-up approach and Networking
• Soft Power / Soft Rules and Partnership

• Principles are beliefs of causation, fact, and rectitude.
• Norms are standards of behavior, and they are defined in terms of rights and obligations.
• Rules are specific prescriptions or proscriptions for action.
• Decision-making procedures are prevailing practices for making and implementing collective choice (Krasner, 1983: 2).

The regime theory suggests two main ways of regime change:

• A regime can change if principles or norms are altered in a specific issue area. 
• Changes within a regime can take place if actors decide to make changes in regime rules and procedures (Hasenclever, Mayer and Rittberger,1996:180; 1997:13). 

International security regimes differ from other types of international regimes for four reasons: 
• First, security issues have a higher degree of competitiveness between states than other issues. Conflicts and wars are inherently a zero-sum game.
• Second, the costs of benefits and errors are much higher in the security realm. States are almost impossible to get a second chance to fix their false policy choices. If states delay their responses, results may also be devastating.
• Third, since it is difficult to separate defensive and offensive motives in security policy choices, both status-quo and nonstatus quo states may engage in a similar behavior to change or maintain the balance of power.
• Finally, international actors are forced to behave under a high degree of uncertainty to detect and interpret the behavior of other actors in the security arena (Jervis, 1983).

At the structural level, power and hegemony are important factors that influence the analysis of regime-building negotiation. At the cognitive level, knowledge, ideas, consensual knowledge, and epistemic community are concepts that are utilized to explain how international cooperation is shaped by perception, information processing, and learning.  At the institutional level, the emergence of international regimes is based on the interactive decision-making among self interested and utilitymaximizing parties to solve collective action problems to reach mutually acceptable joint gains (Young and Osherenko, 1993a, 1993b/ Rowlands, 1995/ Haas, 1992/Porter and Brown, 1996).

• International regimes raise concern about cause-effect relationships.
• Regimes improve the contractual environment and foster the establishment of negotiation processes.
• Regimes reduce transaction costs in issue areas and enhance capacity-building in developing countries (Levy, Keohane, and Haas, 1993: 397-408).

Global governance provides global (re) distributive and regulatory mechanisms in the absence of a world government. It is defined as an international rules-based framework through which international actors aim to collectively resolve common problems and promote cross-border cooperation and coordination in a given issue area of world politics. It is a multipartite process involving governmental and intergovernmental actors, transnational corporations (TNCs), NGOs, civil society, and businesses. In this process, international actors are expected to comply with self imposed rules.

Global governance consists of four basic steps. The first is to define trans-boundary and global problems. The second is to find sustainable approaches to solve these problems. Third, international actors must convert these solutions into certain rules of conduct and ensure other actors to obey them. Last but not least, these rules must be revised in light of changing circumstances (Rittberger et al., 2008: 46)

Internet governance is the development and application by governments, the private sector, and civil society, in their respective roles, of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programmes, that shape the evolution and utilization of the Internet” (Bygrave, 2009:2).

There are five models of internet governance:
• The spontaneous cyberspace model: The Internet is beyond the reach of government control, and it is a self-governing realm of individual liberty.
• The transnational institutions and organization model: It inherently transcends national borders. As a result, most suitable institutions are transnational and quasiprivate cooperatives or international organizations with treaty arrangements.
• The internet architecture and code model: Many regulatory decisions are made by communication protocols and other software about how the Internet operates.
• The national government and law model: Regulatory decisions about the Internet are made through legal regulations by national governments.
• The market regulation and economics model: Market forces are driving forces in shaping the nature of the Internet (Solum, 2009: 56-57).

• Some aspects of Internet governance have been privitazed. The Industry plays an important role in governing the freedom of expression and privacy as well as regulating the content of the internet.
• The freedom of expression can be shaped by the Internet’s underlying technical architecture.
• The stability and security of the Internet cannot be taken for granted.
• Internet governance is continuously developed and negotiated. However, this process is not always public and transparent (Levinson and Cogburn, 2016: 220).

• Epistemic communities share a common set of principled and normative values and beliefs. Such values and beliefs add a valuebased rationale for their social actions.
• Epistemic communities share common professional judgments or causal beliefs. These beliefs come from analytical reasoning; they explain behaviors and propose a causal relationship between policy actions and desired outcomes.
• Epistemic communities share notions of validity, that is, intersubjective, internally defined criteria for validating knowledge in their expertise area.
• Epistemic communities pursue the same policy enterprise: a set of mutual practices related to a set of problems that have to be solved (Haas 1992: 3: 2016:5).

The policy networks do not reflect the same degree of coherence as epistemic communities do. Policy networks are clusters and have larger groups, while epistemic communities are a subset of policy networks. Policy networks’ membership fluctuates. Although they have different values, they are tied together by their interdependency. Power and resources are distributed unequally in policy networks. However, epistemic communities are more stable, and they consist of a smaller number of members who share same values (Carayannis, et.al., 2012: 132-133).

Four global commons are Antarctica, the oceans, the atmosphere (airspace, acid deposition, stratospheric ozone, and climate change), and space (outer space and telecommunications).