Trilemma Tradeoffs in International Relations: An Analytical Framework

Over the past fifty years, scholars have drawn attention to the consequences of trying to overcome openness/effectiveness/autonomy trilemmas, especially in monetary policy and trade policy. Despite this, few have noticed the ubiquity of such policy trilemmas in international relations. This article presents a comprehensive analytical framework that captures the core concepts and causal mechanisms relevant to understanding these trilemmas, and identifies opportunities for future research. The first section provides an analytical review of openness/effectiveness/autonomy trilemmas. By doing so, it highlights three features of trilemmas: that goal attainment is a question of degree, that goal attainment varies across time, and that policy constraints affect states asymmetrically. The second section presents a typology of trilemma-based policy goals (openness, regulatory effectiveness, and policymaking autonomy) and associated “disciplining” mechanisms that explain the likelihood of trilemma tradeoffs (i.e., market-based, politics-based, and law-based mechanisms). The third section shows how the trilemma framework presented in this article can facilitate the empirical study of threefold policy tradeoffs in all aspects of international relations, including security and defense.