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Recent interest in cognitive approaches to international interaction in general and international regimes in particular has not been matched by development in theory and methodology. This article details a systematic "subjective" approach that seeks to meet this need. Its claims are developed through its comparison with the accomplishments and shortcomings of more established approaches to the study of international interaction and, in particular, microeconomic formal theory. The subjective alternative can model both individual subjects and the systems in which they are participating. As such, it offers much more in terms of continuities and connections between agents and system structure than do traditional psychological analyses in international relations. The theoretical arguments proceed in the context of a study of cooperation and conflict over Antarctica and its evolving regimes.

The article surveys the literature on international `regimes'. Regimes are social institutions that influence the behavior of states and their subjects. They consist of informal and formalized principles and norms, as well as specific rules, procedures and programs. The term is explicitly broad and captures the unwritten understandings and relationships, as well as the formal legal agreements, that influence how states and individuals behave in any given issue area. Scholarship over the last decade has elaborated how regimes are formed; this article surveys that work and focuses on more recent scholarship that has turned from the formation of regimes to the question of what makes regimes in general `effective' and which `types of regimes' are especially effective. The survey concludes with the identification of future research priorities in the field.

This article theorizes how public performances matter in international negotiations. Studies of international negotiations are predominantly focused on power-political instruments in use around the negotiating table. I argue that public communication cannot be dismissed as cheap talk but that it plays a constitutive role in and on international negotiations. Contributing to the international relations (IR) literature on negotiations, the article suggests an orientation toward an increasingly important aspect of international negotiations in a hypermediated world political context, namely public performances that challenge the distinction between domestic signaling and claim-making toward negotiating parties. Hypermediated negotiations mean that much of what goes on in IR is spread to large audiences in new and emerging digital sites in near real time. Actors use public performances to define and legitimize their desired visions for negotiating outcomes. As public performances, these are power-political instruments in and of themselves, part of the array of tactics that states turn to when competing for influence in international negotiations. The theorization is illustrated with an example from the UK–EU Brexit negotiations. The illustration is a qualitative Twitter analysis that shows the performative toolbox in use, as well as the importance of public performances themselves in the endgame of the Brexit negotiations.