On Associators and the Grothendieck-Teichmuller Group I

We present a formalism within which the relationship (discovered by Drinfel'd) between associators (for quasi-triangular quasi-Hopf algebras) and (a variant of) the Grothendieck-Teichmuller group becomes simple and natural, leading to a simplification of Drinfel'd's original work. In particular, we re-prove that rational associators exist and can be constructed iteratively, though the proof itself still depends on the apriori knowledge that a not-necessarily-rational associator exists.