Showing papers in "International Organization in 1987"

The agent-structure problem in international relations theory

Abstract: While neorealism and world-system theory both claim to be “structural” theories of international relations, they embody very different understandings of system structure and structural explanation. Neorealists conceptualize system structures in individualist terms as constraining the choices of preexisting state agents, whereas world-system theorists conceptualize system structures in structuralist terms as generating state agents themselves. These differences stem from what are, in some respects, fundamentally opposed solutions to the “agent-structure” or “micromacro” problem. This opposition, however, itself reflects a deeper failure of each theory to recognize the mutually constitutive nature of human agents and system structures—a failure which leads to deep-seated inadequacies in their respective explanations of state action. An alternative solution to the agent-structure problem, adapted from “structuration theory” in sociology, can overcome these inadequacies by avoiding both the reduction of system structures to state actors in neorealism and their reification in world-system theory. Structuration theory requires a philosophical basis in scientific realism, arguably the “new orthodoxy” in the philosophy of natural science, but as yet largely unrecognized by political scientists. The scientific realist/structuration approach generates an agenda for “structural-historical” research into the properties and dispositions of both state actors and the system structures in which they are embedded.

Theories of international regimes

Abstract: Over the last decade, international regimes have become a major focus of empirical research and theoretical debate within international relations. This article provides a critical review of this literature. We survey contending definitions of regimes and suggest dimensions along which regimes vary over time or across cases; these dimensions might be used to operationalize “regime change.” We then examine four approaches to regime analysis: structural, game-theoretic, functional, and cognitive. We conclude that the major shortcoming of the regimes literature is its failure to incorporate domestic politics adequately. We suggest a research program that begins with the central insights of the interdependence literature which have been ignored in the effort to construct “systemic” theory.

Trade and the variety of democratic institutions

Abstract: Students of comparative politics have long acknowledged the importance of such institutional factors as electoral systems, parliamentary versus presidential rule, and the strength of parties; but they have either regarded the institutions as given or have explained them entirely in domestic terms (associating proportional representation, for example, with the intensity of social cleavages). In economically advanced democracies, however, these institutional aspects can be plausibly linked to dependence on trade: proportional representation, the parliamentary system, strong parties, and large electoral districts have “survival value” for developed democracies exposed to trade. That the recently revived agitation for proportional representation in the United Kingdom has been cast explicitly in terms of economic necessity and dependence on trade adds force to this argument, and suggests the need for further historical research on other cases of institutional adaptation and change.

The Persistent myth of lost hegemony

Abstract: There is not much significant theorizing outside America and, within America, most recent theorizing has tended to become more abstract or else has falsely assumed that the United States is no longer a hegemonic power. But rather than criticize what has been done, I shall outline a different approach, identifying four major global structures—security, production, finance, and knowledge—within which states, corporate enterprises, and others operate. I conclude that America is dominant in all four structures. International studies therefore ought to develop a theory of empire which can be applied by U.S. policymakers, if these studies are to have any basis in reality and any practical use.

Power and Interdependence revisited

Abstract: Ten years ago we published Power and Interdependence. 1 The passage of a decade makes this an appropriate time to reread and reevaluate that book, and to take stock of the research program to which it contributed. In doing this, we hope to deepen and enrich scholarly understanding of the politics of interdependence and to stimulate reflection on directions for the field of international relations over the next decade.2 Such a reappraisal seems particularly opportune given the changes in world politics, and especially in American policy, that have marked the intervening years. Stanley J. Michalak commented in 1979 that the authors "may cringe from the analogy but Power and Interdependence may well become the Politics Among Nations of the 1970s."3 But from the perspective of the late 1980s, the world may look different: while the 1970s were seen as the decade of interdependence, many observers regard the use of force and concern for security as characteristic of the 1980s. Indeed, the view is widespread in some circles that the 1980s resemble the 1950s more than the 1970s, and that Hans J. Morgenthau's work is more relevant to contemporary issues of world politics than Power and Interdependence.

Testing the bargaining hypothesis in the manufacturing sector in developing countries

Abstract: The bargaining power model of HC–MNC (host country–multinational corporation) interaction conceives of economic nationalism in terms of rational self-interest and assumes both inherent conflict and convergent objectives. In extractive industries, there is strong evidence that outcomes are a function of relative bargaining power and that as power shifts to developing HCs over time, the bargain obsolesces. A cross-national study of the bargaining model, using data from 563 subsidiaries of U.S. manufacturing firms in forty-nine developing countries, indicates that while the bargaining framework is an accurate model of MNC–host country relationships, manufacturing is not characterized by the inherent, structurally based, and secular obsolescence that is found in the natural resource industries. Shifts in bargaining power to HCs may take place when technology is mature and global integration limited. In industries characterized by changing technologies and the spread of global integration, the bargain will obsolesce very slowly and the relative power of MNCs may even increase over time.

Nuclear learning and U.S.–Soviet security regimes

Abstract: The concepts of regimes and learning have been developed in the Liberal theory of international relations, but their application has been mostly in the area of international political economy. U.S.–Soviet relations are generally explained solely in terms of Realist theory. The dichotomy is unfortunate because both strands of theory have something to contribute. Although the injunctions of an overall regime do not govern the U.S.–Soviet security relationship, it is possible to identify the injunctions and constraining effects of regimes in subissues of the security relationship. In five areas of the nuclear relationship (destructive power, control problems, proliferation, arms race stability, and deterrent force structure), it is possible to identify different degrees of learning and to see how such learning affects and is affected by the development of regimes. Looking at the U.S.–Soviet security relationship in terms of learning and regimes raises new questions and opens a research agenda which helps us to think more broadly about the processes of political change in this area.

Quasi-states, dual regimes, and neoclassical theory: International jurisprudence and the Third World

Abstract: Decolonization in parts of the Third World and particularly Africa has resulted in the emergence of numerous “quasi-states,” which are independent largely by international courtesy. They exist by virtue of an external right of self-determination— negative sovereignty—without yet demonstrating much internal capacity for effective and civil government—positive sovereignty. They therefore disclose a new dual international civil regime in which two standards of statehood now coexist: the traditional empirical standard of the North and a new juridical standard of the South. The biases in the constitutive rules of the sovereignty game today and for the first time in modern international history arguably favor the weak. If international theory is to account for this novel situation it must acknowledge the possibility that morality and legality can, in certain circumstances, be independent of power in international relations. This suggests that contemporary international theory must accommodate not only Machiavellian realism and the sociological discourse of power but also Grotian rationalism and the jurisprudential idiom of law.

Explaining the non-proliferation regime: anomalies for contemporary international relations theory

Abstract: This article reconciles common policy usage with scholarly definition. The system of cooperation on non-proliferation has often been termed an international “regime,” but there has not been any systematic effort to determine if this is actually true. The discussion also attempts to reconcile the formation and maintenance of this system of cooperation with contemporary international relations theory. The central argument is that the system of international cooperation on non-proliferation does constitute a regime, but that such a regime presents a serious anomaly for contemporary theory. The article concludes that power and egoistic self-interest are inadequate to account for the regime's formation and maintenance. The inadequacies of both the hegemonic stability and functional theories point towards another independent variable that needs central consideration in regime analysis: knowledge and learning.

Resisting the protectionist temptation: industry and the making of trade policy in France and the United States during the 1970s

Abstract: Why were advanced industrial states able to keep their economies relatively open to foreign trade in the 1970s and the early 1980s, despite declining U.S. hegemony and increasing economic difficulties? This article argues that an international-level change affected domestic trade politics and contributed to the maintenance of a liberal trading system. Examining the United States and France, the argument proceeds in two steps, showing first how domestic trade politics were changed and second how this change affected the policy process. Initially, I argue that aspects of the increased international economic interdependence of the postwar period altered domestic trade politics by creating new, anti-protectionist preferences among certain firms. Firms with extensive international ties through exports, multinational production, and global intra-firm trade have come to oppose protectionism, since it is very costly for them. Evidence for these new preferences was apparent among both American and French industries. Despite different contexts, firms in the two countries reacted similarly to the growth of interdependence. Next, I ask whether firms' preferences affected trade policy outcomes and show how these preferences were integrated into the policy process in both countries. Trade policy structures in neither country prevented firms' preferences from affecting the policies adopted. Even in France, a so-called “strong” state, firms' preferences were a key influence on policy. In the trade policy area then, the French and American states did not appear to differ greatly in their susceptibility to industry influence, even though their policy processes were different.

Nordic economic policies in the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract: Although the Nordic countries are small, open economies, they were able to benefit considerably from the expansion of the world economy during the “Golden Age” of the 1950s and 1960s. They achieved industrial diversification and consolidated welfare-state reforms. Throughout this period, several economic policy routines were institutionalized. These routines may be analyzed as parts of a specific economic policy model, determined by the economic structure and the pattern of political mobilization. It seems more fruitful to distinguish five such models rather than to use the generalizing notion of a “Scandinavian model.” In the 1970s, the world economic crisis posed new challenges for the Nordic countries. In the first phase of the crisis, economic policies continued to operate in accordance with the established routines. But structural problems, new patterns of political mobilization, and new forms of external pressure forced governments to shift towards austerity policies in the late 1970s. The extent and the specificities of these shifts are compared and the degree to which the economic policy models have changed assessed. Such an analysis is a first step to answer some crucial questions now facing the Nordic countries: Was their flexible adjustment merely the result of favorable conditions during the 1960s—or is it a permanent trait? Are they now trapped between large industrial nations and dynamic newly industrializingcountries? If so, what will be the fate of their advanced welfare sectors?

Accumulation, regulation, and social change: an essay on French political economy

Abstract: Over the last ten years, what can be called the "regulation approach" has become one of the most important paradigms in French political economy. Although not yet a unified approach, it nevertheless provides a set of recurrent concepts, and, more important, a common understanding of the process of capitalist development. Almost every topic within the realm of political economy-inflation, growth and economic crises, the role of the state, wage

Cooperation in the liberalization of international trade: after hegemony, what?

Abstract: Nations dwell in perpetual anarchy, for no central authority imposes limits on the pursuits of sovereign interests. … Because as states, they cannot cede ultimate control over their conduct to an supranational sovereign, they cannot guarantee that they will adhere to their promises. The possibility of a breach of promise can impede cooperation even when cooperation would leave all better off. Yet, at other times, states do realize common goals through cooperation under anarchy.

Divestment, investment sanctions, and disinvestment: an evaluation of anti-apartheid policy instruments

Abstract: Pressure for divestment and mandatory disinvestment sanctions directed against South Africa are an instance of domestic interest groups in one country seeking policy change in another. The link from shareholder divestment to disinvestment by firms is tenuous, however (since South Africa-active firms do not seem to suffer as a consequence of divestment pressure), and legislated sanctions are likely to have unpredictable and sometimes perverse effects on the extent of apartheid practices.

How nations vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations

Abstract: For over forty years the United Nations’ General Assembly has been meeting annually to examine a broad range of international issues. At the conclusion of its debates, it adopts resolutions and decisions on each of its agenda items. While some resolutions are procedural, many can be considered important, even historic, because of the events they spawned or because they marked a turning point in international relations. These include, among others, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, the Partition of Palestine, and the recognition of the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate representative of China in the UN.

Crisis prevention and the Austrian State Treaty

Abstract: Much has been written about how the United States and the Soviet Union have managed crises since World War II, avoiding dangerous escalation and war; little on how the two superpowers have avoided confrontations. In part scholarly neglect of the question of crisis avoidance reflects the acute suspicion and hostility of the cold war. When U.S.-Soviet rivalry was perceived as a struggle between incompatible ideologies and ways of life, it was unthinkable that the superpowers might have any common interests, much less that they could collaborate, even tacitly, to control the conflict in their relationship.

Long cycle theory and international relations

Abstract: Ever since Polybius, scholars have dreamed of discovering a regular cyclical pattern in the interactions of politics, both domestic and international. Despite the recent revival of such views in the study of international relations, however, the dominant patterns have always been static or secular in character.' Many, perhaps even most, theorists have observed (or claimed to observe) static tendencies in the overarching continuity of the international system, which has little cyclical variation. On this point, writers as disparate as Hedley Bull and Kenneth Waltz agree; this links them with a tradition which includes Niccolo Machiavelli, E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, writers on the balance of power, Ludwig Dehio, and F. H. Hinsley.2 Another

Economic culture and foreign policy: the cognitive analysis of economic policy making

Abstract: Political scientists researching economic foreign policy have generally taken one of two analytic approaches. The first is based on realpolitik, the traditional application of “high” politics to the “low” politics of economics. This approach considers economics subordinate to politics. The concept of the national interest dominates; the pursuit of power—what enables the state to achieve its goals of security, welfare, and other societal values—is seen to underlie most actions. The study of foreign economic policy is thus an analysis of the distribution of power among states within the international system. By understanding a state's sources of strength and areas of vulnerability in relation to other states, the analyst will better understand the creation of foreign policy. Hans Morgenthau notes that while states may sometimes pursue economic policies for their own sake (in which case they should take little interest in their success), the more important economic policies they will favor are instruments of political power.Stephen Krasner views the state as an autonomously motivated actor, able to guide policy in pursuit of state priorities while resisting interest groups and ideologies. According to this “power theory”, the state tries to increase its economic competitiveness, ensure security of material needs, and promote its broad foreign-policy objectives. Economic policy is for the most part subordinate to and best explained by state priorities and prerogatives. Robert Tucker, Klaus Knorr, Robert Gilpin and others have also adopted this framework.

Trade gaps, analytical gaps: regime analysis and international commodity trade regulation

Abstract: Studies of international regimes have sought to describe international collaborative arrangements in more systematic terms than in the past, and to analyze their development in terms of major schools of international relations theory. This article refines the commonly used definition of regimes and elucidates the major hypotheses of one theoretical school, structural realism. The strength and nature of the international commodity trade regime are systematically described, and their development is analyzed in terms of the major hypotheses of structural realism. In large part, these hypotheses are supported by the analysis of what is a relatively weak international regime.

Managing an oligopoly of would-be sovereigns: the dynamics of joint control and self-control in the international oil industry past, present, and future

Abstract: The key to the success of the oil oligopoly has been the ability of its members to make commitments to each other credible despite great divisiveness and enormous uncertainties. To accomplish this, the oil companies constructed a regime of suprasovereign constraints to control the pursuit of individual self-interest. When these anti-democratic, anti-autonomous institutions functioned effectively, the corporations met challenges far greater than those OPEC subsequently faced; when they began to disintegrate, the companies' ability to hold price above marginal cost deteriorated. OPEC reinvigorated the oligopoly using the ready-made self-denial and surveillance mechanisms built by the companies, then systematically unravelled them in moving towards a “mature” cartel held together by “mere” common interest, promises, and threats. To reconstruct an oligopoly that has the cohesiveness of the corporate era, OPEC will need not only a more moderate price trajectory, but also a binding structure that gives preponderance to the most conservative members, provides prompt and accurate verification of cheating, and automatically imposes penalties in magnified form for competitive behavior (without the need for direct retaliation). Beyond predictions about the future of the oil industry, these findings have important implications for economic approaches to imperfect competition, for anti-trust analyses of collusion, and for organizational theories of hegemonic leadership.

Ad hoc multilateral diplomacy: the United States, the Contact Group, and Namibia

Abstract: In April 1977 the United States and four other major Western governments embarked on a unique diplomatic exercise in the hope of negotiating an agreement for the independence of the territory of Namibia, or South West Africa. The “Contact Group” as it became known (or Western Five), consisting of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and the Federal Republic of Germany, functioned actively from April 1977 until mid-1982 as an ad hoc multilateral mediating and facilitating team in close proximity to but not directly linked with the United Nations. The five countries secured basic agreement in 1978 on a plan calling for UN supervised elections for a constituent assembly in the territory leading to early independence and the appointment of a UN special representative to ensure the necessary conditions for such elections.

Israeli state-building in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: theory and practice

Abstract: The most significant political division within Israel since 1967 has beenbetween those Israelis who favor the permanent incorporation of the portions of Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel) captured in the Six Day War and those Israelis who favor relinquishing most or all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in return for a peace agreement with the Arab world and resolution of the Palestinian problem. Although usually considered an issue of security, ideology, or diplomacy, the uncertain disposition of the West Bank and Gaza Strip can usefully be analyzed as a state-building problem.

American commitments in the Third World: theory vs. practice

Abstract: Amidst their other differences, the defeats suffered by the United States in Vietnam, Iran, and Lebanon have a common explanation. In all three cases American strategy was based on “global commitments theory.” Interests were to be defended and global credibility strengthened by the making, maintaining, reinforcing, and sustaining of American commitments to Third World allies. However, the core assumptions on which the logic of global commitments theory rests are plagued with inherent fallacies. These fallacies can be identified analytically as patterns of dysfunction along four dimensions of foreign policy: decision-making, diplomacy, military strategy, and domestic politics. They also can be shown empirically to have recurred across the Vietnam, Iran, and Lebanon cases. The central theoretical conclusion questions the fundamental validity of global commitments theory as it applies to the exercise of power and influence in the Third World. Important prescriptive implications for future American foreign policy are also discussed.

Nuclear power safety and the role of international organization

Abstract: Sovereign states determine the health and safety regulation of nuclear power facilities almost exclusively. Yet the Soviet nuclear power accident at Chernobyl (April 1986) demonstrated that nuclear power can have significant health and political effects transcending state boundaries. Several meetings have been held at the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since the Chernobyl accident, with delegates seeking to find the proper balance between autonomous state decision-making and international or transboundary interests. This article examines the nuclear safety role of IAEA in the past, and comes to conclusions regarding its likely role in the future. I claim that IAEA is unlikely to become a powerful regulatory “watchdog,” but that incremental changes in the agency could, over time, create a significant international presence.

Automobiles in international trade: regime change or persistence?

Abstract: The concept of a “regime” is frequently used to describe and explain behavior in international political economy. Peter Cowhey and Edward Long, attempting to test theories of surplus capacity and hegemonic decline, advanced a version of a regime governing international trade in automobiles which was fundamentally liberal from 1966 to 1975, but then collapsed into protectionism. Their diagnosis is mistaken, however, because the trade regime for autos was neither as liberal as they assert during the 1950s and 1960s, nor as protectionist as they believe it has become in the 1980s. The discussion focuses on a new definition of the auto trade regime based on four fundamental rules that have persisted since the 1950s. By examining data on auto imports since 1955 on a region-by-region basis, it becomes clear that the trade expansion of the postwar years was not based on a global liberalization of the trade regime, but on carefully managed regional arrangements that favored imports within the region, or extra-regional imports that did not threaten domestic producers. The flurry of restraints on Japanese imports in recent years is not a collapse into protectionism, but a reinforcement of the fundamental regime rules. The auto industry case illustrates the tendency of analysts to underestimate protectionist elements in industry trade regimes and to overestimate the amount of changes that take place in their fundamental rules.