Showing papers in "International Organization in 1998"

International Norm Dynamics and Political Change

Abstract: Norms have never been absent from the study of international politics, but the sweeping “ideational turn” in the 1980s and 1990s brought them back as a central theoretical concern in the field. Much theorizing about norms has focused on how they create social structure, standards of appropriateness, and stability in international politics. Recent empirical research on norms, in contrast, has examined their role in creating political change, but change processes have been less well-theorized. We induce from this research a variety of theoretical arguments and testable hypotheses about the role of norms in political change. We argue that norms evolve in a three-stage “life cycle” of emergence, “norm cascades,” and internalization, and that each stage is governed by different motives, mechanisms, and behavioral logics. We also highlight the rational and strategic nature of many social construction processes and argue that theoretical progress will only be made by placing attention on the connections between norms and rationality rather than by opposing the two.

The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders

Abstract: The history of international political orders is written in terms of continuity and change in domestic and international political relations. As a step toward understanding such continuity and change, we explore some ideas drawn from an institutional perspective. An institutional perspective is characterized in terms of two grand issues that divide students of international relations and other organized systems. The first issue concerns the basic logic of action by which human behavior is shaped. On the one side are those who see action as driven by a logic of anticipated consequences and prior preferences. On the other side are those who see action as driven by a logic of appropriateness and a sense of identity. The second issue concerns the efficiency of history. On the one side are those who see history as efficient in the sense that it follows a course leading to a unique equilibrium dictated by exogenously determined interests, identities, and resources. On the other side are those who see history as inefficient in the sense that it follows a meandering, path-dependent course distinguished by multiple equilibria and endogenous transformations of interests, identities, and resources. We argue that the tendency of students of international political order to emphasize efficient histories and consequential bases for action leads them to underestimate the significance of rule- and identity-based action and inefficient histories. We illustrate such an institutional perspective by considering some features of the coevolution of politics and institutions, particularly the ways in which engagement in political activities affects the definition and elaboration of political identities and the development of competence in politics and the capabilities of political institutions.

What Makes the World Hang Together? Neo-utilitarianism and the Social Constructivist Challenge

Abstract: Social constructivism in international relations has come into its own during the past decade, not only as a metatheoretical critique of currently dominant neo-utilitarian approaches (neo-realism and neoliberal institutionalism) but increasingly in the form of detailed empirical findings and theoretical insights. Constructivism addresses many of the same issues addressed by neo-utilitarianism, though from a different vantage and, therefore, with different effect. It also concerns itself with issues that neo-utilitarianism treats by assumption, discounts, ignores, or simply cannot apprehend within its characteristic ontology and/or epistemology. The constructivist project has sought to open up the relatively narrow theoretical confines of conventional approaches—by pushing them back to problematize the interests and identities of actors; deeper to incorporate the intersubjective bases of social action and social order; and into the dimensions of space and time to establish international structure as contingent practice, constraining social action but also being (re)created and, therefore, potentially transformed by it.

Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation

Abstract: Neoliberals and their neorealist critics have debated the relative importance of two main obstacles to international cooperation—problems of cheating and enforcement and problems of relative gains. By contrast, I argue that problems of international cooperation have a common strategic structure in which a third, distinct obstacle plays a crucial role. Almost regardless of the issue area, states must first resolve the bargaining problem of agreeing on terms before they can implement and begin to enforce an agreement. Furthermore, the bargaining and enforcement problems interact. Using a game model, I show that if states must bargain to determine the deal to be enforced, the “shadow of the future” cuts two ways. A high expectation of continued interactions may make enforcing the agreement easier, but it can also give states an incentive to bargain harder, delaying agreement in hopes of getting a better deal. Empirical evidence from trade and arms control negotiations suggests that this mechanism may help to explain the costly standoffs that are often observed in international politics and are problematic for received neoliberal theories.

Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines

Abstract: The rise in the importance of nonstate actors in generating new norms in world politics has been documented by scholars, but the literature has focused predominantly on nonsecurity (“new”) issue areas. Conversely, although recent constructivist work in international relations has examined the security policies of states, typically it is the state that is doing the constructing of interests. I bridge these two literatures by examining the hard case of transnational civil society working through issue networks to teach state interests in security policy. I analyze the campaign by transnational civil society to generate an international norm prohibiting antipersonnel land mines and trace the effects of several techniques through which states can be said to be socialized. Through generating issues, networking, “grafting,” and using a transnational Socratic method to reverse burdens of proof, the campaign has stimulated systemic normative change through two processes: norm adoption through the conversion of persuaded moral entrepreneurs and emulation resulting from social pressures of identity.

Theories and Empirical Studies of International Institutions

Abstract: Studies of international institutions, organizations, and regimes have consistently appeared in the pages of International Organization. We review the theoretical and empirical work on international institutions and identify promising directions for the institutionalist research program. Early studies of international institutions were rich with empirical insights and often influenced by theoretical developments in other fields of political science, but lacking an overarching analytical framework they failed to produce a coherent body of scholarship. Current efforts to reinvigorate the study of international institutions draw on a new body of theory about domestic institutions. We argue that the assumptions of this new approach to institutions are more appropriate to international studies than those of earlier attempts to transfer theories across levels of analysis. We suggest that the most productive questions for future research will focus on specifying alternative mechanisms by which institutions can influence outcomes and identify particular sets of questions within this agenda that are especially promising.

Global Markets and National Politics: Collision Course or Virtuous Circle?

Abstract: Increasing exposure to trade, foreign direct investment, and liquid capital mobility have not prompted a pervasive policy race to the neoliberal bottom among the OECD countries. One reason is that there are strong political incentives for governments to cushion the dislocations and risk generated by openness. Moreover, countries with large and expanding public economies (when balanced with increased revenues, even from capital taxes) have not suffered from capital flight or higher interest rates. This is because the modern welfare state, comprising income transfer programs and publicly provided social services, generates economically important collective goods that are undersupplied by markets and that actors are interested in productivity value. These range from the accumulation of human and physical capital to social stability under conditions of high market uncertainty to popular support for the market economy itself. As a result, arguments about the demise of national autonomy in the global economy are considerably overdrawn.

The Sociology of a Not So International Discipline: American and European Developments in International Relations

Abstract: The international relations (IR) discipline is dominated by the American research community. Data about publication patterns in leading journals document this situation as well as a variance in theoretical orientations. IR is conducted differently in different places. The main patterns are explained through a sociology of science model that emphasizes the different nineteenth-century histories of the state, the early format of social science, and the institutionalized delineation among the different social sciences. The internal social and intellectual structure of American IR is two-tiered, with relatively independent subfields and a top layer defined by access to the leading journals (on which IR, in contrast to some social sciences, has a high consensus). The famous successive “great debates” serve an important function by letting lead theorists focus and structure the whole discipline. IR in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom has historically been structured differently, often with power vested more locally. American IR now moves in a direction that undermines its global hegemony. The widespread turn to rational choice privileges a reintegration (and status-wise rehabilitation) with the rest of political science over attention to IR practices elsewhere. This rationalistic turn is alien to Europeans, both because their IR is generally closer to sociology, philosophy, and anthropology, and because the liberal ontological premises of rational choice are less fitting to European societies. Simultaneously, European IR is beginning to break the local power bastions and establish independent research communities at a national or, increasingly, a European level. As American IR turns from global hegemony to national professionalization, IR becomes more pluralistic.

International Organization and the Study of World Politics

Abstract: A distinct subfield of international relations, IPE, has emerged over the last thirty years, largely in the pages of International Organization IPE began with the study of international political economy, but over time its boundaries have been set more by a series of theoretical debates than by subject matter These debates have been organized around points of contestation between specific research programs, reflecting fundamental differences among the generic theoretical orientations in which these research programs are embedded The fate of specific research programs has depended on their ability to specify cause and effect relationships and to operationalize relevant variables Scholarship in IPE has become more sophisticated both methodologically and theoretically, and many of its insights have been incorporated into policy discussions Past points of contestation, including those between realism and its liberal challengers and between various conceptions of domestic structure and international relations, help us to understand recent debates between rationalism and constructivism

Mixed Signals: Central Bank Independence, Coordinated Wage Bargaining, and European Monetary Union

Abstract: Plans for the European Monetary Union (EMU) are based on the conventional postulate that increasing the independence of the central bank can reduce inflation without any real economic effects. However, the theoretical and empirical bases for this claim rest on models of the economy that make unrealistic information assumptions and omit institutional variables other than the central bank. When signaling problems between the central bank and other actors in the political economy are considered, we find that the character of wage bargaining conditions the impact of central bank independence by rendering the signals between the bank and the bargainers more or less effective. Greater central bank independence can reduce inflation without major employment effects where bargaining is coordinated, but it can bring higher levels of unemployment where bargaining is less coordinated. Thus, currency unions like the EMU may require higher levels of unemployment to control inflation than their proponents envisage. They will have costs as well as benefits, and these will be unevenly distributed among and within the member nations, depending on the changes they induce in the status of the bank and of wage coordination.

Who Are the “Masters of the Treaty”?: European Governments and the European Court of Justice

Abstract: To what extent can the European Court of Justice (ECJ), an international court, make decisions which go against the interests of EC member states? Neo-functionalist accounts imply that because it is a legal body the ECJ has vast political autonomy from the member states, while the neo-realist accounts imply that because member states can sanction the ECJ, the Court has no significant political autonomy. Both of these approaches overlook that the ECJ was once politically weak, and that the Court's current autonomy reflects significant unintended changes in the European and national legal systems. In explaining how the European Court escaped member state control, this article develops a general explanation of European Court autonomy, focusing on how differing time horizons of political and judicial actors, political support for the Court within the national judiciaries, and decision-making rules at the supranational level limit the member states' abilities to control the European Court.

The European Court of Justice, National Governments, and Legal Integration in the European Union

Abstract: We develop a game theoretic model of the conditions under which the European Court of Justice can be expected to take “adverse judgments” against European Union member governments and when the governments are likely to abide by these decisions. The model generates three hypotheses. First, the greater the clarity of EU case law precedent, the lesser the likelihood that the Court will tailor its decisions to the anticipated reactions of member governments. Second, the greater the domestic costs of an ECJ ruling to a litigant government, the lesser the likelihood that the litigant government will abide by it (and hence the lesser the likelihood that the Court will make such a ruling). Third, the greater the activism of the ECJ and the larger the number of member governments adversely affected by it, the greater the likelihood that responses by litigant governments will move from individual noncompliance to coordinated retaliation through new legislation or treaty revisions. These hypotheses are tested against three broad lines of case law central to ECJ jurisprudence: bans on agricultural imports, application of principles of equal treatment of the sexes to occupational pensions, and state liability for violation of EU law. The empirical analysis supports our view that though influenced by legal precedent, the ECJ also takes into account the anticipated reactions of member governments.

The Third Leg of the Kantian Tripod for Peace: International Organizations and Militarized Disputes, 1950–85

Abstract: Immanuel Kant believed that democracy, economic interdependence, and international law and organizations could establish the foundations for “perpetual peace.” Our analyses of politically relevant dyads show that each of the three elements of the Kantian peace makes a statistically significant, independent contribution to peaceful interstate relations. These benefits are evident even when the influence of other theoretically interesting factors—such as relative power, alliances, geographic contiguity, and economic growth—is held constant. Increasing the number of shared memberships in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) by one standard deviation reduces the incidence of militarized disputes by about 23 percent from the baseline rate for a typical pair of bordering states. If both members of a dyad are democratic, conflict is 35 percent less likely than the baseline; increasing both the dyadic trade–GDP ratio and the trend in trade by a standard deviation reduces the chance of conflict by 38 percent. Together, all the Kantian variables lower the probability of a dispute by 72 percent. We check for reverse causation and find reason to believe that a feedback system is at work, with IGOs reducing conflict and low-conflict dyads joining IGOs. Democracies and interdependent states are more likely to join IGOs with one another, bringing together the three elements of a system for Kantian peace.

Revisiting the European Court of Justice

Abstract: The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is widely recognized not only as an important actor in the process of European integration but also as a strategic actor in its own right. In the last four years the literature on the Court has dramatically expanded, nourishing a lively debate between neofunctionalists and intergovernmentalists. But this debate has now reached the limits of its usefulness. Both neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism neglect the range of specific motives and constraints shaping the behavior of individual litigants and national courts; further, both insist on modeling the state as a unitary actor. New scholarship on public interest and corporate litigants in the EU and on the relationship between the ECJ and national courts highlights these failings. Reviewing the literature, this essay develops a model of the legal integration process that encompasses disaggregated state actors—courts, regulatory agencies, executives, and legislatures—interacting with both supranational institutions and private actors in domestic and transnational society. It distills new data and theoretical insights to specify the preferences of some of these actors and the constraints they face in implementing those preferences.

Wage Bargaining, Central Bank Independence, and the Real Effects of Money

Abstract: The effects of financial capital mobility on monetary policy autonomy are relatively well understood, but the importance of particular monetary regimes in distinct national-institutional settings is not. This article is a theoretical and empirical exploration of the effects of monetary policy regimes on unemployment in different national wage-bargaining settings. Based on a rational expectations, two-stage game of the interaction between the wage behavior of labor unions and the monetary policies of governments, I argue that monetary policies have real (employment) effects in all but the most decentralized bargaining systems. Specifically, in intermediately centralized bargaining systems a credible government commitment to a nonaccommodating monetary policy rule will deter militant wage behavior with salutary effects on unemployment. In highly centralized systems, by contrast, restrictive monetary policies will clash with unions' pursuit of wage-distributive goals and produce inferior employment performance. Only in highly fragmented bargaining systems is money “neutral” in the sense that employment performance is unaffected by monetary regimes. The model has clear consequences for the optimal design of central banks and collective bargaining arrangements and suggests new ways to study institutional change (hereunder the causal effect of increasingly globalized capital markets). The argument is supported by pooled time-series data for fifteen OECD countries over a twenty-one-year period.

Redistributive Cooperation: Market Failure, Wealth Transfers, and the Basle Accord

Abstract: InDecember1987,policymakersbelongingtotheGroupofTen(G-10)signeda far-reaching agreement on international ” nancial regulation: the Basle Accord ontheInternational Convergence of Capital Measuresand Capital Standards. Underthetermsof thisagreement,G-10 policymakersimplemented uniform risk-based capitalrequirements on commercial banks. The origins of the Basle Accord, according toKapstein, lay in the consequencesof international ” nancial integration. International” nancial integration, by raising systemic risk and eroding regulators’ capacity toensure the soundness of national banking systems, generated a market failure evi-denced by thedebt crisis. Commercial bankshad accepted ariskier portfolioofloansthan society considered optimal and were now unwilling to bear the full costs of thislending behavior. Financial market failurecreated a demand for international regula-tiontowhichpolicymakersrespondedby supplying theBasleAccord.‘ ‘ To theextentthat the payments system had the characterof apublic good, it wasreasonable to askevery state to contribute to its maintenance. . . . Bank supervisors responded to theneed for greater oversight by negotiating the BasleAccord.’ ’

Rationalizing Politics: The Emerging Synthesis of International, American, and Comparative Politics

Abstract: International relations has often been treated as a separate discipline distinct from the other major fields in political science, namely American and comparative politics. A main reason for this distinction has been the claim that politics in the international system is radically different from politics domestically. The degree of divergence between international relations (IR) and the rest of political science has waxed and waned over the years; however, in the past decade it seems to have lessened. This process has occurred mainly in the “rationalist research paradigm,” and there it has both substantive and methodological components. Scholars in this paradigm have increasingly appreciated that politics in the international realm is not so different from that internal to states, and vice versa. This rationalist institutionalist research agenda thus challenges two of the main assumptions in IR theory. Moreover, scholars across the three fields now tend to employ the same methods. The last decade has seen increasing cross-fertilization of the fields around the importance of institutional analysis. Such analysis implies a particular concern with the mechanisms of collective choice in situations of strategic interaction. Some of the new tools in American and comparative politics allow the complex, strategic interactions among domestic and international agents to be understood in a more systematic and cumulative way.

Managing the evolution of multilateralism

Abstract: Author(s): Downs, George W.; Rocke, David; Barsoom, Peter N. | Abstract: In the past five years a relatively extensive literature has emerged that explores the demand for multilateral cooperation, that is, those factors that motivate states to develop (or resist developing) formal institutions that operate to increase interstate economic, military, or environmental cooperation.1 These factors include the transaction costs associated with ad hoc and multiple, bilateral arrangements; increased interstate trade; the diffusion of liberal trade theory; information about the costs of environmental degradation; and trends in elite ideology.To date, however, our understanding of the supply side of multilateralism--the standards that are set for admission, the order and speed with which candidate states are admitted, and the impact of expansion on cooperation and future evolution--has been relatively undeveloped.2 Partly as a result, theorists have had little to say about how multilateral institutions are likely to evolve or what the policy consequences of their expansion will be.3 Supply-side issues are important because multilateral organizations usually do not ''spring forth full blown''--they grow. Instead of forming an ''inclusive'' agreement-- that is, one that covers nearly all of the states that its designers eventually hope to include--many multilateral organizations start out with substantially smaller memberships and generally expand over time. We argue that, among the many possible explanations for the choice of this design strategy, there is a rational choice argument

Realism in the Study of World Politics

Abstract: The popularity of alternative approaches to international politics cannot be explained entirely by their scholarly virtues Among the other factors at work are fashions and normative and political preferences This in part explains the increasing role of rationalism and constructivism Important as they are, these approaches are necessarily less complete than liberalism, Marxism, and realism Indeed, they fit better with the latter than is often realized Realism, then, continues to play a major role in IR scholarship It can elucidate the conditions and strategies that are conducive to cooperation and can account for significant international change, including a greatly decreased tolerance for force among developed countries, which appears to be currently the case But neither it nor other approaches have as yet proved to be reliable guides to this new world

What Happened to Fortress Europe?: External Trade Policy Liberalization in the European Union

Abstract: In an era when many fear the breakdown of the global trading order through the emergence of relatively closed regional trading blocs, assessing the effects of European integration on external European Union trade is particularly important. Surprisingly, despite a severe recession accompanied by record levels of unemployment, a history of increasing protection under similar economic circumstances, and alarming predictions about “fortress Europe,” external trade policy in the region has liberalized in recent years. Prominent trade policy explanations emphasizing changing interest group demands or changing ideas of policymakers are inadequate to account for this significant change in trade policy. Instead, much of this liberalization can be best understood as an unforeseen consequence of the Single European Act. Completing the single market undermined the effectiveness of national trade measures and made it difficult to enact new trade barriers, thus producing a liberal bias in European policy.

Politics at the Water's Edge: Parties, Voters, and the Use of Force Abroad

Abstract: This article examines the effects of party politics and presidential election cycles on U.S. recourse to force abroad. I analyze a game-theoretic model to generate predictions about these effects. In the unique time-consistent equilibrium outcome of the one-shot game, policy varies across political parties. In a subgame–perfect equilibrium outcome of the repeated game, the use of force is invariant to the partisan composition of government. In neither case does policy respond to the electoral cycle.An empirical analysis supports the predictions of the repeated game. Between 1870 and 1992, U.S. recourse to force abroad responds neither to partisan politics nor to the domestic political calendar. It responds only to changes in U.S. power status and to the advent of general wars.

Rationality in International Relations

Abstract: Rationalist models have faced four persistent sets of critics as the research program of international relations has evolved. Under neorealism's structural constraints of international competition and selection, agents' rationality may appear superfluous. Psychological critics have presented neither a single theoretical alternative to rational choice nor contingent hypotheses that specify when psychological distortions of rational decision making are most likely. Both rational choice and psychological approaches must construct models of action for social entities that aggregate individuals. The rationality and individualism of beliefs is questioned by theorists who stress culture, identity, and norms as independent sources of action. Careful stipulation of scope, acknowledgment of methodological shortcomings, and precise definition of differences can serve to bridge the theoretical divide between rational choice models and their critics. Problem-centered research provides a level playing field on which theoretical competition can be established.

Economics and Security in Statecraft and Scholarship

Abstract: This article traces and explains how U.S. policy officials and IR scholars have conceived of the relationship between economics and security over the past half-century. During the interwar years, economics and security were integrated in both scholarship and statecraft. During the Cold War, scholars treated the two issues as separate areas of inquiry. U.S. policymakers integrated economics and security during the early Cold War, but by the 1970s the two components of U.S. foreign policy had drifted apart. After the Cold War, a renewed emphasis has emerged in both U.S. statecraft and IR scholarship on the integration of economics and security. Three factors explain these patterns: (1) the international distribution of material capabilities, (2) perceptions of the strategic environment, and (3) perceptions of the position of the United States in international economic competition.

International and Domestic Constraints on Political Business Cycles in OECD Economies

Abstract: The effect of increased capital mobility on the national control of macroeconomic policy continues to be a topic of debate. Empirical contributions to this debate share the assumption that domestic macroeconomic policy is driven by either partisan or countercyclical motivations, and that the effects of international financial flows have roughly similar effects in all countries. This article reevaluates the integration hypothesis in a framework in which manipulations of the macroeconomy derive from opportunistic motivations. The article emphasizes the ways in which prior institutional choices effect the way these motivations are translated into actions. Evidence from individual country and pooled time-series tests suggests that opportunistic cycles are less likely to occur when (1) a government maintains a fixed exchange rate in the presence of highly mobile capital or (2) when the central bank enjoys above-average independence.

Systemic Conflict and Regional Monetary Integration: The Case of Europe

Abstract: Existing explanations of European monetary integration, emphasizing economic interdependence, issue linkage, institutions, and domestic politics, take a predominantly regional approach. In the international monetary thesis developed here, I argue that U.S. policy disturbances, transmitted through the international monetary system, created compelling incentives for European states to cooperate on exchange-rate and monetary policy. I develop a general theory of macroeconomic power, based on open economy macroeconomics, and show how the exercise of such influence can drive regional monetary integration. This article then tests the international thesis with reference to monetary integration within the European Union by examining four periods in which the United States acted to stabilize the international monetary system and seven episodes in which it disrupted the system. European governments and central banks reduced regional monetary cooperation when the United States supported system stability and strengthened it after each episode of disruption. The evidence thus strongly supports the inference that the link is causal.

The Origins of Central Banking: Solutions to the Free-Rider Problem

Abstract: Certain domestic institutions are sources of international power, by way of their abilities to encourage investment and to mobilize social resources in wartime. For example, states with democratic institutions almost always win the wars they e ght, a regularity known as the ‘‘democratic advantage.’’1 This result is intriguing since it rests on intuition about the effects of military competition on domestic institutions: rivalry among states may put pressure on sovereigns to provide the political foundations for secure markets in order to enlarge future military capabilities. In this article I address the role of war in inducing domestic institutions that allowed governments to credibly commit to promises to pay their debts—a probable source of democracies’ edge in war. Rather than investigate the entire range of protections affected by democratic institutions—a life’s endeavor, as the work of Douglass North attests—I focus on a single e nancial element of the reforms: the innovation of central banking. Britain’s superior e nancial, economic, and military performance after 1689 rested in large part on the establishment of the Bank of England. 2 The central bank provided a commitment technology that improved the government’s ability to borrow, a need impelled by intense military competition. 3 My motivation derives from puzzles concerning the origins and the diffusion of credibility-enhancing institutions like central banks. Institutions resolve collective action problems, but institutions themselves are public goods, meaning that their origins are subject to the same dilemmas they are meant to resolve. 4 What then explains the incentives of self-interested and free-riding individuals to contribute to

Positive Feedback: The Impact of Trade Liberalization on Industry Demands for Protection

Abstract: Contrary to widely accepted theories of interest-group demand for protection, industries that experience high and rising import competition after a reduction in trade barriers often become less rather than more protectionist in the long term. To unravel this paradox, I propose and test a theory that explains variation in domestic producer groups' demand for protection over time. This model of industry behavior suggests that trade liberalization has a “positive feedback” effect on the policy preferences and political strategies of domestic industries, compelling them to adjust to more competitive market conditions and thereby reducing their future demand for protection.

Geopolitical Relations in the European Middle Ages: History and Theory

Abstract: The European Middle Ages have recently attracted the attention of international relations (IR) scholars as a “testing-ground” for established IR theories. Neorealists, historicizing neorealists, and constructivists dispute the meanings of medieval anarchy and hierarchy in the absence of sovereignty. On the basis of a detailed critique of these approaches, I offer a historically informed and theoretically controlled interpretation of medieval geopolitics revolving around contested social property relations. My interpretation is meta-theoretically guided by dialectical principles. Lordships are the constitutive units of medieval authority, combining economic and political powers and assigning contradictory forms of rationality to their major agents, lords, and peasants. Interlordly competition over land and labor translates directly into distinct forms of geopolitical relations, generating a culture of war. Against this background, I clarify the specific meanings of the medieval “state,” territoriality, frontiers, peace, war, anarchy, and hierarchy before drawing out the wider implications of changing social property forms for IR theory.

Economic Interests, Party, and Ideology in Early Cold War Era U.S. Foreign Policy

Abstract: Although it is widely acknowledged that economic interests influence the politics of trade policy, most research on international relations treats security issues differently. Do conflicting economic interests shape political debate over foreign policy even when security issues are highly salient? To answer this question, I test a range of hypotheses about conflicting interests in the economic stakes of U.S. foreign policy during the early Cold War era. I present evidence that economic interests in their home states were closely related to senators' voting patterns on foreign policy issues. These patterns hold across economic and security issues. I also find that political parties play an important mediating role, making senators more or less receptive to various economic interests.

Domestic Responses to Capital Market Internationalization Under the Gold Standard, 1870- 1914

Abstract: The internationalization of capital markets that occurred during the era of the classical gold standard (1870-1914) was part of a broader set of trends that threatened to drain local markets from capital and channel that capital to the national financial center and, from there, toward other national financial centers. Still, internationalization was neither inevitable, uniform, nor irreversible but was a political choice informed by redistributional considerations between rival domestic interests and decided by politically dominant coalitions. The domestic institutional structure in each country determined the composition of the politically dominant coalition. Decentralized structures allowed potential losers to curb public policies favorable to capital market internationalization, whereas centralized structures allowed expected winners to promote such policies. As a result, economies with centralized states ended up being the most dependent on the international capital market, whereas economies with decentralized states took a less active part in the globalization of finance.