Showing papers in "International Studies Quarterly in 1985"

On the Political Consequences of Scarcity and Economic Decline

Abstract: This essay criticizes the relative neglect of political analysis in most of the literature on global resource scarcity and ecological crisis. It proposes that substantial and persisting increases in the scarcity of widely-sought resources in contemporary societies tend to create greater material inequalities within and among societies, intensify internal and international conflict, and a shift from open toward more closed and authoritarian political institutions. National policy responses which facilitate accommodation to ecological limits are contrasted with pro-growth policies. Historical and contemporary evidence is cited in support of the argument. Implications for the Third World and North-South relations are suggested. The analysis is intended to promote empirical research that will qualify both the unrealistic political optimism of ecological analysts and the technological optimism of the proponents of further growth.

Toward a Scientific Understanding of International Conflict: A Personal View

Abstract: A scientific understanding of international conflict is best gained by explicit theorizing, whether verbal or mathematic, grounded in axiomatic logic, from which hypotheses with empirical referents may be extracted, followed by rigorous empirical analysis (whether quantitative or not) in which assumptions and procedures are explicitly stated. Such research should be careful to note whether the hypotheses stipulate necessary, sufficient, necessary and sufficient, or probabilistic relations among variables. Where, as will generally be the case, individual researchers lack all the skills required by the above research agenda, collaboration should be emphasized. Knowledge will best be gained when those with the ‘traditionalist’ skills for evaluating patterns within individual events, those with the ‘behavioralist’ training in the analysis of general patterns, and those with the skills of the axiomatic theorist communicate and cooperate with each other to move the discipline forward.

Kondratieff Waves as War Cycles

Abstract: Kondratieff long economic waves are found in the core of the world-system, at least in synchronized price movements, from 1495 through 1945. These long economic waves are synchronous with a cycle of war between core nations, in which an escalatory war upswing recurs roughly every 50 years. These great power wars apparently play a central role in the economic long wave, especially in connection with inflationary periods on long wave upswings. The long waves of economics and war in the core of the world-system can be traced through ten repetitions since 1495; since around 1945, however, war, prices and production have diverged. Over five centuries, the war cycle has lengthened somewhat, the wars themselves have shortened, and their severity has increased a hundredfold.

Dependent Economic Development, Aid Dependence on the United States, and Democratic Breakdown in the Third World

Abstract: The relationship between two kinds of dependency linkages and the stability of developing democracies is investigated in global perspective utilizing quantitative cross-national statistical analysis considered in the context of descriptive historical information. Hypotheses that explain breakdowns of democracy in developing countries as a result of the process of dependent economic development are not supported. A quite strong inverse time-lagged association is observed between aid dependence on the United States- especially in regard to military aid-and the stability of democratic regimes in the Third World. This correlation is interpreted as reflecting in large part the influence of the aggressive Cold War containment doctrine espoused by theJohnson and Nixon administrations, which encouraged preemptive authoritarian regime transformation in the interest of maintaining stable pro-American, anti-Communist governments in Third World democracies that were of strategic geopolitical value to the United States. The belief that a liberal dosage of economic development constitutes an effiective prescription for democratic political stability is a premise of modernization theory once considered to be virtually a general law of comparative politics. After all, economic development is economic development, regardless of geography, and if this formula had produced stable democracy in the early-developing countries of the North, why should it not be equally applicable to the late-developing countries of the South?

Development, dependence, and gender inequality in the Third World.

Abstract: While there has been much recent empirical investigation of the relationship between economic development, dependence, and income inequality, the issue of gender inequality has received less systematic attention. This exploratory study is a cross-sectional investigation of the effects of industrialization and investment, debt, and export dependency on levels of female education, and on rates of female economic participation, both absolutely and relative to male rates in 60 less-developed countries. Although some of the macroeconomic indicators emerge as significant predictors of gender inequality in several of the regression equations, the most important explanatory variable is cultural region. These findings fail to lend strong empirical support to either the modernization or the dependency/world-system theoretical perspective. The concluding discussion speculates on the interpretation of the research findings, offers some observations on the conceptual distinctions between class and gender stratification, and suggests some directions for future research.

Toward a Reformulation of the Theory of Mutual Deterrence

Abstract: I argue in this article that propositions implicit in the theory of mutual deterrence suggest a basic congruence between the structure of the ideal deterrence relationship and the game of Prisoners' Dilemma. I offer some possible reasons why deterrence theorists have not made this connection explicit and show that by embedding the theory of mutual deterrence within a dynamic game theoretic framework recently developed by Brams and Wittman, the anomaly is reconciled. Finally, I examine some consequences for deterrence of some typical deviations from the archetypical deterrence relationship, and suggest how Brams and Wittman's dynamic approach might be extended to develop a more satisfying theory of mutual deterrence.

The Ties that Bind: Aid, Trade, and Political Compliance in Soviet-Third World Relations

Abstract: The theory of Soviet-centered dependence argues that Soviet economic and military aid to Third World states increases the recipient's trade dependence on the Soviet Union. This dependence, in turn, induces political compliance with the Soviet Union. The present study tests the key hypotheses of this theory. It finds that trade dependence on the Soviet Union provides a significant source of political compliance with the Soviet Union. It finds that the trade dependence effect of Soviet military assistance declined from the 1960s to the 1970s, but that military aid increased in importance as a direct instrument of influence. It also finds that the trade dependence effect of Soviet economic assistance has increased even as economic aid has failed to prove to be an important instrument of direct influence.

Raymond Aron and the Theory of International Relations

Abstract: The scope of Raymond Aron's work has always caused his commentators and his disciples to despair. Many unpublished works will probably be released in the near future. However, Aron's death makes it possible to study in depth, at last, his scientific contribution and to separate the two activities which he led jointly and never fully distinguished: journalism, or commentaries of current events which he thought he had the duty to clarify and to interpret, and theoretical writings, the works of a philosopher of history who was also a sociologist of contemporary societies and a critic of the social and the political thought of most great writers in history. The only purpose of this essay is to sum up Raymond Aron's scientific contribution to the theory of International Relations. I will therefore leave aside books, or parts of books, that deal primarily with current affairs, nor will I examine that part of his work which takes the form of historical narrative, for instance the major parts of The Imperial Republic. Nor will I discuss the first volume of Clausewitz, which belongs in the realm of the criticism of ideas, nor repeat what I wrote 20 years ago in my detailed account of Peace and War, shortly after the publication of this master work in France (Hoffmann, 1965). However, at the end of this essay, I discuss a posthumous publication in which he re-examines his own main concepts and contributions. Nobody who reads again Raymond Aron's enormous work can fail to be struck by its originality. He was original by comparison with earlier French writers. Until the early 1 950s foreign policy and the relations among states had been the bailiwick of historians, of lawyers and to a lesser extent of economists. Raymond Aron is the man who, in France, almost single-handedly created an autonomous discipline of international relations at the crossroads of history, law, and economics, but also of political science and sociology. This discipline, as he conceived it, consisted in a coherent and rigorous system of questions aimed at making intelligible the constant rules and the changing forms of a specific and original type of social action: the behavior on the world scene of the agents of the units in contest, i.e. diplomats and soldiers. This is what he called diplomatico-strategic behavior. The laws and forms of this behavior were already being studied during those same years by important colleagues of Aron in the United States. In all his books and articles he never ceased dialoguing with his American counterparts, and particularly with Hans Morgenthau, the German emigre thinker whose influence both on academics and on practitioners has been so enormous in the United States. He also exchanged ideas with Henry Kissinger, who was both an academic and a practitioner. But even if one compares him with American specialists ofintemational relations, Aron seems strikingly original.

A Cybernetic Model of the US Defense Expenditure Policymaking Process

Abstract: The observation that US military expenditures are largely a function of internal, domestic factors is increasingly becoming a part of the conventional wisdom. This result is counterintuitive, particularly when compared with the statements of US defense planners. In addition, most explanations lack an explicit characterization of decisionmaking and decisionmakers. This article addresses these twin problems by developing a model of US defense expenditure policymaking which is based upon the following principles of cybernetic behavior: (a) decisionmakers are boundedly rational; (b) they respond to a limited number of environmental factors in a hierarchic fashion; and (c) the structure of this hierarchy is a function of “survival” considerations. A multiactor, multistage model is operationalized and tested for the period of Fiscal Years 1947–1980. This article concludes that the hierarchic search structure posited by the cybernetic approach is a reasonable approximation to the behavior of the major actors in the US defense expenditure process.

Toward Understanding in International Relations

Abstract: It is impossible to disagree with the denotation of an essay that concludes with a plea for abstract theorizing, quantitative and nonquantitative analyses 'of implicit theories, or of informal, ad hoc, or personal hunches', and smalland large-N studies. I am completely sympathetic with Bueno de Mesquita's rejection of empiricism and purely inductive exercises associated with justificationalist and neo-justificationalist epistemologies. Lakatos's (1970) sophisticated methodological falsification offers a reasonable set of criteria for assessing research. However, I am skeptical about the possibility of comparing theories which are drawn from different research programs, about the benefits of large-N over small-N studies, and about the merits of quantitative over nonquantitative research. Kuhn's (1962) Structure of Scientific Revolutions touched off a lengthy debate about realism and rationality, about theory-laden observation, theory incommensurability, and criteria for belief and evidence. Kuhn's work challenges the traditional views of major philosophers of science who had held, at least in part, that science is an effort to learn about the one real world, that there is a sharp distinction between scientific and other beliefs, that scientific findings are cumulative, that there is a clear distinction between theory and observation, that hypotheses are justified by observation, that theoretical formulations proceed through deductive reasoning, that concepts have fixed meanings, and that there is a basic unity to all sciences (Hacking, 1981a: 1-2). Kuhn strongly doubts that one could decide objectively about the relative merits of diffierent paradigms. Competing approaches often use different terms. Even when they use the same terms these terms take on different meanings: 'Though most of the same signs are used before and after a revolution-e.g. force, mass, element, compound, cell the ways in which some of them attach to nature had somehow changed. Successive theories are thus, we say, incommensurable' (Kuhn, 1970: 267). Kuhn argues that the choice among competing paradigms, a choice which could bring about a scientific revolution, involves sociological and psychological factors, not just some set of criteria that could be accepted as scientific in the traditional sense. Lakatos's sophisticated methodological falsification is an effort to rebut Kuhn, to establish both empirically and logically that science can and has progressed rationally. He contends that it is possible to establish objective criteria for deciding among competing paradigms. For Lakatos, progress involves selecting research programs

The Outcomes of International Trade Conflicts: The US and South Korea, 1960–1981

Abstract: Since 1960 national governments have increasingly found themselves in international trade disputes. Yet little research has attempted to analyze this important form of conflict comparatively. Here four general hypotheses are proposed for explaining variations in bilateral conflict outcomes, and a technique for comparing outcomes is devised. A study of one bilateral North-South relationship, that of South Korea and the US, shows that 13 significant commercial disputes occurred between 1960 and 1981, spanning three industrial sectors. The outcomes varied in the degree to which each government achieved its initial objectives. The pattern of variations is explained by the interstate power structure, the domestic distribution of power among industries in the US, the international bargaining process, and to some extent by sectoral market conditions. Conclusions are based on interviews conducted in Seoul, Hong Kong and Washington, as well as on other data.

Pluralistic Rigor: A Comment on Bueno de Mesquita

Abstract: As Bueno de Mesquita notes previously in this symposium, it is not clear whether we can make progress toward a scientific understanding of international politics. Indeed, it is not clear, at least not to me, whether we can make much progress in our discussions of this subject. Interest in it seems to go through cycles. The subject occupied much of our journals-and our PhD examinations-at the end of the 1960s and, after a period in which we tired of examining our epistemological and methodological assumptions, seems to be receiving more attention again. Whether we will do better this time around remains to be seen, but if Bueno de Mesquita's paper and the responses are typical, it does seem that there is now a bit greater convergence of views and a bit more civility in the debate. Thus readers who are anticipating a discussion whose entertainment value will rival that of the (1969) exchange between Levy and Kaplan (1969: 106-109) will be disappointed. Before discussing areas of convergence, let me note a few disagreements. First, the question of the utility of case studies is a large and complex one and I do not think Bueno de Mesquita has done it justice. I briefly refer the reader to the detailed arguments of Campbell (1975), Eckstein (1975), and George and McKeown (1985). First, although this may fall outside of the scope of Lakatos's (1978) criteria, case studies are particularly important in international politics because most of us are keenly interested not only in generalizations, but also in the explanation of particular events. Since large wars kill many people and strongly influence the future, we are concerned about conflicts like World War I or World War II whether or not they are typical of wars in general. (For further discussion, see Jervis, forthcoming.) Second, by dealing with many different aspects of the situation, case studies can meet Lakatos's criterion of accounting for previously unexplained facts and subsuming facts we already have explained. Thus, a study that looks at domestic politics in 1914 might explain both the origins of World War I, the foreign economics policies of European powers, and the domestic policies which were pursued. Alternatively, a study of 1914 in terms of the significance of the prevailing beliefs that the offense would dominate the defense could explain facts relating to preemptive war, alliance structures, crises that were particularly liable to lead to war, and the interplay of bureaucratic and domestic politics (see, for example, Snyder, 1984a, 1984b; Van Evera, 1984). The other side of this coin is that I must admit to being a bit confused by some of Bueno de Mesquita's arguments about the utility of using large ifs. Without passing on the validity of the claim that the Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita theory (1979) can encompass and extend the Organski and Kugler formulation (1980), I do not think

World Models: The Bases of Difference

Abstract: Differences in global or world models, including dramatic variation in forecasts they produce, have drawn considerable attention. Most analyses in search of the bases for differences focus on general structural characteristics of the models. This article seeks the bases at three interrelated levels: general world view, specific theoretical and structural components, and data and parameter choices. After analysis of various models in these terms, the article describes a world model with sufficient structural and data/parameter flexibility that characteristics of other models can be introduced. Doing so produces behavior which emulates the other models and thereby supports the identification of the characteristics key to behavioral differences.

Risk and Foreign Policy Choice

Abstract: Social scientists have long been aware of the need to improve our ability to predict the effect of divergent preference orderings on policy choices made by coalitions. More recently scholars have demonstrated the crucial role of differing assumptions about risk-taking preferences for predicting foreign policy choice. In this paper a theoretical approach for analyzing collective choice in the presence of risk and conflicting preferences is presented and then applied to a series of policy choices in Britain, France, and Germany in two historical periods: one, the three decades before World War I; the other, the decades after World War II. Although the specific cases examined all involve foreign and defense policy options that were embroiled in domestic disputes over extraction, the assumptions and hypotheses presented are designed to be applicable to collective decisionmaking in a wide variety of substantive areas. Indeed, they appear to provide a theoretically grounded interpretation for some characteristic patterns of policy choice that have long intrigued students of comparative foreign policy.

Raymond Aron and the History of the Twentieth Century

Abstract: Raymond Aron would undoubtedly have wished that those who render him homage speak with a critical mind rather than sentimentally or from their remembrances. He would have wanted them to analyze his work as much as himself as a person. But no one would have understood better than he (and permitted one to understand) that a judgment about the intellectual contribution of his different works is inseparable from the experience of the reader. I discovered the existence and thought of Raymond Aron in 1948 through The Great Schism. I heard him speak for the first time in June 1950, the day after the outbreak of the Korean War, which he tried to place in perspective in light of the interpretation of wars and of revolutions of the 20th century that he was going to present in The Century of Total War. That explains in part why I have maintained a particular fondness for those two books, that Aron himself retrospectively considered to be too journalistic. Certainly in trying to define for the readers of The Committed Observer what all his books had in common, he was led to the following formula: 'They constitute a reflection upon the twentieth century, in the light of Marxism, and an attempt to understand better all the sectors of modem society: Economies, social relationships, class relationships, political systems, relations among nations, and ideological arguments' (Aron, 1983: 254). But he criticized The Great Schism and The Century of Total War for having combined these different levels too much, and he preferred those of his books 'that have absolutely nothing to do with journalism: The Introduction to the Philosophy of History, Histoire et Dialectique de la Violence, Clausewitz' (Aron, 1983: 260). He criticized himself for having been too obsessed with reality to give to his

The Frustrated Commentator: An Evaluation of the Work of Raymond Aron

Abstract: Hoffmann's article in this volume is a good example). In this context it would, therefore, be inappropriate in order to provide the reader with a more balanced view, to launch a major attack against Aron and to enumerate all of the weaknesses and problematic aspects of his work. In some sense, such post mortem polemicism would be fruitless since Aron himself would not be able to answer. What I will attempt to do here is something much more detached and analytical, namely to try to understand the significance of Aron's work by placing it in the context of the evolution of French intellectual thinking about the social sciences. This should allow me to raise some fundamental questions about that particular development and to get to a more balanced and distant view of Aron's thinking. Aron's evaluations of the achievements of others (his famous Paix et guerre entre les nations can be characterized among other things as a vast review of the international relations literature at the end of the 1 950s) illustrates what constitutes in my view the main feature of Aron's work. He is first and foremost an accomplished essayist and commentator-a frustrated commentator never completely satisfied with the writings he was reviewing nor his own. This particular key to Aron's work is provided by the author himself at the beginning of his essay on Clausewitz: 'Interpretation in its widest sense, on any topic, dreams or Das Kapital, has become one of the favored themes of French philosophers in recent years' (Aron, 1976: 17).1 Indeed, as Aron mentions, this specific trait characterizes large segments of French philosophy and social science since World War II. In fact, it is often difficult during that period to disentangle philosophy and social science in France (Aron's work is again a good example of this aspect of French intellectual life). As a result, the scientific study of social phenomena remained marginal even in economics. In particular, international political analysis was largely dominated by diplomatic historians and area specialists. Even the kind of traditional theorizing about international relations 'a la Morgenthau or Wolfers did not have its equivalent in France. Aron's work constitutes an exception whose merit is to have revealed the Anglo-Saxon literature in that domain to the French. I believe that this was only possible because Aron had previously established strong credentials as a philosopher and commentator of German sociological thinking and was therefore able to function as the critical interpreter of American conceptions about international politics. However, in this function, he was not really able to generate widespread interest for the works of

Technology and Soviet Foreign Trade: On the Political Economy of an Underdeveloped Superpower

Abstract: This paper investigates how the USSR's trade in foreign technologies reflects its position as an 'underdeveloped superpower' within the capitalist worldeconomy. As a part of the world-system, the Soviet Union's political economy is reconceptualized here, using Wallerstein's world-systems theory, as the most core-like semi-peripheral economy in the world capitalist system. These concepts are used to explain how the Soviet economy has successfully escaped the networks of 'financial-industrial' dependency that characterized the Tsarist economy, while, at the same time, becoming caught in a new kind of 'technological-industrial' dependency in many areas of advanced technological production. Even though basic Soviet science is very sophisticated, the investigation concludes that political contradictions within the Soviet state and economic policies based upon the USSR's essentially semi-peripheral niche prevent Soviet producers from generating the industrial and technological infrastructure of a more highly developed superpower. The relative sophistication of Soviet vis-'a-vis Western technology is a growing concern of many academics, military analysts, and policymakers in the major OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) states. The comprehensive campaigns being mounted by Soviet military, industrial and state intelligence to obtain more Western technology is a serious cause celebre in many NATO capitals.' Yet, the purposes behind most studies of East-West technology transfer are one-sided. One group seeks to prove that technology transfer only augments Soviet military capabilities. Another circle looks at whether or not technical inputs from abroad promote or retard Soviet economic reforms. Other interests examine how Western technological imports might enable the USSR to seize a share of global hightechnology markets. Still others ask whether technological goods from the West qualitatively or quantitively improve Soviet industrial productivity and output. In this study I examine the broader context of East-West technology transfer, namely what Soviet trade in foreign technology reveals about the place of the USSR within the world economic system.

The Responsibilities of Competence in the Global Village

Abstract: Specialists in world affairs have a special responsibility to not only teach and conduct high-quality research, but to address the major problems confronting the global village. Two basic problems today are poverty and war, and the evidence suggests that very little progress can be made in the former until considerable progress has been made in regard to the latter. Armed rivalry between East and West so permeates and corrupts the underdeveloped societies that neither resources nor infrastructure can be put into place until that rivalry is brought under control. Among our responsibilities as teachers, researchers, writers and practitioners, is the need for less tolerance and acquiescence in ‘business as usual’. For example, our research requires greater attention to reproducible evidence and to generalizations based on entire classes of cases, rather than a small number based on selective recall. Our teaching requires not only greater attention to methodological rigor, but to explicit consideration of rival and unconventional interpretations. As writers and journalists, we need to be more critical of the arguments and evidence adduced by the elites and the counter-elites. And, as practitioners, it is time for us to pay more attention to the needs of our societies than to the short-run consideration of bureaucratic and personal interests. The problems are menacing, the time is short, and the responsibilities and opportunities are clearly in our hands.

Raymond Aron: A critical retrospective and prospective

Abstract: Rationale for the Symposium Few intellectuals and political analysts have dominated their times more than Raymond Aron. His death in fall 1983 elicited press notice from around the globe. Aron's writings, covering over 50 years of ceaseless productivity, reached every corner of the world. He was truly a scholar and teacher of global proportions. Often at odds with his contemporaries in Europe, he was perhaps more appreciated, if not always fully understood, by his English-speaking peers in the United States and England than by his French and European colleagues. Yet he was too formidable to be ignored or dismissed by his adversaries and too original and iconoclastic to be cast as the representative of any one school of politics or political analysis. Aron's death, coming shortly on the heels of the publication of his best-selling memoirs,1 prompted the Editors of International Studies Quarterly to attempt an evaluation of his contribution to the study and understanding of international relations. This project has several related aims. First of all it seeks to identify some of the principal elements of Aron's work and approach to international politics that merit attention and preservation. Second, the Editors sought to present a critical retrospective rather than a eulogy, which, while well-meaning, would have had little lasting value. It seemed important to determine, at least in a preliminary way, what of Aron's work is likely to stand the test of time. It was also felt that Aron, given his dedication to dialectical discourse, would have also preferred a probing retrospective that looked critically and skeptically at his writing. Three respected scholars in international relations, known to colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic, consented to contribute evaluations. A close reading of the articles by Pierre Hassner, Stanley Hoffmann, and Urs Luterbacher reveals that they do not have the same views about Aron's contribution to the study of politics. Indeed, Professor Luterbacher, while conceding the importance of Aron's earlier philosophical writings, advances the intriguing case that Aron and his contemporaries slowed the development in France of a scientific social science along the model of the physical sciences. The differences expressed in the following retrospective suggest the third aim of the project, namely, to stir debate about key conceptual and methodological problems in international relations that have not been fully resolved. Aron strove throughout his Author's note: As the guest editor of this Aron retrospective, I should like to take this opportunity to thank Professors P. Terrence Hopmann and Robert Kudrle for their unfailing aid and encouragement. Professor Hopmann translated Pierre Hassner's article and was ever diligent and sensitive in capturing the meaning of illusive phrases and in pursuing fugitive citations. Professor Kudrle's persistence and gentle suasion were indispensable in seeing the project to completion.

Change and Persistence in the World System: An Analysis of Global Trade Concentration, 1955–1975

Abstract: This study extends the empirical investigation of world system theory to certain aggregate characteristics of the world economy. World system theory and a more conventional set of development assumptions are shown to generate divergent predictions of global change and persistence in export trade concentration. Certain conventional assumptions suggest that average concentration and the dispersion of concentration scores will tend to decline more or less systematically with advances in world development. Conversely, world system theory predicts that changes will occur in the relative positions of individual countries but that the global distribution of concentration levels will remain fairly stable over short periods of time. To evaluate these predictions against empirical data, a procedure for decomposing patterns of change is applied to two measures of trade concentration, first for a global sample of countries and then for subsamples representing the periphery, semi-periphery, and core. Results from the decompositions generally conformed to world system predictions by revealing very high levels of positional change within structural statuses of individual countries and negligible or small amounts of change in the core/semi-periphery/periphery structure. These implications rest on a thin evidential base and can be no more than suggestive until the further research that this analysis beckons is conducted on other features of change and persistence in the world system.

Breaking Trade Dependency: A Global Simulation of Third World Proposals for Alternative Trade Regimes

Abstract: Calls for a New International Economic Order included proposals for revision of the Liberal trade system in ways which would facilitate Third World development. To assess possible costs and consequences of these proposals a simulation model of the international trade system is employed here to explore changes in trade patterns which could result from alternative trade orders. Specifically, two proposed alternatives are compared to the existing order: one relatively moderate strategy which calls for concessionary tariffs to be granted to developing countries by advanced nations, and a second, more radical strategy which counsels economic disengagement of the South from the North in favor of Collective Self-reliance for the developing nations. The simulation exercise reveals potential difficulties associated with these strategies, including highly unequal distribution of benefits and costs, and the internal incompatibility of the multiple development objectives which these proposals contain. Should global trade relations be governed by the classic liberal norms of openness, non-discrimination and reciprocity, or should the world trade system be structured to facilitate progress in developing areas? For four decades now, trade relations between the industrialized North and the developing South have been deeply politicized because antagonisms go well beyond the individual commercial policies of particular countries and revolve around the trade regime itself. The industrialized countries were largely successful in establishing a liberal world trade order shortly after World War II. Developing nations questioned the underlying norms of this order from the outset and developed proposed regime alternatives over the ensuing years. As scholars, our understanding of the postwar liberal order and proposed alternatives-and thus our understanding of the North-South debate-has been limited by the fact that our observations are quite naturally restricted to outcomes produced by that existing Author's note: The research reported in this paper was conducted while the author was a research scientist in the Global Modeling Group of the International Institute of Comparative Social Research, Science Center Berlin. The extensive support of that institution is gratefully acknowledged. The author would also like to thank the editors of ISQ and three anonymous reviewers for several constructive criticisms and suggestions, and wishes it were possible to have been more responsive to these. An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 22nd Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, March 1981.

Coding Treaties: An Example from Nuclear Cooperation

Abstract: This note reports on a project to develop a codebook and data set for the analysis of bilateral civilian nuclear power agreements. It briefly provides a rationale for treaty coding projects of this kind, a description of the codebook and of the data set to be used with it, and a general discussion of some of the problems encountered in the development of the codebook. The marriage of treaties and computers is not new. In quantitative studies of international relations, treaties have been used as indicators or points on measurement scales (Burgess and Lawton, 1972; Azar and Ben-Dak, 1975), as independent variables (e.g., Singer and Small, 1968), and as guides to state interaction patterns (e.g., Holsti and Sullivan, 1969). In the field of international law, computers have been used to store text, to create indices of treaties or documents (e.g., Jackson, 1969; Rohn 1974), to track signatures, ratifications and withdrawals, to develop 'treaty profiles' of different states (e.g., Rohn, 1976) or to illuminate particular points of international law (e.g., Gamble, 1980).' With, perhaps, the exception of work based on Rohn (1974), these various uses do not seem to involve a close quantitative analysis of the contents of treaties. Developing a detailed codebook for the analysis of treaty contents would be a daunting task if many different types of treaties are included in the data set. If, however, the researcher's focus is on a clearly defined set of agreements, with a definable set of concerns, problems, and responses, the close analysis of treaty contents through computer-assisted means may be both possible and desirable. This note reports on the author's efforts to develop a codebook for the detailed computer analysis of the contents of one such defined set of agreements: bilateral interstate civilian nuclear cooperation agreements, with special attention to safeguards and non-proliferation issues. A vast literature has developed in the area of nonproliferation (see Potter, 1982), and in both general and country-specific studies of agreements and policies related to nuclear exports (e.g., Hunt, 1977; Duffy, 1978; Park, 1979; Katz and Marwah, 1982). Here again, a close quantitative examination of treaty contents seems to be absent, although some qualitative studies may exist (e.g., United States Library of Congress, 1976). While this note focuses on nuclear cooperation agreements, I also touch on some general issues regarding the rationale

Budgetmaking in the United Nations Development Program: An Analysis of the Expenditures for Technical Assistance

Abstract: The United Nations Development Program (UNDP), charged with promoting development projects in the second UN Development Decade, faced a serious financial crisis during the first half of the 1970s. In this paper I investigate the UNDP's budgetmaking to determine the sources of its financial crisis. Unlike municipal, state or national governments, this analysis finds that the UNDP, which is financed by voluntary contributions from member states, is less likely to use an incremental method of budgetmaking. The financial conditions strongly constrain the budgetmaking of the UNDP. However, the UNDP Secretariat's estimates of available resources for technical assistance have been optimistic, allowing the agency rapidly to expand its activities in response to the demand of developing countries, but also leading to the UNDP's serious financial crisis.

The UN Dimension Revisited: A Critique and Reassessment of Wilkenfeld and Brecher

Abstract: Wilkenfeld and Brecher (1984: 50, 52) investigate two general hypotheses regarding the circumstances and the consequences of UN activity in international crises: (a) the greater the seriousness of crises, the greater the extent of activity; (b) the greater the extent of the activity, the more satisfactory are certain outcomes. The authors test their hypotheses by cross-tabulating their measure of UN activity with indicators of crisis seriousness (severity) and crisis outcome. They then calculate a X2 statistic for each cross-tabulation. This statistic, however, indicates only that there is some general unspecified relationship in a sample-a point acknowledged by Wilkenfeld and Brecher (1984: 66)-and not that a directional relationship exists. Statistics such as Guttman's lambda for nominal data or Somers' d for ordinal data would have been more appropriate. Wilkenfeld and Brecher (1984: 56-58) then conduct post hoc tests of their hypotheses by seeing if, for instance, the plurality of cases of high-level UN activity coincide with the most severe forms of violence. The authors implicitly test a priori predictions derived from their hypotheses. Simply looking at the conditional probabilities of activity for each level of the indicators of seriousness is inadequate because it does not guard against the natural null hypothesis of a disproportionately large number of cases in the cells of no activity or low-level activity with high severity. Consider, by way of example, the authors' (1984: 56) claim that the statistic of 47 per cent of the cases of preeminent violence leading to high-level activity 'proves' hypothesis (a). They do not account for the 53 percent of the cases of preeminent violence that lead to no activity or low-level activity. The authors cannot show that preeminent violence, no violence or low-level activity can be safely excluded from consideration; they do not show that their prediction error is tolerably low. Thus, Wilkenfeld and Brecher do not truly test their hypotheses. A proper test must take into account that their predictions are made a priori and must also account for prediction error. Prediction logic (Hildebrand et al., 1977) fulfills these requirements.