Showing papers on "International political economy published in 1990"

Perspectives on positive political economy

Abstract: This volume serves as an introduction to the field of positive political economy and the economic and political processes with which it is concerned. This new research tradition is distinct from both normative and historical approaches to political economy. Grounded in the rational-actor methodology of microeconomics, positive political economy is the study of rational decisions in a context of political and economic institutions. More analytical than traditional approaches, it is concerned with the derivation of principles and propositions against which real-world experience may be compared. Its focus is on empirical regularities, and its goal is theoretical explanation. The field has focused on three main areas of research: models of collective action, constraints on competitive market processes, and the analysis of transaction costs. Developments in all of these areas are covered in the book. The first part of the volume surveys the field, while the second part displays positive political economy at work, examining a variety of subjects. The final part contains essays by leading political economists on the theoretical foundations of the field.

The Changing Architecture of Politics: Structure, Agency and the Future of the State

Abstract: Preface and Introduction PART ONE: THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL STRUCTURATION: STRUCTURE, AGENCY, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STATE Political Structuration and Political Science The Elements of Political Structure Patterns of Agency Markets, Hierarchies and Political Allocation The Modern State at the Crossroads Structuring the Field of Political Action PART TWO: CHANGING PATTERNS OF POLITICAL STRUCTURATION AND THE FUTURE OF THE STATE The Limits of Political Power Personal Leadership and Party Systems The State and Interest Intermediation Patterns of Collaborative Behaviour The Paradox of Civil Society De-differentiation and Re-differentiation in the Contemporary State Transnational Structures and the State Responses From the Welfare State to the Competition State Epilogue Political Structuration and Political Ideas in the 21st Century

Nationalism and international society

Abstract: What is meant by international society? On what principles is the notion of international society based? How has the notion of nationalism influenced its evolution? In this book James Mayall addresses these questions and sheds important new light on the issues of nation and international society by bringing together subjects that have hitherto been examined separately. Three central themes run throughout the study. First, the challenge posed to previous conceptions of international society and order by the principle of national self-determination. Secondly, the relationship between national and liberal ideas about the organization of political and economic relations between states. And thirdly, the merging of the economic and political aspects of nationalist thought in recent claims by Third World states on the international community.

Contested Exchange: New Microfoundations for the Political Economy of Capitalism:

Abstract: SINCE World War II economics has shifted from being the spearhead of the left’s critique of capitalism to its Achilles heel while neoliberals and the right have come to wield economics as a powerful political weapon. The contemporary left in the advanced capitalist countries is nearly unanimous in advocating forms of popular participation that make the exercise of power democratically accountable. Replacing capitalism with a democratic economy figures prominently in this program. Yet the left lacks a compelling account of the exercise of power in the economy, never having convincingly responded to the proposition that in a system of voluntary contractual exchanges no agent has power over any other simply because a buyer or seller can walk away from any transaction with impunity. Thus the Left has not effectively countered the notion that, because markets provide ample opportunities for individual exit, the demand for a collective voice in economic life is misplaced.

Middle power leadership and coalition building: Australia, the Cairns Group, and the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations

Abstract: Perhaps the key question of debate among neorealist scholars of international political economy concerns the manner in which cooperation may or may not be secured in the global economic order "after hegemony," a question posed by Robert Keohane. A second broad question of interest to scholars of international politics concerns the manner in which weaker states attempt to influence stronger ones. A conflation of these two questions could cause scholars and practitioners alike to pay closer attention than they have in the past to coalitions of the weak as vehicles for cooperation and regime building in the global political economy.This article offers a case study of one recent exercise in coalition building as an attempt to foster cooperation in a "nonhegemonic" environment. Specifically, it examines the role of the Cairns Group of Fair Trading Nations in its attempts to foster reform in global agricultural trade within the current Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. The Cairns Group is shown to be an atypical, single-issue driven, transregional coalition. Led by Australia, the Group's actions represent an interesting exercise in "middle power" politics in a global economic order whose decisionmaking processes are increasingly more fragmented and complex and whose major actors need coaxing toward processes of cooperative economic management.

Perspectives on Positive Political Economy: Political science and rational choice

Abstract: The impulse to study politics scientifically is both old and persistent. Aristotle collected 158 constitutions in order to generalize about events and institutions in the Politics . Early in the Renaissance, Machiavelli revived the Aristotelian program in the Discourses and The Prince , although he did not seem to have as clear a vision of the scientific method as did Aristotle. Late in the eighteenth century, when the term political science came into general use, John Adams studied republics in exactly the Aristotelian spirit and with, perhaps, an even bolder claim for political science: The vegetable and animal kingdoms, and those heavenly bodies whose existence and movements we are, as yet only permitted faintly to perceive, do not appear to be governed by laws more uniform or certain than those that regulate the moral and political world. (Adams 1850–1856, vol. VI, p. 218) By the twentieth century, however, hardly anyone shared Adams's faith in the relative certainty of social and physical science. Surely few people now believe that our laws of political life are as certain or as useful for making predictions as are the laws employed in sending a man to the moon or in eradicating smallpox. In 1778, however, when Adams started his book, electricity had been identified but hardly understood, chemistry consisted mainly of the story of phlogiston, and no one had ever thought that bacteria were connected with disease.

The Political Economy of Soviet Socialism: The Formative Years, 1918-1928

Abstract: 1 Introduction.- 2 The Meaning of the First Decade of Soviet Socialism.- 3 The Political Economy of Utopia: Communism in Soviet Russia, 1918-1921.- 4 The Political Economy of NEP: Market Relations and Interventionism in Soviet Russia, 1921-1928.- 5 The Political Economy of Development Strategy: The Soviet Industrialization Debate, 1924-1928.- 6 Conclusion.- References.

The Economics of Political Violence: The Effect of Political Instability on Economic Growth

Abstract: The Scope of the Study The Study of Political Violence in Perspective The Conflict-Free World of Western Social Science: Paradigm Lost Theories of Collective Rebellious Behavior: Paradigm Regained The Individual: The Logic of Participatory Decision The Behavioral Foundations of a Rational Participant in Collective Rebellion The Individual and His Environment The Aggregate: The Impact of Political Instability on the Economy Impact of Political Instability: The Anatomy of an Economic Crisis Political Instability: An Empirical Definition Political Instability: A Structural Explanation Political Instability and Economic Performance: A Political Economic Model of Growth Summary and Policy Implications Appendix: Index for Political Instability Bibliography Index

THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY: ITS EXPLANATORY POWER FOR LDCs*

Abstract: This paper reviews the new political economy and its relevance to explaining policymaking in the developing countries.

Videomalaise Revisited: Media Exposure and Political Alienation in West Germany

Abstract: The concept of `videomalaise' was first used in America in the 1970s to describe the dual phenomenon of a loss of trust in political institutions and individuals' increasing reliance on television as a means of obtaining political information. Could it be that the particular features of political programming caused political malaise? Using West German survey data, the research presented here tests the validity of the videomalaise thesis. No connection was found between political malaise and the contents of political programming which leads to the conclusion that the videomalaise thesis is unwarranted. Instead, political alienation and low participation are related to the use made of entertainment content in both television and the press.

High Politics is Low Politics: The Domestic and Systemic Sources of Israeli Security Policy, 1967–1977

Abstract: The literature on international political economy explains foreign economic policies by integrating systemic, state, and societal features. Theoretical approaches to national security, however, have tended to extract the state from its societal context. An adequate conceptualization of security policy must integrate both systemic forces and the domestic political economy.One way of integrating these concerns is by examining the state's strategies for mobilizing those financial, productive, and human resources considered necessary for national security.This article examines the political economy of the state's mobilization of resources for national security, called “war preparation,” and proposes a framework for investigation that consists of three elements: (i) the objectives of state managers, (2) the constraints on the state, and (3) the policies of the state for mobilizing its required resources. Based upon these considerations, some tendencies in the government's war preparation strategies are suggested. The utility of this framework is explored through an empirical examination of Israel between 1967 and 1977. The study demonstrates how Israel's war preparation strategies were shaped by the state's domestic and security objectives, the domestic political economy, and systemic constraints and opportunities.

Neither MITI nor America: the political economy of capital liberalization in Japan

Abstract: Compared with Japan, no other industrialized country has so adamantly denied foreign investors direct access to its domestic markets. Japan continued to deny such market access until domestic constituencies finally championed foreign demands and successfully pressured a reluctant state for concessions. The initiative for these concessions came neither from Japan's principal government negotiators in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) nor from public policymakers in America. Rather, it came from American and other multinational corporations (MNCs) seeking to exploit imperfect markets for the technology and related assets which they alone controlled and which a few Japanese oligopolists demanded. These local oligopolists served as manipulative intermediaries between MNCs and the nationstate and in that position determined both the timing and the substance of their country's long march toward capital liberalization. Between the legislation of capital controls in 1950 and the de jure elimination of those controls in 1980, what began as an extension of limited concessions to individual MNCs, eventually aided by small regulatory loopholes, gradually encompassed all foreigners supplying broad product groups. During the intervening thirty years, the MNCs examined in this article— including Coca-Cola, IBM, Texas Instruments, and the “big three” U.S. automakers —finally gained limited access to the Japanese market. For them, the formal liberalizations of the late 1960s and early 1970s proved significant, but not always decisive, as Japanese oligopolists moved both to replace public regulations with private restrictions and to mesh their ongoing political influence domestically with their emerging economic power internationally. Thus, de facto liberalization proceeded slowly and unevenly, at least through 1980, and foreign direct investment in Japan continued to languish. What capital liberalization did occur had little to do with the pressures exerted on MITI and the Japanese state by the U.S. government and the international organizations that America then controlled. Rather, American diplomacy proved successful in forcing concessions from Japan only when it was backed up both by the economic power of American MNCs and by the active support of Japanese business.

Comparative Political Economy

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Political Action in Europe and the USA

Abstract: The theory and measurement of political action the social background of political action ideology and political action values and political action dissatisfaction and political action the general model of political action generations and families in conclusion - the future of political action in Western democracies.

Political Institutions: The Neglected Side of the Story—Comment

Abstract: Although an understanding of bureaucracy is vital to the evolving theories of economic organization and politics, bureaucracy is a seriously neglected topic. Terry Moe is one of the few scholars who has addressed himself to the pertinent issues in an illuminating way (see especially Moe, 1990a). I concur with Moe's view that political scientists of the "new institutionalist" genre have given disproportionate attention to legislatures as compared with bureaucracies and that a more balanced approach that "tackles the subject of bureaucracy in a serious way" (Moe, 1990b:S250) is needed. Furthermore, I concur with the eight points of inquiry that he prescribes (Moe, 1990b:S250-S251). My own sense of the best way to reorient a field is to address the neglected questions and to offer insights and answers with which "orthodoxy" must come to terms. Moe's comparison of the American separation-ofpowers system with the parliamentary systems of other Western democracies-in terms both of the differences in their politics of structural choice and differences in the bureaucracies-is in that spirit. His contrast between presidents and legislators as it relates to bureaucratic design is also illuminating. His main point is that political institutions are distinctive and need to be addressed on their own terms. Much of the recent work that he reviews fails that test.

The Myth of America's Decline: Leading the World Economy into the 1990s

Abstract: Introduction: Leadership or decline: America's choice Part I: Domestic and international sources of U>S> foreign economic policy: Purpose, policy and ideas: A choice-oriented perspective on American foreign economic policy Power, markets, institutions and society: Linking voluntarist concepts with international constraints Part II: Making Bretton Woods: The Bretton Woods agreements: A false start The Marshall Plan: Purpose and policy for prosperity Part III: Breaking Bretton Woods: Blaming Bretton Woods: Purpose and policy collapse Ending Bretton Woods: Cooperation without content Part IV: Restoring Bretton Woods?: Recession 1979-1982: Domestic policy adjustment and international conflict Rebound 1983-1985: Missed opportunity for International cooperation Retreat 1985-88: International cooperation without domestic adjustment Part V: The Limits of Bretton Woods: Managing East-West trade: Denial, detente and deterrence Conclusion: The Bretton Woods Policy Triad in the World Economy of the 1990s

The Political Economy of Reform in Egypt

Abstract: The Egyptian economy has deteriorated since the early 1980s. In response to periods of economic crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and actors within the Egyptian government have been pushing President Hosni Mubarak to reform the economic system. Similar, but less obvious, efforts at reform are found throughout Egyptian society; private organizations are providing services–education, job training, health care, and day care–in the face of governmental unwillingness or inability to make these services available as promised

Foreign Capital Penetration, State Intervention, and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract: Despite the growing debt crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, previous quantitative research on Africa has failed to investigate the association between foreign debt and development. This failure represents a glaring omission in development research because foreign debt and other types of foreign capital penetration may have an impact on various programs that facilitate economic growth and physical quality of life. This paper argues that Africa is influenced by a complex interaction among foreign capital penetration, state processes, and different types of development. The data analysis demonstrates that foreign capital affects African states, which, in turn, influence economic expansion and improvement in physical quality of life. Although substantively interesting, these findings also have broad theoretical implications for scholars conducting research on Africa and other Third World regions. Perhaps most important, the results indicate that contemporary Africa cannot be explained within the context of a single theoretical perspective. Instead, scholars must integrate and modify current theories of international political economy to reflect the uniqueness of modern Africa.

Australia in the International Economy: In the Twentieth Century

Abstract: Ever since 1788, Australia's economic well being has, for good or ill, been affected by the international economy. The authors trace that relationship from the late nineteenth-century onwards. The book is arranged in four chronological sections: pre-First World War, the inter-war period, from the Second World War to 1959 and Australia since 1960. The opening chapter in each section discusses the international economy during the period, the second and third chapters look at the impact of the international economy on the Australian economy. Each section gives a clear account of the political and commercial influences which underlie economic developments. This book fills the need for an introductory text in this area for undergraduate students of economics, politics and history since the text does not assume any previous knowledge of Australian economy or history. It is also useful for the general reader who wishes to understand the international framework within which the Australian economy operates.