1. SeeKrasner, Stephen D., “State Power and the Structure of International Trade,” World Politics 28 (04 1976), pp. 317–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Ibid. Krasner's first period (from 1820 to 1879) is rather long, and it is not clear that it was an entirely homogeneous period with respect to systemic openness. Britain, for example, was reluctant to lower tariffs immediately after the Napoleonic Wars for several reasons, including revenue considerations. The major nineteenth-century tariff reductions did not really begin until roughly midcentury. With respect to the fifth period (from 1945 to 1970), Webb and Krasner later updated the data through 1987. Aside from an increase in nontariff barriers (NTBs) in the early 1980s, the indicators examined suggested continued systemic openness through at least the mid-1980s. See Webb, Michael C. and Krasner, Stephen D., “Hegemonic Stability Theory: An Empirical Assessment,” Review of International Studies 15 (04 1989), pp. 183–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As the authors noted, whether this outcome should be viewed as contradicting the 1976 argument depends on the question of whether or to what extent the United States is considered to be hegemonic. In response to this question, Webb and Krasner argued that the relative capabilities of the United States declined between the 1950s and the early 1970s, with little positional change being recorded thereafter. They also noted that the United States remains the system's largest economy and continues to perform some hegemonic functions even if in some sectors it has declined to a position similar to that of some of its rivals. For Webb and Krasner, these observations meant that the current hegemonic status of the United States is ambiguous. While this conclusion reflects a departure from the more clear-cut 1976 decline evaluation, it does not really change the ability of the hegemonic stability model to predict post-1945 developments vis-à-vis systemic openness.

3. See, however, the following comprehensive critiques:McKeown, Timothy J., “Hegemonic Stability Theory and Nineteenth-Century Tariff Levels in Europe,” International Organization 37 (Winter 1983), pp. 73–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stein, Arthur A., “The Hegemonic Dilemma: Great Britain, the United States and the International Economic Order,” International Organization 38 (Spring 1984), pp. 355–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Frederick, Suzanne Y., “The Instability of Free Trade,” in Modelski, George, ed., Exploring Long Cycles (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1987), pp. 186–217Google Scholar.

4. For examples of ideational explanations, see Kindleberger, Charles P., “The Rise of Free Trade in Western Europe,” Journal of Economic History 35 (03 1975), pp. 20–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Odell, John S., U.S. International Monetary Policy: Markets, Power and Ideas as Sources of Change (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldstein, Judith, “The Political Economy of Trade: Institutions of Protection,” American Political Science Review 80 (03 1986), pp. 161–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldstein, Judith, “Ideas, Institutions, and American Trade Policy,” International Organization 42 (Winter 1988), pp. 197–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldstein, Judith, “The Impact of Ideas on Trade Policy: The Origins of U.S. Agricultural and Manufacturing Policies,” International Organization 43 (Winter 1989), pp. 31–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rohrlich, Paul E., “Economic Culture and Foreign Policy: The Cognitive Analysis of Economic Policy Making,” International Organization 41 (Winter 1987), pp. 61–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. See Cowhey, Peter F. and Long, Edward, “Testing Theories of Regime Change: Hegemonic Decline or Surplus Capacity?” International Organization 37 (Spring 1983), p. 162CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Strange, Susan, “The Management of Surplus Capacity; or, How Does Theory Stand Up to Protectionism?” International Organization 33 (Summer 1979), pp. 303–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strange, Susan, “Protectionism and World Politics,” International Organization 39 (Spring 1985), pp. 233–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Strange, Susan and Tooze, Roger, eds., The International Politics of Surplus Capacity (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981)Google Scholar.

6. For examples of the business cycle approach, see McKeown, Timothy J., “Firms and Tariff Regime Change: Explaining the Demand for Protection,” World Politics 36 (01 1984), pp. 215–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McKeown, Timothy J., “The Limitations of ‘Structural’ Theories of Commercial Policy,” International Organization 40 (Winter 1986), pp. 43–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gallarotti, Giulio, “Toward a Business-Cycle Model of Tariffs,” International Organization 39 (Winter 1985), pp. 155–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the following works, which focus on coalition strategies in response to downturns: Gourevitch, Peter, Politics in Hard Times (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Rogowski, Ronald, Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

7. McKeown, “Firms and Tariff Regime Change.”

8. For a good example of the ascending elites approach, See Frieden, Jeff, “Sectoral Conflict and U.S. Foreign Economic Policy, 1914–1940,” International Organization 42 (Winter 1988), pp. 59–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In different ways, Ferguson and Milner focus on corporate preferences. See Ferguson, Thomas, “From Normalcy to New Deal: Industrial Structure, Party Competition, and American Public Policy in the Great Depression,” International Organization 38 (Winter 1984), pp. 41–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Milner, Helen V., Resisting Protectionism: Global Industries and the Politics of International Trade (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

9. Institutional variables, of course, are another source of partial explanations. See Pastor, Robert, Congress and the Politics of U.S. Foreign Economic Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Ikenberry, G. John, “Conclusion: An Institutional Approach to American Foreign Economic Policy,” International Organization 42 (Winter 1988), pp. 219–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haggard, Stephan, “The Institutional Foundations of Hegemony: Explaining the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934,” International Organization 42 (Winter 1988), pp. 91–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and James, Scott C. and Lake, David A., “The Second Face of Hegemony: Britain's Repeal of the Corn Laws and the American Walker Tariff of 1846,” International Organization 43 (Winter 1989), pp. 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are also other types of structural approaches, such as those focusing on nonhegemonic roles. See, for example, the following articles of Lake, David A.: “International Economic Structures and American Foreign Economic Policy, 1887–1934,” World Politics 35 (07 1983), pp. 517–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Beneath the Commerce of Nations: A Theory of International Economic Structures,” International Studies Quarterly 28 (03 1984), pp. 143–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Krasner, “State Power and the Structure of International Trade.”

11. The technological gradient categories are taken from Galbraith's, James K.Balancing Acts: Technology, Finance and the American Future (New York: Basic Books, 1989), pp. 14–15Google Scholar.

12. For a useful data-based analysis of the national sources of technological innovation, see Freeman, Christopher, Clark, J., and Soete, Luc, Unemployment and Technical Innovation: A Study of Long Waves in Economic Development (London: Pinter, 1982)Google Scholar. Modelski defines lead economies in terms of their emphasis on long-distance trade prior to the late eighteenth century and in terms of the founding of lead industries afterwards. See Modelski, George, Long Cycles in World Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987), pp. 223–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Rostow defines leading sectors as those sectors which are based on major technological breakthroughs and lead to increases in efficiency, growth, and spin-off stimulations of other sectors. See Rostow, Walt W., The World Economy: History and Prospects (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), pp. 365–560CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The five sectors examined in Table 2 are among the least controversial candidates for the leading sector designation in the era from the end of the eighteenth century through the middle of the twentieth century. The following indicators were employed to calculate sectoral shares: cotton textiles = raw cotton consumption; iron = pig iron output; steel = crude steel output; chemicals = sulfuric acid output between 1870 and 1945 and the aggregation of nitrogen fertilizer output, plastics and resins output, and synthetic fiber output after 1945; and motor vehicles = automobile and truck output. While motor vehicles were measured in terms of thousands of units produced, the other indicators were measured in terms of thousands of metric tons produced. Shares were based on the total production of Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States.

14. For overviews of the literature on technology-gap trade, see Krugman, Paul R., “A Model of Innovation, Technology Transfer and the World Distribution of Income,” Journal of Political Economy 87 (04 1979), pp. 253–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dosi, Giovanni and Soete, Luc, “Technical Change and International Trade,” in Dosi, Giovanni et al. , eds., Technical Change and Economic Theory (London: Pinter, 1988), pp. 401–31Google Scholar; and Freeman, Christopher, “Technology Gaps, International Trade and the Problems of Smaller and Less Developed Economies,” in Freeman, Christopher and Ludvall, Bengt-Ake, eds., Small Countries Facing the Technological Revolution (London: Pinter, 1988), pp. 67–84Google Scholar.

15. Krugman, “A Model of Innovation, Technology Transfer and the World Distribution of Income.”

16. See Soete, Luc, “Long Cycles and the International Diffusion of Technology,” in Freeman, and Ludvall, , Small Countries Facing the Technological Revolution, pp. 214–30Google Scholar.

17. There are many explanations for the relative decline of the system leader. The one most compatible with the argument being developed here is found in Thompson's, William R. “Long Waves, Technological Innovation, and Relative Decline,” International Organization 35 (Spring 1990), pp. 201–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. The basic problem with analyzing the timing of innovative activity is that someone must first decide which innovations to include and exclude from the data set and then determine a specific date for each innovation. No one has yet been able to accomplish these formidable tasks to everyone's satisfaction. Nevertheless, different attempts to create appropriate data sets do produce evidence for the clustering of innovations. See Mensch, Gerhard, Stalemate in Technology: Innovations Overcome the Depression (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1979)Google Scholar; Hartman, Raymond S. and Wheeler, David R., “Schumpeterian Waves of Innovation and Infrastructure Development in Great Britain and the United States: The Kondratieff Cycle Revisited,” Research in Economic History, vol. 4, 1979, pp. 37–85Google Scholar; Haustein, Heinz-Dieter and Neuwirth, Erich, “Long Waves in World Industrial Production, Energy Consumption, Innovations, Inventions, and Patents and Their Identification by Spectral Analysis,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 22 (09 1982), pp. 53–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Freeman, Clark, and Soete, Unemployment and Technical Innovation; Duijn, J. J. Van, The Long Wave in Economic Life (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1983)Google Scholar; Goldstein, Joshua S., Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; and Kleinecht, Alfred, “Schumpeterian Waves of Innovation? Summarizing the Evidence,” in Vasko, T., Ayres, Robert, and Fontvieille, Louis, eds., Life Cycles and Long Waves (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1990), pp. 41–56Google Scholar.

19. The systemic approach taken here has considerable compatibility with less systemic approaches, such as the product cycle models described in the following works: Vernon, Raymond, Sovereignty at Bay: The Multinational Spread of U.S. Enterprises (New York: Basic Books, 1971)Google Scholar; Kurth, James R., “The Political Consequences of the Product Cycle,” International Organization 33 (Winter 1979), pp. 1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kurth, James R., “Industrial Change and Political Change: A European Perspective,” in Collier, David, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), pp. 319–62Google Scholar. Another area of compatibility is found in comparative models that take the sources of change in trade fluctuation waves as givens. See Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times; and Rogowski, Commerce and Coalitions.

20. Landes attributes these effects to the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the late eighteenth century, but they apply to each successive growth wave equally well. See Landes, David S., “Some Thoughts on Economic Hegemony in the Nineteenth-Century World Economy,” in Holtfrerich, Carl-Ludwig, ed., Interactions in the World Economy (New York: New York University Press, 1989), pp. 153–67Google Scholar. The demand for raw materials, however, intensified only in the late nineteenth century.

21. For useful historical discussions of the surplus capacity phenomenon, see the following chapters in Strange, and Tooze, , The International Politics of Surplus Capacity: Bienefeld, M. A., “Interpreting Excess Capacity,” pp. 25–35Google Scholar; Price, Victoria C., “Recessions and the World Economic Order,” pp. 45–56Google Scholar; and Milward, Alan, “Tariffs as Constitutions,” pp. 57–66Google Scholar.

22. The following works served as the primary inspiration in differentiating between ascent and catch-up waves:Lewis, W. Arthur, The Rate of Growth of the World Economy (Tapei: Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, 1984)Google Scholar; and Gilpin, Robert, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987), pp. 100–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The alternating pattern can be traced to the sixteenth century; but the farther back in time one searches, the more doubtful it is that the differentiated behavioral responses vis-à-vis trade and protectionism would hold up. One reason for this is that innovation in industrial protection replaced innovation in long-distance commerce as the primary basis for technological gaps only in the eighteenth century. Commercial networks had to be taken by force to catch up in the long-distance trade sector. This tended to be a slower process than the later attempts at industrial catch-up. The attitudinal attraction to protectionist sentiments was also more constant in the earlier long-distance trade context. See Thompson, William R., “Systemic Leadership and Growth Waves in the Long Run,” International Studies Quarterly 36 (03 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. See, for example, Modelski, George and Thompson, William R., Seapowerand Global Politics,1494–1993 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thompson, William R., On Global War: Historical-Structural Approaches to World Politics (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Rasler, Karen A. and Thompson, William R., War and State Making: The Shaping of the Global Powers (Boston: Unwin & Hyman, 1989)Google Scholar; Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thompson, “Structural Transitions and War: The Geopolitical Economy of Ascent, Decline and Systemic Violence,” manuscript in progress, Indiana University, Bloomington; and Thompson, William R., “Structural Transitions, Dehio and Contextual Interpretations of the History of War and Change in World Politics,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 1991Google Scholar.

24. This argument suggests an alternative interpretation of what Organski and Kugler have dubbed the Phoenix factor–the twentieth-century tendency for states defeated in World Wars I and II to overtake economically the victors within a few postwar decades. See Organski, A. F. K. and Kugler, Jacek, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980)Google Scholar. For an elaboration of the alternative interpretation, see Rasler, and Thompson, , War and State Making, pp. 159–63Google Scholar.

25. See Perez, Carlota, “New Technologies and Development,” in Freeman, and Ludvall, , Small Countries Facing the Technological Revolution, pp. 85–97Google Scholar; and Bernstein, Michael A., The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery and Economic Change in America, 1929–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26. SeeKindleberger, Charles P., The World in Depression, 1929–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

27. See Bhagwati, Jagdish, Protectionism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

28. For a similar argument on the generational shift background for perestroika, see Snyder, Jack, “The Gorbachev Revolution: A Waning of Soviet Expansionism?” International Security 12 (Winter 1987–1988), pp. 93–131CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In a similar vein, we hasten to add that there is no need to insist that the ideational explanation can or should be reduced simply to a matter of whose political economy is being gored. Macroscopic conditions facilitate the emergence and entrenchment of some ideas, just as they contribute to the fact that other ideas become regarded as old-fashioned. Clearly, macroscopic conditions do not dictate which ideas will emerge, where they will emerge, or where and how long they will persist. An intriguing example is the unsurprising association of nineteenth-century anti-free trade thought with U.S. and German authors, particularly Alexander Hamilton and Friedrich List. While the United States and Germany eventually became Britain's leading economic rivals, they achieved this status some time after the arguments of Hamilton and List first appeared.

29. For a variety of examples, see Rasler and Thompson, War and State Making.

30. In keeping with the arguments of Schumpeter and Rostow, our series of data on technological innovation combines production growth rate information on up to thirteen leading sector commodities and indicators: cotton consumption, pig iron, railroad track (kilometers measured in absolute terms and controlling for country size), crude steel, sulfuric acid, electricity, motor vehicles, nitrogen fertilizer, plastics/resins, synthetic fibers, semiconductors, and civilian jet airframes. For more details on this series, see Thompson, On Global War; and Thompson, “Long Waves, Technological Innovation, and Relative Decline.” See also Schumpeter, Joseph, Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process, 2 vols. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1939)Google Scholar; and Rostow, The World Economy.

31. The principal data base, indexed in terms of 1913 values, was compiled by Maddison, Angus and published in his Phases of Capitalist Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 169–77Google Scholar.

32. See ibid., p. 86.

33. See Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Main Economic Indicators (Paris: OECD, 01 1985)Google Scholar; and OECD, Main Economic Indicators: Historical Statistics, 1969–1988 (Paris: OECD, 1990)Google Scholar.

34. For the periods up to 1970, calculations were based on Maddison's, data in Phases of Capitalist Development, pp. 247–54Google Scholar. For the 1980s, they were based on OECD data in Quarterly National Accounts (Paris: OECD, 1989)Google Scholar.

35. Sources for data on the proportion of world trade were Rostow, The World Economy; Arthur Banks, Cross Polity Time Series Data (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1971)Google Scholar; andU.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1985)Google Scholar.

36. The source for data on industrial production and trade growth was Holtfrerich, Carl-Ludwig, ”Introduction: The Evolution of World Trade, 1720 to the Present,” in Holtfrerich, , Interactions in the World Economy, pp. 1–30Google Scholar.

37. Obviously, the indicator adopted is not ideal. For example, there are a variety of circumstances in which the customs revenue index might prove misleading. If a country that had no imports because of its high tariffs were to reduce its level of protectionism and succeed in encouraging an increase in imports, the index would suggest inaccurately an increase in protectionism. Similarly, if a country had high tariffs overall but allowed some imports to enter with low tariffs, the index might suggest, again inaccurately, a low tariff position. We are sensitive to these potential threats to index validity. However, the threats are most likely to arise in extreme cases (for example, those in which a country moved from no imports to some imports). They are also less likely to be a problem in countries that are among the system's most active traders. Moreover, changes in the index occur fairly smoothly over time. Abrupt changes have been examined as possible anomalies, but the significant changes tend to be readily explicable. For these reasons, it seems justified to use the customs revenue index as a crude device for tapping behavioral changes over a lengthy period of time. For several different approaches to tariff measurement that tend to be used for single-country analyses, short time spans, or both, see Baack, Bennett D. and Ray, Edward J., “The Political Economy of Tariff Policy,” Explorations in Economic History 20 (01 1983), pp. 73–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Conybeare, John A. C., “Tariff Protection in Developed and Developing Countries: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analysis,” International Organization 37 (Summer 1983), pp. 441–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hansen, John M., “Taxation and the Political Economy of the Tariff,” International Organization 44 (Autumn 1990), pp. 527–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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