Ronald Rogowski's work offers valuable insight into the impact of changing trade exposure on domestic politics. Exploring the political implications of the well-known factor endowments model of international trade theory, Rogowski argues that owners of relatively abundant productive factors will form a free-trading coalition against owners of relatively scarce productive factors, who will align in favor of protection. Rogowski's parsimonious three-factor version of the factor endowments theory—although offering valuable insight into the politics of less developed economies, including today's developed economies in earlier centuries—produces significant anomalies when applied to advanced economies. Intuitive logic and empirical research, especially the Leontief paradox, suggest that the highly complex division of labor found in developed countries will confound the simplicity of the three-factor model. Edward Learner's multifactor model suggests solutions to the anomalies that afflict Rogowski's simpler model when applied to recent politics in the United States and Europe.

When should internationally shared resources be subdivided and property and management rights to parts of the resource be distributed among nation states? Subdivision leads to inefficient exploitation and to an arbitrary division of benefits under three conditions: when property rights cannot be economically enforced; when the size and the value of the resource are unknown; and when exploitation involves external economies. The efficient use of such common property resources requires private or public regulation. Voluntary private regulation is likely to be effective only when few users are involved. In other cases, public regulation is called for. Some attributes of an intergovernmental organization designed to achieve efficient, equitable, and stable exploitation are presented. Current proposals for managing ocean resources, the orbit-spectrum resource, and Antarctica are considered.

The currently popular concept of two-level games suffers from certain shortcomings as an approach to studying the interaction between domestic- and international-level variables. In the two-level game approach, different types of domestic-international interaction are insufficiently distinguished, and special dynamics of cases involving third parties like military allies are not adequately recognized. This article modifies the two-level game concept by specifying three forms of domestic-international interaction and adding a third level to the framework. The utility of this new “three-and-three” approach is illustrated through analysis of the U.S.-Soviet negotiations on intermediaterange nuclear forces in the 1980s. This analysis generates new hypotheses suggesting that domestic actors can shape the agenda for international negotiations and that certain forms of domestic-international interaction tend to bring about large changes in the positions of the principal parties to a negotiation.

While extensive research shows that policies and institutions spread across states through processes of diffusion, we know little about diffusion among international organizations (IOs). We develop a novel approach for the study of diffusion among IOs. This approach consists of three components: a theoretical focus on connectivity among IOs as pathways for diffusion; a conceptual differentiation between alternative types of convergence effects; and a methodological strategy combining dyadic and spatial analysis of diffusion. We illustrate the usefulness of this approach through an empirical case: the diffusion of participatory governance arrangements among IOs from 1970 to 2010. The analysis shows that connectivity among IOs contributes to convergence, which typically is manifested through imitation of very specific institutional models. The article's findings have implications both for the study of IOs and for the general study of diffusion.

A transnational community of disarmament proponents achieved considerable success in influencing Soviet security policy in the 1980s on several issues, including two examined here: nuclear testing and strategic defenses. Fundamental changes in the Soviet domestic structure after 1989, however, had the paradoxical effect of making transnational actors simultaneously less constrained in promoting their favored policies and less effective in getting them implemented. Transnational relations and domestic structures in combination affect security policy. This interaction likewise has implications for theories of ideas, learning, and epistemic communities.

There is a growing discrepancy between the popularity of the hegemonic stability theory and the amount of material pointing to the theory's shortcomings, both analytic and empirical. This article begins with a discussion of the theory's major weaknesses and then offers an analysis of the theory's discourse. Using methods of structural analogy and the study of imagery, the investigation proceeds from the most superficial to the most deep-seated and universal imagery found in the theory's discourse. It argues that the idea of hegemonic stability and the notion of the benevolent hegemon have their roots in powerful and interrelated myths, including myths of the golden age, the Savior, and the death of the sun. It also argues that the ability of these myths to sway human emotions has interfered with the process of theory-building and scientific investigation, of which intuition is a vital component. It concludes that the continuing popularity of the hegemonic stability theory is based on the timeless appeal of the myths that it incorporates.

We test how domestic political institutions moderate the effect of leadership turnover on relations between states. Deriving hypotheses from recent theoretical work, Bueno de Mesquita et al. and McGillivray and Smith, we examine how leader change affects trading relations between states using dyadic trade data. Consistent with hypotheses, we find that large winning coalition systems, such as democracies, are relatively immune from the vagaries of leadership change. In such systems, trade remains relatively constant whether leader change occurs or not. In contrast, when winning coalition size is small, as in autocratic states, leadership change profoundly alters relations, causing a decline in trade. Finally, we examine instances of poor relations, measured by a significant decline in trade compared to historical levels. As predicted, instances of poor relations are less common between pairs of democracies than other dyadic pairings. Further, leadership turnover in autocratic systems restores trading relations between states. The effect of leadership change in democracies is much less pronounced.An earlier version of this article was prepared for the 2002 Peace Science Society meeting in Tucson, Arizona. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Science Foundation, SES-0226926. We thank John Oneal and Bruce Russett for generously making their data available to us. We thank audiences at New York University, the University of Rochester, Yale University, and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Scholars of civil conflict have long recognized the importance of state strength in the suppression of nascent insurgencies. However, previous empirical investigations have generally focused on the material and coercive dimensions of state power, obscuring the critical role played by the generation of widespread voluntary compliance through processes of political communication, that is, the production of “soft power.” In contrast, in this article I focus on a factor—mass communication technology—that can enhance state capacity only by strengthening the state's ability to broadly and publicly disseminate political messages. I argue that the enhanced capacities for large-scale normative influence generated by mass communication technologies can be expected to produce substantial barriers to the mobilization of militarized challenges to state rule, by strengthening economies of scale in the marketplace of ideas. Utilizing newly compiled cross-national data on mass media accessibility in the post–World War II period, I show that densely constituted mass media systems dramatically reduce the probability of large-scale civil violence, thereby providing new evidence for the fundamental importance of nonmaterial state capacities in the suppression of internal armed conflicts.

If any group of American blue-collar workers has benefited from the growth of trade it is the unionized dockworkers along the US West Coast. Nevertheless, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) representing these workers is vocally opposed to trade liberalization. We examine several competing explanations for this puzzle and evaluate them by tracing the union's stance on trade over several decades. We also use an original survey to compare ILWU affiliates' attitudes on trade with those of nonmembers with otherwise similar characteristics. Consistent with a model of organizational socialization, the data support the hypothesis that ILWU membership affects the members' revealed political opinions; the data are difficult to reconcile with standard theories of international trade. Our findings indicate that the political support for trade depends not just on voters' structural positions in the economy but also on the organizations and networks in which they are embedded.

This article seeks to ground financial regulatory choices in domestic politics. Based on evidence from twenty-two industrialized countries, we argue that electoral rules—specifically, the extent to which they are centrifugal or centripetal—have a significant effect on whether the banks or their consumers pay for the security of the banking system. Moreover, despite the homogenizing effects of global financial integration, the political dynamics generated by these electoral rules continue to shape the nature and extent of prudential regulations that countries adopt in the place of banking cartels.

Most cases of regional economic integration are among Third World countries, yet research in this field has been dominated by theory based on the European experience. The politics of integration among underdeveloped countries can be better understood within the framework of a theory designed to fit conditions in those regions. Contemporary economic theory provides a basis for such a theory. A successful integration scheme requires a high degree of political cooperation. The problem is that the type of integration scheme most likely to contribute to development is the most difficult to achieve. On the basis of the distribution of the costs and benefits of integration, the policy positions of national and sub-national actors can be predicted on a broad range of integrative measures. The ultimate success of integration depends on the ability of relevant actors to negotiate coalitions in support of policies which will contribute to the development of the region as a whole and which will assure an acceptable distribution of these benefits within the region.

The discipline of international relations faces a new debate of fundamental significance. After the realist challenge to the pervasive idealism of the interwar years and the social scientific argument against realism in the late 1950s, it is now the turn of critical theorists to dispute the established paradigms of international politics, having been remarkably successful in several other fields of social inquiry. In essence, critical theorists claim that all social reality is subject to historical change, that a normative discourse of understandings and values entails corresponding practices, and that social theory must include interpretation and dialectical critique. In international relations, this approach particularly critiques the ahistorical, scientific, and materialist conceptions offered by neorealists. Traditional realists, by contrast, find a little more sympathy in the eyes of critical theorists because they join them in their rejection of social science and structural theory. With regard to liberal institutionalism, critical theorists are naturally sympathetic to its communitarian component while castigating its utilitarian strand as the accomplice of neorealism. Overall, the advent of critical theory will thus focus the field of international relations on its “interparadigm debate” with neorealism.

During the 1980s, economists began to observe a trend of rising income inequality in the advanced industrial economies. At the same time, the data revealed that these economies were becoming increasingly exposed to imports of manufactured goods from developing countries. The question that follows is whether these outcomes are causally related, as economic theory suggests is possible.

The literature under review represents the current thinking on that question. These studies, all by mainstream economists, accept that free trade makes for good policy, since it results in efficiency gains that are enjoyed by consumers. But these scholars also recognize that free trade can alter the returns to the factors of production, creating new patterns of winners and losers.

Although this body of literature provides an impressive display of technical skills and formal economic reasoning, and on the whole gives convincing evidence that trade is only one culprit among many in explaining the problems facing blue-collar workers, it still sheds relatively little light on the political economy of the outcome. That is, it tells us little about the role that political, economic, and labor market institutions might play in shaping factor returns. This deeper understanding requires that we take a fresh look at existing institutions and the material interests and ideas underpinning them. Only then will we discover why societies have allowed a certain group of citizens—mainly the least skilled and least educated—to fall by the economic wayside.

Recent models of speculative currency crises contend that market expectations of policy behavior can trigger a speculative attack. We argue that political processes and partisan objectives inform expectations about the government's commitment to the exchange rate. First, market actors anticipate periods when the partisan identity of a government may change through an election or a cabinet collapse. Second, party labels provide information to currency traders about the policy objectives of a potential government. Consequently, we contend that the probability of a speculative attack will be higher when markets expect the cabinet to end and when the cabinet dissolution is likely to produce a leftward shift in policy. A discrete timesurvival model is used to estimate the probability that a cabinet will dissolve in any given month for sixteen parliamentary democracies from 1970 to 1995. The predicted values are then used as a proxy for market expectations in a model of speculative currency crises.

Since the onset of COVID-19, there has been a surfeit of commentary arguing that 2020 will have transformative effects on world politics. This paper asks whether, decades from now, the pandemic will be viewed as an inflection point. Critical junctures occur when an event triggers a discontinuous shift in key variables or forces a rapid acceleration of preexisting trends. Pandemics have undeniably had this effect in the far past. A welter of economic and medical developments, however, have strongly muted the geopolitical impact of pandemics in recent centuries. A review of how the novel coronavirus has affected the distribution of power and interest in its first six months suggests that COVID-19 will not have transformative effects on world politics. Absent a profound ex post shift in hegemonic ideas, 2020 is unlikely to be an inflection point.

Increased levels of economic openness in the industrial democracies have heightened the potential for intra-party and intra-coalition policy conflicts, hurting the ability of parties to win and retain office. We argue that politicians can use monetary commitments to help manage these conflicts and improve cabinet durability. To determine the political value of these commitments, we test the effect of fixed exchange rates and central bank independence on cabinet durability using a set of 193 cabinets in sixteen parliamentary democracies across the period 1972–98. The results indicate that monetary commitments are associated with higher cabinet durability, particularly for coalition governments. We then use the results of our statistical models to generate expected cabinet durability under alternative institutional configurations. By comparing these expected values, we show that actual monetary reforms in the industrial democracies have helped (or at least not hurt) the ability of political parties to remain in office.

This article shows that the opportunity costs resulting from economic interdependence decrease the probability of war in an incomplete information game. This result is strongly consistent with existing empirical analyses of the inverse trade-conflict relationship but is the opposite of the conclusion reached by Gartzke, Li, and Boehmer, who reject the opportunity cost argument in a game-theoretic framework. As a result of our findings, one cannot dismiss the opportunity cost argument as the explanation why trading nations fight less. Instead our study reaffirms the central position of opportunity costs as the basis for the inverse trade-conflict relationship, thus implying that one need not rely on signaling.

Does foreign aid enable or constrain elite capture of public revenues? Reflecting on prominent debates in the foreign aid literature, we examine whether recipient preferences are consistent with a view that foreign donors wield substantial control over the flow of aid dollars, making elite capture more difficult and mass benefits more likely. We compare elite and mass support for foreign aid versus government spending on development projects through a survey experiment with behavioral outcomes. A key innovation is a parallel experiment on members of the Ugandan national parliament and a representative sample of Ugandan citizens. For two actual aid projects, we randomly assigned different funders to the projects. Significant treatment effects reveal that members of parliament support government programs over foreign aid, whereas citizens prefer aid over government. Donor control also implies that citizens should favor foreign aid more and elites less as their perceptions of government clientelism and corruption increase. We explore this and report on other alternative mechanisms. Effects for citizens and elites are most apparent for those perceiving significant government corruption, suggesting that both sets of subjects perceive significant donor control over aid.