Relations between official agencies and private business concerning international coffee policy suggest that the power of the state dominates the international economic arena. The International Coffee Agreement did not benefit the United States coffee industry. Despite this, some large coffee roasting companies supported the Agreement. Without their support it would not have received Congressional approval. The action of the roasters can be explained by the behavioral theory of the firm, which emphasizes managerial discretion and risk avoidance. Large oligopolistic companies, potentially the most powerful of business enterprises, are also the ones least likely to oppose the state. However, the ability of one company to determine American policy toward the import of soluble coffee from Brazil shows that when the economic interests of an oligopolistic firm are unambiguously threatened, it can severely constrain official actors.

Sectoral growth and change in the postwar West German economy have been affected both by the specialization inherited from prewar times and by the general Western evolution of demand and production along “Neo-Fordist” lines. These two factors have also shaped West Germany's politics, particularly the organization of labor and bourgeoisie, and their alliances with each other and with the state apparatus. The three most important economic crisis situations since 1945 were turning points in the political articulation of socioeconomic interests. The crisis of the immediate postwar period resulted in a politics determined by the conflict of interests between owners of capital and the rest of the population, especially labor from 1947 onward. The Social Democratic party (SPD) was outside the government. A temporary interruption of sustained and highly differentiated sectoral growth in 1966 led to greater political attention to sectoral problems and less attention to class conflict. The SPD entered, indeed led, the government. Since the mid 1970s, the economy's structural crisis, compounded by growing foreign competition, has reaccentuated class conflict in political life. The SPD lost power in 1982.

The World Bank Group consists of three closely affiliated intergovernmental institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (hereinafter referred to as the Bank, IBRD, or the World Bank), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the International Development Association (IDA). These institutions are the chosen multilateral instruments of governments for providing external capital on a global basis to help finance the development of the world's low-income countries

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), held in Geneva from March 23 to June 16, 1964, was a diplomatic event of major importance—and aturning point in the evolution of international organization. It was the largest and most comprehensive intergovernmental conference ever held, involving 2,000 delegates from 119 countries. It was the first major conference in which the lines were drawn sharply on a North-South rather dian on an East-West basis. And, what is of more lasting significance, it gave birth to continuing machinery that has already had a profound impact both on international institutions and national policies.

A remarkable document in the history of international organization is a detailed constitution for a league of nations which was given limited distribution in March 1915 under the title “Proposals for the Avoidance of War”. Prepared by British liberal and socialist critics of prewar British diplomacy headed by Lord Bryce, the historian, jurist, and retired ambassador to the United States, it undoubtedly was the single most influential scheme for a league of nations produced during the First World War. Although the “Proposals” recommended neither international social or economic cooperation nor measures of international administration, it was known to the authors of the major league schemes prepared in the United Kingdom and the United States during the First World War and to officials in both countries. Indeed, the document was the source of key concepts and language embodied in 1919 in the Covenant of the League of Nations and subsequently in the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ) and of its successor, the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Yet discussion of the “Proposals” in the literature on the origins of the League of Nations is both cursory and imprecise. Even such writers as Henry R. Winkler and Alfred Zimmern who recognize its importance seem not to understand how the “Proposals” evolved and how early and pervasive an influence it had.

The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice adopted by 9 votes to 5 on July 20, 1962, affirmed that the expenditures authorized for operations in the Congo (ONUC) by General Assembly resolutions from December 20, i960, to October 30, 1961, and the expenditures authorized for the operations of the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) in the Middle East from November 26, 1956, to December 20, 1960, constitute “Expenses of the Organization” within the meaning of Article 17, paragraph 2, of the Charter of the United Nations. Though the Court, for reasons discussed below, refrained from declaring it explicitly, the opinion had the effect of holding that Members of the UN were legally bound to pay the assessments made by the Assembly to defray the costs of the two operations. The Court arrived at this conclusion by a relatively simple process of reasoning: first, it found that the text of Article 17, paragraph 2, related to expenses incurred in carrying out the purposes of the Organization; second, it examined the expenditures referred to above, and found that they were incurred with that end in view; thirdly and finally, it examined arguments which had been advanced against its conclusion and found them without merit. Some of these arguments will be examined later.

The charter of the International Trade Organization, as drafted at Geneva in the spring of 1947, is a pact expressing the rules of behavior which nations undertake to observe in their economic relations with one; another. Regardless of the subsequent history of this draft, it merits ^ examination as an illustration of the practical difficulties to be surmounted I by those who seek to implement by international agreement even so obj vious a goal as economic cooperation. Not only must idealism and theory I come to grips with the fact that every transaction in international trade ; affects someone's pocketbook, but methods and techniques must be devised to create a semblance of uniformity in a world of vastly different economic practices. Since the Geneva draft seeks to regularize international trade conduct after fifteen years of both autarchic control and war, it bears witness to the fundamentally long-range character of the problem.

That politics, and especially international politics, is the art of compromise is a cliché of ancient standing. This, however, does not deprive it of a certain value if we make it our task to examine the factors of ideology and interest which were responsible for the introduction of radical innovations into the structure of international organization. The story of the acceptance of the Mandate System is a case in point.

The debt crisis riveted attention on political issues at the international level. Groups of states clash, and the North-South divisions are very noticeable. As conflict and cooperation among governments, banks, and multilateral agencies make headlines, three blocs appear to contend: the banks, the debtor governments, and the creditor governments. These are the obvious players in the workouts, and it is important to understand the conventions that bind them.

Empirical studies of interdependence have mainly focused on whether interdependence has been increasing or declining on a world scale. In this research note I examine the nature of economic interdependence in the less developed countries (LDCs). The main question that I address is whether LDCs are more economically dependent, in the sense of being more deeply involved in economic interdependence relationships, than developed countries (DCs). Richard Cooper and Edward Morse have argued that economic interdependence is associated with increased industrialization and modernization—implying that LDCs are less involved than DCs in interdependence relationships. Empirical evidence presented here suggests that LDCs are, in fact, more dependent than DCs.

In this article, we reconsider the rarity of the Long Peace in the light of a probability model that targets the collective experience of major powers. Our examination shows that consecutive periods of peace equal to the forty-two years of the so-called Long Peace are not uncommon over the past eighteen decades—these periods occurred slightly more than 30 percent of the time. The period between 1816 and 1913 actually contains less war involvement by major powers than the period of the putative Long Peace. Our analysis demonstrates that long periods of major power peace are not unusual; periods of major power war are more exceptional than normal. Thus we conclude that the Long Peace is not rare and that its role in evaluating theories of war is misleading.

Analyses of monetary policy posit that exchange-rate pegs, inflation targets, and central bank independence can help anchor private-sector inflation expectations. Yet there are few direct tests of this argument. We offer cross-national, micro-level evidence on the effectiveness of monetary anchors in controlling private-sector inflation concerns. Using firm-level data from eighty-one countries (approximately 10,000 firms), we find evidence that “international” anchors (exchange-rate commitments) correlate significantly with a substantial reduction in private-sector concerns about inflation while “domestic” anchors (inflation targeting and central bank independence) do not. Our conjecture is that private-sector inflation expectations are more responsive to exchange-rate anchors because they are more transparent, more constraining, and more costly than domestic anchoring arrangements.

In a recent article for this journal, Susan Strange analyzed the political consequences of surplus capacity in three industrial sectors: steel, textiles, and shipbuilding. As she has shown, the emergence of serious problems of surplus capacity has accelerated protectionist trends in governmental policy in Europe and North America. The rhetoric of liberalism now is frequently accompanied by the reality of quotas, cartel agreements, subsidies for domestic firms, and discrimination against particularly dynamic producers.

Japan's economy keeps changing too fast, its economic policies are too active and independent, and its domestic structures seemingly deviate too much from Western patterns to conform to theories that rely on general equilibrium in mature economies. Static economics, including recent monetarist, supply-side, and rational expectations models, some aspects of dynamic and development economics, and most of the neoliberal current in international relations theory are seriously challenged. On the other hand, the mercantilist paradigm, theories focusing on the role of the state, and analyses exclusively adopting the subsystemic level of international relations theory have substantial problems with the ample evidence of adaptation to external factors, the dynamism and Schumpeterian qualities of Japanese private enterprises and the far-reaching liberalization of Japan's foreign-exchange and foreign-trade control regime. As the only OECD member to have pursued “anticipatory adjustment” on the macrolevel and as the obvious model for the OECD category of “positive adjustment,” Japan presents a case of universal relevance. It suggests propositions linking targets and instruments of quantitative and qualitative policies, as well as processes of internalization of global factors and externalization of domestic factors. It provides material for revising, extending, and integrating international relations theory and the theory of economic policy.

Economic development requires choices among a broad spectrum of alternative strategies and, as the recent experience of Mexico suggests, those choices are not easy. A complex politics is involved in the transition from one development strategy to another. The international political economy and domestic social coalitions both influence the costs and benefits associated with various development policies; they rule out some choices, but numerous options still remain. How can one explain actual outcomes? Observers may significantly increase their ability to explain outcomes by incorporating a statist component into their analyses. Within the very broad parameters set by the international political economy the state influences (but does not determine) the creation and the demands of the social coalition itself. In addition, the state may use policy instruments and advantages from the domestic and international arenas to implement policy even in the face of domestic opposition. The structure of the domestic political economy determines the space within which the statist perspective contributes to explanatory power. Eventually, it is in a historically based ideology that the chief explanation for the state's choice of policy and the construction of particular domestic coalitions is to be found.

Ellen Comisso and her colleagues are interested in the differences among all nations in their strategic economic responses to the petroleum price hikes of the 1970s—and, by extension, in why some states consistently outperform others in economic adjustment and growth. In particular, Comisso wants to know why the centrally planned economies (CPEs) of Eastern Europe reacted differently from one another to the shocks of the 1970s and yet, as a group, consistently performed less well than some reference groups, notably the East Asian NICs (newly industrialized countries). At the heart of Comisso's and the other authors' concerns are the notions of state “structure” and “process,” particularly as derived from Peter Katzenstein and the other contemporary comparative political economists, since on structural grounds the East European CPEs appear similar to the quasi-corporatist or “bureaucratic authoritarian” NICs elsewhere in the world. They differ primarily in terms of performance—or so it seems. Why? Are structure and process the right variables, and if they are, have they been correctly conceptualized?

Eight years of work on the Law of the Sea, conducted in various United Nations bodies and three rounds of a United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, have produced a high probability of official failure. The complex, cumbersome, and inefficient decision system of the Law of the Sea Conference is largely to blame for this result. It was a major error to attempt to negotiate the entire Law of the Sea simultaneously. During the first two sessions, in 1974 and 1975, difficult decisions were postponed repeatedly, thus multiplying the problems in an already very difficult situation. The Group of 77 was effectively captured by coastal states, leading to a Revised Single Negotiating Text that fails to meet the interests of landlocked and geographically disadvantaged states as well as those of the most advanced maritime states on scientific research, and distant-water fishing states. A number of these states are unlikely to sign a convention in the near future; and even if some agreement is reached at a future session of the Law of the Sea Conference, the new regime will be difficult to apply universally in the way that the old one was. A variety of conflicts is likely to proliferate, and detailed regional or sub-regional negotiations will continue. No universal solution to Law of the Sea issues is likely to emerge.

This essay presents a framework for viewing North-South economic relations which, it is hoped, will facilitate positive analysis and will contribute toward normative prescriptions regarding the desirable trend of North-South economic relations in the future. The primary point of departure is the viewpoint of the South as it faces the whole range of its relationships with the North.

The democratic peace—the idea that democracies rarely fight one another—has been called “the closest thing we have to an empirical law in the study of international relations.” Yet, some contend that this relationship is spurious and suggest alternative explanations. Unfortunately, in the absence of randomized experiments, we can never rule out the possible existence of such confounding biases. Rather than commonly used regression-based approaches, we apply a nonparametric sensitivity analysis. We show that overturning the negative association between democracy and conflict would require a confounder that is forty-seven times more prevalent in democratic dyads than in other dyads. To put this number in context, the relationship between democracy and peace is at least five times as robust as that between smoking and lung cancer. To explain away the democratic peace, therefore, scholars would have to find far more powerful confounders than those already identified in the literature.