The international political economy literature on regimes has focused on relations among the industrialized Western countries. Despite the increasing participation of East European countries in international economic organizations, the literature has neglected the subject of East–West economic relations. To redress this void in the literature, this article assesses the extent to which and the conditions under which realism, mercantilism, and regime theory help explain the Western positions toward negotiations between East European countries and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). It argues that a thorough explanation requires drawing on insights from all three modes of analysis: realism provides a useful starting point and sets the context, while mercantilism and regime theory enrich the explanation in circumstances in which political issues concerning security subside and trade policy issues surface.

Levels of macropolitical consensus and sectoral institutional autonomy both influence industrial policy. Different combinations of high or low consensus and autonomy help anticipate the respective explanatory relevance of generic industrial models, sectoral agencies' trajectories, and bureaucratic politics. Industrial policy choices thus are not always determined by international market opportunities, relevant domestic endowments, or the political strength of industrial entrepreneurs. The nuclear sectors in Brazil and Argentina are examined in light of this argument. A relatively strong consensus over the generic industrial model and a centralized decision-making process explain state entrepreneurship and foreign technology in Brazil. In contrast, Argentina's emphasis on domestic private entrepreneurial and technical resources can be traced to an absence of macropolitical consensus and to sectoral institutional autonomy. These differences had implications for the process of bargaining with foreign technology suppliers. Levels of consensus and autonomy influence the process of bargaining with foreign technology suppliers through their impact on the size of domestic win-sets, on risks of involuntary defection, on credibility of commitments, and on reduction of uncertainties.

Inquiry into the nature and role of international organizations has not been a noticeably cumulative enterprise. Descriptive lacunae have been filled, new and more reliable techniques of observation and measurement have been introduced, and more sophisticated and powerful instruments of analysis have been brought to bear on various problems—all signs of change, even of progress—but the field as a whole remains “notorious for its lack of systematic and testable theory.” This state of affairs has been lamented generally and has been contrasted specifically with the situation which prevails in international organization's “stepfield” of regional integration. Here, previous paradigms and conceptual frameworks have been scrutinized critically and constructively; alternative measures and additional hypotheses have been proposed; originally divergent “perspectives” have acquired convergent properties; and speculative reformalizations have been advanced which seek to build upon past criticisms.

Since its founding in 1946 the United Nations has experienced a remarkable expansion of membership, growing from the 51 original Members to 117 as of the twentieth session of the General Assembly. Much has been said about the membership question; but this discussion has largely ignored the fact that while the Organization's roster never has included and still does not include all states, it has come much closer to universality than is generally recognized and much closer than the roster itself would indicate.

Europe's postwar shift to multilateral trade and payments arrangements was complicated by three factors. Distributional problems and uncertainty about the state of the world made European governments reluctant to adopt multilateral arrangements without financial support from the United States. An enforcement problem made U.S. policymakers reluctant to finance a European multilateral trading system. The severity of these problems was reduced by institutional designs that combined flexibility, centralization, and particular decision rules. Centralization and flexibility reduced uncertainty and softened distributive conflict. Centralization and particular decision rules solved the enforcement problem that U.S. policymakers faced.

Students of integration place their money on different beasts. Some working with the neo-functionalist model bet on the hare, while others using the cybernetic model elect the tortoise. The difference arises in part from their disparate perspectives of the racetrack: Neo-functionalists, with their assumption of a short-cycle process, view only a segment of the track and sight the rabbit sprinting; students of the cybernetic model, assuming a long-cycle process, insist that the whole race be watched and that the runners be clocked at different stages. As bets are still being taken, we might reconsider the basis on which odds are set.

Established by the Charter as one of the principal organs of the United Nations, and entrusted with the solution of international economic and social problems and with international cultural and educational cooperation, the Economic and Social Council met three times during 1946 to discuss both organizational and substantive matters. The First Session was held in London from January 23 to February 16, the Second in New York from May 25 to June 21, and the Third in New York from September 11 to October 3. In addition an ad hoc meeting of the Third Session, to confirm appointments to the various Council Commissions, was held on December 10.

Undertaking to write about the future of the United Nations may well be regarded as a risky if not a downright foolhardy enterprise, particularly in 1965, between the tragicomedy of the nineteenth General Assembly and the great uncertainty of the twentieth session. For many people, the question is whether the United Nations has a future, and for some of them this question is purely rhetorical. I think that it has, or that, at any rate, general international organization has a future. Whatever may happen to the United Nations, I find it difficult to conceive that the men who conduct the foreign relations of states will ever again consider that they can dispense with a comprehensive institutional mechanism or that they will, in the foreseeable future, contrive a global mechanism fundamentally different in character from the United Nations. Objectively, the operation of the international system requires an organizational framework virtually coextensive with the system; just as education requires schools and universities and medicine requires hospitals and clinics, so international relations require at least as much organizational apparatus as the United Nations system provides. Moreover, there is evidence that this objective need has penetrated the consciousness of most statesmen. The questions that they have asked about international organization in the last twenty years have not included the question of whether it is sensible to equip the international system with a general institutional structure.

The French state bureaucracy, able partially to shelter itself from Parliament and to influence the industrial sector directly, has been able to protect national interests in an economically interdependent world. It struck a regional bargain that committed agriculture to the European Community and in effect provided a German subsidy to French farmers. It mediated between the national and international market to promote industrial modernization and force a restructuring of critical industrial sectors. It has grown increasingly sophisticated in its dealings with multinational companies. Early efforts to insist on purely French operations have been abandoned, permitting the state to negotiate more effectively with the multinationals and obtain substantive rather than symbolic goods. These policies have cushioned agriculture's transition into an industrial world and helped pressure a previously protected industry to modernize. Finally, the state has played trader, trying directly to market French goods and assure payment for imports in package trade deals. The French have not been able to impose their own rules on monetary and energy matters. Yet their efforts suggest that a nation-state can use administrative or domestic economic resources to reduce its vulnerability to international developments, though it cannot of course escape from the system.

The imminence of the first intergovernmental conference on the whole human environment has provided a focus for discussion of the new environmental tasks that may fall to international institutions. In fact this is now a major question for intergovernmental decision. Governments must decide in the coming months what part they want the world organization, with all its political and administrative tensions and frustrations, to play in mastering a crisis in the management of the entire human household.

Why do states create weak international institutions? Frustrated with proliferating but disappointing international environmental institutions, scholars increasingly bemoan agreements which, rather than solving problems, appear to exist “for show.” This article offers an explanation of this phenomenon. I theorize a dynamic of deflective cooperation to explain the creation of compromise face-saving institutions. I argue that when international social pressure to create an institution clashes with enduring disagreements among states about the merits of creating it, states may adopt cooperative arrangements that are ill-designed to produce their purported practical effects. Rather than negotiation failures or empty gestures, I contend that face-saving institutions represent interstate efforts to manage intractable disagreement through suboptimal institutionalized cooperation. I formulate this argument inductively through a new multi-archival study of conventional weapons regulation during the Cold War, which resulted in the oft-maligned 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. A careful reconsideration of the negotiation process extends and nuances existing IR theorizing and retrieves its historical significance as a critical juncture and complex product of contesting diplomatic practices.

In a recent paper, Barry Buzan disputes the widespread theory that associates a liberal international economic structure positively, and a mercantilist structure negatively, with international security. We do not take issue with Buzan's arguments on this point; rather we disagree with some of his assumptions concerning the relationship between mercantilistic policies and the international economic order. Those of Buzan's points that we question represent generally accepted views in the literature on mercantilism

Buzan's definition of mercantilism focuses essentially if not exclusively on protectionist trade policies. We prefer a more general definition based on Keynesian and post-Keynesian literature. By including the macroeconomic goals of neomercantilism, this definition accounts for a country's foreign economic policy.

During the first quarter century of the United Nations its non-political work has doinated by one subject—the economic development of the less developed countries. In this period “progress”tended to be measured in terms of gross national product (GNP), and “cooperaton” usally meant what the rich countries could do for the poor through aid, trade technical assistance.

The problems of development assistance have loomed large on the OECD agenda ever since its establishment, first as the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) and then as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Briefly recapitulated, OEEC was created in 1948 to provide for the joint European execution of the Marshall Plan and for the close economic cooperation that the United States' aid offer had launched. Whatever the actual contribution of OEEC, the postwar European economic recovery was remarkably quick. Few international organizations have been thus blessed with the satisfaction of seeing their objectives so amply fulfilled.

The traditional relation between richer and poorer countries, whereby the former exported manufactures and the latter exported primary products, has been undergoing an accelerating transformation in recent years. Developing countries are emerging as serious competitors in the world economy in a widening range of manufactured products, and increasing industrial exports is one of the highest foreign-policy priorities of their governments. At the same time, demands for import restrictions have been increasingly heard in the older industrial countries. The result is that bilateral bargaining to regulate trade and market shares has become a common but understudied element of the North-South diplomatic agenda. Despite all our recent discussion of the international economic order, our knowledge of this type of bilateral conflict is quite sketchy. Industrial trade issues touch several often-conflicting policy objectives of the country involved, including employment and growth, price stability, debt servicing, domestic political power and stability, and the strength of bilateral political ties. Latin American countries and the United States have historically been mutually important as trade partners, and some

Appropriately applied, accurate information is central to decision making, including decisions on all matters related to development. Information is a precondition for identifying alternatives, reducing uncertainty about their implications, and facilitating their implementation. Thus, information is a critical resource.

Under conditions of guerrilla conflict, mass indiscriminate violence has been shown to effectively starve a guerrilla of its support. Consequently, counter-guerrilla mass violence is concentrated within territories where a guerrilla is dominant. However, in roughly 40 percent of mass violence episodes (e.g., Rwanda and Cambodia), the violence was aimed at populations within areas of secure territorial control. These episodes have therefore been explained by attributing ideological preferences to leaders or as unique cases only. I argue that leaders adopt mass indiscriminate violence against outgroups to consolidate power under conditions of elite rivalry. The violence serves two main goals. First, it helps build coalitions with constituencies that gain from violence; and second, it targets rival factions indirectly by forcing local security officials to facilitate or oppose the violence. The violence thereby provides rival supporters with an exit option, provides the regime with information on rival supporters’ private loyalties, and undermines rivals’ abilities to mount an effective resistance. These rivals can ultimately be purged from the regime. Based on newly collected original data on elite purges and on the type of mass indiscriminate violence for the years 1950 to 2004, I show that this type of mass violence, which I call “genocidal consolidation,” is intimately connected to authoritarian consolidation.

By many criteria, Japan is weak internationally. As a consequence one would expect its foreign economic policy to have been marked by limited choice, weakness, and constant vacillation in the face of external pressures. The domestic political structures of the country, however, have for most of the period since World War II permitted wide choice, strength, and consistency. A corporatist coalition of finance, major industry, trading companies, and the upper levels of the national bureaucracy, coupled with the consistent rule of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, the systematic exclusion of organized labor from formal policy-making channels, and the lack of social overhead spending, has permitted the Japanese state to function as official doorman determining what, and under what conditions, capital, technology, and manufactured products enter and leave Japan. The strengths acquired from such past policies make it likely that the Japanese state will remain capable of dealing with the increasing domestic and international threats to its capacity to make relatively autonomous choices about Japan's international economic behavior.