Contemporary balance-of-power theory has become too parsimonious to yield determinate predictions about state alliance strategies in multipolarity. Kenneth Waltz's theory predicts only that multipolarity predisposes states to either of two opposite errors, which this article characterizes as chain-ganging and buck-passing. To predict which of these two policies will prevail, it is necessary to complicate Waltz's theory by adding a variable from Robert Jervis's theory of the security dilemma: the variable of whether offense or defense is perceived to have the advantage. At least under the checkerboard geographical conditions in Europe before World Wars I and II, perceived offensive advantage bred unconditional alliances, whereas perceived defensive advantage bred free riding on the balancing efforts of others.

Hegemons exercise power in the international system not only by manipulating material incentives but also by altering the substantive beliefs of elites in other nations. Socialization—the process through which leaders in these secondary states embrace a set of normative ideals articulated by the hegemon—plays an important role both in establishing an international order and in facilitating the functioning of that order. This article develops the notion of socialization in the international system and examines three hypotheses about the conditions under which it occurs and can function effectively as a source of power. The first hypothesis is that socialization occurs primarily after wars and political crises, periods marked by international turmoil and restructuring as well as by the fragmentation of ruling coalitions and legitimacy crises at the domestic level. The second is that elite (as opposed to mass) receptivity to the norms articulated by the hegemon is essential to the socialization process. The third hypothesis is that when socialization does occur, it comes about primarily in the wake of the coercive exercise of power. Material inducement triggers the socialization process, but socialization nevertheless leads to outcomes that are not explicable simply in terms of the manipulation of material incentives. These hypotheses are explored in the historical case studies of U.S. diplomacy after World Wars I and II and the British colonial experience in India and Egypt.

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.

The claim is advanced for recognizing evolutionary learning as the generative principle of world politics. Immanuel Kant was the first to specify a “natural” process leading toward “perpetual peace.” The long cycle, seen as the process of structural change. is explained with the help of a Parsonian learning model and a social evolutionary model and is argued to be coupled with the Kantian process. The long cycle defines the agenda for change in the major institutional complexes of world politics and deepens our understanding of the conditions for the control of global war.

The dynamics by which norms emerge and spread in international society have been the subject of strikingly little study. This article focuses on norms that prohibit, both in international law and in the domestic criminal laws of states, the involvement of state and nonstate actors in activities such as piracy, slavery, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, the hijacking of aircraft, and the killing of endangered animal species. It analyzes the manner in which these norms have evolved into and been institutionalized by global prohibition regimes and argues that there are two principal inducements to the formation and promotion of such regimes. The first is the inadequacy of unilateral and bilateral law enforcement measures in the face of criminal activities that transcend national borders. The second is the role of moral and emotional factors related to neither political nor economic advantage but instead involving religious beliefs, humanitarian sentiments, fears, prejudices, paternalism, faith in universalism, the individual conscience, and the compulsion to proselytize. The ultimate success or failure of an international regime in effectively suppressing a particular activity depends, however, not only on the degree of commitment to its norms or the extent of resources devoted to carrying out its goals but also on the vulnerability of the activity to its enforcement measures.

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.

The international telecommunications regime provided a multilateral framework that reinforced domestic monopolies and bilateral cartel arrangements in the global market. The regime's epistemic community believed that telecommunications services and equipment were best supplied by national monopolies and that international communications by telephone, telegram, and telex should be jointly provided by monopolists. Strong domestic political incentives reinforced this cognitive framework. When technological innovation triggered a successful political attack on the domestic regulation of telecommunications in a few key countries, the stage was set for a global challenge to the intellectual and political foundations of the regime. Two paths to reform have emerged. Their significance can be assessed by looking at changes in the distribution of benefits from the regime, changes in the manner in which governments delegate power to the regime, and shifts in the epistemic community associated with the regime.

A model for forecasting political choices and for explaining the perceptual conditions that lead to those choices is delineated. The model, based on the median voter theorem and on the axioms of expected utility maximization, is applied to the prospects for a multilateral peace conference in the Middle East. The analysis helps provide insights into the motivations behind recent actions by leaders in the Soviet Union, the United States, Jordan, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Israel.

By viewing multilateral negotiations in a rational choice context, it is possible to elucidate the contents of calculations that reflect decision makers' considerations if they are trying to do what they believe is in their best interest. By modeling the decision process and then using comparative statics simulations, it is also possible to discern when perceptions and reality are likely to deviate from each other and to gauge the hypothesized responses of all the actors to changed circumstances. In this way, the likely impact of Soviet moderation, Israeli intransigence, Jordanian vacillation, or U.S. intervention can be identified.

Traditional accounts of U.S. tariff policy emphasize trade strategies and interest group politics. This article makes a departure. It opens with an observation: up until World War I, the tariff was the largest single source of federal government revenues. It then explores the significance of tariffs as taxes, theoretically and empirically.

In its first part, the article develops a theory of taxation politics and applies it to the tariff. In its second part, it submits the theory to an empirical test, modeling changes in U.S. tariff rates from 1829 to 1940. The politics of tariff revision, it argues, followed from two characteristics of the tariff as tax: from the extent of the treasury's dependence upon it and from the distributive pattern of its burdens and benefits. Taken together, the article concludes, revenue dependence and distributive incidence account for several diverse aspects of American tariff policy, including the structure of its coalitions, the shifts in its objectives, and the timing of its innovations.

Instances of external state involvement in seven postwar secessionist movements—those of Katanga, Biafra, the Southern Sudan, Bangladesh, Iraqi Kurdistan, Eritrea, and the Moro region of the Philippines—were analyzed to shed light on the patterns of interaction between the international system and secessionist minorities. Examined and tested were numerous assumptions of conventional wisdom on the subject, as well as a variety of other relevant questions concerning the constraints on, content of, and reasons for involvement. The results were contrary to many of the common assumptions. For example, given the international regime's norm against involvement with groups that threaten territorial integrity, external state support of these groups was more extensive than would be expected; and support was given for diverse reasons, rather than based solely on the prospects for tangible gain. Additional results of this study suggest a series of hypotheses for further examination.

Recent developments in U.S.-Soviet relations have prompted reassessments of the effects that nuclear weapons may have had on world politics. If there has been a “nuclear revolution,” both the meaning of that term and its precise implications for the behavior of states remain unclear. This article agrees with the realist argument that the discovery of nuclear weapons did not by itself fundamentally change the structure of the international system. However, it argues that the subsequent condition of nuclear deterrence, resulting from the widespread deployment of nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery systems during the 1960s, does constitute a source of structural change. Under nuclear deterrence, the superpowers have acquired a new function—“joint custodianship” of the system—which differentiates their role from that of other states. This suggests that the international system has a new organizing principle that varies from the standard realist conception of anarchy. Structural change led to the rise of detente in the 1970s; but because the processes by which leaders in Washington and Moscow adjusted to structural change were not always parallel, this detente was limited in scope and could not be sustained. As processes of adjustment begin to converge, the modified structural approach proposed in this article predicts that superpower cooperation in a new detente of the 1990s will go beyond what was achieved in the 1970s and also beyond what would be consistent with standard realist arguments.

The popularity of Kondratieff long waves fluctuates according to the economic climate. Periods of slow growth help make long wave explanations more attractive. While their popularity may oscillate, the evidence associated with the existence of long waves continues to be disputed. A review of the pertinent theoretical literature suggests that one reason for the disagreements about the existence of long waves is that much of the available evidence does not correspond as closely as it might to the theoretical foci. A new data series, one based on leading sector production growth rates from 1760 to 1985, is developed to remedy this lack of correspondence. The appropriate analysis of this series requires that particular attention be paid to the rise and relative decline of the world economy's lead state. The empirical outcome provides a close match to the long wave chronology developed by Joseph Schumpeter, Simon Kuznets, and J. J. Van Duijn. While this approach falls short of bringing closure to many of the theoretical and empirical questions concerning long waves, it does establish a solid empirical foundation for further analyses. The article concludes with some observations on the long wave implications for the relative economic decline of Britain in the nineteenth century and the United States in the twentieth century.

To cope with more than incremental change in the international system, the neorealist concept of structure and the neoliberal concept of process must be complemented by a third analytically distinguished element: the concept of action. All three concepts can be used on the systemic level of analysis of international relations theory. Their obvious differentiation is the degree of systemic consolidation, with structure at the highest, action at the lowest, and process at unstable intermediate degrees. Without analyzing prevailing models of action of important units of the international system, it is impossible to predict the possible range of outcomes of processes and structural changes in the international system.

This article offers Japan's “strategic pragmatism” as a model of action. The model, representing a functional cut across contending economic doctrines, combines relative fiscal conservatism with “progressive” provision of credit, dynamic capitalism with public policy activism, and critical rationalism with philosophical pragmatism. Japan's strategic pragmatism has not only enabled its government and enterprises to cope with uncertainty and change in their domestic and international environment but has also increased global welfare and changed the balance of strategic components of power in the international system. The spread of this model of action both within and beyond Japan's control points to a paradigm change in economic and international relations theory—that is, to the most pervasive form of systemic consolidation.

Mancur Olson's theory of collective action could account for much of the variance in the defense burdens of the allied nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the early years of the Cold War, but the association between economic size (gross domestic product, or GDP) and defense burden (the ratio of military expenditures to GDP) has declined to insignificant levels. Two influences are shown to be important in producing this change: the increased pursuit of private goods by Greece, Turkey, and Portugal and the growing cooperation among the other European allies. Since cooperation in the military realm has not provided the Europeans with credible means of self-defense, it appears to be a consequence of the general growth of interdependence in Europe during the postwar period. NATO is still essentially a uniquely privileged group producing a relatively pure public good. Accordingly, the theory of collective action continues to provide valuable insights into the operation of the alliance.

The liberal approach to international regimes is attractive in the development of thatconcept because it deploys a well-developed and rigorous set of analytic devices in the form of rational actor models. However, it also assumes that regimes are benevolent, voluntary, cooperative, and legitimate associations of actors, which unnecessarily limits theregime concept and encourages an ideological and apologetic position with respect to regimes. Following a critique of the liberal approach, this article suggests an alternative based on a fundamental assumption of contestability in regimes. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault which culminates in the concept of “power/knowledge,” it regards international regimes as attempts to define, order, and act within international public spaces. It also regards international regimes as loci and foci of struggle. Some aspects of this conceptualization are sketched in preliminary form, and a brief illustration in the area of nuclear nonproliferation is provided.

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.