Krasner: Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism

SD Krasner, Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (University of California Press, 1985).

The standard story told about North-South relations is that the South is poor, wants more wealth, and that the North should help them go about achieving this. Krasner tells a different tale. Not only do Southern countries want wealth, they also want power and influence. They are out to mitigate vulnerabilities and exploit opportunities. They do this through the promotion of trade regimes that are geared towards authoritative allocation in place of market-based allocation policies. "For developing countries, authoritative international regimes are attractive because they can provide more stable and predictable transaction flows" (5).

Firstly, Southern countries achieve this by promoting regimes that are structured towards one-country one-vote policies. Secondly, these states have fought to expand the role of sovereignty (6). They are successful in accomplishing these changes based on the role of three variables identified by Krasner: "...the nature of existing institutional structures; the ability to formulate a coherent system of ideas...and the attitude and power of the North...toward both the demands of the South and the forums in which they have been made" (7).

Krasner separates Southern behavior into either relational power strategies or meta-power strategies. The later represent strategies that attempt to change the status quo.

Ch 2: The Structural Causes of Third World Strategy

This chapter outlines domestic and international structural arguments for why Southern countries would be interested in changing international regimes in the interesting of mitigating vulnerability and improving their power position. It is relatively standard Realist fare, though the focus on two distinct levels of analysis vis-a-vis structure is unique. It ends with a case study of Mexico.