Krugman: Pop Internationalism

Krugman, PR. 1996. Pop internationalism. Mit Press.

Written in the mid 90s, this slight text responds to a mountain of literature that paints globalization out to be an area of zero-sum competition between states who look more like companies than nations. Krugman presents a standard liberal account for the lack of substantial growth in real wages since the 70s (slower growth in production) and trade theories of comparative advantage to explain how international trade is an arena of overall gains, and not gains that can best be analogized with military battles, etc.

Gilpin: The Political Economy of International Relations

Gilpin, R, and JM Gilpin. 1987. The political economy of international relations. Princeton University Press Princeton, NJ.   

 "Over the past century and a half, the ideologies of liberalism, nationalism and Marxism have divided humanity...The conflict among these three moral and intellectual positions has revolved around the role and significance of the market in the organization of society and economic affairs" (25).

"These three ideologies are fundamentally different in their conceptions of the relationships among society, state, and market, and it may not be an exaggeration to say that every controversy in the field of international political economy is ultimately reducible to differing conceptions of these relationships" (25).

The word "ideology" is explicitly used to reference these different schools of thought because the word "theory" doesn't carry enough weight.  Ideology captures the relationship between the positive and the normative.

"Although scholars have produced a number of 'theories' to explain the relationship of economics and politics, these three stand out and have had a profound influence on scholarship and political affairs.  In highly oversimplified terms, economic nationalism...which developed from the practice of statesmen in the early modern period, assumes and advocates the primacy of politics over economics.  It is essentially a doctrine of state-building and asserts that the market should be subordinate to the pursuit of state interests.  It argues that political factors do, or at least should, determine economic relations.  Liberalism, which emerged from the Enlightenment in the writings of Adam Smith and others, was a reaction to mercantilism and has become embodied in orthodox economics.  It assumes that politics and economics exist, at least ideally, in separate spheres; it argues that markets--in the interest of efficiency, growth, and consumer choice--should be free from political interference.  Marxism, which appeared in the mid-nineteenth century as a reaction against liberalism and classical economics, holds that economics drives politics.  Political conflict arises from struggle among classes over the distribution of wealth.  Hence, political conflict will crease with the elimination of the market and of a society of classes" (25).

"All forms of economic liberalism...are committed to the market and the price mechanism as the most efficacious means for organizing domestic and international economic relations" (27).

Assumptions:  spontaneous market development; individuals form the foundation of society; they are rational in a specific way; there is free information; there is a tendency towards stability; there are always absolute gains to trade.

 

Nationalism:  "Its central idea is that economic activities are and should be subordinate to the goal of state building and the interests of the state.  All nationalists ascribe to the primacy of the state, of national security, and of military power in the organization and functioning of the international system" (31).

Viner (1958) quote:  "'I believe that practically all mercantilists, whatever the period, country, or status of the particular individual, would have subscribed to all of the following propositions:  (1)  wealth is an absolutely essential means to power, whether for security or for aggression; (2) power is essential or valuable as a means to the acquisition or retention of wealth; (3)  wealth and power are each proper ultimate ends of national policy; (4)  there is long-run harmony between these ends, although in particular circumstances it may be necessary for a time to make economic sacrifices in the interest of military security and therefore also of long-run prosperity'" (32).

 

"Whereas liberal writers generally view the pursuit of power and wealth...as involving a tradeoff, nationalists tend to regard the two goals as being complementary" (32).  (this passage references Knorr (1944))

 

The nationalist is keenly interested in industrialization.

 

"As Robert Heilbroner (1980) has argued, despite the existence of...different Marxisms, four essential elements can be found in the overall corpus of Marxist writings.  The first element is the dialectical approach to knowledge and society that defines the nature of reality as dynamic and conflictual; social disequilibria and consequent change are due to the class struggle and the working out of contradictions inherent in social and political phenomena...The second element is a materialist approach to history...The third is a general view of capitalist development; the capitalist mode of production and its destiny are governed by a set of 'economic laws of motion of modern society.' The fourth is a normative commitment to socialism" (35). 

"In a world of competing states, the nationalist considers relative gain to be more important than mutual gain" (33).

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.

Oneal and Russett: The Classical Liberals were Right

Oneal, JR, and BM Russett. 1997. “The Classical Liberals Were Right: Democracy, Interdependence, and Conflict, 1950-1985.” International Studies Quarterly 41:267-294.
(23).

“The liberals believed that economic interdependence, as well as democracy, would reduce the incidence of interstate conflict. In this article, we test both their economic and their political prescriptions for peace, suing pooled-regression analysis of politically relevant dyads for the Cold War era. We find that the pacific benefits of trade, both total and dyadic, have not been sufficiently appreciated” (267).

This article represents an expansion on earlier work by Maoz, Russett and Oneal. This approach is more theoretically grounded in the relationship between regimes and trade affect conflict. It also uses expanded data sets. Finally, it explores the transition from one type of regime to another.

There is a review of the literature beginning with classical liberalism and building towards democratic peace theory. There is a nice overview of democratic peace theory and it would be useful to revisit this article to explore that. The literature review then builds to an account of trade interconnectedness as being a mitigating factor for conflict and how this is not entirely taken into consideration by democratic peace theories, though it should, because it stems naturally from the classic liberalism literature. There have been analyses of the effect of trade interdependence on peace, but the findings have been largely unclear, and there is still a substantial divide between liberal and realist thought on the matter. The direction of causality is also important to take into consideration: before the 19th century, it was not uncommon for nations at war to continue trading. That has since changed, and, if one is not careful to examine the data thoroughly, the decline of trade as a result of conflict could be misinterpreted as being causally connected in different ways.

They use dyads involving at least one great power from the Correlates of War database. They examine the years 1950-85. Use MID data from COW: “A militarized dispute is an international interaction involving threats, displays, or actual uses of military force; it must be explicit, overt, not accidental, and government sanctioned” (273). They have a relatively standard set of independent variables (economic interdependence, democracy, political change, alliances, economic growth, contiguity, etc.).

Oneal, Oneal, Maoz and Russett: The Liberal Peace

Oneal, JR, FH Oneal, Z Maoz, and B Russett. 1996. “The Liberal Peace: Interdependence, Democracy, and International Conflict, 1950-85.” Journal of Peace Research 33:11.

Classic liberals believed that interdependence rooted in trade as well as similar political systems based on majority rule would lead to increased levels of international peace. This article uses economic interdependence variables to augment the democratic peace studies of Maoz and Russett (1993). “Our logistic regression analyses of politically relevant dyads…indicate that the benefits of the liberals’ economic program have not been sufficiently appreciated. Trade is a powerful influence for peace, especially among the war-prone, contiguous pairs of states…international conflict is less likely when external economic relations are important, executives are constrained, and societies are governed by non-violent norms of conflict resolution” (11).

There is initially a very thorough review of literature relating to trade, liberalism, peace and international interdependence.

The research operationalization follows closely that of Maoz and Russett (1993) and is an attempt to quantify the variables identified by Kant. They look at “major powers” as defined by the Correlates of War project. Use MID data for dependent variable and a variety of independent variables. “Our logistic regression analyses of politically relevant dyads…indicate that the pacific benefits of interdependence have not been sufficiently appreciated. This is especially apparent in the analyses of contiguous pairs of states, where the potential for conflict is greatest. Countries that share a border have more issues, particularly territorial, over which to fight; and their proximity makes armed conflict feasible. Economic interdependence significantly counteracts these influences” (23).

Copeland: Economic Interdependence and War

Copeland, DC. 1996. “Economic Interdependence and War: A Theory of Trade Expectations.” International Security 20:5-41.

“The prolonged debate between realists and liberals on the causes of war has been largely a debate about the relative salience of different causal variables. Realists stress such factors as relative power, while liberals focus on the absence or presence of collective security regimes and the pervasiveness of democratic communities” (5).

“Liberals argue that economic interdependence lowers the likelihood of war by increasing the value of trading over the alternative of aggression…Realists dismiss the liberal argument, arguing that high interdependence increases rather than decreases the probability of war” (5-6). Different periods in time can be used as supports for either theory, and the results appear to be problematically correlated.

Copeland presents a theory of trade relations that tries to overcome these problems. “The theory starts b y clarifying the notion of economic interdependence, fusing the liberal insight that the benefits of trade give states an incentive to avoid war with the realist view that the potential costs of being cut off can push states to war to secure vital goods. The total of the benefits and potential costs of trade versus autarchy reveals the true level of dependence a state faces, for if trade is completely severed, the state not only loses the gains from trade but also suffers the costs of adjusting its economy to the new situation” (6). “Trade expectations theory introduces a new causal variable, the expectatt4ions of future trade, examining its impact on the overall expected value of the trading option if a state decides to forgo war” (6). “Levels of interdependence and expectations of future trade, considered simultaneously, lead to new predictions” (7). “Interdependence can foster peace, as liberals argue, but this will only be so when states expect that trade levels will be high into the foreseeable future” (7).

The liberal argument that free trade incentivises nations towards making peaceful decisions was first made popular in the 1850s by Richard Cobden. “Realists turn the liberal argument on its head, arguing that economic interdependence not only fails to promote peace, but in fact heightens the likelihood of war” (10). This realist logic is most clearly made by Waltz and Mearsheimer, though it has its roots in mercantilist thinking of the 1800s. “Mercantilists saw states as locked in a competition for relative power and for the wealth that underpins that power” (11).

“While the liberal and the realist arguments display critical differences, they possess one important similarity: the causal logic of both perspectives is founded on an individual state’s decision-making process. That is, while the two camps freely use the term ‘interdependence,’ both derive predictions from how particular decision-making units—states—deal with their own specific dependence” (12).

“The main difference between liberals and realists has to do with their emphasis on the benefits versus the costs of interdependence” (12).

“…these theories [realism and liberalis] lack an understanding of how rational decision-makers incorporate the future trading environment into their choice between peace and war” (16).

“For the purposes of forging strong theories, however, trading patterns cannot be simply assumed a priori to match the stipulations of either liberalism or of realism. Trade levels fluctuate significantly over time, both for the system as a whole and particularly between specific trading partners, as the last two centuries demonstrate” (16-7).

“From consideration of the expectations-of-future-trade variable along with a state’s level of dependence, one can derive a consistent deductive theory of state decision-making showing the conditions under which high interdependence will lead to peace or to war” (17).

On page 24 there is a very nice overview of the difference between liberal, realist and trade expectations theory.

The theory is then applied to Germany and WWI and Germany and WWII.

Simmons, et. al.: The International Diffusion of Liberalism

Simmons, Beth A., Dobbin, Frank, & Garrett, Geoffrey. (2006). "Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism". International Organization, 60(04), 781-810.

Here we examine the rise and spread of both economic and political liberalism. To understand the causes of this spread, our authors put fourth four distinct drivers and examine them qualitatively. These are the drivers of coercion, competition, learning and emulation. There are symposium articles that follow this article which explore these empirically. This abstract focuses solely on this article.

“Our principal objective is to shed light on the causal mechanisms that explain the timing and geographic reach of liberal innovations. What has caused these new policies to diffuse across time and space?”

They define economic liberalism as: “…policies that reduce government constraints on economic behavior and thereby promote economic exchange”. Political liberalism is also defined: “…policies that reduce government constraints on political behavior, promote free political exchange, and establish rights to political participation” (783).

The diffusion of ideas follows an s-curve. At first, there are a few people who are early adopters. Then, there is a rapid increase in adoption. Finally, there is a peaking out of the curve as all who could adopt have adopted.

Coercion: “Powerful countries can explicitly or implicitly influence the probability that weaker nations adopt the policy they prefer by manipulating the opportunities and constraints encountered by target countries, either directly or through the international and nongovernmental organizations…they influence” (790).

Competition: “…a more decentralized mechanism for policy diffusion than coercion” (792). In order to make claims about competition, theorists must be able to show that policies are being diffused by methods that are not just reducible to arguments about efficiency. This approach involves an information rich environment where actors mutually constitute the decisions of others, that relationships are horizontal and that policy interventions are mostly evaluated by short-medium-term effects.

Learning: “…refers to a change in beliefs or change in one’s confidence in existing beliefs, which can result from exposure to new evidence, theories, or behavioral repertoires” (795). Learning can be theorized as happening with individual rational actors or in broader communities.

Emulation: This approach is highly correlated to social constructivist approaches. “The distinguishing feature of social constructivism is its focus on the inter-subjectivity of meaning—both legitimate ends and appropriate means are considered social constructs” (799). This approach wonders how certain political policies and approaches became more broadly accepted as begin legitimate. Emulation can be seen as being caused by either epistemic communities (top-down) or through the emulation of peers through social psychology (horizontal).

The article then goes on to identify four different types of liberalism, which I will not elaborate on here. The article concludes by saying that these concepts are important and distinct (though the footnote points to a reference where they are unified). They then explain why each article is important in the symposium.