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This paper broadens the scope and depth of business alliance research by way of interdisciplinary enrichment. The paper draws on the political science literature on nation-state alliances to generate insights into the establishment, operations and performance of inter-firm alliances. Shared theory bases of game theory and transaction cost economics, as well as theories, variables and research findings indigenous to political science are posited as a platform from which propositions regarding inter-firm alliances are derived.

The article is dealing in the first place with the definition of (offshore) outsourcing in relation with foreign direct investment and international subcontracting process, as well as with some connected issues such as fragmentation of the production process, international production relocation, de-industrialisation in developed countries and industrialisation in newly industrialising, now coined emerging countries. In the second place, it aims at finding how global strategy differentiates from traditional MNC strategies and how much outsourcing fits with such global strategy. The last section of the article briefly screens the economic impact of outsourcing on the world trade structure – with the two enlightening snapshots of global trade in sports goods and European Union 15's outward processing trade with Central Eastern European countries (CEECs)-, as well as on home developed and host emerging countries. The article conclusion is that outsourcing has grown faster than world trade in the past two decades and has skyrocketed during the very last years because it is a cornerstone of a new global strategy adopted by multinational companies since the late 1980s. ; The article is dealing in the first place with the definition of (offshore) outsourcing in relation with foreign direct investment and international subcontracting process, as well as with some connected issues such as fragmentation of the production process, international production relocation, de-industrialisation in developed countries and industrialisation in newly industrialising, now coined emerging countries. In the second place, it aims at finding how global strategy differentiates from traditional MNC strategies and how much outsourcing fits with such global strategy. The last section of the article briefly screens the economic impact of outsourcing on the world trade structure – with the two enlightening snapshots of global trade in sports goods and European Union 15's outward processing trade with Central Eastern European countries (CEECs)-, as well as on home developed and host emerging countries. The article conclusion is that outsourcing has grown faster than world trade in the past two decades and has skyrocketed during the very last years because it is a cornerstone of a new global strategy adopted by multinational companies since the late 1980s.

The article investigates the relevance of foreign policy discourse and practice for military gender relations. The link between women's status in military institutions and the gendering of foreign policy has so far not been thoroughly addressed in military and gender research or foreign policy analysis. Feminist international relations provides a research strategy to show how foreign policy doctrines and debates are gendered and how they are connected to gender (in)equality in central state institutions such as the military. The article thus applies feminist international relations as a theoretical framework that transcends the constructed dichotomy between national and international levels of analysis. In a case study of the USA from the Clinton to the Obama administrations, patterns of military gender integration are established as a phenomenon incorporating both domestic and international dimensions. Foreign policy discourses and practices in this time period are related to shifts in military gender policies and discourses on gender integration. It is argued that the gender order in military institutions is linked to international politics and state behaviour in the international arena.

Partant d'une comparaison inédite entre le Haut Commissariat des Nations Unies pour les réfugiés (hcr) et l'Organisation internationale du travail (oit), cet article suggère de revisiter la problématique du changement dans les organisations internationales en montrant, dans une perspective de sociologie des relations internationales, l'existence d'un continuum de stratégies organisationnelles mises en place par ces dernières pour légitimer leur existence et leur action, stratégies allant de la survie à la revendication d'une certaine autonomie. Deux moments de la vie du hcr et de l'oit sont comparés : l'intervention, en décembre 2004, du hcr au secours de victimes du tsunami en Asie du Sud-Est et le lancement, en juin 1999, de l'Agenda du travail décent, par le directeur général de l'oit.

Existing compliance research has focused on states' adherence to international rules. This article reports on state and also non-state actors' adherence to international norms. The analysis of warring parties' behaviour in granting the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to detention centres between 1991 and 2006 shows that both governments and rebel groups adhere to the norm of accepting the ICRC in order to advance their pursuit of legitimacy. National governments are more likely to grant access when they are democracies and rely on foreign aid. Insurgent groups are more likely to grant access when they exhibit legitimacy-seeking characteristics, such as having a legal political wing, relying on domestic support, controlling territory and receiving transnational support.

The purpose of this study was to assess core values and attitudes among conscribed soldiers volunteering for international peacekeeping missions (n=146), by a comparison with conscripts from the same class and regiment that did not apply for international missions (n=275).The sample consisted of an entire class of conscribed soldiers whereof 389 completed all three repeated surveys. There were no demographical differences between the groups. Volunteers expressed higher altruistic basic values and held more positive attitudes toward their military education. The findings in this study are of importance for the Swedish armed forces as success in international missions is dependent on soldiers with sound values in order to better understand different cultures in the areas where deployments now are taking place.

This study seeks to extend the approach for an evaluation of statistics on developing countries' trade with each other by examining the statistics on intra-trade of 36 African countries and also on these countries' exports to major OECD markets. The author argues that statistics on trade between African countries are almost useless for empirical and policy studies, partly because of smuggling and false invoicing