Suchergebnisse

The U.S. confronts the difficult task of managing change peacefully as the BRICs' economic rise redistributes power in the international system. I consider the insights form four approaches within international relations - Realism, Institutionalism, Constructivism and Liberalism - to draw out possible policy advice. While the first two offer useful thinking, their policies are in fact quite risky and difficult to implement. Constructivism, too, offers insights, but theories from this apporach d not articulate practical policy guidance. Liberals direct our attention to the domestic sources of state preferences, suggesting not only how to influence future systemic change, but also identifiying ways to make Realist or Insitutionalsit policies towards the BRICs more applicable and effective. (Asian Persp/GIGA)

In the 1840s, agricultural preferences on trade fluctuated between unity around protection and sector-based splits. Political economists have struggled to explain this pattern, because they have relied on the standard economic models of the domestic distribution of the gains from trade. The standard models depict interests in stable and exclusive terms, making them ill-suited for explaining change. I employ a new economic model—one designed to link the macroeconomic effect of trade with the microeconomic changes involved in adjustment—to highlight the risks landowners faced during adjustment. Landowners would support trade liberalisation only when these risks declined. The timing and nature of Peel's actions make sense as efforts to ease agricultural adjustment, thus exposing the latent sector-based cleavage in agriculture, observed economically as well as politically.

While it is realistically acknowledged that economics is of major importance in the balance of power, the specific economic components of balancing, band-wagoning, & buck-passing are not incorporated in the theory itself. It is argued that their inclusion might lead to a better understanding of states' economic strategies & how they address the balance of power & anticipate changes within it. Three major conclusions are reached with regard to the current world situation: (1) Europeans are not responding to US superiority by trying to balance power because they do not fear US dominance. (2) Despite advice to cut back, the US has continued heavy investment abroad, while Japan & Western Europe have been buck-passing & band-wagoning. (3) For balance-of-power theory to be of much use, realists need to rectify its shortcomings & pay greater attention to economics. J. Stanton