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We review and analyze some recent research on regionalism. We begin by discussing how various studies have defined regions and regionalism. Because much of the work has been conducted by economists, we then turn to a summary of the economics of regionalism. However, it is widely held that economic factors alone are insufficient to explain regionalism's causes and consequences and that political factors are centrally important. We analyze how domestic and international political factors have guided both economic regionalism and security regionalism. We conclude by outlining some avenues for future research, placing particular emphasis on the need to better integrate insights from political economy and international security in the study of regionalism.

We review and analyze some recent research on regionalism. We begin by discussing how various studies have defined regions and regionalism. Because much of the work has been conducted by economists, we then turn to a summary of the economics of regionalism. However, it is widely held that economic factors alone are insufficient to explain regionalism's causes and consequences and that political factors are centrally important We analyze how domestic and international political factors have guided both economic regionalism and security regionalism. We conclude by outlining some avenues for future research, placing particular emphasis on the need to better integrate insights from political economy and international security in the study of regionalism. Adapted from the source document.

We have argued in Electing to Fight and other writings that an incomplete democratic transition increases the risk of international and civil war in countries that lack the institutional capacity to sustain democratic politics. The combination of increasing mass political participation and weak political institutions creates the motive and the opportunity for both rising and declining elites to play the nationalist card in an attempt to rally popular support against domestic and foreign rivals.

During the past half-century, states have established a large number of international trade institutions, both multilateral and regional in scope. The existing literature on this topic emphasizes that these agreements are chiefly designed to liberalize and increase the flow of overseas commerce. Yet such institutions have another function that has been largely ignored by researchers, namely, reducing volatility in trade policy and trade flows. Exposure to global markets increases the vulnerability of a country's output to terms of trade shocks. Governments seek to insulate their economies from such instability through membership in international trade institutions, particularly the World Trade Organization (WTO) and preferential trading arrangements (PTAs). We hypothesize that these institutions reduce the volatility of overseas commerce. We further hypothesize that, because market actors prefer price stability, trade institutions increase the volume of foreign commerce by reducing trade variability. This article conducts the first large-scale, multivariate statistical tests of these two hypotheses, using annual data on exports for all pairs of countries from 1951 through 2001. The tests provide strong support for our arguments. PTAs and the WTO regime significantly reduce export volatility. In so doing, these institutions also increase export levels.

Abstract: Countries taking the initial steps from dictatorship toward electoral politics are especially prone to civil and international war. Yet states endowed with coherent institution's such as a functioning bureaucracy and the elements needed to construct a sound legal system, have often been able to democratize peacefully and successfully. Consequently, whenever possible, efforts to promote democracy should try to follow a sequence of building institutions before encouraging mass competitive elections. Democratizing in the wrong sequence not only risks bloodshed in the short term, but also the mobilization of durable illiberal forces with the capacity to block democratic consolidation over the long term.

Struktur und Stärke internationaler Handelsbeziehungen werden von der so genannten "Neuen" und der traditionellen Außenhandelstheorie unterschiedlich postuliert. Wie empirische Ergebnisse nahe legen, wächst die Bandbreite der international gehandelten Güter - eine Folge zunehmender Skalenerträge. Dennoch wird in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur üblicherweise von den Annahmen der traditionellen Theorie ausgegangen. Damit wird das Problem zeitlicher Inkonsistenz, welches unvollständigem Wettbewerb erwachsen kann, ausgeblendet; und damit ebenso der Umstand, dass unvollständiger Wettbewerb die politischen Grundlagen offener internationaler Märkte verschieben kann. Die Autoren führen aus, dass Bündnisse ein optimales Handelsvolumen dann herbeiführen können, wenn Skalenerträge - und nicht unterschiedliche Faktorausstattungen - den Handel bestimmen. Dies können sie empirisch stützen. (kss-swp)

In the wake of the Soviet bloc's collapse, various postcommunist countries rushed to gain greater access to foreign markets. Many of them have made substantial progress in liberalizing commerce, but the movement toward free trade has been by no means universal. One prominent view is that the establishment of democratic institutions has stimulated economic reform in thepostcommunist world. The authors conduct one of the first studies on this topic and find that democracies are indeed more likely to liberalize trade than nondemocracies. They also find that the electoral calendar has a potent influence on the timing of commercial reform in postcommunist democracies: Controlling for a range of factors, politicians are most likely to reduce trade barriers immediately after voters go to the polls. Trade liberalization is much less likely to occur at other points in a democracy's electoral calendar, and elections have no effect on commercial reform in nondemocracies.