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AbstractPreferential trading arrangements (PTAs) have spread widely over the past fifty years. During the same era, multilateral openness has grown to unprecedented heights, spurred by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO). If the cornerstone of the manifestly successful multilateral regime is nondiscrimination, why have its members increasingly resorted to preferential liberalization? We argue that developments at the heart of GATT/WTO encourage its members to form PTAs as devices to obtain bargaining leverage within the multilateral regime. Specifically, the growth in GATT/WTO membership, the periodic multilateral trade negotiation rounds, as well as participation and, especially, losses in formal GATT/WTO disputes, have led its members to seek entrance into PTAs. Conducting the first statistical tests on the subject, we find strong evidence in support of this argument.

Scholars and policy makers have displayed a longstanding interest in the politics of economic reform, particularly over the 1990s as former Communist countries struggled to develop market economies. Yet remarkably little systematic research has been conducted on the political economy of commercial reform in the post-Communist world. We argue that the fragmentation of power within post-Communist countries has been a potent force for trade liberalization. In non-democracies where political power is highly concentrated
in the hands of a small group of elites, state leaders face few impediments to rent seeking and are well insulated from interests favouring commercial reform. In non-democracies where power is fragmented within the national government, however, new elites with weak ties to the old regime are well placed to use trade liberalization as a weapon against their political opponents. Moreover, the dispersion of power in non-democracies creates space for groups favouring free trade to promote trade liberalization. Finally, in democracies, the dispersion of power within the national government combined with electoral competition creates an especially potent impetus to trade liberalization. To assess these arguments, we analyse the trade policy of post-Communist countries during the period 1990–98. The results support our claims, highlighting
the importance of examining institutional differences within as well as across regime types in analyses of economic policy.

The relationship between democratization and war has recently sparked a lively debate. We find that transitions from autocracy that become stalled prior to the establishment of coherent democratic institutions are especially likely to precipitate the onset of war. This tendency is heightened in countries where political institutions are weak and national officials are vested with little authority. These results accord with our argument that elites often employ nationalist rhetoric to mobilize support in the populist rivalries of the poorly-institutionalized democratizing state but then get caught up in the belligerent politics that this process eventually unleashes. In contrast, we find that transitions that quickly culminate in a fully coherent democracy are much less perilous. Further, our results refute the view that transitional democracies are merely the targets of attack due to their temporary weakness: in fact, they tend to be the initiators of war. We also refute the view that any regime change is likely to precipitate the outbreak of war: transitions toward democracy are significantly more likely to generate hostilities than transitions toward autocracy.

We analyze the effects of alliances and preferential trading arrangements on bilateral trade flows. Both factors are likely to promote trade among members, but we argue that the interaction between them is central to explaining patterns of commerce. The combination of an alliance, which creates political incentives for participants to engage in trade, and a commercial institution, which liberalizes trade among members, is expected to provide a considerable impetus to commerce among parties to both. The results of our quantitative analyses support these arguments. Both alliances and preferential trading arrangements strongly affected trade from 1960 to 1990, and allies that included a major power conducted considerably more trade than their nonmajor-power counterparts. Moreover, the interaction between alliances and preferential trading arrangements is fundamental to explaining patterns of bilateral commerce: Parties to a common preferential trading arrangement and a common alliance engage in markedly greater trade than do members of either type of institution but not both.

We analyze the effects of alliances and preferential trading arrangements on bilateral trade flows. Both factors are likely to promote trade among members, but we argue that the interaction between them is central to explaining patterns of commerce. The combination of an alliance, which creates political incentives for participants to engage in trade, and a commercial institution, which liberalizes trade among members, is expected to provide a considerable impetus to commerce among parties to both. The results of our quantitative analyses support these arguments. Both alliances and preferential trading arrangements strongly affected trade from 1960 to 1990, and allies that included a major-power conducted considerably more trade than their nonmajor-power counterparts. Moreover, the interaction between alliances and preferential trading arrangements is fundamental to explaining patterns of bilateral commerce: parties to a common preferential trading arrangement and a common alliance engage in markedly greater trade than do members of either type of institution but not both. (American Political Science Review / FUB)

Recent literature attributes the relative scarcity of open international markets to the prisoner's dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade. We argue that the prisoner's dilemma representation does not reflect the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in an anarchic international system, namely, their security externalities. We consider these external effects explicitly. Doing so leads us to two conclusions: (1) free trade is more likely within, rather than across, political-military alliances; and (2) alliances are more likely to evolve into free-trade coalitions if they are embedded in bipolar systems than in multipolar systems. Using data drawn from an 80-year period beginning in 1905, we test these hypotheses. The results of the analysis make it clear that alliances do have a direct, statistically significant, and large impact on bilateral trade flows and that this relationship is stronger in bipolar, rather than in multipolar, systems.

"The political grammar (now called The political manual) was originally written in 1834 . In the mean time the text has been several times revised."--Pref. ; Mode of access: Internet.