Suchergebnisse

Nontariff barriers to trade are most pervasive when deteriorating macroeconomic conditions give rise to demands for protection by pressure groups, when countries are sufficiently large to give policymakers incentives to impose protection, and when domestic institutions enhance the ability of public officials to act on these incentives. Statistical results based on a sample of advanced industrial countries during the 1980s support the argument that the incidence of nontariff barriers tends to be greatest when the preferences of pressure groups and policymakers converge. More attention should be devoted to the interaction between societal and statist factors in cross-national studies of trade policy.

The debate between neoliberals and realists in the field of international relations draws heavily on the findings offered in Robert Axelrod's Evolution of Cooperation. Axelrod's well-known argument is that cooperation can emerge among egoists despite the absence of a central authority. This article assesses the robustness of Axelrod's findings in light of the realist critique that relative gains concerns make cooperation less likely than neoliberals contend. We build on an amended prisoner's dilemma (PD) game and conduct a computer simulation tournament in which we vary (1) the payoff structure and (2) Axelrod's population of strategies. The results indicate that cooperation can emerge even under strong relative gains concerns, so long as the population of strategies is sufficiently retaliatory. On the basis of this finding, we argue that the realist critique is overstated: the introduction of greater relative gains concerns does not necessarily limit the prospects for cooperation among states.