Theoretically innovative and empirically expansive, this title sets out to become the new authority for the study of small states in International Relations (IR). The book's explanatory approach allows for a comparison of small states' situations and relationships across a global selection of some twenty cases in issues of international security, economy, and institutions. In doing so, it shows how IR's longstanding neglect of small states is a missed opportunity - not just for understanding small states but for developing better theories of IR.
"Latin America Confronts the United States offers a new perspective on US-Latin America relations. Drawing on research in six countries, the book examines how Latin American leaders are able to overcome power asymmetries to influence US foreign policy. The book provides in-depth explorations of key moments in post-World War II inter-American relations - foreign economic policy before the Alliance for Progress, the negotiation of the Panama Canal Treaties, the expansion of trade through NAFTA, and the growth of counternarcotics in Plan Colombia. The new evidence challenges earlier, US-centric explanations of these momentous events. Though differences in power were fundamental to each of these cases, relative weakness did not prevent Latin American leaders from aggressively pursuing their interests vis-...-vis the United States. Drawing on studies of foreign policy and international relations, the book examines how Latin American leaders achieved this influence - and why they sometimes failed"--
ABSTRACTAfter World War II, the US-led international security order exhibited substantial regional variation. Explaining this variation has been central to the debate over why is there nonatoin Asia. But this debate overlooks the emergence of multilateral security arrangements between the United States and Latin American countries during the same critical juncture. These inter-American institutions are puzzling considering the three factors most commonly used to explain divergence betweennatoand Asia: burden-sharing, external threats, and collective identity. These conditions fail to explain contemporaneous emergence of inter-American security multilateralism. Although the postwar inter-American system has been characterized as the solidification of US dominance, at the time of its framing, Latin American leaders judged the inter-American system as their best bet for maintaining beneficial US involvement in the Western Hemisphere while reinforcing voice opportunities for weaker states and imposing institutional constraints on US unilateralism. Drawing on multinational archival research, the author advances a historical institutionalist account. Shared historical antecedents of regionalism shaped the range of choices for Latin American and US leaders regarding the desirability and nature of new regional institutions while facilitating institutional change through mechanisms of layering and conversion during this critical juncture.
