Most great powers had internationalized coalitions in 1914, but some were stronger than others. In particular the German internationalizers faced heavy industry, militarists, and apostles of Weltpolitik to say nothing of the military itself. Mercantilists were also opposed. China's internationalizers are far stronger than those in Germany in 1914.
Recent commentary on the centenary of World War I evokes similarities between Germany then and China now, and between globalization then and now. The nature of dominant coalitions in both countries provides a conceptual anchor for understanding the links between internal and external politics in 1914 and 2014. Coalitional dynamics draw greater attention to agency in debates that all too often emphasize structure, impersonal forces, and inevitability. Two core claims rest on this basic analytical building block. First, despite apparent similarities in domestic coalitional arrangements of putative revisionist challengers—Germany and China—important differences defy facile analogies. China now is not Germany then. Second, the regional coalitional cluster and the global political economy—and hence the links between domestic and external politics—differ across the two periods. The "world-time" against which coalitions operate today is significantly different as well. Thus ahistorical analogies between then and now may not only be imperfect; they can infuse actors with misguided and perilous protocols for international behavior. There is plenty that may recall World War I today but even more that does not, and all must make sure that gap never narrows.
Athough turmoil characterized both the Middle East and East Asia in the two decades following World War II, the two regions looked dramatically different at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Since 1965 the incidence of interstate wars and militarized conflicts has been nearly five times higher in the Middle East, as was their severity, including the use of ballistic missiles and chemical weapons By contrast, declining militarized conflict and rising intraregional cooperation has replaced earlier patterns in East Asia. There are no systematic efforts explaining this contrast between Bella Levantina and an evolving Pax Asiatica. This article traces these diverging paths to competing domestic models of political survival East Asian leaders pivoted their political control on economic performance and integration in the global economy, whereas Middle East leaders relied on inward-looking self-sufficiency, state and military entrepreneurship, and a related brand of nationalism. I examine permissive and catalytic conditions explaining the models' emergence; their respective intended and unintended effects on states, military, and authoritarian institutions; and their implications for regional conflict. The final section distills conceptual and methodological conclusions.
The Barcelona process Initiative must be seen as part of a broader design of European Union (EU) evolution in the post-Cold War era, one involving spatial and functional expansion, including efforts to design a common foreign policy. Both classical security issues (the availability of non-conventional weapons in the Middle East, terrorism, oil and natural gas dependencies) and 'new' security issues (migration, drugs, human rights violations, environmental degradation) bear on EU concerns with the political fate of the Mediterranean basin. These concerns led to the Barcelona Declaration or Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) Initiative, designed to promote peace and prosperity in the Mediterranean region. Three main processes are critical to the relationship between the industrialized North and the industrializing Mediterranean countries: economic reform, democratization, and the role of multilateral organizations. All three are lagging in the Mediterranean South and East, with important consequences for the conception of a Mediterranean region as a whole. The consequences of this lag have implications for the broader debacle in which the Europeans and the West more generally, find themselves in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.
This article introduces a conceptual design for mapping the domestic impact of internationalization. It proposes that internationalization leads to a trimodal domestic coalitional profile and advances a set of expectations about the regional effects of each profile. Aggregate data from ninety-eight coalitions in nineteen states over five regions suggests that between 1948 and 1993 the three coalitional types differed in their international behavior. Internationalizing coalitions deepened trade openness, expanded exports, attracted foreign investments, restrained military-industrial complexes, initiated fewer international crises, eschewed weapons of mass destruction, deferred to international economic and security regimes, and strove for regional cooperative orders that reinforced those objectives. Backlash coalitions restricted or reduced trade openness and reliance on exports, curbed foreign investment, built expansive military complexes, developed weapons of mass destruction, challenged international regimes, exacerbated civic-nationalist, religious, or ethnic differentiation within their region, and were prone to initiate international crises. Hybrids straddled the grand strategies of their purer types, intermittently striving for economic openness, contracting the military complex, initiating international crises, and cooperating regionally and internationally, but neither forcefully nor coherently. These findings have significant implications for international relations theory and our incipient understanding of internationalization. Further extensions of the conceptual framework can help capture international effects that are yet to be fully integrated into the study of the domestic politics of coalition formation.
International Relations theory has recently turned its attention to the study of comparative regionalism in economics and security. As part of this new research agenda, this article explores what we might learn from the Southern Cone's experience with denuclearization that might be applicable to the Middle East. The two regions differ with respect to security dilemmas, military capabilities and doctrines, and the prior availability of a cooperative regional institutional infrastructure. Yet two aspects of the Southern Cone process seem potentially relevant to other regions. The first relates to improving our understanding of the appropriate domestic political conditions that underpin denuclearization. In particular, the nature of domestic coalitions and of their respective approaches to the global economy and political institutions deserve far more serious consideration than they have gained thus far. The second relates to the nature of the regional denuclearization regime initially fashioned in the Southern Cone, which set an international precedent. A regionally-based system of mutual inspections could help remove some of the most intractable barriers to a future Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.
Why do national leaders choose to create a multilateral mechanism for international cooperation? This analysis of the multilateral Arab-Israeli peace negotiations (1993-95) takes stock of the original motivations in launching a multilateral process and of the subsequent development of institutional 'focal points' in five issue areas: Arms Control and Regional Security, Economic Development, Refugees, Water, and the Environment. The multilaterals were designed to provide a supportive framework for the bilateral negotiations, to lubricate the participants' common domestic political and economic agenda, to weaken domestic rivals opposed to the peace process, to enhance the support of the international community, and to provide inducements for inclusion and signal opportunity costs to rejectionists in the region. The multilaterals' preliminary, incipient achievements came about despite continued concerns with 'relative gains', raised mostly by opponents of the peace process. The collapse of bilateral Palestinian-Israeli negotiations (1996-99) doomed this very brief episode of institution-building. Although it is too early to project the direction of the peace process under the new Israeli coalition government led by Ehud Barak, a dedicated effort to resolve outstanding bilateral Palestinian-Israeli and Syrian-Israeli issues bodes well for a subsequent resumption of multilateral negotiations.
This article examines most significant causes of the development of a weapons industry in Argentina and Brazil. International market and political conditions, domestic economic and political determinants, and regional contextual factors explain the evolution and makeup of the military industrial complex in these countries. The article examines all three sources and provides a summary profile of the arms sector in each country. Developments in the 1980 and early 1990s - domestic, regional, and international - have resultsted in the near-collapse of arms production in Argentina and Brazil. In the last section, the implications of this dramatic contraction are explored.
THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES THE MOST SIGNIFICANT CAUSES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF A WEAPONS INDUSTRY IN ARGENTINA AND BRAZIL. IT PROVIDES A SUMMARY PROFILE OF THE ARMS SECTOR IN EACH COUNTRY. DEVELOPMENTS IN THE 1980S AND EARLY 1990S HAVE RESULTED IN THE NEAR-COLLAPSE OF ARMS PRODUCTION IN THOSE COUNTRIES. THE IMPLICATIONS OF THIS DRAMATIC CONTRACTION ARE EXPLORED.