In this chapter, we trace the emergence of institutional approaches in IR theory, outline three important areas of research on international institutions, and suggest promising directions for future research. The review demonstrates that rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and normative institutionalism, as developed in the study of domestic institutions, have constituted sources of inspiration in IR theory. At the same time, the relative absence of formal institutions in the international realm has encouraged IR scholars to theorize more subtle institutional forms and influences, with general implications for institutional analysis in political science.
This book of ten original essays provides a showcase of currently diverse theoretical agendas in the field of international relations. Contributors address the theoretical analysis that their perspective brings to the issue of change in global politics. Written for readers with a general interest in and knowledge of world affairs, New Thinking in International Relations Theory can also be assigned in international relations theory courses.The volume begins with an essay on the classical tradition at the end of the Cold War. Essays explore work outside the mainstream, such as Jean Bethke Elshtain on feminist theory and James Der Derian on postmodern theory as well as those developing theoretical advances within traditional realms from James DeNardo's formal modeling to the more descriptive analyses of Miles Kahler and Steve Weber. Other essays include Matthew Evangelista on domestics structure, Daniel Deudney on naturalist and geopolitical theory, and Joseph Grieco on international structuralist theory. ; https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/books/1241/thumbnail.jpg
The article of record as published may be located at http://www.jstor.org/stable/2625234 ; The recently published lectures by Martin Wight (1913-72) on the history thought regarding international politics are of exceptional importance. points out, the lectures answer a number of questions about what Wight 'traditions' and what his own position was with regard to their validity. analysis and organizing framework capture and clarify a complex historical greater justice and lucidity than many others that have been proposed. lectures place in perspective what has been the most indisputable criticism approach-his 'Eurocentrism' and neglect of non-Western traditions-opportunitiesforfurther research building on these foundations.
A number of recent developments have prompted a revival of interest in liberal theories of international relations, among them the spread of democratic institutions, economic liberalisation and the increasing significance of international institutions in many aspects of life. This paper argues that liberal international relations theory, overimpressed by developments such as these, risks becoming an apologia for a narrow version of liberalism currently promoted by Western governments. The challenge of rethinking the meaning of liberalism in a 'globalising' world characterised by extreme economic inequality, social upheavals and the reassertion of cultural differences—and the questions whether and how liberal values can at all be realised in such a world—have been left to political theorists, whose struggles with these issues attract little interest in an international relations discipline still largely committed to the idea of a purely empirical social science. The paper suggests that a different, 'critical' conception of liberalism offers a way of relating pressing liberal normative concerns to empirical research, instead of seeking to keep the two entirely separate. It presents a critique of current liberal international relations theory and outlines an alternative approach.
Nine years ago, Kenneth Abbott published an article exhorting international lawyers to read and master regime theory, arguing that it had multiple uses for the study of international law.1 He went as far as to call for a 'joint discipline" that would bridge the gap between international relations theory (IR) and international law (IL). Several years later, one of us followed suit with an article mapping the history of the two fields and setting forth an agenda for joint research. 2 Since then, political scientists and international lawyers have been reading and drawing on one another's work with increasing frequency and for a wide range of purposes.3 Explicitly interdisciplinary articles have won the Francis Deak Prize, awarded for the best work by a younger scholar in this Journal, for the past two years running;4 the publication of an interdisciplinary analysis of treaty law in the Harvard International Law journal prompted a lively exchange on the need to pay attention to legal as well as political details;5 and the Hague Academy of International Law has scheduled a short course on international law and international relations for its millennial lectures in the year 2000. Further, the American Society of International Law and the Academic Council on the United Nations System sponsor joint summer workshops explicitly designed to bring young IR and IL scholars together to explore the overlap between their disciplines.
This article raises the intriguing claim that international law can be overlegalized. Overlegalization occurs where a treaty's substantive rules or its review procedures are too constraining of sovereignty, causing governments to engage in acts of non-compliance or even to denounce the treaty. The concept of legalization and its potential excesses, although unfamiliar to many legal scholars, has begun to be explored by international relations theorists analyzing the effects of legal rules in changing state behavior. This article bridges the gap between international legal scholarship and international relations theory by exploring a recent case study of overlegalization. It seeks to understand why, in the late 1990s, three Commonwealth Caribbean governments denounced human rights treaties and withdrew from the jurisdiction of international tribunals. I refer to these events as the Caribbean backlash against human rights regimes. My study of this backlash has two objectives. The first is to show how overlegalizing human rights can lead even liberal democracies to reconsider their commitment to international institutions that protect those rights. The second objective is to assess three competing international relations theories that seek to explain the conditions under which states comply with their treaty commitments. To provide a more persuasive analysis of these issues, the article includes empirical data analyzing changes in the filing and review of international human rights petitions against Caribbean governments during the 1990s.
This article explores an important as peel of peace movements· impact on international relations. It focuses in particular on the articulation and promotion of international legal norms by Anglo-American peace movements in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Social forces, in the form of peace movements, have, since the post-Napoleonic period, attempted with great energy and considerable success to influence norms underpinning international law. Norms promoted by these movements include constraints on stales' right to wage war and the requirement that slates attempt to resolve conflict' peacefully before using force, which over time have been embodied in treaties and agreements such as the Hague Conventions, the Covenant of the League of Nations, the 1928 Pact of Paris and the UN Charter. Additional norms promoted by peace movements include the constitutive principles or universalism (the notion that all political actors should participate in decisions about peace, security, and the improvement of international life) and equality of status (the notion that they should do so on an equal basis, and that rights should be granted to and obligations binding upon all) that provide the foundation for twentieth century global international organisations such as the League or Nations and the United Nations. Social movements have made these attempts as part of a much less successful endeavour to promote law as a means of ensuring international peace.
Within international relations one seldom finds discussion of how legitimacy affects 'state capacity'—a state's capacity to enact and adapt to domestic and international change. This is especially surprising for neo- Weberian approaches that have viewed state capacity as a major concern for over two decades. And although legitimacy was a key ingredient to Max Weber's approach to the state, the concept is eschewed or ignored in the three discernible neo Weberian approaches to state capacity. The first two of these approaches, 'isolated autonomy' and 'embedded autonomy', produce functionalist view of a state which responds to an anarchical international system. The third, 'social embeddedness', conceives of the state–society complex as a contested rather than functional space but does not produce a substantive conception of legitimacy. I argue that a reinvigorated conception of legitimacy provides us with a substantive neo-Weberian 'historicist' approach that provides a deeper understanding of how both norms and material interests shape the state. This approach is applied to a brief case study of financial reform in the United States and Japan to illustrate that bringing legitimacy back in provides a better means of understanding state capacity.
In an environment of increasing government expenditures financed largely viii through taxes, including a relatively visible and large residential property tax, the issue of whether property taxes are capitalized into market values is increasingly important. Property tax capitalization is the reflection of property taxes in the value of real property. The capitalization of property tax does not necessarily pose a problem; rather, problems arise when homes identical to each other have different taxes and these differentials are then capitalized into market values. These capitalized tax differentials result in large capital gains and losses to owners of real estate. This study (1) reviews existing economic theory and empirical evidence on the capitalization of property taxes, (2) develops a model of property valuation inclusive of tax effects, and (3) estimates the parameters of this model using a comprehensive data set of over 334 home sales in the Logan, Utah area. The empirical results include an estimate of the tax capitalization effect. Two closely related issues are also addressed in the study. They include: (I) changes in real estate prices, including a suggested method for measuring such change and (2) a study of property tax equity, including two specific measures of tax fairness. The conclusions are (I) tax differentials are capitalized; (2) real estate prices in the study area increased approximately 10 percent per year from 1989 to 1992; and (3) there is significant variation in assessment ratios.
Compellence, the use of a contingent threat of force to get a target state to modify a behavior, is an understudied area of international relations. An empirical examination of this area reveals patterns of the frequency of attempted compellence and successful compellence that are not explained by current research or broader international relations theories. In the post-World War II period (1946–2001), the pattern is a rapid drop and continued suppression of success, but a continuation of compellence attempts at the historic level. Existing compellence research and international relations theory do not explain this puzzling disparity of low success and continued attempts at compellence. By comparing this pattern with a sample of the previous conditions (1914–1945), this study provides initial findings about the compellence puzzle. Key among them is the effects of the shift in the international system after World War II, the American policy of containment, norm formation and promulgation, shifts of compellence from the core to the periphery, and the domestic effects of compellence on the longevity of leaders.
There is no international bankruptcy law, but only the national bankruptcy laws of various states. The failure of a multinational firm therefore raises difficult questions of conflict and cooperation among national bankruptcy regimes. Theorists have proposed various reforms to the uncoordinated territorial approach that most states pursue when a multinational firm suffers financial distress. Among these reform proposals, universalism has long been the dominant idea. Under universalism, the bankruptcy regime of the debtor firm's home country would govern, and that regime would have extraterritorial reach to treat all of the debtor's assets and claimants worldwide. Despite its conceptual dominance, universalism has yet to find vindication in any concrete policy enactments. No universalist arrangements exist. While recent challenges to universalism have emerged, the current lively debate over universalism and rival proposals focuses almost exclusively on their comparative efficiencies. This article provides an entirely new perspective. Applying insights from elementary game theory and international relations theory, I show that universalism is politically implausible. Even for states interested in establishing universalist arrangements, they will be unable to do so. They will find themselves caught in a prisoners' dilemma with no ready solution. I conclude therefore that universalism holds only dubious promise as a prescription for international bankruptcy cooperation.
This paper provides empirical evidence on the dynamic effects of uncertainty on firm-level capital accumulation. A novelty in this paper is that the firm-level uncertainty indicator is motivated and derived from a theoretical model, the neoclassical investment model with time to build. This model also serves as the base for the empirical work, where an error-correction approach is employed. I find a negative effect of uncertainty on capital accumulation, both in the short and the long run. This outcome cannot be explained by the model alone. Instead, the results suggest that the predominant mechanism at work stems from irreversibility constraints.
The purpose of this study is to examine municipal involvement in international relations in the United States. This municipal phenomenon is occurring concurrently with both a shift away from the traditional nation-centric structure of international relations under the influence of globalism as well as a sharp decline in intergovernmental aid. The research questions were: (1) What are the indicators that define municipal involvement in international relations? and (2) What is the extent of that involvement? Extensive qualitative and research was conducted in the form of an exploratory literature survey which was set forth in narrative analysis to overcome the paucity of specific research in this area. The qualitative research developed 121 indicators of municipal international involvement. The 121 indicators were analytically grouped into economic, technological, sociocultural, political, and intergovernmental relations indicator groups. The qualitative research concluded that municipal involvement in international relations was a spreading phenomenon and that many American municipalities are substantially involved in international activities. In support of the qualitative results, 32 of the 121 indicators were validated through analysis of an independent random sample quantitative cross-sectional survey of American municipalities. The survey indicated substantial but varied involvement in international activities by municipalities. Exploratory quantitative analysis indicated that 12 of the 34 indicator variables, split between the economic, sociocultural, and political constructs, contributed significantly to municipal strength as an indicator of municipal international involvement. Exploratory quantitative analysis also indicated that the 32 indicators grouped into three composite constructs; i.e., economic, sociocultural, and political activities. Analysis of the composite constructs determined that only sociocultural activities made a significant contribution to municipal strength as an indicator of the degree of international involvement. The results of this study indicated that many municipalities in the United States are involved in international relations and assisted in the definition of variables indicating the nature and extent of that involvement. Many avenues of future research are warranted.
The recent 'open-economy industrial organization' literature generally finds export-orientation to enhance the weight of post-merger international competitive gains; thereby, favoring lenient domestic merger policy. We observe, however, that mergers seldom generate the 'significant synergies' that are supportive of international competitive gains. Further, we explore a joint-economies of production effect which suggests that domestic mergers tend to generate international competitive losses (not gains). Accordingly, we contend that export-orientation favors strict (not lenient) domestic merger policy. In order to support this contention, we develop a model illustrative of how non-synergistic domestic mergers in the presence of international sales might reduce national welfare and incur stringent merger-reviews. Further, using a panel data set composed of U.S. merger policy by manufacturing sector over the 1990-2001 period, we empirically support export-orientation leading to strict merger policy. ; In der neueren Literatur zur Industrieökonomie in offenen Volkswirtschaften wird allgemein herausgestellt, dass die Zunahme internationaler Wettbewerbs-vorteile durch eine Fusion umso stärker ins Gewicht fällt, je höher die Exportorientierung der Volkswirtschaft ist. Mithin wird eine nachsichtige nationale Fusionskontrolle befürwortet. Im Gegensatz dazu stellen wir fest, dass Unternehmenszusammenschlüsse oft nicht die beabsichtigten signifi-kanten Synergieeffekte haben, die die internationale Wettbewerbsfähigkeit des Unternehmens tatsächlich stärken würden. Stattdessen führen Fusionen eher zu internationalen Wettbewerbsnachteilen. Eine Ursache dafür finden wir im "joint economies of production - Effekt", den wir hier näher untersuchen. Entsprechend kommen wir zu der Auffassung, dass die Exportorientierung einer Volkswirtschaft statt für eine nachsichtige eher für eine strenge Fusions-kontrolle spricht. Das von uns entwickelte Modell veranschaulicht, wie Fusionen von Unter-nehmen, bei denen der Synergieeffekt ausbleibt, in einer offenen Volkswirt-schaft die Wohlfahrt des Landes reduzieren, und lässt erkennen, dass diese Auswirkungen strengere Fusionsprüfungen nahe legen. Auch empirisch belegen wir unsere These über den Zusammenhang von Exportorientierung und strengerer Fusionspolitik anhand von Paneldaten der Jahre 1990-2001, in denen die US-amerikanischen Fusionsentscheidungen nach den Sektoren des produzierenden Gewerbes geordnet zusammengefasst sind.
