Suchergebnisse

This essay examines and reformulates the realist-neoliberal debate. It focuses initially on the issue of the attribution of instrumental goals to states—the goals they pursue as a function of the environment they confront—and argues not only that such goals are epiphenomena of other things but also that their specification constitutes a mere redescription of the alternative equilibria that states can achieve in anarchic systems. The world orders that realists and neoliberals envision are but alternative equilibria to a more general game. In that game cooperation, regardless of its form, must be endogenously enforced, and a debate over instrumental goals (whether it is best to model states as relative or absolute resource maximizers) is not central to the development of a theory that explains and predicts world orders.Instead, the realist-neoliberal debate should be recast. The central research agenda should be to develop models that illuminate the following: how the equilibrium to a game in which states structure international affairs influences the types of issue-specific subgames states play, how countries coordinate to equilibria of different types; how the coordination problems associated with different equilibria can be characterized; how institutions emerge endogenously to sustain different equilibria; how states can enhance the attractiveness of an equilibrium; and how states can signal commitments to the strategies that are part of that equilibrium.

This paper examines regional population distribution when there is an interregional transfer policy without commitment. We introduce explicitly the following time structure of actions. Individuals make decisions on locational choices freely ex ante, but are immobile ex post. The interregional transfer policies by regional governments and the central govenment are implemented after individuals' migration decisions. We obtain the following results. First, locally stable time-consistent equilibria are single-community equilibria when there is a pure local public good. When we extend the basic model by taking account of capital, congestion, and spillovers in the provision of a public good, it is shown that whether or not central government intervention enhances the efficiency of the population distribution depends upon several economic factors.