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Intro -- Contents -- Cover -- Title -- Foreword ix -- Acknowledgments xiii -- The Research Project and Team xv -- 1. Regional Integration Agreements 1 -- 2. Politics and Policymaking 11 -- 3. Economic Benefits and Costs 29 -- 4. Policy Choices 63 -- 5. Trade Blocs and the World Trading System 93 -- 6. Conclusion: Tell Me the Truth about Trade Blocs 123 -- Bibliography 133 -- Boxes -- Figures -- Tables.

This paper examines the question of whether the world will continue to move toward a liberal, multi-lateral world trade system or whether it will fall apart into rival trade blocs. It starts with a short comparison of different scenarios for the development of the world economy. It then tries to illustrate the importance of developments inside the major trade blocs for the relationships between these blocs, taking as an examples (a) the impact of Gernam reunification, (b) the impact of a possible break-up of China, and (c) the impact of domestic polarization within the United States. It then discusses how different research avenues give rise to different expectations with regard to cooperation versus rivalry. For instance, from a long waves perspective increasing rivalry can be expected. However, an analysis of strategic alliances points in the direction of more cooperation and collective management of international economic relations. And finally, analyses that give more attention to the internal restructuring of companies lead to the hypothesis that new societal demands for a more active state will be articulated, implying more frictions at the international level. An analysis in terms of "concepts of control" points in the same direction. The tenative conclusion of this paper, meanwhile, is that "managed rivalry" will characterize future relations between the main trading blocs.

Most structural analyses of the world system have focused on distinguishing the core from the periphery and semiperiphery. This article extends the structural approach by identifying blocs and groupings in the world market. A network analysis of trade among the 102 countries with 1990 trade of U.S. $2 billion or more finds that the United States, Japan, and Germany are by far the most important countries in the trade network. The U.S. and Japanese trade blocs are highly overlapped, while the German trade bloc is largely separate. The 1990 trade patterns suggest the potential for, and possible shape of, increased trade conflict between rival world powers.

AbstractWho supports trade in the US Congress? We uncover the ideological space of trade voting, focusing on trade agreements and development policy as two fundamental cleavages around globalization. We then cluster members of Congress into coherent voting blocs, and identify the most pro-trade voting blocs in each Chamber. We find that these blocs: cross party lines; are ideologically heterogeneous; and are over-represented on the committees with jurisdiction over trade. We then examine two leading theories of Congressional voting – on constituency characteristics and campaign contributions – and find support for each using our learned voting blocs. Members of pro-trade blocs have defended their constituents' and contributors' interests by speaking out to confront the Trump administration's protectionism. We conclude that unsupervised learning methods provide a valuable tool for exploring the multifaceted and dynamic divisions which characterize current debates over global economic integration.

The relationship between foreign trade and political conflict has been a persistent source of controversy among scholars of international relations. Existing empirical studies of this topic have focused on the effects of trade flows on conflict, but they have largely ignored the institutional context in which trade is conducted. In this article we present some initial quantitative results pertaining to the influence on military disputes of preferential trading arrangements (PTAs), a broad class of commercial institutions that includes free trade areas, common markets, and customs unions. We argue that parties to the same PTA are less prone to disputes than other states and that hostilities between PTA members are less likely to occur as trade flows rise between them. Moreover, we maintain that heightened commerce is more likely to inhibit conflict between states that belong to the same preferential grouping than between states that do not. Our results accord with this argument. Based on an analysis of the period since World War II, we find that trade flows have relatively little effect on the likelihood of disputes between states that do not participate in the same PTA. Within PTAs, however, there is a strong, inverse relationship between commerce and conflict. Parties to such an arrangement are less likely to engage in hostilities than other states, and the likelihood of a military dispute dips markedly as trade increases between them.