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1181. Patterns of Trade and Foreign Direct Investment in Africa—A simple test of the new trade theory with multinationals

Author:
Lars C. Svindal and Leo A. Grünfeld
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
In this study, we present an empirical survey of the patterns of trade and FDI in Africa based on a sample of 28 countries and their transactions with the OECD countries. These patterns are used to test whether the predictions of the new trade theory with multinationals as described by Markusen and Venables (1995,1998) fit the development in Africa. The theory states that multinational production will gradually outgrow trade as countries converge in terms of income, yet our econometric study gives only week evidence supporting such a pattern. Alternative explanations are also investigated,and it is shown that trade barriers, geographical distance, income per capita and access to ocean explain much of the variation in trade and FDI in Africa.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
Africa

1182. Notes Toward a Theory of Multilevel Governing in Europe

Author:
Fritz W. Scharpf
Publication Date:
05-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The complexity of the multi-level European polity is not adequately represented by the single-level theoretical concepts of competing "intergovernmentalist" and "supranationalist" approaches. By contrast, empirical research focusing on multilevel interactions tends either to emphasize the uniqueness of its objects, or to create novel concepts – which are likely to remain contested even among Europeanists and have the effect of isolating European studies from the political science mainstream in International Relations and Comparative Politics. These difficulties are bound to continue as long as researchers keep proposing holistic concepts that claim to represent the complex reality of the European polity as a whole. It is suggested that the present competition among poorly fitting and contested generalizations could be overcome if European studies made use of a plurality of simpler and complementary concepts, each of which is meant to represent the specific characteristics of certain subsets of multi-level interactions – which could also be applied and tested in other fields of political-science research. The paper goes on to describe four distinct modes of multi-level interaction in the European polity – "mutual adjustment", "intergovernmental negotiations", "joint-decision making", and "hierarchical direction" – and to discuss their characteristics by reference to the criteria of problem-solving capacity and institutional legitimacy.
Topic:
International Relations, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

1183. ASEM 3: More Talk or Move Forward?

Author:
Yeo Lay Hwee
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The Third ASEM Summit (ASEM 3) was held in Seoul on 20-21 October 2000. Openly, those who participated in the meeting, and several of the Asian newspapers, particularly the Korean papers, were happy to hail the meeting as a "success". What does it mean? With the presence of all heavy-weight European and Asian leaders - Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Zhu Rongji, Yoshiro Mori, Abdurrahman Wahid, and the adoption of three Documents - The Chairman's Statement; Seoul Declaration for Peace on the Korean Peninsula; and the Asia-Europe Cooperation Framework 2000, it is possibly the best outcome one could hope for under the cloud of rumours of forum-fatigue, acrimonious debates about human rights, increasing divergences and complaints on the slow progress of some key initiatives such as the Trade Facilitation Action Plan (TFAP) during the preparatory process. That the meeting was held smoothly under tight security without any major disruptions from anti-globalisation protestors was another triumph for the Korean government, especially in the wake of a series of street protests and demonstrations that targeted and disrupted several international meetings since the Seattle fiasco in November last year.
Topic:
International Relations and Government
Political Geography:
Europe and Asia

1184. The fall of Milosevic and the Kosovo problem

Author:
Kenneth Schmidt Hansen
Publication Date:
09-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
Despite all precautions taking by Slobodan Milosevic the Presidential elections held in Yugoslavia 24 September 2000 turned out to be his Waterloo. It is an outspread belief that the political regime in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia that Slobodan Milosevic represented was one of the last obstacles to bringing peace and stability to the Balkans. Despite this outspread belief, it is in this paper argued that the problems in Kosovo are not just the product of the policy pursued by Milosevic which implies that they not necessarily will be easier solved in the years to come even though a democratic revolution has taken place in Yugoslavia. No solution to the Kosovo problem seems available that will satisfy both the Serbs and the Kosovo-Albanians. But perhaps most interesting, it seems reasonable to argue that even maintaining status quo, i.e. not deciding for the final status of Kosovo, might turn out to be a problem for the current democratic developments in Belgrade.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, and Albania

1185. Back in the U.S.S.R.? Russia as an Actor in World Politics

Author:
Mette Skak
Publication Date:
07-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
The gap between the structural reality surrounding Russia and the cognitive level of Russian foreign policy making is highlighted. The literature on Russian foreign policy is reviewed, distinguishing between 'optimists' and 'pessimists'. The analysis differentiates between 'milieu goals' and 'possession goals' and traces the pursuit of these goals in Czarist Russian, Soviet and postcommunist Russian foreign policy. The conclusion is that possession goals – hard-core realism, as it were – remain the dominant feature of Russian foreign policy (as in the Soviet era). This challenges the theory of democratic peace. This finding is then subjected to a policy-oriented criticism of Russian foreign policy. Three examples of dysfunctional Russian foreign policy are addressed: the misguided pursuit of multipolarity, myth and reality about regional priorities, and Russian self-destructive partisanship in ex-Yugoslavia. The final section raises the eternal Russian questions of Kto vinovat? and Shto delat'?On the causal factors behind the observed traits of irrationality, the analysis emphasises the volatile, 'praetorian' decision-making environment. Concerning policy implications, the dialogue with Russia must address features of realism, for instance by marketing the virtue of internal balancing, and as for concessions, formally dismiss foreign policy doctrines of spheres-of-influence like the Monroe doctrine as anachronistic in an era of globalization.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia

1186. Integration Policy: Between Foreign Policy and Diffusion

Author:
Morten Kelstrup
Publication Date:
07-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
Abstract:
This working paper is a discussion of the concept of “integration policy” and its application, in particular to the study of policies of individual states towards European integration. The paper takes its point of departure in traditional studies of foreign policy. It illustrates different approaches to the study of foreign policy. It claims that when we are dealing with policy towards integration, for instance European integration, focus has to be redirected from the study of foreign policy to what we might call integration policy. Different dimensions of integration policy are specified. European integration is interpreted at being somewhere between intergovernmental cooperation and supranational decision making. It is shown how integration policy, as integration become more intense, will develop into a proliferated and multidimensional set of policies and possibly develop further into “diffusion”. The overall contribution of the paper is to conceptualise a new, grey area and to contribute to the study of different kinds of integration policy.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe

1187. The United States, Japan, and China: Setting the Course

Author:
Neil E. Silver
Publication Date:
04-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
The political dynamics of China-Japan relations have changed in reaction to three events: the demise of bipolar world politics, China's ''rise,'' and Japan's unexpected economic stall. These changed political dynamics have brought important challenges and consequences for the United States.
Topic:
International Relations and Security
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Israel, East Asia, and Asia

1188. Bosnia's November Elections: Dayton Stumbles

Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Despite five years and five billion US dollars of international community investment in Bosnia, the 11 November Bosnian elections demonstrated once again that international engagement has failed to provide a sustainable basis for a functioning state, capable of surviving an international withdrawal.
Topic:
International Relations, Politics, and Treaties and Agreements
Political Geography:
United States, Bosnia, and Eastern Europe

1189. Montenegro's Socialist People's Party: A Loyal Opposition?

Publication Date:
04-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The assertion of the primacy of Serbian rights over all other peoples by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has driven nearly every nationality of the former Yugoslavia toward the Republic's exits. Even Montenegro, once Serbia's closest political and military ally, has not been immune from the turmoil that Slobodan Milosevic has created and has opted to distance itself from Belgrade's controlling influence.
Topic:
International Relations, Non-Governmental Organization, and Politics
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, Serbia, and Montenegro

1190. Albanians in Serbian Prisons: Kosovo's Unfinished Business

Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
With the immense challenges facing the international community in its effort to secure and rebuild Kosovo, one critical outstanding matter that has received very little attention is the ongoing detention in Serbian prisons of several thousand Kosovar Albanians. Arrested by Serbian forces in the course of the Kosovo conflict, these prisoners were hastily transferred to Serbian jails and penitentiaries in the wake of the Kumanovo military-technical agreement, which ended the NATO air campaign and established a timetable for the withdrawal from Kosovo of all Serb forces.
Topic:
International Relations, Ethnic Conflict, Human Rights, and Politics
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Serbia, and Albania

1191. Women's Rights are Human Rites: Women's human rights activists as cross-cultural theorists

Author:
Brooke A. Ackerly
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
The familiar human rights paradigm, manifested in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and subsequent related international documents, is problematic. It cannot deal with 1) rights violations associated with a country's cultural norms that define what it means to be “human” and 2) rights violations that do not take the paradigmatic form of discrimination. Further, the framework for human rights set out by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights is insufficient for 3) adjudicating between seemingly competing liberal rights or between liberal and other rights, 4) attributing responsibility for human rights violations by state and non-state actors, attributing responsibility for structural causes of human rights violations, or imputing political import to private actions, and 5) reconciling the concept of universal human rights with cultural norms that violate certain universal human rights. These five problems are interrelated. Cross- cultural human rights theorizing is promising, but in its current articulations, it tends to focus on the last of these five problems. Moreover, it relies either on models of discourse that are exclusionary or on models of culture articulated by elites. Drawing on the theory implicit in their actions, I argue that women's human rights activists give us a way of theorizing that addresses the problems with the existing paradigm without being exclusive or elitist.
Topic:
International Relations, Gender Issues, and Human Rights

1192. 'So how do you do culture?': A workshop to discuss methodological approaches to studying culture in International Relations

Author:
Patricia M. Goff and Jacinta O'Hagan
Publication Date:
04-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
Abstract:
Increasingly, scholars of International Relations are acknowledging that attention to the various dimensions of culture can expand our understanding of world politics. This workshop was premised on the assumption that culture is a significant factor in international relations. Its objective was not to ask whether culture matters in IR; it assumes that it does. Instead, it asked “how do we study the influence of culture? What methodological approaches are available to us?” Part of the difficulty in addressing these questions lies in the epistemological and methodological divide that animates many IR debates. While discussions inevitably touched on these issues, the emphasis was on productive discussions of method. Rather than reprising debates over the relative merits of quantitative versus qualitative methods, or rationalist versus social construction approaches, the workshop sought to draw on all of these traditions, in an effort to assemble a problem-driven methodological toolkit that could make confident assertions and arguments about an increasingly important area of inquiry.
Topic:
International Relations

1193. Pruebas Nucleares en el Sur de Asia: Las Razones y las Repercusiones

Author:
Varun Sahni
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
On May 11, 1998, India conducted three underground nuclear tests, followed by two more 48 hours later. Two weeks later, Pakistan responded with six nuclear tests of its own. The purpose of this document is to analyze the reasons behind the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests as well as their innumerable implications. To facilitate analysis, the study is divided into two parts. In the first, the reasons that propelled the governments of India and Pakistan to a posture of overt nuclearization are analyzed. In both cases, the nuclear tests were the result of diverse factors, ranging from security concerns to domestic political calculations to considerations of international prestige. In the second part of the document the impact of the Indian and Pakistani actions are analyzed on four well-defined levels: internal, bilateral, regional and global.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Middle East, and India

1194. Three and a Half Centuries of the Westphalian State System

Author:
Varun Sahni
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
This short paper studies how the international system has evolved over the last 350 years through an identification of its most important features. The paper has a pedagogic rather than research orientation, and is divided into three sections. The first section analyzes the most significant features of international relations from the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to the Second World War. It demonstrates how, over the centuries, the evolution of alliances and the rise of a peace norm transformed a war system into a peace system, thereby mitigating the basic systemic condition of anarchy on the salient structural characteristics of the sovereign state system. The second section studies international relations during the Cold War, with the focus on the strategic, economic, ideological and cultural factors that defined the international system during that period. The third section of the paper analyzes international relations since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The various developments and trends that are leading to systemic change are examined. Despite the sundry challenges posed to the state by non-state actors, the rise of new issue-areas and sub-systemic supranational integration, the sovereign state and the Westphalian system is expected to endure.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Development, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
Berlin and Westphalia

1195. Drug Trafficking in US-Mexican Relations: The Politics of Simulation

Author:
Jorge Chabat
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
This document presents the hypothesis that the Mexican and U.S. governments are trapped in their current anti-drug strategy. This strategy causes high levels of violence and corruption in Mexican territory, and cannot be changed because it responds to pressures exerted by American public opinion on its own government. One of the consequences is that the U.S. government is compelled annually to certify the Mexican government's fight against drugs. This certification constrains an accurate evaluation of Mexico's combat against narcotrafficking, because it tends to underestimate failures and exaggerate accomplishments. Nevertheless, the possibility of change in the anti-drug strategy is limited, so this scenario is expected to endure for several years. In this sense on can also expect a better integration f Mexican and U.S. anti-drug policies in the near and medium term.
Topic:
International Relations, Crime, and Government
Political Geography:
United States, America, North America, and Mexico

1196. International Explanations for Stock Market Opening

Author:
Susan Minushkin
Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
Most studies on financial market liberalization focus on wealthy countries, emphasizing international, economic or domestic political factors as explanations for financial liberalization or have specified the conditions under which one factor dominates in causal significance. They have not tested whether their arguments are applicable to the middle-income countries that comprise the 'emerging markets.' Focusing on these countries, this paper seeks to isolate and test a series of propositions derived from international approaches. The main contribution of this article is to provide some first-cut testing of the existing hypotheses, as a guide for other researchers in terms of the timing, pace and style of financial opening in middle-income countries.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance

1197. Identity, Empathy and International Relations

Author:
Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann
Publication Date:
03-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
Abstract:
The insertion of identity politics into international relations undermines the capacity for cosmopolitan empathy, a capacity that might be useful in ameliorating some of the world's social problems. Empathy is the capacity to put oneself into another's shoes and recognize a stranger's humanity. The useful post-modern stress on the mutability of identity has hardened in identity politics into the creation of exclusive social categories of Oppressed and Oppressor. The social creation of such categories through such devices as the politics of amnesia paves the way for isolationist indifference. Yet data drawn both from the sociology of genocide and from the author's own research shows that humanitarian empathy across lines of identity is possible.
Topic:
International Relations, Civil Society, and Imperialism

1198. Coming Home or Moving Home? "Westernising" Narratives in Finnish Foreign Policy and the Re-interpretation of Past Identities

Author:
Chris Browning
Publication Date:
01-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
Since the end of the Cold War it is widely accepted that Finnish foreign policy has oriented increasingly towards the 'West', the most pertinent and concrete example of which, to date, has been accession to the EU. Implicit in many commentaries is the assumption that this orientation is a natural phenomenon, the natural culmination of an effervescent Finnish 'Western' cultural identity. Whilst the rhetorical style perhaps differs espousers of this view draw on Herderian and Hegelian assumptions, essentially arguing that after the unfortunate interruption and deviation from its true path occasioned by the Cold War the Finnish 'national spirit' is now back on its rightful historical and linear course to national fulfilment and blossoming. Looking into the nation's history such discourses see Finland's cultural and political roots as lying in the West and hence posit that with the break-up of the Soviet Union Finland is returning to these organic origins in Western civilisation, with all the effects for foreign policy such a 'Western' identity will entail. This is what we may term the 'Westernising' narrative of current debates about Finnish identity and Finnish foreign policy. On this basis the Finnish Cold War foreign policy of neutrality is characterised, either as having been a total aberration and betrayal of the Finnish 'Western' Self, or, and perhaps more commonly, as having been the best possible option available to the Finnish elite at the time: constrained by the dictates of power, agile Finnish political leaders were able to manoeuvre the Finnish ship of state through the various pitfalls and traps waiting to beguile them in the stormy waters of great power Cold War politics. Now free of such power dictates these current 'Westernising' discourses are attempting to push Finnish foreign policy towards the West, legitimising such a move to the Finnish public and the wider international audience on the grounds of Finland's claimed historical Western identity. To note the title of this panel discussion, “Defining New Identities Between East and West', for Westernising discourses there is no between about it. As an organically Western state why would Finland want to be between East and West any longer? On this basis the Finnish neutrality of the Cold War period merely disguised the true Finnish identity, a ruse so that Finland could in the future once more live as its true self when conditions once again permitted.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, International Political Economy, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Europe and Finland

1199. Europe and Its Neighbors

Author:
Gianni Vaggi
Publication Date:
11-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Union Studies Center
Abstract:
The paper is an introduction to some of the issues that the enlargement, both in terms of memberships and association, will involve.
Topic:
International Relations and NATO
Political Geography:
Europe

1200. Explaining Political Corruption: An Institutional-Choice Approach

Author:
Michael w. Collier
Publication Date:
02-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Studies Association
Abstract:
This paper presents and institutional-choice model that addresses the problem of political corruption, the abuse of public office for private gain. The institutional-choice model first employs a rational-choice game, and then through a constructivist analyses links the game solutions to a surrounding institutional structure that influences agent decisions. This paper models political corruption as a coordination game among a state's ruling elite and citizen groups—a game with multiple solutions that reveal the range of corruption expected among states. A constructivist theory of rules is then used to build the causal mechanisms explaining the domestic and international causes of political corruption. The paper highlights the need to build self-enforcing mechanisms to police the conduct of public officials.This paper presents and institutional-choice model that addresses the problem of political corruption, the abuse of public office for private gain. The institutional-choice model first employs a rational-choice game, and then through a constructivist analyses links the game solutions to a surrounding institutional structure that influences agent decisions. This paper models political corruption as a coordination game among a state's ruling elite and citizen groups—a game with multiple solutions that reveal the range of corruption expected among states. A constructivist theory of rules is then used to build the causal mechanisms explaining the domestic and international causes of political corruption. The paper highlights the need to build self-enforcing mechanisms to police the conduct of public officials.
Topic:
International Relations and Politics