Search

This paper examines when states stop receiving US foreign assistance. Using duration models on all US aid recipients from 1948-2000, this paper examines the influence of realist, liberal, and economic explanations on when states stop receiving aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toward A Coherent Global Economic Governance Strategy Globalization is at the center of public debate throughout the world. It reflects the growing interdependence of economies, which goes far beyond the expansion of international trade and capital flows, to the diffusion of technology, culture, even democracy. It has also become entwined with the policy agenda of deregulation and liberalization in which governments have retracted from their legitimate and necessary roles to regulate markets at the national and international levels to ensure that economic development does in fact lead to social progress. The strategy of sustainable development allows these issues to be discussed coherently from a public management perspective. Unfortunately, efforts to make free trade and sustainable development policies more compatible have faced significant obstacles over the years: the two communities have distinct goals, traditions, operating procedures, and languages; the ultimate goods for advocates of sustainable development (equity, environmental protection) have often been the consummate bad for advocates of free trade. A divergence in the value systems between proponents of free trade and sustainable development would occur in the absence of world trade and investment; however, ethical questions have become more difficult and urgent in an international context as economic decisions in one country impinge on environmental, health, and labor conditions in other countries. Ethical questions also arise in allocating the costs of development in an intergenerational context. Who is to bear the cost of employee health and safety? Will market regimes shift more significant costs of environmental protection to future generations? Are such regimes more effective than government regulation? Are they more equitable? The need to collapse efficiency, equity and the related issue of stewardship may be most acute in discussions revolving around the issues of climate change, species decline, population growth, immigration and other problems in which the international and intergenerational distribution of costs and benefits is central. Economics and politics cannot answer purely ethical questions associated with these and the growing number of issues with global implications, but a public management perspective can greatly help in sorting out the issues, identifying more or less efficient and effective trade measures, and tracing through the equity implications of development, trade, environmental and labor policies. The central theme of this study is that the current economic paradigm supporting free trade and multilateralism needs to be viewed in the broader context of trade-economic growth-environment and sustainable development. In the absence of such integration trade is unlikely to be sustainable. Moreover, the greater awareness of the tradeoffs in this regard, the greater will be the potential for a sustainable world trade system. The paper proceeds as follows: First, a discussion of the role of trade liberalization in promoting current global development patterns is presented. This is followed by a discussion of the general approach of trade law to environmental and labor issues, noting the most important shortcomings in this regime. Based on the above, what are the implications of this for the public sector? The paper suggests that the erosion of effective public regulation or “governance” results in high social costs that pose the most serious threat from globalization. Moreover, the erosion of public authority reflects the shortcomings of the present paradigm of international economic governance (i.e. a growing “governance-gap”). Finally, an alternative model for reconciling trade, labor, environmental, and other developmental concerns is presented which is more sensitive to unique economic, social, political, and administrative conditions in developing regions. Its deployment suggests that supranational organizations, not free trade agreements, are the most viable structures for reconciling global trade, development and environmental needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been evident for some time that trade policy and environmental policy cannot long pretend to ignore each other’s existence. Conceptually, each is an integral element of sustainable development; which, ostensibly, is a stated goal of both. Practically, they already cast long shadows on each other and the actual implementation of each influences, and is influenced by, the other. After years of tortured public discussion on the subject, the Fourth Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), held in Doha, Qatar, finally placed a limited set of trade and environment issues on the negotiating agenda of the multilateral trading system. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg, South Africa, reaffirmed the need to establish more coherence between trade policy and environmental policy. Limited as these incursions might be, they suggest a trend and a tendency that is likely to be irreversible. It has been argued that within the context of the WTO, the question is no longer whether trade and environmental policy are going to be linked, but how. The answer, of course, is far from clear because a) the Doha mandate on trade and environment was left purposely vague; b) the issue is new to multilateral trade negotiations and its many implications and manifestations have not yet been fully explored; and c) because of that, parties have yet to fully develop and firm their positions on this subject as they have on many others. For all of these reasons, there is an opportunity for all parties to shape the agenda on future trade and environment negotiations in rather more profound ways than might be possible on many other issues. This opportunity is particularly pertinent to the developing countries of the South because they, for most part, have been generally suspicious of environmental issues seeping into trade deliberations and accepted the Doha mandate for trade and environmental negotiations rather hesitantly, if not grudgingly. The purpose of this paper is to better understand Southern concerns about the forthcoming trade and environment negotiations and to explore how an emergent Southern agenda might take shape. The analysis presented here derives directly from a review of Southern views on trade and environment issues compiled as part of an ICTSD/IISD/RING research project on the ‘Southern Agenda for Trade and Environment.’ While a budding literature on the subject does exist, this project was an early attempt to systematically collect and analyze the views of developing country delegates themselves. Methodologically, two distinct ‘data’ sets were constructed. The first compiles together the various formal interventions and proposals made by developing countries within the WTO; most particularly within the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE). The second data set of Southern views on environment and development is drawn from several months of consultations and discussions with developing country negotiators in Geneva and Brussels. These small group discussions sought to elicit a first-hand articulation of Southern concerns and interests in relation to trade and environment issues from developing country delegates, especially in terms of the post-Doha negotiation agenda. This paper presents a review and synthesis of the learning from these two data sets of Southern views on trade and environment. The research concludes that although the developing countries are likely to adopt a conservative strategy in negotiating the environment and trade aspects of the Doha workplan, this is to be expected. This is because developing countries a) had initially resisted these provisions, b) are the historically weaker parties and therefore prone to risk-minimizing strategies, and c) the newness of this issue for trade negotiations coupled with the resource and time strains on Southern delegations will itself limit the scope of innovation by any party. The previous section has outlined three key ingredients of the South’s post-Doha concerns that are likely to influence the defensive aspects of the South’s negotiation position between now, and January 2005. However, the more important conclusion relates to the emerging willingness within the developing countries to begin engaging the trade and environment agenda and to possibly re-craft it within the framework of sustainable development. This is neither going to be easy, nor automatic. While it is to the obvious benefit of the South (and many other parties) for the developing countries to adopt a proactive strategy, doing so will require much effort from the South itself and a supporting environment from other actors interested in a furthering the links between trade, environment and sustainable development. What can the South do itself to move from a reactive agenda defined by its apprehensions about trade and environment to a proactive agenda that seeks the opportunities to be realized by defining sustainable development as the goal of international trade? How can other international actors assist? The paper will outline four key steps in this direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers the role of the IMF in managing financial crises in developed nations. It argues that principal-agent and constructivist approaches to studying the Fund pay insufficient attention to client state preferences and that these preferences give the clearest indication of the degree of country ownership of IMF programs. As such, it argues that lending decisions should also be considered in domestic political and economic statecraft terms. The paper draws on primary evidence from the Fund's last non-routine interaction with a developed nation, the UK in 1976, and shows how established preferences for restoring balance to the British economy through the introduction of deflationary measures within the framework of the open international economy were delivered by preference laundering through the IMF. In light of these findings, the paper notes that further research into Fund interactions with developed nations from the domestic statecraft approach is needed if the IMF's legitimacy is to be enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the IMF deal with 'renegade regimes' that rebel against the economic 'rules of the game' created and sustained by Western international society? This paper uses the example of norm renegades to investigate how the IMF's influence over a government's economic policy orientation works in cases of weak socialization. The paper seeks to enhance our understanding of both the IMF's role in propagating global monetary norms and how the IMF engages states that resist socialization into those norms, as well as exploring the limits of the organization's influence. The central argument presented here is that the IMF uses material incentives to establish a pattern of interaction with norm renegades, which can create recurring opportunities to persuade domestic actors to re-conceptualize how they should pursue their interests. Even where the organization's direct influence over regime behavior might appear to be weak, this can potentially enable the IMF to gradually cultivate a substantive shift in a regime's economic policy orientation over a medium-term time horizon. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explain the varying, and sometimes intriguing, outcomes of the past threerevisions of the Treaty concerning the Community's Common Commercial Policy. Subjectingthe external trade policy outcomes of the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice and theConstitutional Treaty to causal analysis, the paper argues that stagnancy and change can beexplained by four factors: (i) functional pressures; (ii) the role of supranational institutions;(iii) socialisation, deliberation and learning processes; and (iv) countervailing forces. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies show that foreign aid fails in producing the expected results. Also, despite constituting an international practice, foreign aid receives little attention from international relations theory. This paper inquires how foreign aid can be understood on international relations grounds, after the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Making use of existing scholarly work, I assess the existing international relations theory literature on foreign aid and I identify relevant insights from other fields, from practice, and from the development of the aid regime. The paper takes the stagnating debates on foreign aid a step further by showing two major obstacles to a functioning foreign aid regime which rest on international relations groundsâ€"the current understanding of inter-state relations/sovereignty and of ‘doing development’. Also, the paper shows why understanding aid requires an interdisciplinary approach and finds that the failure of implementing the Millennium Development Goals represents a critical event which will lead to further improvements in the aid regime. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the causal direction of the complex relationship between economic sanctions and repression using various methodological techniques for a sample of 20 Latin American countries for 1976-1998. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IMF has used Structural Adjustment Loans (SALs) to encourage economic development in Less Developed Countries by alleviating short term financial difficulties and imposing loan conditions mandating economic restructuring in recipient countries. In general, SALs require governments to balance their books, reduce expenditures for social programs, promote export-orientated growth, and de-regulate and privatize state-held entities. There is much speculation in the popular press and in the academic literature on human rights that the imposition of SALs induces recipient governments to reduce their level of respect for internationally recognized human rights (Bello 1994; Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Danaher 1994; and Sadasivam 1997). While there has been much previous research on this topic, most of it has been based on the observation of only one or a few cases, usually over a short time period (Bello 1994; Commonwealth Secretariat 1989; Chipeta 1993; Danaher 1994; Dennis 1992; Handa and King 1997; Kane 1993; Sadasivam 1997; Sowa 1993 and Vuorela 1991). Only a few scientific studies attempt to assess the effects of SALs from a cross-national time series perspective (Poe and Camp Keith, 2001; Buchmann 1996; Çagatay and Özler 1995; Dorosh 1996; Due and Gladwin 1991; and Sahn 1996) and only one of the previous scientific studies addresses the cross-national effects of SALs on government respect for specific civil and political rights (Poe and Camp Keith, 2001). Recent work (Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002) has examined the impacts of IMF adjustment controlling for issues of selection. Their findings indicate a selection process, which connects the factors that determine both the receipt and impact of adjustment lending. The negative impact on economic growth and income distribution, generate questions about the impact of adjustment on other issues including the respect for human rights. This paper investigates the impacts of IMF structural adjustment lending on respect for human rights and will employ a data set that includes annual observations of specific human rights practices for all countries from 1981 to 2001. Thus, we will be able to draw conclusions about how SALs affect particular human rights practices. We also will estimate the direct and indirect effects of SALs on the human rights practices of recipients and determine whether the relationship we discover between receipt of a SAL and subsequent human rights practices might be due to selection effects rather than the effects of the loans themselves (Abouharb and Cingranelli 2002; 2003; Przeworski and Vreeland 2000; Vreeland 2002). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the study of contemporary development involves a thoroughgoing rethinking of the disciplinary divisions between International and Comparative Political Economy. It seeks to set out a new framework within which to move towards a greater and more constructive meshing between these two branches of political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The next EU enlargement will take place in May 2004. Cyprus is joining the EU along with nine other new memder states. The Mediterranean island, however, is still de facto divided and the Cyprus problem unresolved. This paper argues that the EU is now in unique position to play a role in solving the problem and bringing about permanent peace and stability on the island, and improving Greek-Turkish relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The processes of globalization have forced local communities into the international economic arena. At times, the interests and agendas pursued by these communities diverge from those at the national level. This has been particularly evident with respect to free trade agreements and the pursuit of foreign investment, where the impacts at the local level may be felt quite directly and profoundly. While local authorities have been careful to stay within accepted bounds when pursuing their global agendas, the potential for conflict with the federal government remains. This paper will examine the increasing salience of sub-national foreign economic policy initiatives and the ways in which these initiatives are affecting (and are being affected by) existing federal-local relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with an empirical puzzle: in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Unites States maintained a high tariff wall even as it flung its gates open to millions of European immigrants. America?s trade and immigration policy was unambiguously inconsistent: the United States was clearly ?open? on immigration, but ?closed? with respect to trade. This inconsistency poses a significant puzzle for standard economic theory, which views trade and factor flows as substitutes, and expects states to adopt consistent policies across international economic dimensions. It also points to a much broader set of questions that are rarely addressed in the International Political Economy literature: How are we to understand the foreign economic policies of states across issue-areas, especially with respect to trade and factor flows? Why do some states display greater consistency across foreign economic policy dimensions than others? Drawing upon the histories of the United States and Australia in the decades preceding World War I, I argue that a broadened domestic politics approach ? one that incorporates multiple issue-areas and treats them as interdependent ? offers the most convincing answers to these questions. Significantly, I argue that the preferences of domestic actors cannot be properly understood or anticipated when issue-areas are treated in isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much research has been devoted toward understanding when states impose economic sanction and with what effect. Little attention has been devoted toward understanding when sanctions, once imposed, are removed. Ostensibly, sanctions are accompanied with a demand for a change in behavior on the part of the target; so sanctions should end if and only if this demand is met. Sanctions are often imposed as a punishment, with no accompanying demands, however. Moreover, in some cases where demands are made, the target never changes its behavior; and, when the target does make some changes, the sender’s demands are almost never fully met. The answer to When do states remove sanctions? is thus not obvious. In this paper, we explore the relationship between several factors (domestic politics, target type, costs of sanctions, issue type) and when sanctions end. We use a new data set on sanctions that occurred between 1970 and 1989. Our investigation will uncover several empirical insights upon which further theoretical development can be based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent preliminary research has shown that there may be a connection between regime types and the use of economic sanctions–conclusions that reinforce the democratic peace argument. However, democracies still sanction one another, and autocracies rarely use coercive economic tools. This paper seeks to understand fully the connection between regime type and economic sanctions. I posit that democracies will use economic sanctions more frequently than one would expect given their trade levels, but that sanctions aimed at other democracies will be few and short lived. Autocracies will use fewer economic means of coercion than expected, but their sanctions (and the ones against them) will be lengthy. Newly supplemented economic sanction data will be used to test these hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the interaction of external pressures and domestic political and institutional constraints in the context of IMF programs in transition economies. The [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable competitiveness as a concept is introduced in the scientific debate in the last two decades. It is addressed on considering economic, social and environmental factors that determine competitiveness in the long run. The paper is focused on measuring sustainable competitiveness at the national level. Two indexes are considered: the Sustainability Adjusted Global Competitiveness Index (World Economic Forum) and the Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index (SolAbility). The paper compares sustainable competitiveness of EU28 countries, EU13 and selected South-East Europe. The author conclude that almost all observed EU28 and EU13 countries have better scores in sustainable competitiveness compared to the economic pillar. The data confirm social sustainability dimension as being interrelated with the higher level of economic development while the environmental dimension is still a challenge for many observed countries. Sustainable competitiveness is a conditio sine qua non for sustaining or increasing current and future welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic diplomacy attracts an increasing level of interest from various areas of life ranging from academics in the fields of e.g. international relations, international economics and political economy through public servants responsible for foreign affairs, trade policy and promotion as well as their private and entrepreneurial counterparts to its former and active practitioners – all of them trying to identify its role in foreign and/or economic policy from their own particular perspective. However, many of them do not always apply the legal framework of contemporary diplomacy – the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations – as the guiding principle and defining norm. The paper discusses various aspects of economic diplomacy from the theoretical viewpoint as well as the relations and specifics of its constituting vectors and streams (trade diplomacy, commercial diplomacy, financial diplomacy and others), levels of action (bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral as well as macro and micro). It focuses on institutional forms states apply in order to pursue economic interests abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linkage of developmental aid to the promotion of democratic governance in recipient countries has stimulated both policy and scholarly interest. Many aid donors (e.g., governments and multilateral organizations) have been replacing the conventional single task aid concentrating on growth promotion with this type of multitask aid. The linkage between growth and democracy is not only integral part of the liberal discourse that provides a cognitive foundation for foreign aid, but also an instrument to enhance the efficiency and political palatability of foreign aid in the early twentieth-first century. The current paper examines multitask aid in both normative and empirical terms. Normatively, it outlines three distinct conceptual perspectives on the relationship growth and politics--liberalism, authoritarianism and realism. Empirically, it analyzes the conduct of Japanese aid that directs toward mostly illiberal Asian states and is criticized for focusing excessively on growth with a limited attention to democracy. Finally, it deduces the Japanese government's beliefs from its aid practices and illuminates reasons why Japan often deviates from the international liberal norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With strategic circumstances changing in Asia, and with a fiscal imperative to reduce defense spending, the United States will face hard choices about its national security strategy and the alliances that support it. This paper assesses options regarding U.S. alliances in East Asia during an era of strategic and budgetary change. I describe the U.S. alliance system in the region, and the goals that these alliances are meant to achieve. I next evaluate the extent to which U.S. alliances in East Asia advance these goals, and conclude that they advance many but not all U.S. objectives. I then describe the costs and risks that are associated with U.S. security guarantees in East Asia. I conclude by describing options to reduce these costs and risks: first, the more radical option of withdrawing from these alliances, and secondly the option of continuing the security guarantees but restructuring basing arrangements and reforming U.S. diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to answer whether or not there is an inevitable tradeoff between high levels of social diversity concomitant with a multicultural state and levels of economic solidarity requisite for a strong welfare state. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s, Chinese elites were engaged in a complex learning process, during which they gradually adopted an outwardly-oriented development regime. This paper analyzes internal documents to understand the policy readjustment phase. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the United States allocates foreign aid around the world. The main argument is that the United States uses foreign aid as a foreign policy tool to maintain the status quo with autocratic states which have alliance or trade relationships with the United States. Leadership turnover in these autocratic states significantly damages the status quo. To decrease the leadership turnover and protect its strategic interests, the United States allocates foreign aid to provide resources to these leaders who have to distribute private goods to their winning coalition. Results of empirical analysis show that those states with smaller winning coalition which have an alliance or trade relationship with the United States are more likely to receive foreign aid. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking at macroeconomic policies, scores of studies (e.g., Garrett 1998; Iversen and Soskice 2006; Blais et al 1993; Adserà and Boix 2002) have argued that the partisan composition of governments makes a difference. Others, e.g., Mishra (2005), Milner and Judkins (2004), and Zahariadis (1997) find that parties matter even in targeted microeconomic policies. Examining trade policy and protectionism, such as tariffs and non-tariff barriers (Mishra) in developed and developing countries and state aids (Zahariadis) in EU countries in the 1980s, authors assert that governments dominated by leftist parties are more likely to pursue protectionist policies. However, analysts have also argued that the end of the cold war and increased globalization have dampened the ability of partisan governments to sustain such targeted policies. In this paper, I explore the effects of parties on industrial subsidy disbursement in the EU during the period 1992-2004. Using pooled time series analysis, predictions are tested in a model controlling for the impact of international economic integration, domestic institutions, and the European Commission. The model has implications for arguments regarding trade policy, coalition formation, and redistributive politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the frequent use of economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool, research devoted to understanding whether these non-violent coercive policies have unintended consequences is limited. This paper seeks to analyze comprehensively the impact sanctions have on democracy by arguing that economic coercion has a counterproductive impact on democratic governance because the sanctions reinforce the target state's coercive capacity and create new incentives to repress its public. Using time-series cross-national data over the 1972-2000 period, the findings show that both the immediate and longer term effects of economic sanctions reduce the level of democratic freedoms in the target. These findings have important policy implications with regards to the use of coercive foreign policy tools in the achievement of greater political liberalization in sanctioned countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does foreign aid affect government stability? Previous research presentsmixed answers to this question. I start with the largely uncontroversial finding thatdonor interests are major determinants of aid allocation. Donors may use aid tosupport loyal government leaders; on the other hand, aid suspensions are a form offoreign economic pressure on recipient governments. This foreign policy tool canonly work if it generates political costs or benefits for the leaders of recipient coun-tries. Consequently, the leader of a government that comes under pressure (whenthe donor suspends aid disbursements) should be more likely to lose office than aleader who does not or a leader who receives additional aid. This paper presentsa theoretical argument linking changes in foreign assistance levels to governmentinstability. I also test an observable implication of my theoretical argument usingcross-country time-series data on U.S. aid and leaders' political survival. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Despite widespread enthusiasm for foreign direct investment (FDI) as an engine for development, there are significant differences among countries' national policy frameworks governing the entry and operations of foreign-owned companies. What explains the variation in governments' choices of national policies regulating foreign investments? Building upon a combination of Bueno de Mesquita et al.'s (2003) theory of political survival and economic insights into the distributional consequences of foreign direct investments, the paper argues that democracies are more likely than non-democratic regimes to adopt policies favorable to foreign investment. Preliminary evidence from 26 postcommunist countries supports the hypothesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conventional wisdom holds that economic sanctions are ineffective as instruments of foreign policy. Many scholars have based this conclusion on empirical evidence drawn from examining cases in which sanctions have been imposed. While it is true that targets of sanctions rarely back down when sanctions are imposed, a number of recent theoretical arguments have suggested that our conclusions regarding sanctions effectiveness might be clouded by a selection bias. That is, since a target can anticipate the costs of sanctions, it knows in advance whether it would back down should sanctions be imposed. If it would, it alters its behavior at the mere threat of sanctions rather than waiting to suffer the costs. Thus, successful sanctions should rarely be observed. These arguments are compelling, but existing data have not allowed them to be tested. In this paper, I use a new data set, which includes cases in which sanctions were threatened and/or imposed to test hypotheses relating to the effectiveness of the threat of sanctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assesses the U.S. interest in stability in the Persian Gulf Region. Economic interests of the U.S. in the region; Impact of the instability and violence in the region on the U.S. economy; Information on a model of how the global economy adjust to disruptions in the region.

We explore the relationship between economic sanctions and militarized conflict by analyzing the coercive options leaders have in a dispute with another nation. Although often argued to be ineffective and perhaps a path to military conflict, economic coercion is one of the most widely used tools in interstate disputes. However, the sanction literature has not empirically investigated the connection between economic sanctions and military conflict. Similarly, studies of militarized disputes tend not to ask whether less violent foreign policy measures were used prior to the onset of militarized hostilities. Insight into the role of non-military coercion prior to a militarized dispute would provide significant benefits to both our understanding of military conflict and economic coercion. We attempt to shed light on this issue by analyzing the role economic sanctions play in militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). We assert that sanctions are more complementary policies to military action than they are substitutable alternatives. Further, disputes in which economic coercion is used will tend to be more severe because the two actors have built up a hostile relationship and used a variety of coercive measures against one another. We test these assertions by adding sanction data to the conventional conflict model found in the liberal peace research program (Russett and Oneal, 2001; Oneal and Russett, 2003). Additionally, we create several proxies to validate the use of sanctions by the disputants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International donors are committing hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance programs to Afghanistan to help it recover after the devastating war and to facilitate its transition to peace. Afghanistan in its history has already had a profound experience of international aid but it however failed to promote a viable social concord and political stability for any lengthy period of time. Foreign-directed development in the 1950-1070s provided impressive economic growth but finally did little to avert two decades of turmoil that drove the country to the brink of disintegration. I argue that the history of foreign assistance to Afghanistan offers lessons of experience that current donors can ignore only at their own peril. The study sums up a century and a half of international assistance to Afghanistan in effort- and resource-saving advice to help donors avoid some of its pitfalls in the years to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing demand of the world economy for infrastructure-related capital increases the practical importance of its academic research. However, there are significant differences in the understanding of the term "infrastructure" and its classification. Consequently, the results obtained by different researchers are often incomparable. All this requires once again refer to the concept of infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to formulate a flexible framework for the concept of infrastructure, to examine the presence of the concept's core among the research for the last 50 years and to identify the ways to create infrastructure classification system, following the same logic of flexibility. Achieving this purpose allows, on the one hand, adapting the concept to specific research goals and objectives and, on the other hand, making the results comparable. The authors emphasize to the importance in advancing the understanding of how to ensure the usefulness of economic research for the formulation of economic policy in terms of infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key goal of mercantilist manipulation of trade was to increase national power. Two and a half centuries of more recent economic theorizing provides reasons for thinking that this claim was (1) wrong, (2) right, or (3) conditional upon the specific context of international trade. Given the range of theoretical expectations, the question is ultimately an empirical one, and the outcome of such tests have important implications for international relations. This study develops key implications from the long economic and international relations literature on the relationship between (balance of) trade and national power, and subjects those implications to the test using data from the 1870s through the present for a panel of many countries. Our analysis suggests that trade surpluses sometimes pay. In periods in which substantial trade deficits are tolerated, countries with surpluses gain power, and one might say that mercantilism pays. In periods in which substantial deficits are not tolerated, trade balance is uncorrelated with changes in power, and one might say that mercantilism does not pay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can senders remove economic sanctions without the fear of strengthening targets' capabilities? Despite the inefficiencies created by sanctions and incentives to resume economic interactions, senders are often uncertain if targets will make policy concessions in exchange for sanctions relief. I argue that this uncertainty, coupled with the difficulty of perfectly observing the compliance behavior, creates incentives for targets to misrepresent their willingness to make policy concessions. Using a game theoretic model of sanctions removal under uncertainty about the intentions of the target, I demonstrate the conditions under which monitoring can or cannot facilitate the ending of economic coercion and the resumption of normal economic interactions. I find that monitoring facilitates sanctions removal by inducing target cooperation in some cases, eliminates the incentives to alter the status quo characterized by sanctions in others and can have unanticipated and counterproductive consequences by creating an opportunity for targets to cheat under certain circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]