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This paper analyzes the developmental trade-offs involved in multilateral versus regional-bilateral strategies of integration into the international economy. I contrast the regulations that guide policy in the areas of trade, investment, and intellectual property in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in regional-bilateral agreements between the US and developing countries. Both strategies of integration feature similar trade-offs, in that developing countries gain increased market access and opportunities for specialization in exchange for diminished space for use of industrial policy instruments to create new productive capacities. However, the trade-offs are intensified in the case of regional-bilateral agreements: countries receive more market access, but in exchange make significantly deeper concessions regarding the management of inward investment and intellectual policy. I argue that countries whose integration into the international economy is guided by their obligations as members of the WTO still have opportunities to implement industrial strategies that are designed to alter comparative advantages and achieve upward mobility in the international economic order, but the obligations under the regional-bilateral strategy greatly circumscribe these options. The paper thus points to the need for new terms of reference in the debate over ‘policy space’ in the international political economy. In analyzing contemporary development strategies, the most useful contrast is not between the alternatives that countries have under the WTO and the alternatives that countries had in the past under the WTO's predecessors, but between a constraining multilateral environment and even more constraining regional and bilateral environments that condition increased market access on the sacrifice of the very tools that countries have historically used to capture the developmental benefits of integration into the international economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under George W. Bush, the United States has chosen to revolutionize world affairs by abandoning successful forms of hegemonic governance, based on the institutionalization of collective economic and security regimes, in favor of militarism, or the pursuit of global domination through force. Starting from a critique of structuralist approaches, this paper examines the ideational transformation of the American right and situates it within the context of the US's emergence in 1991 as a unipolar strategic actor and as the core state in the newly globalized capitalist political economy. While these synchronous transformations considerably augmented America's autonomy, giving the US the opportunity to reconfigure the world system to its advantage, one must distinguish between the current imperial expansionism of the revived and expanded US national security state and earlier forms of US hegemonic rule. The aim: to account for a fundamental shift of the way in which the US has governed the capitalist world system since 1945. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the consequences of the political 'incompleteness' of the monetary union for the democratic accountability of its external monetary policy, comparing the euro area to the United States. In most countries, exchange-rate policymaking is substantially delegated to the finance ministry and central bank; oversight by other domestic actors is relatively weak. While this is true of the United States, the role of the Congress provides the possibility for 'democratic override' when policy diverges substantially from the preferences of a broad set of private sector interests. Europe's monetary union, by contrast, lacks such a mechanism; no institution can provide an effective check on the policies pursued by the core actors, the ECB and Eurogroup. A comparison of the postures of the United States and euro area toward Chinese exchange rate policy suggests that these institutional differences affect policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to liberal arguments for American hegemony a dangerous world needs American power. How does the liberal view hold up against the reality test of how political aims are interpreted and implemented by security professionals? I argue that many security operations are embedded in strategies of political brinkmanship. The second part explores whether American economic policies too can be viewed as brinkmanship. This concerns the ramifications of 'free market' policies for the United States at a time when exports become imports, the trade deficit deepens, income inequality widens and external deficits rise to unsustainable levels. In closing I reflect on the rationality of political and economic brinkmanship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defenders of the WTO argue that it provides an independent arena for hearing and adjudicating trade disputes. Member countries are bound by the decisions of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (WTO-DSB), and the perception of neutrality – that cases are ruled according to the strict and true meaning and spirit of the agreements that countries signed – is pivotal to its broader legitimacy. Using a fine-grained assessment of one trade dispute brought to the WTO, involving a complaint by Australia and New Zealand that US lamb tariffs contravened the WTO's safeguard provisions, this article questions these assumptions. It argues that the praxis of dispute settlement is over-determined by the institutionalized market preferences of the Organization. The procedural materiality of dispute settlement hinges on the narrow legalisms of wording within trade agreements, heard within an environment that is sympathetic to market liberal interpretations. With regard to safeguard provisions, and as evidenced in the case US – Lamb Meat , these institutional contexts create daunting obstacles for defendant countries to demonstrate they have not contravened WTO rules. These insights bring into relief debates on WTO dispute settlement as a system of global governance, providing support for the contention that this system should be understood as a political mechanism working systematically to advance trade liberalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Monetary Fund claims that its loan conditions are apolitically devised because loans are negotiated by the technocratic staff and away from the possibly politicized Executive Board. Previous studies have suggested IMF Executive Board politicization but have not analyzed internal IMF documentation. Recently released IMF Article IV Consultations from the IMF Archives provide the opportunity for a new methodology based on searching for slippages in staff recommendations. It was found that two lenient IMF–Egyptian agreements had considerable slippages and two strict IMF–Egyptian agreements had little evidence of slippages. It was further found that the United States intervened in both the 1987 and 1991 agreements by usurping staff recommendations and undermining negotiations to ensure that these two agreements were lenient. The United States intervened in the 1987 and 1991 negotiations to preserve the political stability of the pro-Western Egyptian regime during a particularly turbulent time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s the US government sought to encourage India to liberalize its trade regime in services and foreign investment. US officials sought to achieve their objective by naming India to the 1988 Trade Act's 'Super 301' list of target countries for mandatory market-opening negotiations under threat of retaliation while at the same time also pursuing Indian trade liberalization multilaterally under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Uruguay Round negotiations. The two policies were uncoordinated and incompatible, and ultimately the Super 301 cases against India were terminated when US officials realized that they risked damaging prospects of success under the Uruguay Round talks. As a case study the US-India case exposes weaknesses in the ability of state actor-based theories of hegemonic stability as well as domestic politics and institutions-based explanations alone to yield a full account of interest formation and policy formulation. An integrative theoretical approach taking account of the role of epistemic communities is required to provide the fullest explanation both of individual decision making and institutional and structural factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1980s the United States government was instrumental in entering the issue of liberalization of trade in services, and specifically liberalization of trade in telecommunications services onto the GATT agenda. Yet, in 1992 it reversed its policy and excluded basic telecommunications (voice transmission) from GATT. This article seeks to explain this change in policy, arguing that ten years on, because its activities in other international institutions have effectively allowed it to make the gains it originally sought, the US no longer needs GATT in the telecommunications sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]