Credibility and Flexibility: Political Institutions,Governance, and Foreign Direct Investment

This article argues that the relationship between political institutions and foreign direct investment is both nonlinear and conditional upon status quo policies. The empirical analysis demonstrates an inverted U-shaped relationship between political institutions and foreign direct investment in developing countries, with four veto players being the most attractive institutional arrangement. Countries with too few or too many veto players are not favored because of either high policy uncertainty or high policy rigidity. In addition, the benefits and costs of credibility and flexibility vary in good times and hard times. The benefits of maintaining status quo tend to outweigh the costs in countries with good initial regulatory environment. The costs of maintaining status quo tend to outweigh the benefits when countries are more vulnerable to exogenous shocks.     

Taif and the Lebanese State: The Political Economy of a Very Sectarian Public Sector

Abstract

The political reforms adopted in the 1989 Taif Agreement created a veritable postwar paradox: a more balanced consociational power-sharing arrangement led to a bigger, more clientelist, more corrupt, less autonomous public sector, one preoccupied by predatory rentier practices along sectarian and clientelist lines. The more durable the power-sharing arrangement the less the state in Lebanon acts as a state with a measure of bureaucratic autonomy, extractive capacities, and a national agenda. This article problematizes this postwar anomaly by examining the instrumental role played by the public sector in the reproduction of the political elite’s clientelist ensemble undergirding the political economy of sectarianism.     

Globalization,the State,and India's Halting March to Common Market: The Political Economy of Tax Reform Under Federalism

As a social phenomenon, globalization has been the target of much criticism. One particular line of attack holds that it will lead to the segmentation and disintegration of the national economy. However, an examination of the long process of reform of the indirect tax system in India underlines, paradoxically, the significant role of globalization precisely in fostering domestic economic integration in the form of a common market, which would overcome the economic segmentation existing prior to globalization. Interestingly, such tax reform has, in considerable part, been driven by the need to meet globalization's challenge that India's economy be efficient and internationally competitive. At the same time, one should not underestimate the critically important role of the state as an institutional variable—which critics tend often to ignore—in carrying through the goal of establishing a common market, presently a work still in progress.     

Surveys,Experiments, and the Landscape of International Political Economy

The contributions to this issue show that surveys and experiments offer exciting new tools for doing empirical research in international political economy (IPE). This essay cautions that the utility of these tools is not self-evident: Neither appeals to microfoundations nor to methodological individualism in constructing explanations for social phenomena themselves recommend an embrace of surveys or experiments. The field of IPE should worry that the focus on surveys and experiments will constrain not just methodological choice but also theoretical breadth, limiting the field’s ability to conceive of what theories are admissible in learning about the global political economy.     

Survey Research in International Political Economy: Motivations,Designs, Methods

The use of surveys and survey experiments by international political economy scholars is increasing, adding to the ability to study a broad array of topics. In doing so, many scholars in international political economy draw on—and are contributing to—insights and arguments from American politics and comparative politics (Milner 1998), substantive fields with a history of using surveys and survey experiments. In this article, I review motivations for using surveys and survey experiments, the research designs, and analysis strategies in light of this issue’s contributions. I contrast these motivations and their accompanying designs and discuss the pros and cons of ways to approach the data generated by these research designs. The goal of this commentary is to situate surveys and survey experiments—especially those within the special issue—within a larger discussion about research motivations, design, and analysis techniques.     

Piracy,the Protection of Vital State Interests and the False Foundations of Universal Jurisdiction in International Law

It is widely asserted by courts and in legal scholarship that for hundreds of years universal jurisdiction has applied to the crime of piracy. However, the alleged historical legal foundations of universality need challenge. The central argument of this analysis is that jurisdiction over “piracy” is better understood under the protective principle, which arose out of the necessity of maritime Powers roughly between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to protect certain of their vital interests, not least their overseas trade routes and colonial trade and settlements. It follows that there is a need to re-conceptualise jurisdiction over piracy as the protection of vital State interests shared by the international community, a concept misinterpreted as universal jurisdiction.     

美国经济的国家因素:经济制度与主要国内经济政策

国家政府在美国经济中扮演了什么角色?文章主要从美国市场经济的制度因素和经济发展的政策因素着眼,对20世纪以来美国经济模式、主要经济政策作粗略的历史考察和现实分析,力图阐释美国市场经济中的国家政府作用的重要性。     

Challenging the State: Effect of Minority Discrimination,Economic Globalization,and Political Openness on Domestic Terrorism

Discrimination against minority groups is a robust predictor of domestic terrorism. However, economic and political openness might further facilitate mobilization of such aggrieved sections of a larger population. This study relates economic and political openness to minority discrimination in explaining vulnerability to domestic terrorism. Terrorism is a rational choice when a minority’s deprivation of public good provisions increases, while global economic integration and limited political openness facilitate rebel mobilization. Using data on 172 countries, I find strong support that countries discriminating against minority groups are more likely to experience domestic terrorist attacks when their economic and political systems open up.     

Norms Are What States Make of Them: The Political Psychology of Norm Violation

I examine why states violate norms they embrace as members of international society. The rationalist answer, that norms are violated whenever they conflict with interests, is underspecified and empirically challenged. Constructivists cannot address violations well from their structural, sociological perspective. I argue from political psychology that violations stem from the motivated biases of actors who face a moral dilemma between personal desires and social constraints. These biases compel leaders to interpret norms and situations in a manner that justifies violation as socially acceptable. The ability to do so depends on the norm and the situation. The more parameters a norm possesses, and the more ambiguous those parameters are, the easier it is for actors to interpret them favorably to justify violation. Oftentimes norms are what states make of them. If the situation is plausible for states to claim exemption, they violate; otherwise they are constrained. The U.S. invasion of Panama illustrates these dynamics.     

The Global Political Economy of Right-wing Populism: Deconstructing the Paradox

ABSTRACT

The rise of right-wing populism should be studied as a truly global phenomenon. Domestic and regional contexts are obviously crucial, yet a narrow focus on the domestic realm fails to capture some of the key constituents and paradoxical features of the rise and resilience of right-wing populist projects around the world. Therefore, right-wing populism and the way its contradictions are ‘managed’ ought to be understood within the context of mutual interactions between: 1) an economy-identity nexus and 2) a domestic-foreign policy nexus. A critical review of six controversial aspects of right-wing populism in the global North and global South is used to substantiate this main argument.     

Introduction: Survey and Experimental Research in International Political Economy

Studies in international political economy (IPE) that use survey-response data sets and survey (or field) experiments have grown dramatically in recent years. New developments in survey and experimental methodology have arguably influenced IPE scholars not only to think more deeply about the microfoundations of the preferences, attitudes, and political behavior of key IPE actors but also to use survey or experimental methods to test causal claims and predictions. Yet the reasons for the rapid growth in survey and experimental methods in IPE are more multifaceted. We therefore seek to answer the following three pertinent questions in the introduction. First, what are the main substantive puzzles and issue-areas that IPE scholars analyze via survey and experimental methods in their research? Second, what are the main methodological advantages and drawbacks from using survey and experimental methods in IPE? Third, what are the key substantive theoretical and empirical insights that scholars have learned from recent research in IPE that employs either survey or experimental methods (or both)? In addition to answering these questions here, we also provide a summary of each article included in the special issue. The introduction concludes with a road map for future studies on survey and experimental research in IPE.     

Organizations,Credibility, and the Psychology of Collective Action

Political organizations frequently attempt to recruit sympathetic citizens to support their causes. Doing so requires communicating credibility—that is, persuading potential new supporters that they can actually achieve the goals they set out to achieve. In this article we investigate two of the predominant kinds of information that organizations might use to establish credibility: retrospective information (about past successes) and prospective information (about future plans). Using one field experiment and one survey experiment, we find that retrospective information fails to increase people’s willingness to spend scarce resources supporting political organizations. We find that this occurs because information about past successes suggests that the organization can succeed without any additional help. In contrast, we find that prospective information motivates new participants to become active.     

Warlords,Intervention, and State Consolidation: A Typology of Political Orders in Weak and Failed States

Despite efforts to bolster failed states over the past two decades, many states in the international system still exhibit endemic weakness. External intervention often leads to political instability and in most cases fails to foster state consolidation, instead empowering and creating ties with the ones it aims to weaken. Using the case of Afghanistan, I develop a typology of political orders that explains variation in degrees of state consolidation and provides the basis for more systematic comparative analysis. I demonstrate the resilience of a political logic according to which non-state armed actors (warlords) “shape-shift” and constantly reinvent themselves to adapt to changing political environments. This article, based on extensive field research in Afghanistan, shows why failed states are unlikely to consolidate and exhibit Western-style state building, as a result of intervention or otherwise.     

The Irish Meet the Welsh Wizard: Character,Narrative, and Political Rationality in the Formation of the Irish Free State

The negotiations that led to the formation of the Irish Free State in 1921 form the focus of this article. A longstanding interpretation of these negotiations has the British finessing the Irish by playing on the weaknesses of character of the Irish delegation. This interpretation is both flawed and influential. On one level, the article questions its historical accuracy and proposes an alternative. On another level, the article seeks to account for its enduring importance. This interpretation plays a role in a larger narrative of Anglo-Irish relations that is rooted in British colonialism and Irish nationalism.     

Experiencing Globalization: Active Teaching and Learning in International Political Economy

This article explores the teaching and learning challenges for the discipline of international studies (IS) that arise from the contemporary social, economic, and political changes usually labeled "globalization." The focus is upon the challenge posed to IS by a transformation in the nature of the relationship of teachers and students to the subject matter that they study: that is, teachers and students increasingly experience and contribute to globalization in the course of their daily lives as they simultaneously teach and learn about it. Significantly for the study of globalization in IS, pedagogical debates surrounding active teaching and learning highlight the potential for strategies that actively engage students' interests and everyday experiences with the subject itself. On this basis, the article outlines some potential routes into the active teaching and learning of globalization in the field of international political economy, illustrating these with examples from classroom activities and exercises.