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.     

Do Democracies Attract Portfolio Investment? Transnational Portfolio Investments Modeled as Dynamic Network

For many, transnational capital is an important driving force of economic globalization. However, we know little about the political determinants for cross-border portfolio investments. Recent economic literature focuses upon information asymmetries. We move beyond this and introduce an explicitly political element into the study of international asset flows. Democratic institutions attract portfolio investments because they reduce the chances of government predatory practices. Applying a dynamic latent space model on the bilateral portfolio investment data from 2001 to 2005, we empirically examine the effects of important country-level characteristics of both exporters and importers of portfolio investments. The empirical findings suggest that democracies are often associated with higher levels of inward portfolio investments. Interestingly, we also find that portfolio investments are associated with business communities’ subjective estimate of property rights protection, but not with more comprehensive, index-based aggregate measures from international think tanks.     

Terrorism and Counterterrorism: An Integrated Approach and Future Research Agenda

In this commentary, we make the case that the analysis of terrorism and counterterrorism must be based on an integrated theory that links both issues together. Terrorist groups’ ultimate goals must be distinguished from their strategic goals and the strategic logic by which they employ terror and select targets to further their ultimate goals. The strategic logic of terrorism is thus key to understanding patterns of terrorism and the counter-reaction by governments against it. We make the case for a unified approach and suggest major areas for future research.     

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.     

Nativism or Economic Threat: Attitudes Toward Immigrants During the Great Recession

To better evaluate the weight of economic versus cultural factors in determining individual attitudes toward open borders, this article reports on a survey experiment conducted over the course of the Great Recession. Over the course of the recession, we measured changes in attitudes on both immigration and trade policies, controlling for economic circumstance. Based on the data provided by respondents on both their current salaries as well as a subjective assessment of their economic well-being, we illustrate how both objective and subjective perceptions of the economy interact with cultural factors and influence attitudes on open borders. The panel provides a unique picture of the “stickiness” of policy attitudes in hard economic times, and by extension, the level of commitment in the United States to globalization.     

The Social Construction of Policy Reform: Economists and Trade Liberalization Around the World

We argue that the global spread of ideas contributes to trade liberalization. Building on insights from a rich case-based literature, we suggest an explicit mechanism of trade policy diffusion: US-trained Ph.D. economists, who share a common belief in the benefits of free trade, and who operate with varying degrees of political influence around the world. We offer the first cross-national test of the impact of economists on trade liberalization using a unique dataset recording the country of residence of all 6,493 foreign-based, US-trained American Economic Association (AEA) members over the period 1981–1997. Specifically, we measure the influence of economists on the timing and extent of trade liberalization. First, we endogenize the date of trade liberalization using hazard and probit models. Controlling for alternative diffusion mechanisms and other confounding variables, our results suggest that economists significantly speed up the reform process. Second, we find that countries with greater numbers of economists are more open to trade at the end of the period. All of our results are robust to an instrumental variables strategy that employs the number of Fulbright grants allocated by the United States as an instrument for the number of US-trained economists.     

Case Study Methods in International Political Economy

IPE scholars frequently use qualitative methods to contribute to theory-building, but we could get greater value from them. Single case studies are actually a family of research designs: the disciplined interpretive case study, the hypothesis-generating case study, the least-likely, most-likely, and deviant case studies. The method of difference employs comparison and attempts to eliminate rival interpretation by choosing two or more cases that match in important respects. These methods enjoy several inherent advantages relative to statistical methods, and they suffer from several disadvantages. Neither family of methods is sufficient. The two complement one another and ultimately must be combined.     

Breaching the levee,waiting for the flood. Testing beliefs about the internationalization of securities markets

Abstract

In the 1970s and 1980s, the three major securities markets in New York, London, and Tokyo underwent significant regulatory shifts that lowered national barriers to entry and liberalized the markets. Popular explanations point toward technologies, economic efficiencies, foreign policy pressures, the removal of controls on international capital flows, or international competition as unleashing forces promoting liberalization and breaching the regulatory levees. Such explanations generate expectations about behavior once the international pressures are unleashed. Significant changes in overseas participants' market behavior should be observable. International competitive pressures should produce convergence in regulatory and transaction costs across markets upon one of two equilibriums—one by competitive deregulations or another by harmonization through agreement. Empirical tests produce results inconsistent with such expectations. Foreign participation does increase following the breach in the regulatory levees, but the unleashed demand cannot be described as a flood. Observable measures of market dynamics and transaction costs remain distinctive. The inconsistencies between results and expectations raise questions about explanations that emphasize increasing interdependence and international pressures as driving domestic political and economic changes.     

Who Promotes Protection? Economic and Electoral Influences on Trade-Related Position Taking in the Senate

Existing studies of Congressional behavior devote little attention to understanding legislators' trade-related positions outside the context of roll call votes. Using a new dataset on bill sponsorship that spans 15 Congresses, the author explores the factors that affect a senator's propensity to introduce protectionist trade bills, including state-level manufacturing characteristics, economic cycles, and electoral vulnerability. The results provide support for a number of the prominent economic-based explanations for trade policy preferences, including the Heckscher-Ohlin and Ricardo-Viner models, and also draw attention to several additional economic and political influences on policy outcomes. Beyond trade politics, these findings have implications for the expanding body of research on bill sponsorship as well as the literature on the role of Congress in U.S. foreign policymaking.     

南海共同开发的国际政治经济学

本文试图用国际政治经济学的视角对南海共同开发这一问题做出分析,分析政治解决模式的局限性和国际政治经济学解决模式的优越性和良好前景。     

Contracting with Whom? The Differential Effects of Investment Treaties on FDI

Under what conditions can governments use international commitments such as Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) to attract foreign direct investment (FDI)? Although numerous studies have attempted to answer this question, none considers how investment treaties may have heterogeneous affects across industry. I argue BIT effect is strongest when the obsolescing bargaining problem between firms and governments is most protracted, namely, when FDI relies on strong contracts between firms and states. Using a time series cross-sectional data set of 114 developing countries from 1985 to 2011, I find BITs are associated with increases in infrastructure investment, an industry particularly reliant on the sanctity of government contracts, but not with total FDI inflows. Moreover, BITs with strong arbitration provisions display the strongest statistical effect on infrastructure investment, while BITs that do not provide investors with such protections are not associated with increased investment. My results have implications for both scholarship on the relationship between governments and multinational firms as well as for the study of international institutions more broadly. To properly ascertain the effects of international treaties and institutions, scholars should consider not just whether institutions constrain or inform—or matter at all—but also the extent to which the targets of institutions have heterogeneous responses to them.