A New Dominant Trade Species Emerges: Is Bilateralism a Threat?

Over the past decade, government trade and finance ministrieshave increasingly turned toward negotiating bilateral and regionaltrading arrangements, and away from negotiations in multilateralforums like the WTO. There are several reasons for this shift,including changes in the global political environment and negotiatingobstacles encountered by the multinational business communityat the multilateral level. This shift appears to be an embeddedphenomenon. Positive and negative aspects of preferential tradingarrangements (PTAs) are in evidence. Trade creation-trade diversioneconomic analysis suggests the results may be net global welfareenhancing, although such analysis does not readily assess distributionaleffects. The global economy is enjoying a period of sustained—andwidely distributed—economic growth, suggesting that thePTA phenomenon is not an immediate economic threat. On the negativeside, the PTAs lead to administrative complexity, and may besomewhat destabilizing as businesses are encouraged to relocate.Some countries may suffer if left out, but this risk is amelioratedby the wide availability of potential negotiating partners.The PTA negotiating environment strongly favors powerful economicactors like the United States and European Union, which arelargely dictating terms to developing (and developed) countries.Developing countries, particularly the less economically powerful,are losing autonomous decision-making authority. The consequencesof this are difficult to quantify, and may raise questions betterattuned to moral philosophers than economists. The WTO continueson its way, relegated to a less central status. A return tothe WTO might reinvigorate the role of less powerful actors,but such return does not appear an immediate prospect. The PTAphenomenon, on balance, does not appear aggressively threatening.We may, however, be underestimating the positive role of multilateralism.     

External Barriers to Help Seeking for Older Women Who Experience Intimate Partner Violence

There has been relatively little research published to guide the field in identifying and addressing barriers to seeking help for older women who experience domestic violence (DV). The current article focuses on findings related to external behaviors to help-seeking in the Domestic Violence Against Older Women (DVAOW) study. Data were collected in 21 focus groups with 134 women, 45 to 85 years of age. External barriers, described by DVAOW respondents as contributing to the reluctance of some older women to seek help for domestic abuse, include response of family, response of clergy, response of the justice system, and responsiveness of community resources. These findings are discussed with implications for community outreach and future research.

Selection Bias and Continuous-Time Duration Models: Consequences and a Proposed Solution

This article analyzes the consequences of nonrandom sample selection for continuous-time duration analyses and develops a new estimator to correct for it when necessary. We conduct a series of Monte Carlo analyses that estimate common duration models as well as our proposed duration model with selection. These simulations show that ignoring sample selection issues can lead to biased parameter estimates, including the appearance of (nonexistent) duration dependence. In addition, our proposed estimator is found to be superior in root mean-square error terms when nontrivial amounts of selection are present. Finally, we provide an empirical application of our method by studying whether self-selectivity is a problem for studies of leaders' survival during and following militarized conflicts.     

The economic development of Vietnam,Laos, and Cambodia

The three states of Indochina are engaged in the most radical economic transformation of any of the nations in Southeast Asia. Of the three countries, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, with a population of 70 million, is the most important to the market economies of Asia and the West. Although their individual situations vary greatly, the systemic reforms of all three countries emphasize decentralization and privatization, and permit market forces considerable scope in determining economic activity. They remain several decades behind most of their counterparts in the rest of Southeast Asia with respect to the standards of living of their populations and the overall development of their economies. With the end of the Cold War, they have had to redirect their external political relationships and must contemplate internal political reforms occasioned by influences accompanying a new economic orientation. In Vietnam and Laos, the Communist party is in command of the society’s fundamental decisions; it is determined to retain political control. In Cambodia, pluralism and a form of democracy are mandated by the United Nations and by the new Cambodian constitution. Over the near term, full membership in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will be important to all three countries once their economies become compatible with the other ASEANs.     

Institutional confidence and democratic consolidation in Latin America

Citizen confidence in the institutions of their nations is critical to democratic consolidation in Latin America. The data provided by the Latinobarómetro survey in 1995 mark the beginning of significant empirical investigation in this realm. While longitudinal comparisons are not yet possible, institutional confidence for the major countries as of 1995 can be probed. This study considers three levels of generality: the comparative study of institutions in the region; patterns of confidence related to political culture; and the degree of political learning derived from the repressive dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s. John D. Martz is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the Pennsylvania State University. He is also the editor of this journal.     

Refugee repatriation during conflict: Protection and post-return assistance

This article reports on the findings of the International Study of Spontaneous Voluntary Repatriation, begun by the authors in 1986, and involving case studies on return to countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It discusses the lack of recognition in both policy and practice of the pervasiveness of refugee-induced repatriation, and of repatriation during conflict; and offers new assumptions regarding the pattern and process of contemporary repatriation and of refugee decision-making. Lastly, it examines some repatriation issues for the 1990s: fragile peace and tenuous security; protection of the voluntary nature of return; dealing with non-recognised entities; and post-return assistance, particularly the need to focus on rehabilitation before development and to provide refugee-centred aid.