scholarly journals Declining hegemony and the sources of Trump’s disengagement from multilateral trade governance: the interaction between domestic politics and the international political economy

Author(s):  
Arlo Poletti ◽  
Lorenzo Zambernardi

AbstractAs a result of the economic and political rise of China and Trump’s decision to undermine the liberal international order, theories of hegemony have regained center stage in both policy-oriented and scholarly debates. Yet, a careful analysis of the evolution of the US foreign policy strategy in the realm of international trade politics reveals that traditional theories of hegemonic decline are ill-equipped to account for both the timing and the content of the Trump administration’s behavior in this issue area. This paper argues in favor of integrating structural theories of hegemonic transition/stability with an analysis of the domestic sources of trade policy preferences. To do so, we draw on the International Political Economy literature highlighting how the domestic political process triggered by the dynamics of international economic competition combined with structural forces in shaping the timing and content of the Trump administration’s disengagement from the existing multilateral trade governance structures.

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 399-417 ◽  
Author(s):  
In Song Kim ◽  
Iain Osgood

We survey the literature on firms as primary actors in trade politics. In contrast with prevailing approaches, firm-centered models predict that trade internally divides industries and that larger firms are the strongest advocates for globalization. This new preference map alters extant predictions about the dynamics of interest group contestation over trade and suggests revised accounts for how political organization and institutions contribute to an open international order. We also explore the potential for new insights into the operation of the global trade regime, the politics of foreign investment, immigration and capital movements, and exchange rates. Poli-tical activities undertaken by firms are important areas for further research in international political economy: Their economic engagements directly affect the movement of goods, services, capital, and people across the globe.


1979 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Kurth

What explains the continuing stagnation in the industrial economies of the West? What will be the impact of such stagnation upon domestic politics and upon international relations? Are there domestic and foreign policies which the state can undertake to bring about a return to sustained economic prosperity and a recapitulation of that lost golden age of 1948–1973? These are now the central questions for scholars in the emerging field of international political economy. A recent special issue of International Organization, edited by Peter Katzenstein, has presented some of the most useful and sophisticated approaches to these questions and analyses of the international political economy of the West during the period of the last thirty years.


Author(s):  
Alison Johnston

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and subsequent European Debt Crisis had wide-sweeping consequences for global economic and political stability. Yet while these twin crises have prompted soul searching within the economics profession, international political economy (IPE) has been relatively ineffective in accounting for variation in crisis exposure across the developed world. The GFC and European Debt Crisis present the opportunity to link IPE and comparative political economy (CPE) together in the study of international economic and financial turmoil. While the GFC was prompted by the inter-connectedness of global financial markets, its instigators were largely domestic in nature and were reflective of negative externalities that stemmed from unsustainable national policies, especially those related to financial regulation and household debt accumulation. Many in IPE take an “outward looking in” approach to the examination of international economic developments and domestic politics; analysis rests on how the former impacts the latter. The GFC and European Debt Crisis, however, demonstrate the importance of a (CPE-based) “inward looking out” approach, analyzing how unique policy and political features (and failures) of individual nation states can unleash economic and financial instability at the global level amidst deepened economic and financial integration. IPE not only needs to grant greater attention to variation in domestic politics and policies in a time of closely integrated financial markets, but also should acknowledge the impact of a wider array of actors beyond banks and financial institutions (specifically more domestically rooted actors like households) on cross-national variation in the consumption of foreign credit.


Politics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan A Schirm

Domestic politics theories of international political economy and the recent disruptions in international cooperation and trade apparently induced by domestic discontent have shown the crucial role domestic forces play in influencing governmental preferences. This article contributes to this theoretical school, first, by assessing seminal works on the ideational, material, and institutional dimensions of domestic politics, and second, by conceptualising the ‘societal approach’ to fill a major gap in domestic politics theorising. The societal approach asks under which conditions value-based societal ideas, domestic institutions, and material interests matter in shaping governmental preferences. When do ideas prevail over interests and vice versa? How do they interact with each other and with domestic institutions? The societal approach includes all three domestic variables as potential driving forces for governmental preferences and conceives them both as individual and as interacting forces. Most importantly, it complements domestic politics theories by proposing hypotheses on the conditions for the influence of each variable on governmental preferences. The article brings together previously conceived parts of the societal approach and considerably expands it.


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chloe Thurston ◽  
Kathryn Bowen

The articles in this special issue of Business and Politics weigh in on the domestic political dynamics that continue to shape the international political economy, with a focus on the United States case. In this issue, Richard Carney discusses the role of New Deal–era farmers in shaping modern global financial standards, Daniel Kono analyzes the relationship between social policy and support for freer trade, and Kathleen Rehbein and Douglas Schuler examine the characteristics of business firms that are most likely to gain legislative and executive branch access in the area of trade policy. The two final articles provide insights into critical issues in ongoing policy debates. Irja Vormedal discusses the role of business strategies and “tipping points” in determining the support and failure of federal environmental regulation from 1990 through 2010, while Emily Yixuan Cao, Yong Cao, Rashmi Prasad, and Zhengping Shen argue that domestic politics continues (and will continue) to influence the character of U.S.-China exchange rate negotiations. This introduction to the special issue summarizes the contributions of these five articles and also situates them in relation to other contemporary political science debates.


Author(s):  
Nicola Phillips

This chapter introduces the field of International Political Economy (IPE), the themes and insights of which are reflected in the Global Political Economy (GPE), and what it offers in the study of contemporary globalization. It begins with three framing questions: How should we think about power in the contemporary global political economy? How does IPE help us to understand what drives globalization? What does IPE tell us about who wins and who loses from globalization? The chapter proceeds by discussing various approaches to IPE and the consequences of globalization, focusing on IPE debates about inequality, labour exploitation, and global migration. Two case studies are presented, one dealing with the BRICs and the rise of China, and the other with slavery and forced labour in global production. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether national states are irrelevant in an era of economic globalization.


2004 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
BETH A. SIMMONS ◽  
ZACHARY ELKINS

One of the most important developments over the past three decades has been the spread of liberal economic ideas and policies throughout the world. These policies have affected the lives of millions of people, yet our most sophisticated political economy models do not adequately capture influences on these policy choices. Evidence suggests that the adoption of liberal economic practices is highly clustered both temporally and spatially. We hypothesize that this clustering might be due to processes of policy diffusion. We think of diffusion as resulting from one of two broad sets of forces: one in which mounting adoptions of a policy alter the benefits of adopting for others and another in which adoptions provide policy relevant information about the benefits of adopting. We develop arguments within these broad classes of mechanisms, construct appropriate measures of the relevant concepts, and test their effects on liberalization and restriction of the current account, the capital account, and the exchange rate regime. Our findings suggest that domestic models of foreign economic policy making are insufficient. The evidence shows that policy transitions are influenced by international economic competition as well as the policies of a country's sociocultural peers. We interpret the latter influence as a form of channeled learning reflecting governments' search for appropriate models for economic policy.


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