There has been considerable interest in recent years in the question of issue linkages in international negotiations. What is significant about discussions of linkages in the present era is the stress put on making trade-offs explicit among issues. Most of the highly publicized cases of proposed issue linkages appear to have been motivated by attempts of individual countries or groups of countries to extend their dominant bargaining or veto power in one particular issue area into other areas so as to achieve maximum advantage from their whole array of international interactions. The existence of an additional rationale for linkage that relies upon mutual interest has important implications. Drawing on the economic theory of exchange, the use of issue linkages to facilitate the completion of a greater number of mutually beneficial agreements among nations is considered.

Contemporary trends toward protectionism seem not merely to represent a passing phase in the world political economy but reflect widespread resistance to deep-seated structural change. In three major sectors of the world economy characterized by surplus capacity—textiles, steel, and shipbuilding—state policies increasingly challenge liberal, market-oriented economic arrangements. The emergence of restrictive arrangements in these areas is still primarily organized nationally: multinational enterprises do not dominate economic activity. Conflict among firms over market shares is reflected, therefore, in conflict among governments. Such conflict may be temporarily resolved through market-sharing agreements, but these are inherently unstable. Increasing state involvement is likely in the long run to exacerbate the problems of capitalism and to increase conflict over international economic issues. These adverse developments will call further into question theories of international political economy that assume compatibility between a liberal, market-oriented international economic system and a state-oriented international political system.

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.

In recent years efforts to account for changing patterns of alliance relationships have incorporated a growing number of insights and propositions derived from the analysis of “global interdependence.” These efforts have been complicated, on the one hand, by a lack of precision in providing operational definitions of the independent variables and, at a more fundamental level, by considerable ambiguity with respect to those types of changes which may be best explained in terms of these variables.

An analysis of Washington-Bonn relations reveals a reasonably coherent pattern of changes with regard to four specific aspects of the relationship: 1) the nature of the alliance agenda; 2) the structure of the relationship (i.e. the characteristic distribution of influence between alliance partners); 3) the operative procedural norms which regulate bilateral bargaining and negotiation; and 4) the institutional arrangements which have evolved for the coordination of alliance policy.

During the 1970s the European Community's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), acclaimed only a decade earlier as prominent evidence of successful integration of member states, manifest major defects. Farm prices to the consumers increased continually, large surpluses of certain farm commodities accumulated, the cost of operating the CAP rose tremendously, and recurring changes of member state currencies made a shambles of the common price and market concept. Several general and specific causes of those problems can be identified. Strongly influenced by powerful national farm lobbies, the member governments have imposed their own interests, often at variance with the “common” interest, upon the Community decision-making framework. The large number of national officials participating in the CAP implementation process has tended to strengthen trends toward policy outcomes undesirable from the Community perspective. More specifically, the main cause for disrupting agricultural price and market unity has been the system of “green” currency rates and the monetary compensatory amounts (MCAs) which have provided the member governments with opportunities to reconstitute national control over farm prices. Fear of domestic political repercussions has restricted the creation of vigorous policies to counter surpluses, and structural improvement of farms, badly needed in some regions of the Community, has been slow.

Continued dependence on expensive imported liquid fuels puts stress on the relations among and the domestic performance of the members of OECD. Coordinated energy R&D could in principle lessen those stresses and also benefit other liquid fuel consumers. A political economy approach can help explain the tepid pursuit of this possibility in two ways. First, it can clarify the reasons for the weak collective action energy R&D record of the members of the OECD both before and after the oil events of 1973. Second, it can demonstrate and identify the nature of the undersupply of the public good of energy knowledge. The history of this area illustrates several general obstacles to the provision of public goods in realistically complex political situations. These include the uncertain and distant nature of commitments to actually deliver collective goods in the absense of self-enforcing agreements, unwillingness to jeopardize possible future private advantages, and the tendencies to link provision of particular public goods to cooperation by other parties with the provider on a host of other matters. In effect, the attempts of particular statesmen to tie energy R&D cooperation to other issues reinforce tendencies to view the choices not as ones about the level of provision of public goods, but rather as ones about national shares of private goods—economic, military, and political.

Much of the discussion and study in the field of international organization has long been beset by a sterile encounter between the “uncritical lovers” and the “unloving critics” of formal intergovernmental organizations, of which the UN family is the preeminent example. The former have seen in those institutions and their procedures precursors of a regime of international law, if not of a world government, characterized by greater rationality, order, and cooperation and by less conflict in interstate relations; they have often been mentally fixed on a dominant image of international order, an image whose flaws and other characteristics were well analyzed by John Ruggie several years ago. The latter have seen them largely as shadow plays, at best reflecting and at worst having nothing to do with the power relations among states, which are the real determinants of state behavior in an anarchic system. The split between the two corresponds roughly, if not identically, to another fundamental divide among theorists of international relations, namely, that between idealists and realists.

International monetary arrangements in effect since the Bretton Woods conference of 1944 underwent major changes in the early 1970s, most notably from the norm and practice of “fixed” exchange rates to a new mixed regime in which major rates are now flexible. The outcome strongly reflected the external monetary behavior of the U.S. government, which changed dramatically with the “Nixon shocks” of August 1971 and again with a second devaluation of the dollar in February 1973. Since then the U.S. has officially advocated the once-heretical policy of exchange-rate flexibility.

Export promotion has replaced import substitution as the orthodox strategy for economic development. In sectors dominated by transnational corporations, however, such a strategy may run afoul of difficulties not immediately apparent from the neo-classical comparative-advantage perspective that has provided its principal theoretical support. Evidence from the Mexican automobile industry shows that an export promotion policy may face problems of a) demand rigidities in TNC intracompany transfers, b) decision dependency, c) difficulties in enforcing sanctions in cases of recalcitrance, and d) an unequal distribution of benefits between foreign-owned and domestically-owned firms.

Increasingly, technological decisions are entering into the political arena. They alter the environment in which policy must operate. It is claimed that British foreign policy since the Second World War has been dominated by unrealizable goals. Britain has been preoccupied by the debate about her world-role, a debate which was in itself the product of anachronistic values and assumptions. The Concorde project was the manifestation of a desire to maintain Britain's position as a leading aeronautical power. The aircraft industry faithfully reflects the pattern of government interests and influence. But Concorde was also intended to emphasize what the British government felt to be changing relationships with the United States and Europe. However, in “modernized” states, the boundaries between foreign and domestic policies are increasingly blurred. Although this phenomenon may result in interdependence at an international level, the formation of transnational links can restrict the power of sovereign states. It can also inhibit the domestic process of democratic control. While international burden-sharing may place unforeseen pressures on the structures of government, the momentum for technological development is often so strong that it becomes impossible to resist. While visible technology can be a potent instrument of prestige, it must also respond to needs at a market level in order to be successful. Concorde has conspicuously failed to do this.

Cross-sectional evidence from interviews at the United Nations found some delegate socialization. Third World delegates with longer tenure showed frustration with the organization, expansionist interests toward its economic activities, and satisfaction with their governments' missions to the United Nations, suggesting increased identification with governmental supranationalist goals. Western delegates with longer tenure showed cynicism about world politics, frustration with the United Nations, expansionist interest toward the Secretariat, and dissatisfaction with their UN missions, suggesting tension between governmental policies and socialized delegate supranationalism which delegates may reduce by leaving the United Nations. Such socialization implies little more than a reinforcement of national policies.

The finding of even this disheartening socialization in the United Nations calls for more careful research in organizations where delegate socialization is theoretically more likely. Such research should use scales more complex than those commonly used and should consider bodies “intermediate” between national governments and international organizations, such as permanent missions.

Little work has been done—on either a conceptual or an empirical level—in assessing the way in which national political support operates in the context of the regional integration scheme. The purpose of this study is to describe and explain patterns of national support for one regional integration scheme, the Andean Pact. It is suggested here that foreign policy behavior toward a regional integration scheme is not a simple, unidimensional type of behavior, but rather is a complex set of activities and attitudes directed toward specific programs of the regional integration scheme in the pursuit of specific economic development goals and limited by the constraints of resources. The policies of member governments toward the Andean Pact are clearly designed to satisfy national goals and needs. Although some governments have been willing to acquiesce in certain areas of national interest on occasion, by and large the Andean Pact members have consistently sought to further national interests through support of the Andean Pact as a whole.

In the mid 1950s, West German industry changed from being oriented primarily towards internal and West European reconstruction needs and the supply of coal and steel, to being more oriented towards the international market of finished goods. Whereas prewar and war-time technology had dominated production processes and products up until then, U.S. competition started to force advanced technologies like computers and atomic energy upon industry.

Along with increased instability in the general political and economic situation of West Germany these changes contributed greatly to progressive differentiation within what had been a more homogenous industry structure and within the West German state apparatus.

One important result of these new trends was the genesis of a foreign atomic policy, resulting in the founding of Euratom. Global versus European orientation, traditional versus “modern” industries, traditional liberal versus new interventionalist policies were joined in the issue and produced a highly ambivalent result. In the attempt to explain and interpret the case of Euratom in this context, theories of integration and of state are tested. The greatest explanatory power is conceded to modern Marxist theories which combine the concept of international dependency with a differentiated concept of relations between state and industry.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is the major technical assistance fund in the UN family of institutions. By purchasing goods and services, it affects developed and developing states alike. As well as distributing assistance, UNDP attempts to stimulate follow-up investment and procures goods and services from member states. UNDP project expenditures are correlated with public and private follow-up investment, but the relationship is rather weak. On the procurement side, developed states receive subcontracts, equipment orders, and fellowship students in direct relationship to their contributions to UNDP, and developing states attract employment possibilities for their nationals as UNDP experts in direct relationship to their contributions. Developed states receive the largest returns from UNDP procurement. Providing multilateral assistance is UNDP's primary activity, but the purchase of equipment, the generation of investment opportunities, and the employment of experts provide economic incentives for both developing and developed states.

An analysis of 344 selected votes in the four major issue areas in the UN General Assembly from 1971 to 1977 examines the question whether China has fulfilled its promise to support the Third World and oppose the superpowers. The findings are: 1) China was much more favorable to the Third World than to the West in this period and more supportive of the developing nations than of the Communist bloc on all except colonial issues; 2) China voted with the Third World more often than with the Communist nations, even when colonial issues were included; 3) China was least friendly to the United States on the majority of issues and in all years; and 4) the Soviet Union was the most anti-China nation in the Communist world, and of the four permanent members of the Security Council, Soviet voting agreement with China was the third lowest on political and security issues in the overall period and was often the lowest on arms control and disarmament. Thus at least within the context of UN voting, China has succeeded in developing its pro-Third World and anti-superpower position, particularly on economic and security issues.

Little is known about the impact of international organizations. Neither a rudimentary theory of IGO impact exists nor are there sufficient case studies to develop meaningful generalizations. To answer the question whether they make a difference, the effect of intergovernmental organization (IGO) policies must be evaluated.

An analysis of UN coverage in sample years between 1948 and 1975 by five representative black U.S. newspapers as compared with the New York Times and, to a lesser extent, the Chicago Tribune shows that UN coverage by the black press since 1961 has declined, as it has for the white press, but that the decline in black press coverage is not only less sharp but has also been somewhat reversed in recent years. Patterns of coverage differ: greater priority is accorded in the black press to Africa and Asia and more emphasis is placed on personalities, especially on black Americans at the United Nations. Comparisons of black press coverage with UN “busyness” and with the differentials of support for the UN that have been manifested over the years in both black and white public opinion reveal no clear correlations.

Suggested from the study of budgeting, the quasi-budgeting framework is used to analyze a certain type of negotiation. Three pre-conditions are spelled out for using this framework. A simple structural equation model to account for how negotiation outcomes are determined on the basis of the Soviet-Japanese salmon catch negotiations in the Northwest Pacific for the 1957–1977 period is presented. The estimation results for the 1957–1976 period as well as the predictive performance for the 1977 negotiations are demonstrated to be fairly good, thereby suggesting that the quasi-budgeting framework is both conceptually powerful and methodologically feasible in the study of various international negotiations.