Reconstructing World Politics: Norms, Discourse, and Community

This Article argues that the conventional (rationalist) approach to world politics characterized by political bargain cannot fully capture the new social reality under the contemporary global ambience where ideational factors such as ideas, values, culture, and norms have become more salient and influential not only in explaining but also in prescribing state behaviors. After bringing rationalism’s paradigmatic limitations into relief, the Article offers a sociological framework that highlights a reflective, intersubjective communication among states and consequent norm-building process. Under this new paradigm, one can understand an international organization as a “community” (Gemeinschaft), not as a mere contractual instrument of its contracting parties (Gesellschaft). The Article applies the new paradigm to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as it describes the WTO’s institutional evolution from a power-oriented, tariff-reducing contract to a norm-oriented world trade community

The Travels Of a T-Shirt In The Global Economy

XXII, 289 hal.: 23 c

Perverse Effects and Unintended Consequences of U.S. Textile Trade Policy - The WTO, CAFTA, and Chinese Socks (Power Point Presentation)

International Relations/Trade,

Politics and Perceived Country Creditworthiness in International Banking.

This paper marks a departure from most previous studies of country creditworthiness in international banking because it incorporates systematically generated quantitative indicators of political instability in the analysis. The authors empirically test for the effects of political instability on perceived country creditworthiness using data on thirty heavily indebted developing countries for the period 1967-86. In addition to economic factors, they examine the effects of three types of political instability--regime change, political legitimacy, and armed conflict. The authors also distinguish between proximate instability and chronic instability. They find significant effects of proximate instability--particularly in governmental regime--on indicators of countries' perceived creditworthiness. Copyright 1990 by Ohio State University Press.