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.

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.

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.

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.