By many criteria, Japan is weak internationally. As a consequence one would expect its foreign economic policy to have been marked by limited choice, weakness, and constant vacillation in the face of external pressures. The domestic political structures of the country, however, have for most of the period since World War II permitted wide choice, strength, and consistency. A corporatist coalition of finance, major industry, trading companies, and the upper levels of the national bureaucracy, coupled with the consistent rule of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, the systematic exclusion of organized labor from formal policy-making channels, and the lack of social overhead spending, has permitted the Japanese state to function as official doorman determining what, and under what conditions, capital, technology, and manufactured products enter and leave Japan. The strengths acquired from such past policies make it likely that the Japanese state will remain capable of dealing with the increasing domestic and international threats to its capacity to make relatively autonomous choices about Japan's international economic behavior.

Regulation of the exploitation of seabed minerals has to be considered in terms both of the technical nature of the operations and of the requirements of the supervisory body. The major issue, however, has been “Who May Exploit the Area?”. Different approaches to this question have been taken by the leading industrialized powers and by the Group of 77. Particular difficulties have arisen over: 1) the extent of the discretion to be exercised by the International Seabed Authority and the security of access of individual operators; 2) the way in which the Authority might itself engage in direct operations through an “Enterprise”; 3) the protection to be given to land-based producers against adverse consequences of seabed exploitation; and 4), the decision-making procedures of the Authority. Future events are hard to predict; but failure to produce a generally acceptable treaty could lead to significant conflict over the international seabed in the years ahead.

Evaluation research involves the use of the scientific method to evaluate the impact of public programs. The cross-disciplinary evaluation research literature provides a useful orientation for the examination of activities of international organizations. The primary advantage of this approach is that more dependable cause and effect statements are possible. The major limitations relate to its applicability, vary from case to case, and should not be underestimated. Yet they do not preclude its beneficial use by international organization scholars and policy makers. The smallpox eradication program of the World Health Organization serves as the basis for an illustration of the evaluation research methodology.

During more than two decades, West German foreign economic policy has served a strategy of export-oriented growth. The success of this strategy is based on a number of factors, such as Germany's industrial structure, a favorable international environment, a pro-investment domestic economic policy and the constructive role of labor in postwar economic development. Decision making in foreign economic policy is characterized by the dominance of the export sector. The strategy of export expansion met withobstacles in two areas. In Eastern trade policy export interests clashed with the imperatives of “high politics” during the Cold War era. In monetary policy, the chronic undervaluation of the Deutsche Mark, a crucial factor of export competitiveness, collided with the goal of price stability. Both cases highlight the limits of export sector dominance. In recent years, the internationalization of German industry and the process of structural change have created problems that suggest that theGerman economy is reaching the limits of export-oriented growth. These pose new challenges to economic policy makers.

The negotiations concerning the establishment of an International Seabed Resources Agency (ISRA) raise three research questions: 1) what is the current state of the ISRA negotiations, and how have they evolved; 2) what effect do New International Economic Order (NIEO) considerations have on national behavior in these negotiations; and 3) can the ISRA negotiations “succeed” (reach a positive-sum-type outcome) and produce a comprehensive Law of the Sea treaty? A methodology based on thematic content analysis is useful in answering these questions. Despite recent concessions by developed states, continued stalemate in the negotiations is likely. The Group of 77's position has hardened as it has become increasingly united behind demands for a New International Economic Order for the seabeds. Short of a breakthrough on ISRA, neither the ISRA negotiations nor the Law of the Sea Conference can succeed. Such a breakthrough might be generated either by verbal acceptance of the NIEO by the North, or by side payments.

The relationship between students of international organization and students of international politics has been an erratic one, marked by appreciable shifts in both salience and sympathy. At some points, we may have been close but hostile, at others close and friendly, and more often than not, distant and mildly skeptical of one another's work. As I see it, the extraordinary gap of the 1960s is beginning to close, and I take it as one of my missions here to help accelerate this process, while enhancing the probability that, as our intellectual paths converge again, we will like what we see.

Weighted voting at the UN has been suggested for various reasons: (1) to overcome the problems of the mini-states now being admitted, with one vote just as the very large states have; (2) to prevent voting in the General Assembly from swinging any further in the anti-West, anti-Israel direction; (3) to satisfy the requirements of democratic justice: i.e., “one person-one vote,” not “one nation-one vote”; and, (4) to reflect more realistically the distribution of power among nations.

Italy's political economy is characterized by international weakness and internal fragmentation and polarization. Since 1947, Italy's foreign economic policies have been defined by a broadly-based political and social coalition dominated by the Christian Democratic party (DC). This coalition has incorporated or maintained close links with ministerial bureaucracies, the Bank of Italy, state-controlled industrial and commercial enterprises, large corporations, and Catholic trade unions. It has attempted to foster a postwar climate receptive to business interests and to foreign investment; one which would facilitate the maintenance of a stable domestic political and social order. At the same time, the DC coalition is so fragmented by factionalism and personal competition that economic policy making has lacked direction and has been marked by personalism and by improvisation. Italian policy makers operate in a precarious environment in that they must use political and economic weaknessin order to mobilize the international assistance needed to maintain the internal social order as well as external economic survival.

The French state bureaucracy, able partially to shelter itself from Parliament and to influence the industrial sector directly, has been able to protect national interests in an economically interdependent world. It struck a regional bargain that committed agriculture to the European Community and in effect provided a German subsidy to French farmers. It mediated between the national and international market to promote industrial modernization and force a restructuring of critical industrial sectors. It has grown increasingly sophisticated in its dealings with multinational companies. Early efforts to insist on purely French operations have been abandoned, permitting the state to negotiate more effectively with the multinationals and obtain substantive rather than symbolic goods. These policies have cushioned agriculture's transition into an industrial world and helped pressure a previously protected industry to modernize. Finally, the state has played trader, trying directly to market French goods and assure payment for imports in package trade deals. The French have not been able to impose their own rules on monetary and energy matters. Yet their efforts suggest that a nation-state can use administrative or domestic economic resources to reduce its vulnerability to international developments, though it cannot of course escape from the system.

An inventory of the objectives and instruments which characterize the differing political strategies of six advanced industrial states in the international economy yields three groups of states: the two Anglo-Saxon countries, mercantilist Japan, and the states of the European continent. Corresponding differences exist in the distinctive elements of domestic structure: the coalition between business and the state and the policy networks linking public and private sectors. An historical explanation of these differences is most appropriate. In the future, stresses in the relations between business and the state and contradictions between ruling coalitions and organized labor may lead to changes in political strategies.