In this article, we incorporate the study of diasporas into international relations (IR) theory by focusing on diasporas as independent actors who actively influence their homeland (kin-state) foreign policies. We argue that diasporic influences can best be understood by situating them in the ‘theoretical space’ shared by constructivism and liberalism; two approaches that acknowledge the impact of identity and domestic politics on international behavior. We also maintain that the exploration of diasporic activities can enrich both constructivism and liberalism. First, diasporas' identity-based motivations should be an integral part of the constructivist effort to explain the formation of national identities. Second, diasporic activities and influences in their homelands expand the meaning of the term ‘domestic politics’ to include not only politics inside the state but also inside the people For the liberal approach, this is a “new fact” in the Lakatosian sense of the word. We theorize that the extent of diasporic influence on homeland foreign policy is determined by three components that make up the ‘balance of power’ between homelands and diasporas. We then test this theory by delving into the interaction between the newly established state of Armenia and its powerful diaspora, and by comparing this case with examples taken from the relations between Israel and diaspora Jews.

Of all noncombatants in the former Yugoslavia, adult civilian men were most likely to be massacred by enemy forces. Why, therefore, did international agencies mandated with the “protection of civilians” evacuate women and children, but not military-age men, from besieged areas? This article reviews the operational dilemmas faced by protection workers in the former Yugoslavia when negotiating access to civilian populations. I argue that a social constructivist approach incorporating gender analysis is required to explain both the civilian protection community's discourse and its operational behavior. First, gender beliefs constitute the discursive strategies on which civilian protection advocacy is based. Second, gender norms operate in practice to constrain the options available to protection workers in assisting civilians. These two causal pathways converged in the former Yugoslavia to produce effects disastrous to civilians, particularly adult men and male adolescents.

Current international relations theory struggles to explain both the autonomy and transformation of international organizations (IOs). Previous theories either fail to account for any IO behavior that deviates from the interests of member states, or neglect the role of member states in reforming IO institutions and behavior. We propose an agency theory of IOs that can fill these gaps while also addressing two persistent problems in the study of IOs: common agency and long delegation chains. Our model explains slippage between member states' interests and IO behavior, but also suggests institutional mechanisms—staff selection, monitoring, procedural checks, and contracts—through which states can rein in errant IOs. We evaluate this argument by examining multiple institutional reforms and lending patterns at the World Bank from 1980 to 2000.

Despite their presumed liabilities, institutions associated with democracy serve as a source of power in prolonged international competition by increasing the financial resources that states can bring to bear. The theory of sovereign debt suggests that a state's ability to raise money through public borrowing is enhanced when debtholders have mechanisms for sanctioning state leaders in the event of default. Institutions associated with liberal government provide such mechanisms. All other things being equal, states that possess these institutions enjoy superior access to credit and lower interest rates than do states in which the sovereign has more discretion to default unilaterally. Liberal states can not only raise more money from a given economic base but can also pursue tax-smoothing policies that minimize economic distortions. The ability to finance competition in a manner that is consistent with long-term economic growth generates a significant advantage in prolonged rivalries. These claims are explored by analyzing the Anglo-French rivalry (1688–1815) and the Cold War.

This article revisits the influential “Leviathan” hypothesis, which posits that tax competition limits the growth of government spending in decentralized countries. I use panel data to examine the effect of fiscal decentralization over time within countries, attempting to distinguish between decentralization that is funded by intergovernmental transfers and local taxation. First, I explore the logic whereby decentralization should restrict government spending if state and local governments have wide-ranging authority to set the tax base and rate, especially on mobile assets. In countries where this is most clearly the case, decentralization is associated with smaller government. Second, consistent with theoretical arguments drawn from welfare economics and positive political economy, I show that governments grow faster as they fund a greater portion of public expenditures through intergovernmental transfers.

Much recent international relations scholarship has argued that states are unable to control e-commerce, so that private actors are coming to play a dominant role. However, this body of literature fails to account for emerging “hybrid institutions,” in which states create general frameworks of rules, which are then implemented by private actors. This article examines a prominent example of such an institution, the EU-U.S. Safe Harbor arrangement in the field of privacy, and sets out an alternative explanation of state–private actor relations in the sphere of e-commerce. It shows how Safe Harbor had its origins in efforts by the European Union (EU) and United States to mitigate problems of interdependence that threatened to undermine the principles of order on which their regulatory systems were based. Safe Harbor reflects neither the EU nor U.S. approach, but rather a novel blend of state and private regulation. The article demonstrates the vital role of argument and persuasion in identifying Safe Harbor as a solution, and in negotiating its particulars. It finds that conventional game-theoretic accounts of bargaining are unable to explain the negotiation of Safe Harbor, and argues that constructivist approaches should pay more attention to how argument can disclose new possibilities of action.

This article highlights the dynamic interaction between Chinese, Thai, and Sino-Thai identity construction, on the one hand, and the mutual production of domestic and international politics, on the other. It questions how nationalism and cosmopolitanism are formulated by arguing against the popular notion that a diaspora is a cosmopolitan community situated in a foreign nation. Diasporic public spheres are critically examined to show how Sino-Thai identity is produced in relation first to neo-nationalism in Thailand and China, and second in specific contexts within Thailand that call into question essential notions of Thai, Chinese, and overseas Chinese identity. Diasporas thus both construct and deconstruct the seemingly opposing forces of nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The article uses the ethnographic approach of anthropological constructivism to build on sociological constructivism's focus on national identity, norms, and formal institutions. Rather than looking to culture as a substance, the article highlights how culture takes shape in context-sensitive relations between identity and difference. This ethnographic approach encourages one to look in different places for world politics, shifting away from state actors to transnational nonstate actors, from geopolitics and international political economy to economic culture, and from law and institutions as the foundations of international society to the less formal organizations of the diasporic public sphere. Diaspora thus not only adds new data to arguments about global/local relations—it helps one question the structures of world politics that look to the opposition between cosmopolitanism and nationalism.

German and Japanese counterterrorism policies differ from those adopted by the United States as well as from one another. Defeated in war, occupied, and partially remade during the Cold War, Germany and Japan became clients of the United States first, then close allies. Both countries offer easy tests to explore the extent to which the United States can hope to fight the war against terrorism, as it did the Cold War, supported by a broad coalition of like-minded states. On this central point the article's conclusion is not reassuring. In contrast to the Cold War, the relative importance of different self-conceptions and institutional practices appears to be larger and the systemic effects constraining national divergences smaller. Even among the closest allies of the United States, the very early stages of the war against terrorism point to substantial strains. Over a prolonged period such strains are likely to affect profoundly long-standing patterns of alliance.

Studies of the effects of interest groups on congressional roll-call voting typically view party and ideology as competing factors and rely on a factoral model of interests or a sectoral model including only interest groups with a direct stake in the vote. We depart from that strategy in several ways. We define interest groups at the level of Standard Industrial Classification two-digit codes and observe the universe of interests. For 1979–90, we use measures of geographically and nongeographically based economic interests to estimate the representative's party and ideology. We also consider the factor endowments of individuals within a district to examine their impact on floor votes. We then investigate the influence of these interests on members' party affiliation and ideology, as well as a pool of five floor votes on foreign trade, using instrumental variables for party and ideology. Economic interests account for a substantial portion of the variance in all cases, and models that also include other explanatory variables are highly accurate in estimating floor votes.

This article seeks to ground financial regulatory choices in domestic politics. Based on evidence from twenty-two industrialized countries, we argue that electoral rules—specifically, the extent to which they are centrifugal or centripetal—have a significant effect on whether the banks or their consumers pay for the security of the banking system. Moreover, despite the homogenizing effects of global financial integration, the political dynamics generated by these electoral rules continue to shape the nature and extent of prudential regulations that countries adopt in the place of banking cartels.

This article describes the basic components of the operating and normative systems as a conceptual framework for analyzing and understanding international law. There are many theoretical questions that follow from the framework that embodies a normative and operating system. We briefly outline one of those in this article, namely how the operating system changes. In doing so, we seek to address the puzzle of why operating system changes do not always respond to alterations in the normative sphere. A general theoretical argument focuses on four conditions. We argue that the operating system only responds to normative changes when response is “necessary” (stemming from incompatibility, ineffectiveness, or insufficiency) for giving the norm effect, and when the change is roughly coterminous with a dramatic change in the political environment (that is, “political shock”). We also argue, however, that opposition from leading states and domestic political factors might serve to block or limit such operating system change. These arguments are illustrated by reference to three areas of the operating system as they concern the norm against genocide.

We argue that greater degrees of international integration lead to lower levels of corruption, which we define as the misuse of public office for private gain. We theorize that international factors affect a country's level of corruption through two principal channels. One acts through economic incentives, altering for various actors the costs and benefits of engaging in corrupt acts. The second mode is normative. Prevailing norms in international society delegitimate and stigmatize corruption. Countries that are more integrated into international society are more exposed to economic and normative pressures against corruption. We therefore test the following hypothesis: the more a country is tied into international networks of exchange, communication, and organization, the lower its level of corruption is likely to be. The analysis of data from approximately 150 countries strongly confirms our expectation.

What explains the changes in International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionality? I argue that IMF conditionality agreements are influenced by supplementary financiers. The IMF regularly relies on external financing to supplement its loans to countries facing payments imbalances. As a result, these supplementary financiers are able to exercise leverage over the IMF and the design of its conditionality programs. I consider the influence of one type of supplementary financier, private financial institutions, on IMF conditionality. “Conclusions are supported by a data set of 249 conditionality arrangements, coded according to their terms, and two case studies.”

Why did Soviet foreign policy change during 1985–1991 from viewing conflict between capitalism and socialism as inevitable to favoring cooperation between states in solving global problems? Neither materialist analyses nor ideational accounts explain why Gorbachev adopted the radical new thinking instead of more conventional reform alternatives. We argue that the new thinking offered a means to enhance Soviet status despite retrenchment and accommodation of the West. By promoting principles underlying a new world order, the Soviet Union could achieve greatness based on the exercise of soft power. This explanation draws on social identity theory, which maintains that people are motivated for their social group to have a distinctive, positive identity. Lower status groups may enhance their perceived standing by finding a new domain for comparison or reevaluating an undesirable trait.

In the aftermath of war, what determines whether peace lasts or fighting resumes, and what can be done to foster durable peace? Drawing on theories of cooperation, I argue that belligerents can overcome the obstacles to peace by implementing measures that alter incentives, reduce uncertainty about intentions, and manage accidents. A counterargument suggests that agreements are epiphenomenal, merely reflecting the underlying probability of war resumption. I test hypotheses about the durability of peace using hazard analysis. Controlling for factors (including the decisiveness of victory, the cost of war, relative capabilities, and others) that affect the baseline prospects for peace, I find that stronger agreements enhance the durability of peace. In particular, measures such as the creation of demilitarized zones, explicit third-party guarantees, peacekeeping, and joint commissions for dispute resolution affect the duration of peace. Agreements are not merely scraps of paper; rather, their content matters in the construction of peace that lasts.

Understanding the conditions under which state leaders are willing to honor alliance commitments in war will increase knowledge about the escalation and diffusion of conflict and about the propensity of states to fulfill agreements under anarchy. New data analysis provides evidence that alliance commitments are fulfilled about 75 percent of the time. But how can one understand the failure of alliance partners to act as promised in the remaining 25 percent of cases? Formal modelers have deduced that because of the costs associated with alliances, state leaders who form alliances are likely to fulfill them; those alliances that are formed should be fairly reliable. I argue, therefore, that one can best account for violations of alliance agreements either through an understanding of the factors that reduce the costs of violation or through changes that have occurred since the alliance was formed. Using detailed data on alliance commitments between 1816 and 1944, I find evidence commensurate with this argument. Changes in the power of states or in their policymaking processes are powerful predictors of the failure to honor past commitments; and nondemocratic states and major powers, sets of states that I argue suffer lower costs from reneging on agreements, are more likely to violate treaties.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is an important element of the global economy and a central component of economic development strategies of both developed and developing countries. Numerous scholars theorize that the economic benefits of attracting multinational corporations come at tremendous political costs, arguing that democratic political systems attract lower levels of international investment than their authoritarian counterparts. Using both cross-sectional and time-series cross-sectional tests of the determinants of FDI for more than 100 countries, I generate results that are inconsistent with these dire predictions. Democratic political systems attract higher levels of FDI inflows both across countries and within countries over time. Democratic countries are predicted to attract as much as 70 percent more FDI than their authoritarian counterparts. In a final empirical test, I examine how democratic institutions affect country credibility by empirically analyzing the link between democracy and sovereign debt risk for about eighty countries from 1980 to 1998. These empirical tests challenge the conventional wisdom on the preferences of multinationals for authoritarian regimes.

If different producer groups have divergent interests concerning macroeconomic policies, how do societal preferences translate into state policy outcomes? I develop and test a party-as-agent framework for understanding the importance of societal preferences with regard to monetary policy under capital mobility. Following the principal-agent model, political parties function as agents for different societal principals. Rightist parties tend to represent internationally oriented business groups with preferences for monetary convergence, while leftist parties do the same for domestically oriented groups preferring monetary autonomy under capital mobility. I present statistical evidence showing that OECD leftist governments have been associated with more monetary autonomy and currency variability than their rightist counterparts, even after controlling for basic economic indicators such as inflation. The statistical evidence also shows that societal group size tends not to explain either autonomous monetary policy choices or exchangerate stability. Thus even large and wealthy societal groups may be unable to obtain their preferred policy outcome when their respective partisan agents do not hold government power.

Most researchers interested in the relationship between global markets and public policy focus on advanced industrial democracies. In contrast, we examine competing hypotheses as to globalization's effect on governments by expanding the scope of the discussion to include developing nations. More specifically, we investigate the relationship between international market integration and the evolving burden of taxation on capital, as well as the subsequent response of markets to shifts in tax policy in Latin America since the late 1970s. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, we find that global market forces are more constraining vis-à-vis tax policy in Latin America than in the world's wealthiest nations. Despite these market-based pressures, however, national politics continue to influence tax policy in Latin America in a manner consistent with findings on advanced industrial democracies. As such, developing nations continue to have some room to manipulate policy, though within the context of a more strictly neoliberal context than their counterparts in advanced industrial democracies.