Bruce E. Moon

Political Similarity and American Foreign Trade Patterns

International economic flows have become an increasingly prominent component of both international relations and domestic politics over the last two decades. Even though politically motivated governments have played a growing role in shaping these transactions, empirical studies have largely ignored the political determinants of international trade patterns. This study addresses that important gap in our understanding of the international political economy with particular reference to United States trade. We theorize that two aspects of the relations between nations should predict enhanced trade levels: similarity in political system and similarity in foreign policy orientation. We test this proposition for U.S. exports to 76 importing nations over an 18-year period in a pooled time- series design that controls for known influences on trade flows. Our results suggest that these two political factors have a substantial and predictable impact on U.S. export patterns. We consider some possible criticisms of our results along with some suggestions for future research.

The Military Burden and Basic Human Needs

This study examines ways in which military factors influence the provision of basic human needs once the effects of aggregated social wealth and certain political aspects of the state are removed. Three channels of influence are examined: the defense burden on the economy, the scope of military participation in society, and military control of the ruling regime. We analyze these influences by regressing an index of physical well-being, the PQLI, on measures of each factor for a sample of 116 contemporary national societies. Our findings indicate that military attributes do indeed have some impact on the provision of basic needs even with other important influences removed. Military participation is found to make a positive contribution to welfare performance; military spending, on the other hand, appears to inhibit welfare outcomes, but only when controlling for the size of the military establishment. Military control of the government has no discernible effect on our measure of welfare performance.

Consensus or compliance? Foreign-policy change and external dependence

The foreign-policy behavior of weak states, conventional wisdom holds, is largely determined by a process of bargaining with a dominant state. Compliance with the dominant states preferences is viewed as necessary to the maintenance of economic exchange relations that benefit the weak state. Evidence for such a theory has been found in cross-sectional correlations of aid and trade with UN voting. However, such empirical studies have ignored alternative explanations, overlooked elements of the statistical record, and failed to examine the logic of the bargaining model. The assumptions of the bargaining model are vulnerable to criticism; an alternative model emphasizes multiple constraints on the behavior of both the strong and the weak nation in an asymmetrical dyad. Reanalysis of the data uncovers strong evidence of an explanation for foreign-policy continuity rooted in dependency. Dependency permeates and transforms the political system of dependent nations, thus bringing about constrained consensus rather than compliance. Furthermore, the data provide strong evidence for an explanation of foreign-policy change in both nations that centers on regime change, not on bargaining with an external actor.

The Foreign Policy of the Dependent State

This paper probes the process by which the foreign policy orientation of weak nations comes to reflect the preferences of more powerful nations. Two general conceptions of the nature of this process are identified. The most common view, that of the bargaining model, regards the policymaking process of weak states as relatively autonomous though influenced by reward/punishment actions of a more powerful nation which condition the weaker partner. By contrast, the dependency model stresses the long-term character of the influence and the indirect path by which it occurs. It regards the decisionmaking process as imbedded in a social/political structure which is itself distorted by the dependency relationship. Both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal analysis relying upon UN voting data and measures of the relations between the United States and 88 less-developed nations indicate that the explanatory power of the bargaining model is relatively limited and that the dependency model is a more appropriate conception. Though cross-sectionally, both reward behavior (various forms of aid) and dependency-indicating transactions (e.g. treaties, trade, arms sales, IGO memberships, consultations, etc.) exhibit correlations with voting behavior, those of the latter are generally considerably stronger. Further, longitudinal analysis exposes much greater stability in voting behavior over time—and much less correlation with aid-giving—than one would expect if bargaining were present. This stable pro-American behavior is precisely that which would be predicted by a theory resting upon long-term distortions implicit in an enduring and penetrating structural relationship.

Basic needs and growth-welfare trade-offs

Can nations achieve both growth and equity or must one value be sacrificed to attain the other? The controversy over trade-offs between aggregate economic performance and social welfare lies at the heart of recent debates on development policy. This study reviews these debates, identifies the specific forms of likely trade-offs, and examines the evidence over a twenty-five-year period for a sample of 104 nations. We employ a cross-national panel design to ask two questions: (1) Does basic needs achievement compromise future growth? (2) Does rapid growth undermine future needs achievement? We find no evidence for the orthodox view that basic needs fulfillment or improvement compromise growth. To the contrary, we find that basic needs attainment facilitates long-term economic growth. The evidence is somewhat less clear regarding the second question, although it appears that rapid growth does not produce substantial basic needs improvements.

Voting Counts: Participation in the Measurement of Democracy*

The measures of democracy commonly used in empirical research suffer notable limitations, primarily the exclusion of participation. As a result, quantitative studies may undervalue the effect of democracy on important social outcomes or misinterpret the aspect of democracy responsible for that effect. We respond by introducing and validating two variants of a new indicator, the Participation Enhanced Polity Score (PEPS), which augments institutional factors with the breadth of citizen participation. We demonstrate, using statistical evidence on democratic persistence, basic needs fulfillment, and gender equality, that no measure of democracy can be considered an accurate representation of its basic character without directly including participation as a core component.

Long Time Coming: Prospects for Democracy in Iraq

Prospects for democracy in Iraq should be assessed in light of the historical precedents of nations with comparable political experiences. Saddam Husseins Iraq was an unusually extreme autocracy, which lasted an unusually long time. Since the end of the nineteenth century, only thirty nations have experienced an autocracy as extreme as Iraqs for a period exceeding two decades. The subsequent political experience of those nations offers a pessimistic forecast for Iraq and similar nations. Only seven of the thirty are now democratic, and only two of them have become established democracies; the democratic experiments in the other five are still in progress. Among the seven, the average time required to transit the path from extreme autocracy to coherent, albeit precarious, democracy has been fifty years, and only two have managed this transition in fewer than twenty-five years. Even this sober assessment is probably too optimistic, because Iraq lacks the structural conditions that theory and evidence indicate have been necessary for successful democratic transitions in the past. Thus, the odds of Iraq achieving democracy in the next quarter century are close to zero, at best about two in thirty, but probably far less.

Domestic political conflict and basic needs outcomes: An Empirical Assessment

This study undertakes an empirical investigation of the near universal assumption that domestic political conflict is invariably harmful to the societies in which it occurs. In particular, we examine the implications of domestic conflict for the provision of basic human needs once the known effects of aggregate national wealth are removed. Using a variation of the panel regression model, we regress an index of basic needs satisfaction on measures of domestic conflict scope and intensity, along with suitable controls, for a sample of 85 contemporary nations. The findings indicate that the intensity measure is associated with long-term improvements in basic needs while the scope of conflict carries a negative impact for basic needs outcomes.

Regionalism Is Back! Now What?

The Political Economy of Regionalism edited by Edward D. Mansfield and Helen V. Milner Network Power: Japan and Asia edited by Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi

The great divide in microfinance: Political economy in microcosm

Woller, Dunford, and Woodworth (1999) and Morduch (2000) were among the first to discuss the existence of a “schism” in the study of microfinance. Although the exact dimensions of this divide are stated differently by various authors, the existence of alternative schools of thought is widely accepted (Brett, 2006; Bhatt & Tang, 2001; Mitlin, 2002; Robinson, 2001; Rhyne, 1998).