Rawi Abdelal

Identity as a Variable

As scholarly interest in the concept of identity continues to grow, social identities are proving to be crucially important for understanding contemporary life. Despite—or perhaps because of—the sprawl of different treatments of identity in the social sciences, the concept has remained too analytically loose to be as useful a tool as the literature’s early promise had suggested. We propose to solve this longstanding problem by developing the analytical rigor and methodological imagination that will make identity a more useful variable for the social sciences. This article offers more precision by defining collective identity as a social category that varies along two dimensions—content and contestation. Content describes the meaning of a collective identity. The content of social identities may take the form of four non-mutually-exclusive types: constitutive norms; social purposes; relational comparisons with other social categories; and cognitive models. Contestation refers to the degree of agreement within a group over the content of the shared category. Our conceptualization thus enables collective identities to be compared according to the agreement and disagreement about their meanings by the members of the group. The final section of the article looks at the methodology of identity scholarship. Addressing the wide array of methodological options on identity—including discourse analysis, surveys, and content analysis, as well as promising newer methods like experiments, agent-based modeling, and cognitive mapping—we hope to provide the kind of brush clearing that will enable the field to move forward methodologically as well.

Measuring identity : a guide for social scientists

Identity is a central concept in the social sciences. We present a laboratory experiment that measures the effects of induced group identity on participant social preferences. We find that when participants are matched with an ingroup member (as opposed to an outgroup member) they show more charity concerns when they have a higher payoff and less envy when they have a lower payoff. Likewise, while participants are more likely to reward an ingroup match for good behavior, they are less likely to punish an ingroup match for misbehavior. Furthermore, participants are significantly more likely to choose social-welfare-maximizing actions when matched with an ingroup member. All results are consistent with the notion that participants are more altruistic towards an ingroup match. As a result, ingroup matching generates significantly higher expected earnings.

Writing the Rules of Global Finance: France, Europe, and Capital Liberalization

ABSTRACT Why were capital controls orthodox in 1944, but heretical in 1997? The scholarly literature, following the conventional wisdom, focuses on the role of the United States in promoting capital liberalization. Although the United States encouraged capital liberalization bilaterally, US policy makers never embraced multilateral rules that codified the norm of capital mobility. Rather, European policy makers wrote the most important rules in favour of the free movement of capital. Paradoxically, French policy makers in particular played decisive roles. For the debates that mattered most—in the EU, OECD, and IMF—the United States was, respectively, irrelevant, inconsequential and indifferent. Europe did not capitulate to global capital. Rather, French and other European policy makers created todays liberal international financial regime. French and European policy makers have promoted a rule-based, ‘managed’ globalization of finance, whereas US policy makers have tended to embrace an ad hoc globalization based on the accumulation of bilateral bargains. Once liberal rules were codified in the EU and OECD, they constituted the policy practices of ‘European’ and ‘developed’ states, for which capital controls are no longer considered a legitimate policy tool. During the middle of the 1990s, the IMF debated new, universal rules in favour of capital freedom, but the proposal was defeated, primarily by the US Congress, after the financial crises of 1997–98. By then the vast majority of the worlds capital flows were already governed by the liberal rules of the EU and OECD.

Constructing the International Economy

The world is, as they say, complicated. The world economy is especially so. Unpredicted events often infl uence markets in improbable ways. Individuals and organizations—fi rms, governments—surprise observers by behaving in ways that appear contrary to their presumed material interests as events defy the categories and concepts we construct to contain them. Crises recur with worrisome frequency. As the world internationalizes, these complications become more profound. Yet it would be diffi cult to fi nd evidence of these complications in much of the scholarly study of international political economy (IPE). Scholars of IPE have arrived at a comfortable certainty about how the world works. Most see the environment in which fi rms and governments operate as predominantly material. The incentives, they argue, that actors derive from the material structure of the economy determine what fi rms and governments do. These scholarly constructs are generally presumed by their constructors to correspond to reality rather than to represent stylizations of the heuristics that, we assume, inform decision making within organizations (Blyth 2007a). As their materialist theories and rationalist models become more sophisticated, these scholars have hoped that the world will become more knowable. And to some extent, progress has, in fact, been made. We grow more and more satisfi ed with our ability to explain the world to ever more detailed degrees. Tremendous gaps in our understanding still exist, however, because scholarship based on the connection between observer-deduced material incentives _S _E _L

Strategy, Economic Relations, and the Definition of National Interests

This article addresses the ways that economic incentives shape national interests and foreign policies, applying arguments that are derived from Albert Hirschmans National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (Albert O. Hirschman, National Power and the Structure of Foreign Trade (1945; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). Hirschmans focus was on the political consequences of asymmetric economic relationships, and he illustrated these with a study of German trade strategy in the interwar period. National Power also illustrated how the pattern of economic relations can profoundly affect international politics by shaping the way governments define their interests. Although states must always provide for their own security, different domestic political actors typically have competing visions of their countrys best interests. Basic foreign policy choices often result from domestic political struggles, and the foreign economic policies of other states affect the outcomes of those internal political contests.

The profits of power: Commerce and realpolitik in Eurasia

ABSTRACT Although the energy trade is the single most important element of nearly all European countries’ relations with Russia, Europe has been divided by both worldview and practice. Why, in the face of the common challenge of dependence on imported Russian gas, have national reactions to such vulnerability varied so dramatically across the continent? And why have a handful of French, German, and Italian corporations somehow taken responsibility for formulating the energy strategy – and thus the Russia policy – for essentially all of Europe? The resolutions of these two puzzles are, I show, interlinked; they also demand theoretical innovation. With several case studies – of Gazproms decision-making during the 2006 and 2009 gas crises, and of the response of western and central Europe to their gas dependence – I find that: firms are driving these political outcomes; those firms are motivated by profits but employ sociological conventions along their ways; and firms generally seek the necessary inter-firm, cross-border cooperation that will deliver corporate performance. Finally, I conclude that the field will ultimately require a framework that puts firms at its center.

Managed globalization: doctrine, practice and promise

Two alternate visions for shaping and explaining the governance of economic globalization have been in competition for the past 20 years: an ad hoc, laissez-faire vision promoted by the United States versus a managed vision relying on multilateral rules and international organizations promoted by the European Union. Although the American vision prevailed in the past decade, the current worldwide crisis gives a new life and legitimacy to the European vision. This essay explores how this European vision, often referred to as ‘managed globalization’, has been conceived and implemented and how the rules that Europe fashioned in trade and finance actually shaped the world economy. In doing so, we highlight the paradox that managed globalization has been a force for liberalization.

Sovereign Wealth in Abu Dhabi

By the turn of the century, oil had already made the tiny emirate of Abu Dhabi rich beyond anyones wildest dreams. A sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), has invested extra oil revenues abroad for more than thirty years and amassed a still-growing portfolio worth approximately

Memories of nations and states: Institutional history and national identity in post-Soviet Eurasia

750–900 billion. ADIA is widely believed to be the worlds largest sovereign wealth fund – indeed the worlds largest institutional investor. But Abu Dhabi is not yet a “developed” economy. So, in 2002, the Mubadala Development Company was established as a government-owned investment vehicle. Unlike ADIAs mandate to build and manage a financial portfolio, Mubadalas charge was to develop Abu Dhabi. According to some observers, ADIA was a “sovereign savings fund,” while Mubadala was a government-owned investment firm. Mubadala is supposed to invest the wealth of the emirate in activities that would diversify the economy away from energy and into industry and services. Although each Mubadala investment is supposed to earn large returns, the strategy balances financial against “strategic” returns. ADIA and Mubadala are the institutional architecture to manage the wealth of the Abu Dhabi sovereign.

Contested Currency: Russia's Rouble in Domestic and International Politics

The national identities of post-Soviet societies profoundly influenced the politics and economics of Eurasia during the 1990s. These identities varied along two distinct but related dimensions: their content and contestation. Nationalist movements throughout post-Soviet Eurasia invoked their nations in support of specific purposes, which frequently cast Russia as the nation’ s most important “ other” and the state from which autonomy and security must be sought. Nationalists therefore offered specific proposals for the content of their societies’ collective identities. But not everyone in these societies shared the priorities of their nationalist movements. Indeed, the international relations among post-Soviet states often revolved around one central question: did post-Soviet societies and politicians agree with their nationalists or not? The former Communists played a decisive role in contesting the content of national identity. One of the defining differences among post-Soviet states during the 1990s was the political and ideological relationship in each one between the formerly Communist e lites and the nationalists— whether the former Communists marginalized the nationalists, arrested them, coopted them, bargained with them, or even tried to become like them. These different relationships revealed different degrees and kinds of societal consensus about national identity after Soviet rule. Post-Soviet societies sorted themselves into roughly three groups. 1 One included the former republics on the Baltic littoral: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. In the three new Baltic states the nationalist movements’ authority and fundamental goals were relatively uncontested during the 1990s; their demands for political-economic reorientation toward Europe, their interpretation of dependence on Russia as a security threat, and their portrayal of Russia as the nation’ s defining “ other” influenced their governments’ policies. Even Communist successor parties in the three states adopted the rhetoric and goals of the nationalists. 2 In a second group of countries— including Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova— the nationalists and former Communists remained deadlocked, their respective bases of support divided largely along regional lines. Regional contestation of national identity in these four states prevented their governments from decisively choosing a politicaleconomic orientation toward either West or East. Finally, a third group of states—