William J. Long

Trade and Technology Incentives and Bilateral Cooperation

This article develops a theory of how economic incentives alter a states external payoff environment and affect its internal preferences and choices. Externally, incentives offer an exchange of economic gains from trade and technology transfer for political concessions. Incentives may be compelling in altering state behavior and fostering bilateral cooperation over time, especially when: (1) both the sender and the recipient stand to gain in economic terms through the creation of new trade; (2) the recipients total utility for the goods or gains from trade remains substantially positive (this situation typically occurs when technology is a part of the package because technology alters a states overall productive capacity); and (3) the sender has market power in the traded goods. Internally, incentives shape state preferences in a cooperative direction in four important ways, in contrast to sanctions. First, societal actors in the sender state who stand to gain economically from expanded trade lend support over time for an incentive thereby improving the policys legitimacy and endurance. Public opinion is likely to follow the lead of elites. Second, certain actors in the recipient state who can appropriate the economic benefits tend to ally with the sender state and reinforce its efforts to move the recipients policy preference in the direction of the senders intent. Third, incentives are unlikely to create an impetus to elude or undermine its influence through the search for third-party suppliers or to create the economic conditions that invite new entrants. Finally, incentives convey more-precise information to decision-makers in the recipient state and in a manner that is unlikely to be filtered or avoided by them. As for the dependent variable of international cooperation, the theoretical argument commends investigation of diffuse factors that shape state preferences and influence cooperation. While incentives are “under-theorized” in the international relations literature (despite considerable interest in economic coercion), they are not unnoticed by policy-makers. This article examines three pertinent historical case studies, in part to help generate hypotheses on how incentives work but also to offer some policy advice as to when incentives might work and what factors contribute to or detract from their practical effectiveness. The article concludes with suggestions for further research.

War and Reconciliation

Many scholarly disciplines as well as popular opinion recognize reconciliation as a powerful force in restoring social order following conflict. Reconciliation between countries following a war or a series of wars has attracted little attention from international relations scholars, however. This paper uses four international events datasets developed by others and a reconciliation events dataset assembled by the authors to determine whether reconciliation events lead to a discernable decrease in the level of conflict between former belligerents. The results suggest that reconciliation events signal a change towards more cooperative and less conflictual bilateral relations in a number of cases. The impact of reconciliation is hardly uniformly positive, however, and limitations of the data constrain what can be asserted. The paper concludes with thoughts on continuing this inquiry to determine the forces that give rise to reconciliation and the factors that might explain the variance in the dependent varia...

Nonproliferation as a Goal of Japanese Foreign Assistance

Conventional wisdom holds that Japanese economic assistance, both Official Development Assistance (ODA) and otherwise,1 is either a response to foreign (primarily U.S.) pressure—the so-called gaiatsu thesis2—or is motivated by Japan’s desire to expand export and investment markets for Japanese firms—the neomercantile thesis.3 Kent Calder explained Japan’s vulnerability to gaiatsu as a result of the inability of its government to take policy initiatives, which rendered Japan a “reactive state.” Japan’s immobility, he argues, stems from its multiple bureaucratic players and a weak, fragmented legislature.4 With regard to foreign assistance, Calder maintains, “despite some self-interested nuances, Japanese foreign aid policies also appear reactive to foreign pressure as well as broadly supportive of U.S. strategic purposes in the global political economy.”

Ideas, beliefs, and nuclear policies: The cases of South Africa and Ukraine

Dr. William J. Long is Professor and Director of Graduate Programs at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He also serves as Co-Director of the European Union Center of the University System of Georgia and Research Director for Georgia Tech’s Center for International Business Education and Research. He is the author of US Export Control Policy (Columbia University Press, 1989) and Economic Incentives and Bilateral Cooperation (University of Michigan Press, 1996). Dr. Suzette R. Grillot is Assistant Professor in Political Science and International Academic Programs at the University of Oklahoma. She is coeditor of Arms on the Market: Reducing the Risk of Proliferation in the Former Soviet Union (Routledge, 1998) and Arms and the Environment: Preventing the Perils of Disarmament (forthcoming).

Economic incentives and bilateral cooperation

Can the United States meet its security challenges through economic incentives and expanded commercial exchange? How can market access and technology transfer build stable long-term cooperative relations between countries? Incentives have been prescribed for diverse problems including dissuading North Korea from developing nuclear weapons or convincing the Ukraine to destroy them, and encouraging developing nations to adopt less environmentally dangerous economic policies. Unfortunately, international relations scholars have seldom considered the operation and possible uses of economic incentives as a means of international influence.William Long uses three pertinent historical incentive cases to develop an original theory of how trade and technology incentives work to affect interstate cooperation and to provide some practical guidelines for policymakers regarding when incentives work and the factors that enhance or limit their success.Theoretically, this book develops a two-level explanation of how economic incentives can alter the structure of a states external payoffs and affect its internal preferences and choices to induce cooperation by the recipient. Externally, according to Long, incentives offer an exchange of economic gains from trade and technology transfer for political concessions and are compelling when the sender has market power in the traded goods, both recipient and sender stand to gain from economic relations and the recipients total utility for the gains from trade remains positive. Internally, incentives shape state preferences in a cooperative direction by building alliances with actors in the recipient state who will benefit from the incentives: by creating support for the incentives in the sending state among actors who will benefit from the incentives and, unlike sanctions, by not encouraging the recipient state to find ways to evade the impact of the action or to filter out the message behind the incentives.This book contributes to the scholarly literature on international cooperation and economic statecraft. It will also engage policymakers and practitioners involved in a wide range of issues where incentives are an option.William J. Long is Associate Professor, School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology.

The emotive causes of recurrent international conflicts.

Many international conflicts are recurrent, and many of these are characterized by periods of violence, including wars, that are hard to describe as planned products of rational decision-making. Analysis of these conflicts according to rational-choice international-relations theory or constructivist approaches has been less revealing than might have been hoped. We consider the possibility that emotive causes could better explain, or at least improve the explanation of, observed patterns. We offer three emotive models of recurrent conflict and we outline a method by which the reliability of emotive explanations derived from these models could be tested prospectively.

Rich digital media as a tool in post-conflict truth and reconciliation

Modern rich digital media (such as interactive systems with audio and video as well as text) have not been robustly deployed as a tool in the processes of peace-building, healing and reconciliation in nations emerging from civil conflict. This article studies the use of rich digital media in Liberia, a country that has only recently emerged from a protracted and intense civil war. The authors demonstrate that, when rich digital media are used to target processes of truth and reconciliation, they enhance Liberians’ feeling of self-efficacy – their self-assessed sense of personal competence to deal effectively with stressful situations. This increased self-efficacy was not present in a control group. The authors argue that self-efficacy is a critical component for forgiveness and truth-telling which, in turn, is a fundamental process in reconciliation and healing. These results are based on a survey of over 100 Liberians in Monrovia, the capital city. Participants interacted with a rich digital media system, took pre- and post-interaction self-efficacy inventories, and responded to additional questions. The findings suggest that rich digital media focused on truth and reconciliation can contribute to post-conflict healing.

Proliferating problems:: U.S. management of strategic technology after the cold war

Abstract The end of the Cold War, political revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, the globalization of commercial markets, and the proliferation of dangerous technologies to many unstable regions present new challenges for the management of strategic technology. Technology controls designed to enhance national security must address the economic costs of such restrictions. In relations with former Cold War adversaries, technology transfer policy must find innovative ways to encourage cooperative problem solving and pluralistic, democratic, and market-oriented reforms. Also, policy must respond to new threats posed by proliferation in a way that recognizes the limits of technology controls and the need to balance U.S. control interests with demands for technologies with legitimate commercial purposes. Recently, U.S. strategic technology policy has reduced barriers that have traditionally impeded the ability of U.S. exporters to do business in the global marketplace, and U.S. policy is evolving to play a cautious but constructive role in East-West relations. To address more effectively the challenge of proliferation, however, policy makers must better coordinate technology controls with U.S. arms, aid, and diplomatic initiatives toward nations and regions of concern. The first steps toward more effective policy will involve breaking down inter-agency barriers domestically and strengthening emerging multilateral institutions.