International Relations

Lloyd Gruber, associate professor, examines the political logic of institutional design in “Power Politics and the Institutionalization of International Relations,” a chapter for a forthcoming volume on power and global governance. In it, he asks how the institutional preferences of powerful states might be altered by the realization that the regional or multilateral arrangements they are about to inaugurate will engender strong opposition, if not immediately then perhaps a year or two in the future. Focusing on the case of European monetary unification, Gruber’s analysis suggests that states often try to mitigate this problem by endowing their new institutional structures with highly elaborate supranational dispute resolution mechanisms.

Shifting the spotlight from the international realm to the domestic, Gruber’s latest research examines the impact of trade openness on the efficacy of domestic redistribution mechanisms and institutions. In “Globalization and Political Conflict: The Long-Term Prognosis,” a paper delivered at the 2002 meeting of the American Political Science Association, Gruber traces globalization’s negative political externalities to its overlooked spatial effects: the more open a society’s economy, the more likely that society’s “haves” are isolated geographically from the “have-nots.” Gruber uses both cross-sectional and time-series data to assess globalization’s long-term demographic effects, concluding that globalization encourages economic segregation, which, in turn, encourages policy paralysis and other forms of domestic political conflict.

Associate Professor Duncan Snidal continues his study of the international policy economy in his paper (with Kenneth Abbott, Northwestern University), in the Journal of Legal Studies (2002), “Values and Interests: International Legalization in the Fight against Corruption.” Using the various turning points in the development of the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention as an example, he develops a simple model of the interaction of “value” and “interest” actors that shows how their different logics of behavior and distinctive strategies drive the politics of legalization. Snidal is also the author of a chapter in The New Bargaining (Daniel W. Drezner, editor), entitled “Taking International Institutions Seriously” (with Alex Thompson).

Snidal, again with coauthor Kenneth Abbott, in “Filling the Folk Theorem” is also examining the effect of the 1997 OECD law that prevents companies from bribing diplomats. He is also preparing a rational design of international institutions in reply to a critique in a special issue of International Organization.

Professor and Deputy Dean Charles Glaser continues to examine several issues on the international front. In a recent chapter in Realism and the Balancing of Power (Colin Elman and John Vasquez, editors, Prentice-Hall, 2003), he analyzes an emerging debate in international relations theory about the impact of the international system on states’ decisions to compete or cooperate. He assesses several strands of realism that have developed since the publication of Kenneth Waltz’s seminal work, Theory of International Politics, and argues that many of the evolving variants of realism make significant improvements to Waltz’s theory.

Glaser was among several leading American realists asked to respond to the provocative statement that realism is of little value as we enter the twenty-first century. In “Structural Realism in a More Complex World,” forthcoming in Review of International Studies, he responds by arguing that the lack of opposition to American hegemony does not pose a serious problem for structural realism, and that realism does see an important role for international institutions, although one that is less significant than critics suggest.

Glaser continues to pursue his research on national missile defense and an international relations theory project on arms races. He is also beginning to work on the new U.S. national security strategy, focusing on its two key elements: preventive war to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and overwhelming military superiority, designed to discourage and prevent challenges to U.S. hegemony.