Governance crisis and the Andean region: a political economy analysis

Includes bibliography

Relaciones econ��micas internacionales y cooperaci��n regional de Am��rica Latina y el Caribe = International economic relations and regional co-operation in Latin America and the Caribbean

Incluye Bibliograf��a

International economic relations and regional co-operation of Latin America = Las relaciones econ��micas internacionales y la cooperaci��n regional en Am��rica Latina

Includes bibliography

Essays on the political economy of European integration

Recently, a rising interest in political and economic integration/disintegration issues has been developed in the political economy field. This growing strand of literature partly draws on traditional issues of fiscal federalism and optimum public good provision and focuses on a trade-off between the benefits of centralization, arising from economies of scale or externalities, and the costs of harmonizing policies as a consequence of the increased heterogeneity of individual preferences in an international union or in a country composed of at least two regions. This thesis stems from this strand of literature and aims to shed some light on two highly relevant aspects of the political economy of European integration. The first concerns the role of public opinion in the integration process; more precisely, how economic benefits and costs of integration shape citizens' support for European Union (EU) membership. The second is the allocation of policy competences among different levels of government: European, national and regional. Chapter 1 introduces the topics developed in this thesis by reviewing the main recent theoretical developments in the political economy analysis of integration processes. It is structured as follows. First, it briefly surveys a few relevant articles on economic theories of integration and disintegration processes (Alesina and Spolaore 1997, Bolton and Roland 1997, Alesina et al. 2000, Casella and Feinstein 2002) and discusses their relevance for the study of the impact of economic benefits and costs on public opinion attitude towards the EU. Subsequently, it explores the links existing between such political economy literature and theories of fiscal federalism, especially with regard to normative considerations concerning the optimal allocation of competences in a union. Chapter 2 firstly proposes a model of citizens��� support for membership of international unions, with explicit reference to the EU; subsequently it tests the model on a panel of EU countries. What are the factors that influence public opinion support for the European Union (EU)? In international relations theory, the idea that citizens' support for the EU depends on material benefits deriving from integration, i.e. whether European integration makes individuals economically better off (utilitarian support), has been common since the 1970s, but has never been the subject of a formal treatment (Hix 2005). A small number of studies in the 1990s have investigated econometrically the link between national economic performance and mass support for European integration (Eichenberg and Dalton 1993; Anderson and Kalthenthaler 1996), but only making informal assumptions. The main aim of Chapter 2 is thus to propose and test our model with a view to providing a more complete and theoretically grounded picture of public support for the EU. Following theories of utilitarian support, we assume that citizens are in favour of membership if they receive economic benefits from it. To develop this idea, we propose a simple political economic model drawing on the recent economic literature on integration and disintegration processes. The basic element is the existence of a trade-off between the benefits of centralisation and the costs of harmonising policies in presence of heterogeneous preferences among countries. The approach we follow is that of the recent literature on the political economy of international unions and the unification or break-up of nations (Bolton and Roland 1997, Alesina and Wacziarg 1999, Alesina et al. 2001, 2005a, to mention only the relevant). The general perspective is that unification provides returns to scale in the provision of public goods, but reduces each member state���s ability to determine its most favoured bundle of public goods. In the simple model presented in Chapter 2, support for membership of the union is increasing in the union���s average income and in the loss of efficiency stemming from being outside the union, and decreasing in a country���s average income, while increasing heterogeneity of preferences among countries points to a reduced scope of the union. Afterwards we empirically test the model with data on the EU; more precisely, we perform an econometric analysis employing a panel of member countries over time. The second part of Chapter 2 thus tries to answer the following question: does public opinion support for the EU really depend on economic factors? The findings are broadly consistent with our theoretical expectations: the conditions of the national economy, differences in income among member states and heterogeneity of preferences shape citizens��� attitude towards their country���s membership of the EU. Consequently, this analysis offers some interesting policy implications for the present debate about ratification of the European Constitution and, more generally, about how the EU could act in order to gain more support from the European public. Citizens in many member states are called to express their opinion in national referenda, which may well end up in rejection of the Constitution, as recently happened in France and the Netherlands, triggering a European-wide political crisis. These events show that nowadays understanding public attitude towards the EU is not only of academic interest, but has a strong relevance for policy-making too. Chapter 3 empirically investigates the link between European integration and regional autonomy in Italy. Over the last few decades, the double tendency towards supranationalism and regional autonomy, which has characterised some European States, has taken a very interesting form in this country, because Italy, besides being one of the founding members of the EU, also implemented a process of decentralisation during the 1970s, further strengthened by a constitutional reform in 2001. Moreover, the issue of the allocation of competences among the EU, the Member States and the regions is now especially topical. The process leading to the drafting of European Constitution (even if then it has not come into force) has attracted much attention from a constitutional political economy perspective both on a normative and positive point of view (Breuss and Eller 2004, Mueller 2005). The Italian parliament has recently passed a new thorough constitutional reform, still to be approved by citizens in a referendum, which includes, among other things, the so called ���devolution���, i.e. granting the regions exclusive competence in public health care, education and local police. Following and extending the methodology proposed in a recent influential article by Alesina et al. (2005b), which only concentrated on the EU activity (treaties, legislation, and European Court of Justice���s rulings), we develop a set of quantitative indicators measuring the intensity of the legislative activity of the Italian State, the EU and the Italian regions from 1973 to 2005 in a large number of policy categories. By doing so, we seek to answer the following broad questions. Are European and regional legislations substitutes for state laws? To what extent are the competences attributed by the European treaties or the Italian Constitution actually exerted in the various policy areas? Is their exertion consistent with the normative recommendations from the economic literature about their optimum allocation among different levels of government? The main results show that, first, there seems to be a certain substitutability between EU and national legislations (even if not a very strong one), but not between regional and national ones. Second, the EU concentrates its legislative activity mainly in international trade and agriculture, whilst social policy is where the regions and the State (which is also the main actor in foreign policy) are more active. Third, at least two levels of government (in some cases all of them) are significantly involved in the legislative activity in many sectors, even where the rationale for that is, at best, very questionable, indicating that they actually share a larger number of policy tasks than that suggested by the economic theory. It appears therefore that an excessive number of competences are actually shared among different levels of government. From an economic perspective, it may well be recommended that some competences be shared, but only when the balance between scale or spillover effects and heterogeneity of preferences suggests so. When, on the contrary, too many levels of government are involved in a certain policy area, the distinction between their different responsibilities easily becomes unnecessarily blurred. This may not only leads to a slower and inefficient policy-making process, but also risks to make it too complicate to understand for citizens, who, on the contrary, should be able to know who is really responsible for a certain policy when they vote in national,local or European elections or in referenda on national or European constitutional issues.

From authoritarianism to upheaval : the political economy of the Syrian uprising and regime persistence

The ensuing bloodshed and deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Syria, the failure of the United Nations Security Council to reach a consensus on what action to take, and the involvement of contending external actors partially reflect the complexity of the current impasse. Despite the importance of regional and international factors, however, this papers attempts to argue that the domestic dynamics of the Syrian crisis have been vitally important in determining the course of the popular uprising and the regime���s response. In this, Syria���s crisis belongs with the Arab Spring the trajectories and prospects of which have been shaped by dynamics within regimes. It will be seen that the formal and informal institutional structure of the Ba���thist regime in Syria has been critical to its resilience and ability to stay united so far while attempting to crush a peaceful popular uprising that turned into insurgency in the face of the regime���s violent crackdown.

The effects of international politics on oil-exporting developing countries

International politics affects oil trade. But does it affect the oil-exporting developing countries more? We construct a firm-level dataset for all U.S. oil-importing companies over 1986-2008 to examine how these firms respond to changes in "political distance" between the U.S. and her trading partners, measured by divergence in their UN General Assembly voting patterns. Consistent with previous macro evidence, we first show that individual firms diversify their oil imports politically, even after controlling for unobserved firm heterogeneity. We conjecture that the political pattern of oil imports from these individual firms is driven by hold-up risks, because oil trade is often associated with backward vertical FDI. To the extent that developing countries have higher hold-up risks because of their weaker institutions, the political effect on oil trade should be more significant in the developing world. We find that oil import decisions are indeed more elastic when firms import from developing countries, although the reverse is true in the short run. Our results suggest that international politics can affect oil revenue and hence long-term development in the developing world.

Political influence in commercial and financial oil trading : the evidence from US firms

International politics affects oil trade. But do financial and commercial traders who participate in spot oil trading also respond to changes in international politics? We construct a firm-level dataset for all U.S. oil-importing companies over 1986-2008 to examine how these firms respond to increases in "political distance" between the U.S. and her trading partners, measured by divergence in their UN General Assembly voting patterns. Consistent with previous macro evidence, we first show that individual firms diversify their oil imports politically, even after controlling for unobserved firm heterogeneity. However, the political pattern of oil imports is not entirely driven by the concerns of hold-up risks, which exist when oil transactions via term contracts are associated with backward vertical FDI that is subject to expropriation. In particular, our results indicate that even financial and commercial traders significantly reduce their oil imports from U.S. political enemies. Interestingly, while these traders diversify their oil imports politically immediately after changes in international politics, other oil companies reduce their oil imports with a significant time lag. Our findings suggest that in designing regulations to avoid harmful repercussions on commodity and financial assets, policymakers need to understand the nature of political risk.

Mutual security act of 1951 : hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, Eighty-second Congress, first session, on S. 1762, a bill to promote the foreign policy and provide for the defense and general welfare of the United States by furnishing assistance to friendly nations in the interest of international security.

Hearings held: July 26-Aug. 9, 1951.

Political dictionary; forming a work of universal reference, both constitutional and legal; and embracing the terms of civil administration, of political economy and social relations, and of all the more important statistical departments of finance and commerce.

Mode of access: Internet.

The U.S. role in a changing world political economy : major issues for the 96th Congress : a compendium of papers /

Mode of access: Internet.

Employment opportunities for students trained in international relations and area studies; a directory of governmental and private enterprises which employ students trained in international affairs.

Includes bibliographical references.

Regionalism, globalisation and international order:Europe and Southeast Asia

New regionalism and globalization have been prominent themes in academic and political debates since the beginning of the 1990s. Despite the considerable amount of scholarly attention that the new regionalism has received in recent years, its full empirical and theoretical potential has yet to be fully investigated. This illuminating study provides an overview of new avenues in theorizing regionalism and proposes a consolidated framework for analysis and comparison. Offering a comparative historical perspective of European and Southeast Asian regionalism, it presents new and imaginative insights into the theory and practice of regionalism and the links between regional developments, globalization and international order. Contents: Introduction; Regionalism and integration theory the first wave: traditional approaches; New regionalism the second wave: towards a framework for comparative regionalism; Regionalism in the EU and ASEAN during the Cold War: the first wave; Second-wave regionalism: the post-Cold War period; Identifying regions: emerging regional identities in Europe and East Asia; Conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.