Introduction 7created the institutions—the Marshall Plan, the Bretton Woods agreement, the
European Union—of today’s international political economy. We must therefore
search within these nations for the true roots of the shift in trade policy in North
America and Western Europe.
The example of trade policy illustrates that serious scholars can arrive at strikingly
different analytic conclusions on the basis of the same information. For some,
domestic political and economic pressures caused the adoption of auto import
restrictions, whereas for others, geopolitical, economic, or technological trends
in the international environment explain the same action.
The second dimension along which analysts differ in their interpretation of
trends in the international political economy has to do with the relative importance
of politicians and political institutions, on the one hand, and private social actors,
on the other. The interaction between state and society—between national
governments and the social forces they, variously, represent, rule, or ignore—is
indeed another dividing line within the field of international political economy.
In studying the politics of the world economy, questions continually arise about
the relative importance of independent government action and institutions versus
a variety of societal pressures on the policy-making process.
The role of the state is at the center of all political science; international political
economy is no exception. Foreign economic policy is made, of course, by foreign
economic policymakers; this much is trivial. But just as scholars debate the relative
importance of overseas and domestic determinants of foreign economic policies,
so, too, they disagree over whether policymakers represent a logic of their own or
instead reflect domestic socioeconomic interest groups or classes. According to
one view, the state is relatively insulated or autonomous from the multitude of
social, political, and economic pressures that emanate from society. The most that
pluralistic interest groups can produce is a confused cacophony of complaints
and demands; coherent national policy comes from the conscious actions of national
leaders and those who occupy positions of political power and from the institutions
in which they operate. The state, in this view, molds society, and foreign economic
policy is one part of this larger mold.
The opposing school of thought asserts that policymakers are little more than
the transmitters of underlying societal demands. At best, the political system can
organize and regularize these demands, but the state is essentially a tool in the
hands of socioeconomic and political interests. Foreign economic policy, like other
state actions, evolves in response to social demands; it is society that molds the
state, and not the other way around.
We can illustrate the difference in focus with the previously discussed example
of trade policy in North America and Western Europe before and after World War
II. Many of those who look first and foremost at state actors would emphasize the
dramatic change in the overall foreign policy of these governments after World
War II, starting with the Atlantic Alliance, which was formed to meet the demands
of European reconstruction, and the Cold War, which required that the American
market be opened to foreign goods in order to stimulate the economies of the
country’s allies. Eventually, the European Union arose as a further effort to cement
the Atlantic Alliance and bolster it against the Soviet Union.