Economic Interdependence and International Conflict or When Nature Goes Public

Economic Interdependence and International Conflict: New Perspectives on an Enduring Debate

Author: Edward Deering Mansfield

The claim that open trade promotes peace has sparked heated debate among scholars and policymakers for centuries. Until recently, however, this claim remained untested and largely unexplored. Economic Interdependence and International Conflict clarifies the state of current knowledge about the effects of foreign commerce on political-military relations and identifies the avenues of new research needed to improve our understanding of this relationship. The contributions to this volume offer crucial insights into the political economy of national security, the causes of war, and the politics of global economic relations.
Edward D. Mansfield is Hum Rosen Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Brian M. Pollins is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University and a Research Fellow at the Mershon Center.

Foreign Affairs

The relationship of interdependence to conflict is one of the oldest questions in the study of international relations. Liberals have long held that, as Cordell Hull once said, "if trade crosses borders, soldiers won't." Realists, on the other hand, point to 1914: despite extensive economic ties, European governments marched to war. This book provides a useful survey of the current status of this old debate. Scholars have only recently begun to explore these questions through rigorous empirical investigation; even so, no consensus has emerged, and the dominant message of this volume is that the relationship is complex and contingent. Mansfield, for example, argues that the effect of trade flows on conflict depends on the institutional context of commerce. Other authors note that domestic economic conditions and the character of states mediate the impact of interdependence: trade can encourage democracy, as it has in China, or stoke the fires of nationalism. Ultimately, this book offers fresh insights but does not settle the basic question.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments
	Interdependence and Conflict: An Introduction	1
	Pax Mercatoria and the Theory of the State	31
	Economic Interdependence, the Democratic State, and the Liberal Peace	44
	Internationalization, Coalitions, and Regional Conflict and Cooperation	60
	Assessing the Role of Trade as a Source of Costly Signals	89
	The Classical Liberals Were Just Lucky: A Few Thoughts about Interdependence and Peace	96
	Trade and Conflict: Uncertainty, Strategic Signaling, and Interstate Disputes	111
	Economic Interdependence, Opportunity Costs, and Peace	127
	Liberal Hopes with No Guarantees	148
	Violence and Disease: Trade as a Suppressor of Conflict when Suppressors Matter	159
	The Strategy of Economic Engagement: Theory and Practice	175
	Empirical Support for the Liberal Peace	189
	Models and Measurers in Trade-Conflict Research	207
	Preferential Peace: Why Preferential Trading Arrangements Inhibit Interstate Conflict	222
	Trade and Conflict: Does Measurement Make a Difference?	239
	Measuring Conflict and Cooperation: An Assessment	254
	Temporal Dynamics and Heterogeneity in the Quantitative Study of International Conflict	273
	Concerns with Endogeneity in Statistical Analysis: Modeling the Interdependence between Economic Ties and Conflict	289
	Qualitative Research on Economic Interdependence and Conflict: Overcoming Methodological Hurdles	310
	Computer Simulations of International Trade and Conflict	324
	Contributors	345
	Index	347

New interesting book: Managing Expectations or Foundations of Empowerment Evaluation

When Nature Goes Public: The Making and Unmaking of Bioprospecting in Mexico

Author: Corinne P Hayden

Bioprospecting--the exchange of plants for corporate promises of royalties or community development assistance--has been lauded as a way to develop new medicines while offering southern nations and indigenous communities an incentive to preserve their rich biodiversity. But can pharmaceutical profits really advance conservation and indigenous rights? How much should companies pay and to whom? Who stands to gain and lose? The first anthropological study of the practices mobilized in the name and in the shadow of bioprospecting, this book takes us into the unexpected sites where Mexican scientists and American companies venture looking for medicinal plants and local knowledge.

Cori Hayden tracks bioprospecting's contentious new promise--and the contradictory activities generated in its name. Focusing on a contract involving Mexico's National Autonomous University, Hayden examines the practices through which researchers, plant vendors, rural collectors, indigenous cooperatives, and other actors put prospecting to work. By paying unique attention to scientific research, she provides a key to understanding which people and plants are included in the promise of "selling biodiversity to save it"--and which are not. And she considers the consequences of linking scientific research and rural "enfranchisement" to the logics of intellectual property.

Roving across UN protocols, botanical collecting histories, Mexican nationalist agendas, neoliberal property regimes, and North-South relations, When Nature Goes Public charts the myriad, emergent publics that drive and contest the global market in biodiversity and its futures.