AMERICAN TRADE POLITICS AND THE TRIUMPH OF GLOBALISM
A deep and unresolved tension exists within American trade politics between the nations promotion of an open world trading system and the operations of its democratic domestic political regime. Whereas most scholarly attention has focused on how domestic politics has interfered with the United States global economic leadership, Orin Kirshner offers here an analysis of the ways in which U.S. leadership in the arena of global trade has affected American democracy and the domestic political regime.
By participating in multilateral trade agreements, the U.S. Congress has transferred its trade policymaking authority to the president and, through international trade negotiations, from the American state to the GATT/WTO regime. This reorganization of policy-making authority has resulted in the triumph of globalism, and fundamentally alters the citizen-state relationship assumed in democratic theory. Kirshner illustrates this process through four case studies: the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1945, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the Trade Act of 1974, the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, and further examines the impact of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994 on the political and institutional structure of American trade politics up to the current period.
American Trade Politics and the Triumph of Globalism makes a significant contribution to the study of both international trade and domestic American politics. This is essential reading for students and scholars of trade policy, international political economy, American politics, and democratic theory.
Orin Kirshner teaches American politics at Florida Atlantic University. He has been a senior fellow at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP); a visiting fellow at the Wuhan University WTO Studies School (Peoples Republic of China); and the executive director of the Global Environment & Trade Study (GETS).
Foreign Policy Analysis
Douglas A. Van Belle, Series editor
The Routledge series Foreign Policy Analysis examines the intersection of domestic and international politics with an emphasis on decisionmaking at both the individual and group levels. Research in this broadly defined and interdisciplinary field includes nearly all methodological approaches, encompasses the analysis of single nations as well as largeN comparative studies, and ranges from the psychology of leaders, to the effects of process, to the patterns created by specific dynamic or contextual influences on decision making.
Titles in Series:
The Unilateralist Temptation in American Foreign Policy
David G. Skidmore II
When Things Go Wrong: Foreign Policy Decision Making under Adverse Feedback
Charles F. Hermann
Prospect Theory and Foreign Policy Analysis in the Asia Pacific: Rational Leaders and Risky Behavior
Kai He and Huiyun Feng
Becoming Rivals: The Process of Interstate Rivalry Development
Brandon Valeriano
American Trade Politics and the Triumph of Globalism
Orin Kirshner
First published 2014
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kirshner, Orin, 1961
American trade politics and the triumph of globalism / by Orin Kirshner.
pages cm.(Foreign policy analysis)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. United StatesCommercial policyHistory20th century.
2. United StatesCommercial treatiesHistory20th century.
3. United StatesForeign economic relations.
4. GlobalizationPolitical aspectsUnited States. I. Title.
HF1455.K57 2013
382.30973dc23
2013036585
ISBN: 9780415742863 (hbk)
ISBN: 9780415742870 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781315814315 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon
For Isaiah and Stanley
May your songs always be sung
CONTENTS
I am often asked to comment on what books and articles should be on the must read list for someone who wants to bring foreign policy analysis (FPA) into their research portfolio. I have never put together a list of references, or done anything else like that, primarily because the field is so diverse that the response really needs to be tailored to fit the background of the person or persons who have asked. However, there are a few that I almost always mention in that conversation. Valerie Hudsons undergraduate textbook (Hudson, 2006) provides a nice overview. Essence of Decision (Allison, 1971), The Functions of Social Conflict (Coser, 1956), The Insecurity Dilemma (Job, 1992), Origins of Containment (Larson, 1985), and Analogies at War (Khong, 1992) all provide stimulating examples of high-quality research. However, the only one that I would actually call an FPA must read is Putnams Logic of Two-Level Games (Putnam, 1988).
In many ways, for me to say that Two-Level Games is the one FPA must read is quite curious. There really isnt anything all that original about the theories or concepts introduced. Every causal dynamic discussed in Two-Level Games can also be found in Essence of Decision, and they all had been in common use in the FPA literature for at least a decade. Putnams analysis is simplistic and, at best, suggestive rather than robust and, unlike Analogies at War or Origins of Containment, it doesnt offer a good example that scholars can use as a model for empirical analyses. So why would I offer Two-Level Games as a must read?
While it may not be theoretically innovative or empirically impressive, I would say that Logic of Two-Level Games is iconic, and I use iconic in the technical sense of the word. Logic of Two-Level Games is an idealized and extremely simple yet evocative representation of the essence of foreign policy analysis. We can talk about actor-specific theories of decision-making and any other defining characteristic of FPA that we like, but the simple analogy of a two-level game is the one thing that cuts through it all and immediately shows the commonality in the menagerie of studies and theories that might be found under the rubric of foreign policy analysis. Everything in FPA relates back to that simple idea that every decision or action is simultaneously playing out on both international and domestic political stages and, more often than not, the pressures from those two arenas are divergent rather than convergent.
