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Why do certain governments often have an actual exchange-rate policy that differs from their official declaration, creating a gap between their de jure and de facto exchange-rate regimes? This article offers a political explanation centered on the need for certain types of government to respond to a broader set of societal actors with different preferences concerning the exchange-rate regime. The argument posits that more democratic governments must respond to a broader set of societal actors, thus leading them to use their de jure and de facto regimes as short-term political substitutes. In using one regime (either de jure or de facto) to appeal to one group of societal actors and the other regime to appeal to another group with different preferences, exchange-rate regimes are hypothesized to be more frequent for more democratic governments. The statistic evidence accords with this expectation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that foreign aid can promote economic growth in recipient countries by facilitating economic reform, but only when the strategic benefits associated with providing aid are small for donor governments. When the strategic benefits are large, foreign aid becomes ineffective because Western governments cannot credibly enforce their conditions for economic reform. This paper presents evidence consistent with both the cause and effect of this argument. Based on the understanding that Western aid was driven more (less) by strategic factors during the Cold War era (post-Cold War era), it shows that aid has been positively associated with economic reform, but only after 1990 when Western governments could more credibly threaten to curtail their aid if such reform was not forthcoming. It also shows that aid has promoted economic growth, but only after 1990 when the strategic benefits associated with aid provision declined for most Western donors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to answer an important question in international cooperation theory: if cooperation requires successful bargaining among states, then what factors bring these states to the negotiation table in the first place? It presents a game-theoretic model of the ''prebargaining'' phase of the international cooperation problem, positing that states are more likely to enter a bargaining phase when the shadow of the future is long. This hypothesis is then tested in statistical models that explore how different shadow of the future indicators affect the probability of negotiations over territorial, river, and maritime claims in the Western Hemisphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]