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This paper draws attention to an understudied phenomenon, transnational political alliances (TPA), which occur when multinational corporations cooperate with local companies to influence public policies of the host government. The paper first explores the economic and political sources of TPAs, their structures, and the obstacles to their formation. It then examines TPAs through the context of China, a critical case because of a hostile political environment that discourages TPAs. However, the surprisingly common occurrence of TPAs in China indicates the power of economic incentives for political cooperation across national boundaries. Such alliances do not explain why China originally opened its doors to international trade and investment, but it may explain why the doors are remaining opening. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the various types of lobbies in Washington, D.C. scholars probably know less about the lobbies representing the interests of foreign nation than any category. There have been just a handful of studies that have examined the foreign lobbies with most of the work done of the Israeli lobby and the Old China Lobby of the 1950s and 1960s. Mearsheimer and Walt's 2007 book on The Israel Lobby produced a firestorm in American politics over whether that lobby had an undue influence on U.S. foreign policy. Other academic work has mentioned the Cuban, Armenian and Irish lobbies as particularly powerful. But, very little is known about the many lobbies in our capitol that represent foreign interests. Other than the Old China Lobby ((1920-1973) and a couple of studies of the Japan Lobby of the 1980s, Asian lobbies have been generally ignored. Very little is known about the lobbies that represent the rising powers of Asia: China, India and South Korea. Probably the biggest story of the past three decades has been the rise of China to great power status. Nations on the rise sooner or later understand that they need effective representation in American politics as the political, economic and security issues begin to mount in frequency and significance. In this paper, we focus on the history and the rise of three of these rising Asian lobbies: the New China Lobby, the India Lobby and the Korean Lobbies. We will close with a discussion on how the foreign nations' lobbies and the American ethnic lobbies work together to represent foreign national interests and what elements combine to make for a significant foreign lobby. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do policymakers respond differently to speculative exchange market pressure on their cur-rencies? When deciding about defending or depreciating their currencies against such pressure, policymakers consider private sector vulnerabilities to a depreciation and monetary tightening. These vulnerabilities differ between periods of mild and severe pressure. Faced with mild pres-sure, interest groups evaluate the effects of the two policy options based only on their vulnerabil-ity to depreciation. Only when pressure intensifies, they increasingly take the trade-off between their depreciation vulnerability and their vulnerability to interest-rate increases into account. High interest-rate vulnerabilities can result in a re-assessment of the preferred policy response, leading groups that initially preferred a defense to prefer a depreciation when the pressure intensifies. Comparative case studies of speculative attacks on the currencies of Hong Kong, Korea, Thailand and Taiwan support the argument's empirical implications. The case studies show that policy-makers strongly defended their currencies against mild pressure when the private sector's vulner-ability to depreciation was high. In countries, where interest group vulnerabilities to interest-rate increases exceeded the potential costs of a depreciation, these defenses were subsequently aban-doned when pressure intensified. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]