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The article discusses the importance of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in American foreign policy and argues for its reinstatement. It highlights the economic gains, job creation, and policy leverage that joining the TPP could bring, particularly in countering China's rise. However, the article acknowledges the challenges of persuading the American public and Congress due to partisan gridlock and populist backlash. It also mentions the Biden administration's introduction of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) as an alternative, but suggests that active advocacy is needed to rally support for the TPP and pursue a coherent foreign economic policy. [Extracted from the article]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2008.00527.x Byline: David H. Bearce (*) Abstract: This paper explores whether fixed exchange rate commitments and central bank independence have functioned more as institutional complements or as substitutes in achieving exchange rate stability. Focusing on the advanced industrial democracies in the post-Bretton Woods era, it argues that these two monetary institutions should have functioned in a non-complementary, but substitutable, manner with regards to this external policy goal. This argument is tested statistically using different measures of exchange rate variability and de facto exchange rate fixity. Finally, given evidence that fixed exchange rate commitments and central bank independence have not functioned as complementary institutions, this paper discusses why certain OECD (governments that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) governments nonetheless made fixed exchange rate commitments when their central bank was legally independent. Author Affiliation: (*)University of Pittsburgh

The commercial institutional peace research program provides help to reduce the incidence of militarized interstate conflict and function of economic integration or related institutional effects. Three different casual arguments are described to explain the commercial institutional peace.

While the commercial institutional peace research program provides empirical evidence that international institutions, especially preferential trade arrangements, help reduce the incidence of militarized inter-state conflict, it fails to delineate clearly how such institutions matter. Building from the logic that low opportunity costs for fighting, private information, and commitment problems constitute important causes of war, this article explores three interrelated causal mechanisms. First, the state leaders' increased expectations about future commerce create an incentive for these actors to consider peaceful bargains as an alternative to costly war. Second, security coordination under the umbrella of a commercial institution provides fuller information about state military capabilities, thus making inter-state bargaining for dispute resolution more efficient. Third, in bringing together high-level state leaders on a regular basis, commercial institutions may create the trust necessary to overcome commitment problems in inter-state bargaining. I explore how these mechanisms have operated within the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Economic Community of West African States.

This article explores how the dramatic expansion of British trade in the decades prior to World War I affected Britain's ability to raise an army. We first develop a simple institutionally based model of British army recruiting which we then perturb by expanding trade while holding all other variables constant. Our theoretical analysis suggests that the expansion of trade would impede Britain's ability to raise an army, a prediction that finds substantial support in the historical record using both quantitative and qualitative analysis. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that trade enhances a state's military power, we find that the expansion of trade did not ease Britain's resource constraints by making labor more freely available for military purposes. Rather, by raising the civilian demand for labor, the expansion of trade made labor more expensive and difficult to mobilize, even as a more effective army became more important to British strategy.

This article explores the relationship between trade and war by applying an agent-based model of military conflict and economic exchange, focusing on an analysis of the economics of trading networks. The authors' model treats war as a breakdown of interstate bargaining due to incomplete information, and explores the economic geography, technological advancement, state revisionism and defensive advantages which affect trade and war; findings show that the relationship between war and trade depends on revisionist states within compact geographies.

Under capital mobility, governments face a political choice: hold an autonomous monetary policy with currency instability or stabilize exchange rates with the sacrifice of policy autonomy. This article examines what domestic political factors led the advanced industrial democracies to choose an autonomous monetary policy and what factors led them instead to choose stable exchange rates in the post-Bretton Woods era. Leftist-led governments have opted for an autonomous loose fiscal-tight monetary policy mix associated with exchange rate instability. Rightist-led governments have chosen a tight fiscal-loose monetary policy mix associated with exchange rate stability. These results are important because they help reestablish partisan agency in terms of monetary-exchange rate policy making, even under the structural constraint of international capital mobility.

This article reconsiders the argument that as labor immigration policy opens, it must also become more restrictive in terms of immigrant rights. After discussing this tradeoff logic, positing a negative relationship between external (numbers) and internal (rights) labor migration policy, it then extends the underlying political model to show that when accounting for the lobbying pressure of firms seeking high skill labor, a very different expectation emerges. This political accommodation argument predicts a positive relationship between external and internal migration policy, or that policy related to labor immigration openness and immigrant rights should advance together, although not necessarily quickly or at the same rate. It then tests these competing propositions using a new dataset that sorts labor migration policy changes among 38 advanced industrial democracies from 1995 to 2016 into these two dimensions, finding a significant positive relationship between them. [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]

Using the logic of a two-phase cooperation framework (first bargaining to reach an agreement, then enforcement of the negotiated agreement), this article examines how the risk of institutional breakdown can help promote international cooperation. I argue first that the risk of institutional breakdown can help promote bargaining cooperation by raising the opportunity costs of bargaining failure, thus providing a strong incentive for states who value the fragile international institution to negotiate a cooperative agreement. Having helped states to reach a cooperative bargain, the risk of institutional breakdown can also play a role in the subsequent enforcement phase. I argue second that the risk of valued institutional breakdown can reduce state preferences for defection, moving the enforcement problem away from the standard Prisoners' Dilemma structure. To illustrate these arguments, I examine the European Community's decision to recognize the breakaway Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Slovenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]