Economic interdependence

Abstract: Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are the key drivers of globalization, as they foster increased economic interdependence among national markets. The ultimate test to assess whether these MNEs are global themselves is their actual penetration level of markets across the globe, especially in the broad ‘triad’ markets of NAFTA, the European Union and Asia. Yet, data on the activities of the 500 largest MNEs reveal that very few are successful globally. For 320 of the 380 firms for which geographic sales data are available, an average of 80.3% of total sales are in their home region of the triad. This means that many of the world’s largest firms are not global but regionally based, in terms of breadth and depth of market coverage. Globalization, in terms of a balanced geographic distribution of sales across the triad, thus reflects a special, and rather unusual, outcome of doing international business (IB). The regional concentration of sales has important implications for various strands of mainstream IB research, as well as for the broader managerial debate on the design of optimal strategies and governance structures for MNEs. Journal of International Business Studies (2004) 35, 3–18. doi:10.1057/palgrave. jibs.8400073

Abstract: Triangulating Peace tackles today's most provocative hypothesis in the field of international relations: the democratic peace proposition. Drawing on ideas originally put forth by Immanuel Kant, the authors argue that democracy, economic interdependence, and international mediation can successfully cooperate to significantly reduce the chances of war.

Abstract: The liberals believed that economic interdependence, as well as democracy, would reduce the incidence of interstate conflict. In this article, we test both their economic and their political prescriptions for peace, using pooled-regression analyses of politically relevant dyads for the Cold War era. We find that the pacific benefits of trade, both total and dyadic, have not been sufficiently appreciated. We also offer clear evidence that democracies are relatively unlikely to become involved in militarized disputes with other democracies, while autocracies and democracies are prone to conflict with each other. Since democratic dyads are more peaceful than autocratic dyads, it follows that democracies are more peaceful than autocratic states generally, ceteris paribus. Previous research at the national level of analysis, which led most to conclude that democracies have been no more peaceful than other states, did not consider that the incidence of conflict depends importantly upon the number of contiguous states, the character of their political regimes, and other factors. In addition, we find no evidence that states that have recently undergone regime changes, whether in the democratic or autocratic direction, are particularly conflict prone. Our results suggest the basis for a broader formulation of expected–utility theories of interstate conflict.

Abstract: THROUGHOUT T H E twentieth century, modernists have been proclaiming that technology would transform world politics. In 1910 Norman Angell declared that economic interdependence rendered wars irrational and looked forward to the day when they would become obsolete. Modernists in the 1970s saw telecommunications and jet travel as creating a global village, and believed that the territorial state, which has dominated world politics since the feudal age, was being eclipsed by nonterritorial actors such as multinational corporations, transnational social movements, and international organizations. Likewise, prophets such as Peter Drucker, Alvin and Heidi TofHer, and Esther Dyson argue that today s information revolution is ending hierarchical bureaucracies and leading to a new electronic feudalism with overlapping communities and jurisdictions laying claim to multiple layers of citizens' identities and loyalties. The modernists of past generations were partly right. Angell's understanding of the impact of war on interdependence was insightful: World War I wrought unprecedented destruction, not only on the battlefield but also on the social and political systems that had thrived during the relatively peaceful years since 1815. As the modernists of the 1970s predicted, multinational corporations, nongovernmental