POLI 243 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: World Trade Organization, Unemployment Benefits, Opec
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18 Mar 2013
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Lecture 8: The Domestic or National Level1/30/2012 8:41:00 AM
“opening the black box”
examples of domestic-level theories
culture
o why did Germany start the war?
o Changes really slowly
Not a good causable variable
o What do the people of that society want to protect/what do
they see as important
Regime-type
o Germany did not have a democracy
Could create their own foreign policy
o Shows up in cold war as well
Contest between US and democracy vs. Soviet Union
Ideology
o Communists believed in one party
o Why do some states worry about certain goals
Domestic stability
o Stability of gov’t
o Domestic unrest
o Some kind of internal stability and gov’t must use foreign
policy to fix it
Economic characteristics
o Why would country that could supply needs internally be less
involved in WTO than import based economy country
Mixing characteristics
Population density
o High/low
Technology
o High/low
US
o High tech low pop density
o Could supply resources internally
o Did not collapse when trading halted
Japan
o High tech high pop denity
o Island
o Flourishes with trade
o Cannot export – cannot afford imports – need to use military
to get resources
China
o Low tech high pop density
o China needs access to foreign markets
Theories focusing on domestic institutions
Democracy vs. Autocracy
o Are autocracies necessarily bad?
Easy to get a straight answer from the gov’t
The democratic peace
o Why do democracies fight
We don’t know
o Theories tell us that if you change other countries regime
(democratic), you will get along with them, even if you have
different beliefs
o Sense that democracies get along with each other
o Does not mean that democracies do not start wars
They start them with non democracies
Steven Krasner: insulation of top decision-makers
o People inside of white house chosen by president can decide
foreign policy, without worrying about someone complaining
Prime minister would face that
State tools
o Get things done through policies eg. Unemployment insurance
Same in different regions
Not in france, gov’t owned large stakes in banking
systems: could determine where lending went
Directed decision making means different answers to
crisis’s
State-society relations
o Peter katzenstein: between power and plenty
o State
Strong/weak
o Society