Abstract
What do international relations scholars understand by the term ‘cooperation’? Whereas realists and neoliberals disagree about the importance of international cooperation, there is widespread agreement on a working definition.1 Cooperation arises, ‘when actors adjust their behaviour to the actual or anticipated preferences of others, through a process of policy coordination’.2 Cooperation in the Airbus case should manifest itself as the adjustment of European Community and US trade policies.
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Helen Milner, ‘International theories of cooperation among nations: strengths and weaknesses’, World Politics, 44 (3), April 1992, p. 467.
Robert Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984, pp. 51–2.
Andrew Moravcsik, ‘Disciplining trade finance: the OECD export credit arrangement’, International Organization, 43(1), Winter 1989, p. 175.
Paul Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld, International Economics: Theory and Policy, 2nd edn, New York: Harper Collins, 1991, p. 278. At present, only three firms trade in this type of aircraft: Airbus, Boeing and MDC.
In fact, the US Department of Commerce reports that MDC and Boeing spent $2 billion on RandD in 1991 alone. Presumably, this includes military programmes. See US Department of Commerce, US Industrial Outlook 1992, Washington: US GPO, 1992, pp. 21–7.
David Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg,‘The Commercial Aircraft Industry, 1925–1975’, pp. 170–1, in Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Gilbert Winham, International Trade and the Tokyo Round Negotiation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 237–40.
There is a new, fourth theory of cooperation that emphasizes psychological factors which shape decision-makers’ attitudes toward cooperation. This work, while an interesting contribution, has not yet gained the prominence of the other schools of explanation and so will not be considered here. See Janice Stein and Louis Pauly (eds), Choosing to Cooperate: How States Avoid Loss, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Andrew Wyatt-Walter, The United States and Western Europe: the theory of hegemonic stability’, in N. Woods (ed.), International Relations Since 1945: Theory and History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 6 in mimeo.
Jill Hills, ‘Dependency theory and its relevance today: international institutions in telecommunications and structural power’, Review of International Studies, 20 (2), April 1994, pp. 171–5.
Arthur Stein, Why Nations Cooperate: Circumstance and Choice in International Relations, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990, p. 152.
Joanne Gowa and Edward Mansfield, ‘Power, politics and international trade’, American Political Science Review, 87 (2), June 1992, p. 416.
Joanne Gowa, ‘Bipolarity, multipolarity and free trade’, American Political Science Review, 83 (4), December 1989, p. 1253.
Michael Webb and Stephen Krasner, ‘Hegemonic stability theory: an empirical assessment’, Review of International Studies, 15 (2), April 1989, p. 185.
Jagdish Bhagwati makes a broadly similar point in, Protectionism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988, p. 39.
Clyde Prestowitz, Trading Places: How We are Giving Our Future to Japan and How to Reclaim It, New York: Basic Books, 1989, p. 405.
Debora Spar, ‘Co-developing the FSX fighter: the domestic calculus of international cooperation’, International Journal, vol. 47(2), Spring 1992, pp. 265–92.
Ibid, p. 274. See also, David C. Mowery and Nathan Rosenberg, Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 228.
Spar, ‘Co-developing the FSX Fighter’, p. 285; emphasis added. See also, Michael Mastanduno, ‘Do relative gains matter? America’s response to Japanese industrial policy’, International Security, 16(1), Summer 1991, pp. 86–93.
On linkage see, Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence, 2nd edn, New York: Harper Collins, 1989, pp. 30–2;
Lisa Martin, ‘Institutions and cooperation: sanctions during the Falklands Islands conflict’, International Security, 16(4), Spring 1992, p. 145
Michael Artis and Sylvia Ostry, International Economic Policy Coordination, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982, p. 13.
For the argument that possibilities for cooperation are enhanced by state interaction over time see, Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, London: Penguin Books Edition, 1990, esp. ch. 9.
Kenneth A. Oye, ‘Explaining cooperation under anarchy’, in Kenneth A. Oye (ed.), Cooperation Under Anarchy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 17.
Figures derived from GATT, International Trade, 1990–1991, vol. II, Geneva: GATT, 1991, tables 3.7 and 3.27. Stephen Woolcock estimates EC—US trade to be $190 billion in 1990. See his, Market Access Issues in EC-US Relations: Trading Partners or Trading Blows?, London: RIIA and Pinter, 1991, p. 7.
On the unpredictable nature of linkage politics, see: John Conybeare, Trade Wars: the Theory and Practice of International Commercial Rivalry, New York: Columbia University Press, 1987, pp. 276–8.
This globalization has been dubbed ‘the new multinationalism’ by Robert Gilpin. See Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations, pp. 252–60. This is an extension of his pioneering work on the relationship between the state and the multinational corporation in Robert Gilpin, US Power and the Multinational Corporation: the Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment, New York: Basic Books, 1975.
Helen Milner, Resisting Protectionism: Global Industries and the Politics of International Trade, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.
Sylvia Ostry, ‘Beyond the border’, p. 82, and, Michael Porter, ‘Changing patterns of international competition’, California Management Review, 23(2), Winter 1986, pp. 9–40.
John Stopford and Susan Strange with John S. Henley, Rival States, Rival Firms, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 92.
Robert Reich, ‘Who is us?’, Harvard Business Review, 68(1), Jan./Feb. 1990, pp. 53–64
Kenichi Ohmae, The Borderless World, London: Fontana, 1990.
For a contrary view see; Yao-Su Hu, ‘Global or stateless corporations are national firms with international operations’, California Management Review, 34(2), Winter 1992, pp. 107–26. YaoSu Hu does not examine alliances and instead examines the traditional MNC as a national-corporate entity with operations in other countries. By doing so, he overlooks the type of business arrangement that is becoming popular in high-technology sectors.
Dowty Aerospace, Dowty Aerospace (corporate publication), 1992, p. 2.
Bill Gunston, Airbus, London: Osprey Books, 1988, p. 205.
Jonathan Tucker, ‘Partners and rivals: a model of international collaboration in advanced technology’, International Organization, 45(1), Winter 1991, p. 84.
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© 1997 Steven McGuire
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McGuire, S. (1997). Cooperation in International Political Economy. In: Airbus Industrie. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230372214_2
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