Statist Approach Research Articles

State Autonomy and Canadian Foreign Policy: The Case of Deep Seabed Mining

AbstractThe article assesses the utility of Eric Nordlinger's statist approach in explaining Canada's policies on deep seabed mining at the United Nations Third Conference on the Law of the Sea. Nordlinger argues that government decision-makers in liberal democratic societies enjoy considerable autonomy in translating their preferences into public policies even when opposition is mounted by major groups outside government circles. Nordlinger's thesis on state autonomy is useful in explaining Canada's deep seabed mining policies since government decision-makers determined policy outcomes. Nevertheless, the approach requires important modifications to enhance its relevance to the Canadian parliamentary system. It needs to distinguish between politicians and government bureaucrats, to identify the sources of their policy preferences and to recognize provincial involvement.

Rocks, hard places, and the new protectionism: textile trade policy choices in the United States and Japan

Why have advanced industrial countries responded with different types of protectionist policy to postwar international competition and the resulting societal pressure for state action? In contrast to the across-the-board tariff wars of the 1930s, postwar protectionism is a patchwork of tariffs, unilateral and nonunilateral quotas, administrative restrictions, state subsidies, and production cartels. Arguments based on international economic structure, international regimes, statist approaches, and domestic structure all appear to have difficulty in accounting for divergent trade policy choices. This article introduces a more nuanced identification and integration of the international and domestic sources of the new protectionism. An examination of textile trade policy in the United States and Japan reveals that when state policymakers face conflicting international constraints and domestic pressure over the use of overt types of protectionist policy, the greater the domestic pressure, the more overt the policy response.

Safeguards and Profits: Civilian Nuclear Exports, Neo-Marxism, and the Statist Approach

The purpose of this article is to appraise the explanatory capacities of the Statist model and of structural Marxism-amended and elaborated here-as applied to the issue area of the regulation of civilian trade in sensitive nuclear facilities and fuel. During periods of 'happy convergence' between the interests of state managers and of pertinent societal groups, many scholars find little to chose between the two models. In moments of 'policy crisis' however, we find that structural Marxism provides the better account of the dynamics of conflict over policy formulation. The article indicates that the revised structural Marxist model warrants further applications in a limited but highly crucial set of policy problems which exhibit the characteristics of 'crisis' described herein.

The Concept of the State: A Response to Stephen Krasner

Stephen D. Krasner's review article, Approaches to State: Alternative Conceptions and Historical Dynamics, effectively illuminates the ways in which several recent books explicitly concerned with 'the state' differ from and challenge prevailing intellectual approaches that emerged out of behavioral revolution of 1950s.' His discussion, moreover, convincingly advocates analysis. Contained in his treatment is a great deal that is helpful to those interested in wrestling with intellectual problems entailed in statist approach. At same time, some of pathways pointed to by his analysis may prove to be blind alleys and should, therefore, be approached with caution. Joining several issues raised by Krasner, this note stresses abstractness of state and urges that a Hegelian conception of state should be added to Marxist tradition, which he does not treat, and to liberal ideas promoted by Krasner. In my view, it would be a superior intellectual strategy for concept formation and theory development to rethink political and philosophical literature on state rather than to borrow a controversial metaphor from biology, as Krasner recommends. This alternative strategy leads to thoughts different from Krasner's on concept of development and on question of strength of state. To conclude, I elucidate some of problems and puzzles that statist approach faces.