Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Putnam outlined a powerful metaphor for understanding domestic-international interactions in his two-level framework. In his analysis domestic politics drives international negotiations. Negotiators must make their international actions consistent with domestic support and policy: leaders respond to international obligation to the extent that these commitments are domestically viable. Aseema Sinha offers a modification to this framework in two important respects. First, she shows how the specific negotiation structure of the international context shapes the domestic win set. Global rules need to be disaggregated and their variable effects analyzed more carefully than has been done from within the terms of the two-level model. Further, India?s experience with GATT and WTO offers the opportunity to exploit within case variation across time to analyze how global rules of the game affect and change domestic imperatives and interests.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Findings from Robert Putnam’s national Social Capital Benchmark Survey (2007) indicate that race and ethnic diversity reduces social solidarity and social capital among intra-group members. According to Putnam’s constrict theory, individuals in diverse communities, tend to “hunker down” and withdraw from members of their own race and neighborhood. Trust, social support, altruism, and community cooperation also decrease. These claims are examined in 99 rural Iowa communities, many of which have recently experienced social, economic, and demographic changes due to restructuring in the meat processing industry, the consolidation of pork and poultry farms into confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), deskilling, and the recruitment of a predominantly Latino immigrant labor force. Combining Census data and data from the Rural Development Initiative (Iowa State) gathered in 1994 and 2004, the effects of increased Latino diversity on measures of social support are analyzed through multiple regression and hierarchical linear modeling. Although initial findings indicate diversity is a small and statistically significant predictor of social capital, greater variance in social support occurs within rather than between communities, challenging the accuracy of generalizations about the effects of diversity. The impact of industry changes at the individual level must be understood and examined in further analysis.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Achieving cooperation is difficult in international politics. However, cooperation sometimes occurs. Multilateralism is based on the WTO agreement, regionalism is based on regimes, and bilateralism is expressed by Free Trade Agreements (FTA) even if legislative confirmation by both sides is still pending left. South Korea agreed to a FTA with Chile and Singapore in 2004 and in 2006. This paper draws attention to the interesting point that the negotiation process and its result can be explained by the logic of two-level games. It is now well known that preferences and strategies of domestic actors, political structures, strategy of negotiator, the character and level of political issue have great effect on the process and result of negotiation. Considering the South Korea-Chile, and the South Korea-Singapore FTAs, the former was faced with radical opposition by domestic interest groups while the latter had almost no objection. It is quite interesting that there was a great distinction between them. Analysis structure will be proposed in this paper through combination of Putnam's logic of two-level games and its subsequent various theories.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: English abstract:

During the 1980s and early 1990s Brazil has faced two big economic challenges which paralyzed the development based on import substitution industrialization. Inflation and the crisis of foreign debt were the main obstacles for Brazilian growth in this period. The foreign debt question still requires more research in order to explain 1) the decision making process insulated around the Brazilian Presidency and its economic staff. The role of the Congress and of the Ministry of Foreign Relations appears in the literature as weak and passive either during the dictatorship or in the transition to democracy. It is not clear however the degree of confrontation or cooperation between the Legislative and Executive on this question and the role of Itamaraty usually appears underestimated 2) the paper tries to investigate if the Brazilian bureaucracy had any degree of autonomy to conduct negotiations concerning foreign debt with the representatives of foreign banks (creditors) and multilateral agencies, contrary to the myth that Brazilian negotiators knelt down before the IMF and the foreign creditors.

This paper tries to explain how domestic foreign economic policies articulate with the international financial community plus IMF and other agencies as far as foreign debt was concerned, during the 1980s and 1990s. The two level game approach developed by Putnam is used here in order to explain the (economic and political) coalitions formed in the domestic arena in each presidential period (from Figueiredo until Itamar Franco) and their connections and confrontations towards the international coalition of financial groups involved in the debt question. In the international side of this two-level game are the foreign banks (mainly from US), their institutional representatives, the United States government (Department of State, Treasure and Federal Reserve) and the IMF, here analysed as the organism responsible to implement decisions taken in the financial arena. The transition from dictatorship to democracy in the middle of the debt negotiations presents important consequences for the performance of the actors, for the renewing of domestic staff involved with the debt negotiations. Eventually the paper links the negotiations around foreign debt with the agenda of the Washington Consensus.



Resumo em portugues

Dos anos 80 até meados da década de 1990 o Brasil enfrentou dois grandes problemas na sua economia que paralisaram o modelo desenvolvimentista de crescimento puxado pela industrialização substitutiva de importações: foram eles a inflação e a crise da dívida externa. A questão da dívida externa demanda mais estudos para que se entenda 1) o processo decisório insulado que caracterizou as negociações da dívida com os atores internacionais, e que até certo ponto marginalizou o Congresso e o Ministério das Relações Exteriores. Não está muito claro o grau de confronto e cooperação entre o Congresso e o Executivo ao longo do processo de gestão da crise. 2) busca-se verificar no trabalho se a burocracia brasileira e os demais atores dentro e fora do Executivo tiveram algum grau de autonomia para conduzir a negociação da divida externa com os representantes de bancos credores e agencias multilaterais. Questiona-se aqui o mito de que o Brasil negociou de joelhos com o FMI e os credores.

Este trabalho busca entender como se deu a articulação entre a política doméstica e os interlocutores internacionais na questão da dívida externa brasileira nos anos 80 e 90. A abordagem do jogo de dois níveis de Putnam (o nível doméstico e o internacional) permite compreender a atuação dos atores brasileiros e dos negociadores estrangeiros em cada um dos governos desse período, como uma sucessão de jogos de dois níveis, analisando o desempenho da área econômica do Executivo, do Congresso e dos partidos políticos e do Ministério das Relações Exteriores. A transição da ditadura para a democracia em meio ao processo de negociação vai apresentar impactos importantes sobre o desempenho dos atores e na renovação das equipes negociadoras domésticas. Tal fato revela como a democracia altera o estilo de negociação, as coalizões domésticas e internacionais e os objetivos últimos da negociação.

Por fim o trabalho apresenta uma ligação entre as negociações em torno da dívida com a agenda do Consenso de Washington.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Tocquevillian theory of associations will be examined in the context of his entire democratic theory and it will be shown how this is valuable in understanding Putnam's (2000) associational findings and improving his arguments on American democracy