Page 105 - Global Political Economy_Understanding The International Economic Order

CHA PTER F OUR
compliance with international regimes ultimately rests on the domes-
tic and, I would add, the foreign policy interests of individual states.
Despite its important insights into the functioning of the world
economy, regime theory frequently sidesteps problems of national au-
tonomy and interests. For example, every nation joining an interna-
tional regime reserves the right to withdraw from the regime if its
interests change. In addition, concerns over national autonomy place
severe limits on the types of international regimes that are created.
Even in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), each mem-
ber reserves the right not to come to the aid of another alliance mem-
ber if the other is attacked. 33
The increasing importance of social welfare in state behavior has
not substantially changed matters, although many scholars of interna-
tional political economy have suggested that it has. As James Mayall
points out, international regimes have resulted in few, if any, sacri-
34
fices of domestic social welfare. Despite much talk of international
distributive justice, for example, voluntary sharing by one society of
a substantial portion of its wealth with other societies is rare indeed.
Foreign aid, for example, has never absorbed more than a small per-
centage of a nation’s GDP, and with a few notable exceptions such
aid has been and is given for national security or economic (rather
than humanitarian)reasons. The modern welfare system has actually
made states even more attentive to their own economic interests. The
nationalistic nature of the modern welfare state is well demonstrated
by the singular fact that every state severely restricts immigration, at
least in part to restrict access to its welfare system.
While international regimes are useful to provide solutions to tech-
nical, economic, and other problems associated with the world econ-
omy, they also invariably affect the economic welfare, national secu-
rity, and political autonomy of individual states. For this reason,
states frequently attempt to manipulate regimes for their own paro-
chial economic and political advantage. This concept of international
regimes as both technical solution and arena of political struggle di-
verges from that held by many economists and liberal scholars of
political economy that regimes are economically and politically neu-
tral. The realist interpretation maintains that international regimes
are neither above nor outside the struggle for power and advantage
among states. Regimes are both a part and an object of a political
33
James Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1990). In the case of NATO, every member has reserved the right whether
or not to declare war if another member of the alliance is attacked.
34
Ibid., Chapter 6.
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