161. Security and the Political Economy of International Migration
- Author:
- Christopher Rudolph
- Publication Date:
- 04-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
- Abstract:
- Richard Rosecrance (1986) argues that the world has transformed into a system of trading states, where power is increasingly based on Ricardian notions of comparative advantage, factor mobility, and free trade. As gains from trade and interdependence increase, as they have under the past half-century of American hegemony, the use of a military-territorial strategy is a less appealing means of maximizing state power, especially since war has become increasingly costly, complicated, and destructive (Cf. Morgenthau, 1948; Kennedy, 1988; Mueller, 1989; Kupchan, 1994). Proponents of "Washington consensus" neoliberalism argue that liberal trade policies and laissez-faire treatment of international factor flows moves economies toward a Pareto-optimal frontier, one that will create a "rising tide to lift all boats" in both developed and developing nations, though perhaps not evenly (Krugman, 1995; Krugman and Venables, 1995; Krugman and Obstfeld, 1997). Considerable evidence supports the argument that trading state globalization has emerged as a global norm and as a widely accepted basis of state grand strategy since World War II. Since the 1940s, successive rounds of the GATT (now the WTO) have resulted in consistently lower tariff rates that have helped stimulate world trade. From 1980—1998, world trade has grown anywhere from 4.2% to 10.3%, and between 1990—1999 world trade has grown at over three times the rate of global output (World Bank, 1998; WTO, 2000). Moreover, financial transactions, once an adjunct of trade, now tower of trade flows by a ratio of 50:1 (Ruggie, 1995:48; see also Cohen, 1998).
- Topic:
- International Relations
- Political Geography:
- America and Washington