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International regimes, transactions, and change: embedded liberalism in the postwar economic order
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1982
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Regime AnalysisInternational EconomicsEconomic InstitutionsSocial SciencesPostwar Economic OrderPolitical EconomyEmbedded LiberalismInternational PoliticsInternational Economic RegimesInternational RegimesGeopoliticsPax AmericanaInternational RelationsInternational Relation TheoryEconomic LiberalizationMaterial Power CapabilitiesGlobalizationInternationalism (Politics)BusinessGlobal PoliticsInternational OrganizationPolitical ScienceWorld-systems TheoryInternational Institutions
International economic regimes are typically explained by a positivistic model that focuses on material power distribution. The model presented departs from this view by asserting that regimes consist of actors’ shared meanings, that such meanings arise from state‑society relations rather than power distribution, and that the analysis remains systemic to avoid reductionist cause‑effect attributions. The study concludes that the prevailing positivistic model is inadequate, requiring expansion, and demonstrates that the postwar money and trade regimes endure despite claims of their demise, while the pax Britannica and pax Americana are not equivalent.
The prevailing model of international economic regimes is strictly positivistic in its epistemological orientation and stresses the distribution of material power capabilities in its explanatory logic. It is inadequate to account for the current set of international economic regimes and for the differences between past and present regimes. The model elaborated here departs from the prevailing view in two respects, while adhering to it in a third. First, it argues that regimes comprise not simply what actors say and do, but also what they understand and find acceptable within an intersubjective framework of meaning. Second, it argues that in the economic realm such a framework of meaning cannot be deduced from the distribution of material power capabilities, but must be sought in the configuration of state-society relations that is characteristic of the regime-making states. Third, in incorporating these notions into our understanding of the formation and transformation of international economic regimes, the formulation self-consciously strives to remain at the systemic level and to avoid becoming reductionist in attributing cause and effect relations. The article can therefore argue that the prevailing view is deficient on its own terms and must be expanded and modified. Addressing the world of actual international economic regimes, the article argues that the pax Britannica and the pax Americana cannot be equated in any meaningful sense, and that the postwar regimes for money and trade live on notwithstanding premature announcements of their demise.