Introduction: domestic and international forces and strategies of foreign economic policy

Abstract

Why does a common challenge, such as the oil crisis, elicit different national responses in the international political economy? The domestic structure of the nation-state is a critical intervening variable without which the interrelation between international interdependence and political strategies cannot be understood. The essay justifies this volume's concentration on a few advanced industrial states of the North; from a broader historical perspective it looks briefly at the interaction of international and domestic forces in the shaping of the international political economy; it examines two theories of foreign policy (international approaches and bureaucratic politics) in order to highlight the gap which this volume intends to fill; and it details the theoretical orientation informing the essays which follow.