The Influence of Regional Power Distributions on Interdependence

Abstract

Political economy debates about the influence of power configurations in expanding and maintaining global liberalization ebb and flow with the wax and wane of the concentration of power in the international system. This article engages the debate in a novel way from previous scholarship. Employing a series of econometric models that account for regional power, I argue that the global power concentration is ill fit to be the primary predictor of trade liberalization, but instead, regional power fluctuations can dampen and enhance global trends. By incorporating subsystemic power configurations, we gain a better understanding of the regional variation in states buying into or cashing out of interdependence.