A domestic ratification game nested within an international bargaining game establishes that domestic politics influences the outcome of international negotiations. When information on the domestic side is incomplete, an informational role of lobbies is established. Cooperation is more likely...

Conventional theories of the political economy of trade argue that industries in import-competing businesses favor protectionism, while multinational firms and export-dependent corporations advocate unconditional free trade. However, many multinational industries have recently advocated...

International relations has often been treated as a separate discipline distinct from the other major fields in political science, namely American and comparative politics. A main reason for this distinction has been the claim that politics in the international system is radically different from...

Are there systematic political economy factors that shape preferences for foreign aid, a key component of American foreign policy? We analyze votes in the House of Representatives from 1979 to 2003 that would increase or decrease foreign aid by considering the political, economic, and...

In this article we bring together opposing international relations theories to better understand U.S. foreign policy, in particular foreign trade and aid. Using votes in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979–2004, we explore different theoretical predictions about preferences for foreign...

Elections affect both the probability of successful ratification and the terms of international trade agreements; domestic politics in its simplest form shapes international negotiations. Without elections, the extent of protection in a trade agreement increases with the degree of divided...

International institutions that include an escape clause generate more durable and stable cooperative international regimes and are easier to achieve <italic>ex ante</italic>. The escape clause is endogenous in a model of repeated trade-barrier setting in the presence of symmetric, two-sided, political...