As students of international political economy, we are attracted to...

As students of international political economy, we are attracted to lucidity. We want a coherent conception of our subject, even though we recognize that any such conception will be partial and flawed. Particularly lucid arguments can therefore stimulate great scholarly interest and productive responses, even if they are conceptually and empirically inadequate. Although we are never likely to be able to predict or thoroughly explain specific strategic interactions among states, firms, and nongovernmental organizations, we can aspire to conditional generalizations that narrow the range of our uncertainty by accounting for general patterns of behavior. Stephen D. Krasner's 1976 article in World Politics, "State Power and the Structure of International Trade," is notable for its distinctive com bination of lucid and problematic propositions.1 Krasner forcefiillyargues that openness in the world economy is most likely to occur "during periods when a hegemonic state is in its ascendancy" (p. 323). As long as the state's technological lead is increasing, its leadership will perceive economic advantages to openness, since openness will expand markets for the products of its technologically sophisticated industries. The hegemon will also gain politically, since the "opportunity costs of clo sure" will be low, relative to those facing smaller and poorer states. Conversely, when several large, unequally developed states coexist, Krasner predicts that the more backward states will find openness eco nomically and politically cosdy and will therefore resist it. Greater trade closure will therefore result. "State Power and the Structure of International Trade" crystallized issues and set the terms for more than a decade of work in the field of international political economy (iPE). Although several of Krasner's themes can be found in the earlier writings of others, no one juxtaposed economics and politics more succincdy or effectively than he. And no one combined lucidity with problematic argument so well. By raising key issues in a pungency provocative way and by manifesdy resolving none of them, Krasner defined the agenda for years of scholarship. I. Major Themes and Causal Mechanisms "State Power and the Structure of International Trade" operates simul timeously on three levels. Its first sentences announce a program for the revival of the state in studies of international relations: "In recent years, students of international relations have multinationalized, transnation 1 Krasner, "State Power and the Structure of International Trade," World Politics 28 (April 1976). This content downloaded from 146.96.128.36 on Thu, 28 Aug 2014 15:04:13 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 152 WORLD POLITICS alized, bureaucratized and transgovernmentalized the state until it has virtually ceased to exist as an analytic construct_This perspective is at best profoundly misleading" (p. 317). Krasner s rhetoric is dazzling: the core subject matter of political sci ence is threatened and must be recovered. "State Power" sounds the ral lying cry for the defenders of the state. People who look to the state for redress of market unfairness, scholars whose human capital is invested in understanding how states work, and Hobbesian skeptics suspicious of visions of efficiency and harmony can all rally around the statist stan dard. Teaching and writing on this theme in the mid-1970s, after the defeat of the United States in Vietnam, Krasner helped to launch a counterwave of renewed interest in the state against the trends empha sizing economic interdependence, transnational relations, "ungovernability," and the states alleged economic irrelevance. Leading economists had been more impressed with the advantages of multinational firms over states. Not long before Krasner wrote, Charles Kindle Berger had proclaimed that "the nation-state is just about through as an economic unit."2 Even political scientists sympathetic to the transnationalist research agenda recoiled from such rhetoric. It was Krasners counter rhetoric that energized a statist reaction? And it mattered little that his article nowhere defines "the state"; contests over definitions also became part of the subsequent scholarly debate. Some of the appeal of "State Power" derives from its clear specification of 2l puzzle. Puzzles are central to social science, and Krasner s puzzle is an important one. Why, he asks, has the world economy vacillated between openness and closure? To clarify this issue, Krasner carefully defines the continuum between openness and closure. While acknowledging the significance of movements of capital, labor, and technology, he focuses on trade. He argues that openness or closure in the structure of international trade can be operationalized by examining tariff levels, trade as a proportion of national product, and the regionalization or globalization of trade. Krasner does not merely present an important puzzle; he provides a way to measure the dependent variable that he has identified. Thus he lays out the basis for a focused research program. "State Power" also advances a strong proposition, as stated above, that hegemonic ascendancy tends to create openness. Indeed, Krasner pro posed a set of explanatory variables? Position in the world political economy, defined in terms of size, level of development, and changes in 2 Kindle Berger, American Business Abroad: Six Lectures on Direct Investment (New Haven: Yale U

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