Andrew C. Sobel – författare

With American leadership facing increased competition from China and India, the question of how hegemons emerge - and are able to create conditions for lasting stability - is of utmost importance in international relations. The generally accepted wisdom is that liberal superpowers, with economies based on capitalist principles, are best able to develop systems conducive to the health of the global economy. In "Birth of Hegemony", Andrew C. Sobel draws attention to the critical role played by finance in the emergence of these liberal hegemons. He argues that a hegemon must have both the capacity and the willingness to bear a disproportionate share of the cost of providing key collective goods that are the basis of international cooperation and exchange. Through this, the hegemon helps maintain stability and limits the risk to productive international interactions. However, prudent planning can account for only part of a hegemon's ability to provide public goods, while some of the necessary conditions must be developed simply through processes of economic growth and political development.Sobel supports these claims by examining the economic trajectories that led to the successive leadership of the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States. Stability in international affairs has long been a topic of great interest to our understanding of global politics, and Sobel's account sets the stage for a consideration of recent developments affecting the United States.

The internationalization of financial markets moved to center stage in the international political economy during the 1980s. These markets affect trade, investment, venture enterprises, growth, and competitiveness. Domestic Choices, International Markets uses the internationalization and liberalization of securities markets to examine interdependence, leadership, and the mechanisms of change in an increasingly global political economy.During the 1970s and 1980s, the United States began relaxing government oversight of the security markets, promoting price competition, lowering national barriers, dismantling barriers between individual sectors of the financial industry, encouraging innovation, and easing international capital flows. The United Kingdom and Japan soon adopted similar policies, thereby transforming markets in New York, London, and Tokyo. Yet during this time, the United States’ leadership in international finance was seen to be waning. Why did Japan and the United Kingdom follow the United States’ lead so completely and quickly?Most emphasize the interdependence of the world’s financial markets to explain this phenomenon. If this were the case, though, one would expect regulation and transaction costs to converge across markets by competitive deregulation. This has not happened. Significantly, the markets have remained overwhelmingly national with only a modest increase in international activity. In an alternate explanation, Andrew Sobel argues that opening up national doors was really a secondary consequence of policy competitions among sectors of the domestic financial services industry. Changes that occurred earlier in the United States served as examples and constrained the range of choices considered by policy makers in other nations. The author shows how information and reputation networks award disproportionate influence to U.S. actors and institutions. Thus U.S. leadership persists.

Although many international political economy texts offer good descriptions of what events have occurred in global economic and political relations, they make little attempt to develop explicit theoretical frameworks explaining why. Andrew Sobel′s International Political Economy in Context: Individual Choices, Global Effects takes a micro approach to international political economy that considers the fact that individuals—not nations—make choices. Grounding policy choices in the competitive environs of domestic politics and decision-making processes, Sobel illustrates how policymakers choose among alternatives, settling on those that are most in sync with their self-interest. The book is structured to build students′ skills for a sophisticated understanding of how and why events unfold in the international political economy. Students become versed in the primary assumptions and structural/macro conditions of economic and political geography in the global arena. An examination of micro-level conditions and mechanisms introduces the factors that influence political and economic outcomes. Students are then able to use those primary assumptions and micro-level arrangements to make sense of past and present changes in the global political economy. Those familiar with Sobel′s first volume, Political Economy and Global Affairs, will easily find their way through this new book. Anyone looking for a compelling, accessible, and fully integrated rational choice perspective on international political economy will find it here.

Policy decisions at the domestic level—whether relating to currency rates, tariffs on certain goods, or labor protection—factor heavily on such issues as trade, monetary policy, foreign debt, and development. How can we best understand the way those decisions and events at the national level affect outcomes and policy at the international level? A focus on one over the other paints an incomplete picture for students. Sobel contends that we must focus on the individual preferences, strategies, and choices of political-economic policymakers in order to fully understand the larger, macro view of international political economy. With the aim of linking the two, Sobel helps students develop analytic skills for describing both what happens in the international political economy, and why policymakers make the choices they do.In this groundbreaking new text, Sobel presents—in a lucid and intuitive way—the core assumptions of scarcity, political survival, and rationality which form the basis of the book’s “micro-level” approach. Individuals—not nations—make choices. With constraints as to what resources and opportunities are available, policymakers choose among alternatives that are most in sync with their self-interest. If students understand market failure and social traps, as well as how collective action problems affect interest group and institutional performance, they will be able to answer questions about a wide spectrum of events that start at the domestic level and spill over into global economic markets.To add context, Sobel presents a concise but detailed historical overview of globalization that demonstrates the shortcomings of common macro-level models in the field, from realism to liberalism to hegemonic stability theory. Your students will be equipped with a set of analytic tools that better explain individual behavior and social outcomes in areas such as trade liberalization, institutional bargains, factor endowments, currency exchange systems and convertibility, and development.Special features:

Exercises at the end of each chapter encourage students to apply the concepts they’ve just read about.A suggested reading list for each chapter provides rich sources for further study.Valuable figures and tables as well as highlighted key terms and a glossary help students grasp important concepts and aid in study.Photos enliven the book’s presentation and provide visual examples to help students understand core concepts.