The Business of International Politics

Recent years have brought renewed interest in the societal determinants of foreign policy and international relations. Whereas realist and liberal theorists each proceed from the assumption that foreign policy is the product of some version of the national interest, societal explanations depict the foreign policymaking process as dominated by the struggle among private interests. Among the more interesting studies in the latter vein are those that focus on the role of business. Recent works by Thomas Ferguson (1984), Jeffry Frieden (1989, 1988, 1987), Helen Milner (1988), and Sylvia Maxfield andJames Nolt (1990) have provided us with a more sophisticated understanding of why and how business interests insert themselves into the foreign policymaking process. What sets this new wave of research apart is that it dispenses with the notion that business constitutes a monolithic class. Instead, these works show that foreign policy issues often evoke serious cleavages among distinct business groups. These clashing interests give rise to conflict within and among nations over international issues. The most pervasive fault line divides nationalist from international business blocs. Nationalists consist of smaller, less competitive firms that depend on the domestic market for their sales and profits. Internationalist firms are typically larger, more globally competitive and engage heavily in trade and foreign investment. Nationalists and internationalists possess conflicting policy preferences in areas such as trade, exchanges rates, and foreign assistance. The recent literature on such divisions and their consequences for foreign policy and international relations can be dubbed the "business conflict school." The three books under review here belong to this emerging perspective and each succeeds in extending this research agenda in interesting directions. Ronald Cox, in Power and Profits: U.S. Policy in Central America, and David Gibbs, in The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crisis, examine the influence of contending business factions on U.S. interventionism. Gregory Nowell's study, Mercantile States and the World Oil Cartel, 1900-1939, is even more