This 2002 book expands our understanding of the distinctive policy analysis produced between 1919 and 1950 by economists and other social scientists for four major international organizations: the League of Nations, the International Labor Organization, the Bank for International Settlements, and the United Nations. These practitioners included some of the twentieth century's eminent economists, including Cassel, Haberler, Kalecki, Meade, Morgenstern, Nurkse, Ohlin, Tinbergen, and Viner. Irving Fisher and John Maynard Keynes also influenced the work of these organizations. Topics covered include: the relationship between economics and policy analysis in international organizations; business cycle research; the role and conduct of monetary policy; public investment; trade policy; social and labor economics; international finance; the coordination problem in international macroeconomic policy; full employment economics; and the rich-country-poor-country debate. Normative agendas underlying international political economy are made explicit, and lessons are distilled for today's debates on international economic integration.

From the end of World War I through the early years of the Cold War, international organizations such as the League of Nations, International Labor Organization, the Bank for International Settlements, and the United Nations had a major influence on policies adopted among member nations. This book surveys ideas produced by those organizations on such vital matters as the international business cycle; trade policy; social policy; public expenditure; taxation and government investment activity; money and exchange rate management; wage setting and full employment and the rich country-poor country divide. The work reveals explicit normative agendas underlying international political economy, and lessons are distilled for today's debates on international economic integration.

International organizations have come to play a central role in world politics. The authors present a major new attempt to explain the difference - and the similarities - between them, as well as their crucial role

Guide to U.S. Economic Policy shows students and researchers how issues and actions are translated into public policies for resolving economic problems (like the Great Recession) or managing economic conflict (like the left-right ideological split over the role of government regulation in markets). Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the guide highlights decision-making cycles requiring the cooperation of government, business, and an informed citizenry to achieve a comprehensive approach to a successful, growth-oriented economic policy. Through 30 topical, operational, and relational essays, the book addresses the development of U.S. economic policies from the colonial period to today; the federal agencies and public and private organizations that influence and administer economic policies; the challenges of balancing economic development with environmental and social goals; and the role of the U.S. in international organizations such as the IMF and WTO. Key Features: 30 essays by experts in the field investigate the fundamental economic, political, social, and process initiatives that drive policy decisions affecting the nation’s economic stability and success. Essential themes traced throughout the chapters include scarcity, wealth creation, theories of economic growth and macroeconomic management, controlling inflation and unemployment, poverty, the role of government agencies and regulations to police markets, Congress vs. the president, investment policies, economic indicators, the balance of trade, and the immediate and long-term costs associated with economic policy alternatives. A glossary of key economic terms and events, a summary of bureaus and agencies charged with economic policy decisions, a master bibliography, and a thorough index appear at the back of the book. This must-have reference for students and researchers is suitable for academic, public, high school, government, and professional libraries.

In 2009, the International Labour Organization (ILO) celebrated its ninetieth anniversary. The First World War and the revolutionary wave it provoked in Russia and elsewhere were powerful inspirations for the founding of the ILO. There was a growing understanding that social justice, in particular by improving labour conditions, was an essential precondition for universal peace. Since then, the ILO has seen successes and set-backs; it has been ridiculed and praised. Much has been written about the ILO; there are semi-official histories and some critical studies on the organization's history have recently been published. Yet, further source-based critical and comprehensive analyses of the organization's origins and development are still lacking. The present collection of eighteen essays is an attempt to change this unsatisfactory situation by complementing those histories that already exist, exploring new topics, and offering new perspectives. It is guided by the observation that the ILO's history is not primarily about «elaborating beautiful texts and collecting impressive instruments for ratification» but about effecting «real change and more happiness in peoples' lives».

While the birth of global economic governance is conventionally dated to the end of World War II, Jamie Martin shows how its roots lie in World War I and its aftermath. The Meddlers explores the intense political struggles about sovereignty and self-governance provoked by the first attempts to govern global capitalism.

A new and original history of the forces that shaped the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century. For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clear: democratic values had prevailed over dictatorship. But if the twentieth century meant the triumph of liberalism, as many intellectuals proclaimed, why have the era’s darker impulses—ethnic nationalism, racist violence, and populist authoritarianism—revived? The Project-State and Its Rivals offers a radical alternative interpretation that takes us from the transforming challenges of the world wars to our own time. Instead of the traditional narrative of domestic politics and international relations, Charles S. Maier looks to the political and economic impulses that propelled societies through a century when territorial states and transnational forces both claimed power, engaging sometimes as rivals and sometimes as allies. Maier focuses on recurring institutional constellations: project-states including both democracies and dictatorships that sought not just to retain power but to transform their societies; new forms of imperial domination; global networks of finance; and the international associations, foundations, and NGOs that tried to shape public life through allegedly apolitical appeals to science and ethics. In this account, which draws on the author’s studies over half a century, Maier invites a rethinking of the long twentieth century. His history of state entanglements with capital, the decline of public projects, and the fragility of governance explains the fraying of our own civic culture—but also allows hope for its recovery.

The Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development explores the theories and approaches which, over a prolonged period of time, have existed as viable alternatives to today’s mainstream and neo-classical tenets. With a total of 40 specially commissioned chapters, written by the foremost authorities in their respective fields, this volume represents a landmark in the field of economic development. It elucidates the richness of the alternative and sometimes misunderstood ideas which, in different historical contexts, have proved to be vital to the improvement of the human condition. The subject matter is approached from several complementary perspectives. From a historical angle, the Handbook charts the mercantilist and cameralist theories that emerged from the Renaissance and developed further during the Enlightenment. From a geographical angle, it includes chapters on African, Chinese, Indian, and Muslim approaches to economic development. Different schools are also explored and discussed including nineteenth century US development theory, Marxist, Schumpeterian, Latin American structuralism, regulation theory and world systems theories of development. In addition, the Handbook has chapters on important events and institutions including The League of Nations, The Havana Charter, and UNCTAD, as well as on particularly influential development economists. Contemporary topics such as the role of finance, feminism, the agrarian issue, and ecology and the environment are also covered in depth. This comprehensive Handbook offers an unrivalled review and analysis of alternative and heterodox theories of economic development. It should be read by all serious scholars, teachers and students of development studies, and indeed anyone interested in alternatives to development orthodoxy.

Writing Global Trade Governance operationalises a key post-structuralist methodology in order to expand understanding on the institution at the heart of the global political economy. Despite the WTO’s centrality and the growing popularity of methods utilizing discourse theory, no other text has yet demonstrated how these two fields of learning can be productively combined. The book seeks to move beyond existing literatures that assume the WTO to be a structure, institution or normative framework, in order to enquire into the discursive processes of identity formation that make the WTO both possible and contested. The book criticises conventional approaches that treat critical civil society as distinct to the WTO, arguing instead that it is only through including such social practices within the field of relations making the WTO that we can properly understand what makes the WTO work. The book presents an empirical analysis of the discursive character of the present-day WTO (including its formation and operation) and then moves on to evaluate how it is subject to change within a broader social context. The final stage of the book seeks to discuss the impact of the findings on future research, both on the WTO and other institutions. This work is a significant intervention in the literature on the World Trade Organization and the politics of global trade and social movements, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of global governance, discourse theory and international organizations