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Conclusion: an institutional approach to American foreign economic policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

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It may well be that Poincaré's observation is correct, that natural scientists discuss their results and social scientists their methods. if so, it is because our guides to social reality are so frail. Approaches to political investigation are difficult to separate from the substantive puzzles that drive inquiry and the results that follow. In collective enterprises, such as this volume, the problem of approach or method becomes all the more central. We are left with no choice but to reflect on the tools that we use as well as the social reality that they promise to reveal.

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Research Article
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Copyright © The IO Foundation 1988

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References

I gratefully acknowledge the comments and suggestions of David Lake and Michael Mastanduno as well as the other authors in this volume. I have also received helpful comments from David Bachman, Peter Hall, Stephen Krasner, Charles Kupchan, Ken Oye, Theda Skocpol, and participants in the conference on The American State in the International Political Economy, sponsored by the Program on Interdependent Political Economy, University of Chicago, 29 April 1987.

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2. This point is my own judgment. My characterization of the volume should not suggest that the contributors have reached an explicit consensus.

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31. World War I did have some institutional repercussions. In the area of labor relations, see Julie, Strickland, “War, the State, and Labor: The Case of the United States, 1917–1935,” paper prepared for delivery at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association,28–31 August 1986,Washington, D.C.Google Scholar

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33. See Pletcher, David M., “1861–1898: Economic Growth and Diplomatic Adjustment,” in Becker, William H. and Wells, Samuel F. Jr., eds., Economics and World Power: An Assessment of American Diplomacy Since 1789 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

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47. The issue-area approach does not have much to say about international-centered theory. To the extent that state elites dominate policy and act in terms of systemic constraints and opportunities, however, the international explanations also become relevant.

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51. Ibid., p. 22.

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