Introduction: The International Diffusion of Liberalism

Abstract

Political scientists, sociologists, and economists have all sought to analyze the spread of economic and political liberalism across countries in recent decades+ This article documents this diffusion of liberal policies and politics and proposes four distinct theories to explain how the prior choices of some countries and international actors affect the subsequent behavior of others: coercion, competition, learning, and emulation+ These theories are explored empirically in the symposium articles that follow+ The goal of the symposium is to bring quite different and often isolated schools of thought into contact and communication with one another, and to define common metrics by which we can judge the utility of the contending approaches to diffusion across different policy domains+The worldwide spread of economic and political liberalism was the defining feature of the late twentieth century+ Free-market-oriented economic reformsmacroeconomic stabilization, liberalization of foreign economic policies, privatization, and deregulation-took root in many parts of the world+ At more or less the same time, a "third wave" of democratization and liberal constitutionalism washed over much of the globe+ Most economists believe the gains to developing countries from the liberalization of economic policies to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars+ But they also acknowledge the instability and human insecurity sometimes left in liberalization's wake+ 1 Political scientists argue that the rise of democracy has contributed to the betterment of both human rights and international security+ 2 While the precise effects of these twin waves of liberalization are still debated, it is hard to deny that they have had a tremendous impact on the For helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article, the authors wish to thank

How Socialization Attenuates Tax Competition

“…See Schmidheiny 2005. 27 Hallerberg and Basinger 1998;Swank and Steinmo 2002;Hays 2003;Basinger and Hallerberg 2004;Swank 2006;Plümper, Troeger, and Winner 2009;Cao 2010. 28 Radaelli and Kraemer 2008;Genschel, Kemmerling, and Seils 2011;Genschel and Schwarz 2011. 29 Braun and Gilardi 2006;Simmons, Dobbin, and Garrett 2006;Dobbin, Simmons, and Garrett 2007;Gilardi 2012. 30 Some studies have examined the role of learning in the diffusion of tax policies (Baturo and Gray 2009;Jensen and Lindstädt 2012). functions and organizational capacity.…”

Beyond methodological nationalism: how multilevel governance affects the clash of capitalisms

“…By doing so, it complements recent work on policy diffusion, which explores the interaction between policy choices at home and policy choices abroad. Simmons, Dobbin and Garrett, who focus on the receiving end of policy diffusion, identify four reasons why actors may follow another country's policy choices: Coercion, competition, learning and emulation (Simmons, Dobbin & Garrett 2006). I look in the opposite direction and place greater emphasis on rational decision-making to explore how preferences change where actors know that their policy choices will also have effect abroad.…”

EU–China Security Cooperation in Context

“…These three aspects are linked to some extent in that changes in the (geo-) structural domain can affect changes in national interests, and changes in interest formation can affect change in the way norms are applied in the field of EU-China security cooperation. The effects of these changes can either promote or impede what Simmons et al (2006) call 'interdependent decisionmaking' or that policy choices of one country are shaped by the choices of others, in this case decision-making and joint actions in the field of EU-China security cooperation. The following will explore in more detail the three aspects which are seen to affect EU-China security cooperation in this manner.…”