At the present time the spectrum of views on the probabilities for major change in the present political economy of North-South relations is very broad. Some scholars predict a significant increase in the bargaining strength of the developing countries; others suggest that the asymmetrical interdependences in today's political economy are unlikely to produce major alterations in North-South bargaining power in the near future. This article examines some of the empirical and theoretical evidence which seems most relevant to the outcome of the present conflict between the Third World and the industrialized states and concludes that arguments predicting major structural changes in. North-South economic relations may have overstated their case.

A new approach is suggested to analyze the relations between the EC and national administrations on the one hand and the EC and national interest groups on the other. Drawing from research in comparative politics and public administration, the essay examines the working relationship between a government agency and an interest group in order to see what functions each performs. Under certain conditions, there arises a situation called clientela, a close relationship between agency and group. When studying the EC, a crucial question concerns the reasons why an interest group would forsake a productive national relationship for a new one at the Community level. One conclusion suggests that the extent of national clientela will determine both the development of Community-level interests groups as well as the strength of EC-national interest group linkages.

Data collected from a survey of corporate managers in the Federal Republic of Germany are used, first, to describe the level and pattern of attachment of this critical elite as regards regional integration in Western Europe and, second, to assess two alternative hypotheses purporting to explain different integration support levels among members of this elite. While not entirely satisfactory, the concept we introduce, “external interest” (defined as an individual's perception of the “effect” and “valence” of regional integration on one's own well-being), is more highly correlated with integration attitude than is its rival, Inglehart's concept of “values,” with respect to both the German managerial data we collected and also the European Community (EC) survey data upon which Inglehart's original analysis was based. The investigation drew attention to operationalizations of the concept “regional integration”; what in fact is being measured and explained when alternative (often analyst-specific) approaches yield conflicting findings.

The construction of explanatory theory about the determinants of regional integration is contingent upon our prior ability to measure integration in a typology or set of dimensions as a description and classification of that dependent variable. Previous attempts to conceptually differentiate the types of regional integration are reviewed and found to be contradictory. In order to generate empirically informed estimates about which typifications of integrative behavior are the most powerful and reasonable for theory construction, Joseph Nye's framework was selected for analysis. Construct validation was performed by operationalizing Nye's variables and confronting his scheme with data drawn from the Southeast Asian regional subsystem in order to ascertain the scheme's region-specific applicability. Factor analysis provided partial support for Nye's construct. The evidence derived here suggests that regional integration is a multidimensional phenomenon and that efforts to construct a single, multipurpose index of integration are not warranted. The major dimensions of regional integration emergent were (a) societal interdependence, (b) attitudinal integration, and (c) intergovernmental cooperation. The findings suggest that it is most meaningful to formulate theories in terms of the sources of each distinct type of integration; moreover, it appears that the dimensionality of integration may vary across regions and/or types of national actors.

This paper provides data on long-term changes in international interdependence. Transactions exchanged between societies and states are one possible means of interdependence. Two decades ago Karl Deutsch collected a substantial amount of data which illustrated a long-term decline in transactions since the beginning of the twentieth century. An extension of his time series data points to a possibly important reversal of that trend in recent years. This conclusion is in agreement with other empirical measures of international interdependence.

The existence of quasi-sovereign international institutions raises important questions regarding the level of national influence and the degree of democratic control over international political decisions which can be exercised within a multilateral political framework. Karl Kaiser suggests that “as the number and activities of international organizations expand, an area grows in which major decisions are made without much democratic control by the peoples and institutions which are affected or which support these activities financially. Because the national government is still the basic unit of political organization in contemporary world politics, it is necessary that national governments oversee the operations of the international institutions if the principle of public control over those who make the major political decisions is to be retained. For oversight to be effective, and for the principle of public control over the makers of political decisions to be retained, oversight must be reinforced by sufficient access to information so that governments can regulate these institutions and so that citizens can control governments.