1. For example, Strange, Susan, “Cave! Hie Dragones: A Critique of Regime Analysis,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), pp. 299–324CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. See Rosecrance's, Richard “Introduction” to his edited volume, America as an Ordinary Country (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), p. 1Google Scholar; Oye, Kenneth A., “The Domain of Choice,” in Oye, , Rothchild, Donald, and Lieber, Robert J., eds., Eagle Entangled: U.S. Foreign Policy in a Complex World (New York: Longman, 1979), pp. 4–5Google Scholar; and Liska, George, Career of Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), chap. 10Google Scholar.

3. See Gilpin, Robert, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation: The Political Economy of Direct Foreign Investment (New York: Basic Books, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gilpin, , War and Change in the International System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), esp. p. 231Google Scholar: “By the 1980s the Pax Americana was in a state of disarray”; Krasner, Stephen, “Transforming International Regimes: What the Third World Wants and Why,” International Studies Quarterly 25 (03 1981), pp. 119–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kindleberger, Charles, “Systems of International Economic Organization,” in Calleo, David, ed., Money and the Coming World Order (New York: New York University Press, 1976)Google Scholar; and also many of the contributors to the special issue of International Organization 36 (Spring 1982)Google Scholar. Keohane's, Robert O.After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar, represents a special case. His is the most sophisticated version of hegemonic stability theory, and he explicitly argues against equating a decline in power base with an equivalent decline in the characteristics of a regime. Nevertheless he repeatedly uses such phrases as “a post-hegemony world” (p. 216) and “the legacy of American hegemony” and “hegemony will not be restored in our lifetime” (p. 244), justifying the book's title. The only strong emphasis on the continuity of American power that I have been able to find is Susan Strange, “Still an Extraordinary Power: America's Role in a Global Monetary System,” in Lombra, Raymond E. and Witte, William E., eds., Political Economy of International and Domestic Monetary Relations (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

4. Keohane, After Hegemony, identifies four criteria by which to judge a hegemon of world political economy: a preponderance of material resources in raw materials, capital, markets, and production of highly valued goods. A broader view of hegemony, however, requires inclusion of military, scientific, and other resources.

5. For example, Rupert, Mark E. and Rapkin, David P., “The Erosion of U.S. Leadership Capabilities,” in Johnson, Paul and Thompson, William R., eds., Rhythms in International Politics and Economics (New York: Praeger, 1985)Google Scholar.

6. See, for instance, Waltz, Kenneth, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), esp. chap. 7Google Scholar, who regards the United States as more autonomous, and hence stronger, than more internationally involved states.

7. Deutsch, Karl W., The Analysis of International Relations, 2d ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978)Google Scholar.

8. Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph, Power and Interdependence (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), p. 44Google Scholar, and Krasner, Stephen, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), p. 199CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. McKeown, Timothy J., “Tariffs and Hegemonic Stability Theory,” International Organization 37 (Winter 1983), pp. 73–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Keohane, , After Hegemony, p. 37Google Scholar.

10. Snidal, Duncan, “Public Goods, Property Rights, and Political Organization,” International Studies Quarterly 23 (12 1979), pp. 532–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Krasner, Stephen, “State Power and the Structure of International Trade,” World Politics 27 (04 1975), pp. 314–47Google Scholar, and Ruggie's, John review of Krasner's book in American Political Science Review 74 (03 1980), pp. 296–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Oppenheimer, Joe, “Collective Goods and Alliances: A Reassessment,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 23 (07 1979), pp. 387–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Modelski, George, “The Long Cycle of Global Politics and the Nation-State,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20 (04 1978), pp. 214–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Deutsch, Karl W. et al. , Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

15. Arrighi, Giovanni, “A Crisis of Hegemony,” in Amin, Samir et al. , Dynamics of Global Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1982), p. 77Google Scholar.

16. I am aware that much of the hegemonic stability literature (for example, a “founding father,” Kindleberger, Charles, The World in Depression, 1929–1939 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973])Google Scholar is concerned with very specific issue-areas and goods rather than with such broader achievements or “goods” as “peace and prosperity.” Focus on narrow issue-areas makes the thesis of a decline in American hegemony more plausible–at least for those selected issue-areas. Nevertheless, issue-areas are usually selected because they are assumed, implicitly or explicitly, to be symptomatic of a broad decline in U.S. ability to maintain the conditions of global prosperity. “Peace” among industrial capitalist powers (and containment of the Soviet Union) is one of those conditions. Thus, while some hegemonic stability writing can escape the strictures of my critique, a general evaluation of the state of American “hegemony” and its consequences–an evaluation that is both common and necessary–must carry the discussion beyond selected, rather narrow issue-areas. Gilpin, , War and Change, and many of the contributors to the Spring 1982Google Scholar special issue of International Organization would surely agree.

17. See Russett, Bruce and Starr, Harvey, World Politics: The Menu for Choice, 2d ed. (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1985), chap. 15Google Scholar, and Doyle, Michael, “Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (Summer 1983), pp. 205–35Google Scholar.

18. The terms are, respectively, from Deutsch, et al. , Political Community, and Boulding, Kenneth E., Peace, Stable (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

19. See Singer, J. David and Small, Melvin, “The War-Proneness of Democratic Regimes, 1815–1965,” Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 1, 1 (1976), pp. 50–69Google Scholar.

20. Not to me the most persuasive explanation, though see Weede, Erich, “Extended Deterrence by Superpower Alliance,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 27 (06 1983), pp. 231–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. Krasner, , “Structural Causes,” p. 185Google Scholar.

22. Jervis, Robert, “Security Regimes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), p. 371CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. See Lijphart, Arend, The Trauma of Decolonization: The Dutch and West New Guinea (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), chap. 11Google Scholar; and Hoopes, Townsend, The Devil and John Foster Dulles (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 384Google Scholar.

24. See Khalilzad, Zalmay, “Islamic Iran: Soviet Dilemma,” Problems of Communism 33 (01–02 1984), pp. 1–20Google Scholar.

25. Keohane, , After Hegemony, p. 34Google Scholar.

26. Small, Melvin and Singer, J. David, Resort to Arms (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1982), p. 134Google Scholar.

27. For the comparative data on trade I am indebted to Strange, Susan, “Protectionism and World Politics,” International Organization 39 (Spring s1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hughes, Helen and Waelbroeck, Jean, “Foreign Trade and Structural Adjustment–Is There a New Protectionism?” in Braun, Hans-Gert et al. , eds., The European Economy in the 1980s (Aldershot: Gower, 1983)Google Scholar, reply that the increase in protectionism during the 1970s was very small. There is some evidence that protectionism rises during periods of cyclical economic downturn, but those increases must not be mistaken for long-term trends. On the collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed-exchangerate system see Patrick, Hugh and Rosovksy, Henry, “The End of Eras? Japan and the Western World in the 1970–1980s” (paper presented at the Japan Political Economy Research Conference, Honolulu, 07 1983), p. 38Google Scholar: “In our view, despite excessively wide swings in real rates among currencies, the flexible exchange rate system was a way of maintaining the liberal international economic order rather than being a cause of its demise.” Also see Keohane, , After Hegemony, p. 213Google Scholar: “Substantial erosion of the trade regime … has occurred, but … what is equallly striking is the presistence of cooperation even if not always addressed to liberal ends. Trade wars have not taken place, despite economic distress. On the contrary, what we see are intensive efforts at cooperation, in response to discord in textiles, steel electronics, and other areas” On liberalization of the Japanese economy see Vernon, Raymond, Two Hungry Giants: The United States and Japan in the Quest for Oil and Ores (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. Arrighi, , “A Crisis of Hegemony,” p. 65Google Scholar. One could quarrel with the use of “national interest,” and qualify it by reference to the interests of the ruling classes, but on the whole I am not inclined to do so–major qualification would require some near-heroic assumptions about false consciousness.

29. Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Keohane, Robert O., “The Demand for International Regimes,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), p. 348CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Keohane's discussion is reminiscent of Deutsch, Karl W., The Nerves of Government (New York: Free Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

31. Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar.

32. Keohane, , After Hegemony, p. 270Google Scholar: “So the United States farsightedly made short-term sacrifices–in growing financial aid, and in permitting discrimination against American exports– in order to accomplish the longer-term objective of creating a stable and prosperous international economic order in which liberal capitalism would prevail and American influence would be predominant.” The proposition that the burdens of empire almost inevitably outweigh its benefits is of course a common one. Elvin, Note Mark, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (London: Methuen, 1973)Google Scholar: “The burdens of size consist mainly in the need to maintain a more extended bureaucracy with more intermediate layers, the growing difficulties of effective co-ordination as territorial area increases, and the heavier costs of maintaining troops on longer front lines further removed from the main sources of trustworthy manpower and supplies” (p. 19).

33. See Russett and Starr, World Politics, chap. 18.

34. Russett, Bruce, What Price Vigilance? The Burdens of National Defense (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), chap. 4.Google Scholar.

35. Rasler, Karen and Thompson, William R., “Global Wars, Public Debts, and the Long Cycle,” World Politics 36 (10 1983), pp. 489–516CrossRefGoogle Scholar, carefully recognize the particular private benefits, to the commercially extended hegemon, of providing defense and deterrence for others. This should be set against the more familiar argument that military expenditures become a private “bad” by inhibiting capital formation and growth in the hegemon. For evidence see Rasler and Thompson, “Longitudinal Change in Defense Burdens, Capital Formation, and Economic Growth,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming.

36. Stein, Arthur A., “The Hegemon's Dilemma: Great Britain, the United States, and the International Economic Order,” International Organization 38 (Spring 1984), pp. 355–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the argument that free trade is not necessarily a collective good see Conybeare, John, “Public Goods, Prisoners' Dilemma, and the International Political Economy,” International Studies Quarterly 28 (03 1984), pp. 5–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. Arrighi, , “A Crisis of Hegemony,” p. 57Google Scholar.

38. Tufte, Edward R., Political Control of the Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Ellsberg, Daniel, Papers on the War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972)Google Scholar; and Gelb, Leslie and Betts, Richard, The System Worked: The Irony of Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1979)Google Scholar.

39. In his brilliant paper Duncan Snidal, “Hegemonic Stability Theory Revisited,” International Organization, forthcoming, notes that both Krasner, “State Power,” and Gilpin, War and Change, fully recognize the degree to which the postwar regimes benefited the United States in particular, and that Gilpin particularly argues that the United States was significantly able to extract contributions as a quasi-government.

40. See Keohane, After Hegemony.

41. That is, persuading someone to do something he or she would not otherwise do; see Dahl, Robert A., Modern Political Analysis, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984)Google Scholar.

42. Cox, Robert W. and Jacobson, Harold K., “The United States and World Order: On Structures of World Power and Structural Transformation” (paper presented at the Twelfth World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Rio de Janeiro, 08 1982), p. 7Google Scholar: “World hegemony is founded through a process of cultural and ideological development. This process is rooted mainly in the civil society of the founding country, though it has the support of the state in that country, and it extends to include groups from other countries.” Also see Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process, vol. 2: State Formation and Civilization (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982)Google Scholar: “Just as it was not possible in the West itself, from a certain stage of interdependence onwards, to rule people solely by force and physical threats, so it also became necessary, in maintaining an empire that went beyond mere plantation-land and plantationlabour, to rule people in part through themselves, through the moulding of their superegos. …The outsiders absorb the code of the established groups and thus undergo a process of assimilation. Their own affect-control, their own conduct, obeys the rules of the established groups. Partially they identify themselves with them, and even though the identification may show strong ambivalencies, still their own conscience, their whole superego apparatus, follows more or less the pattern of the established groups.” Neither of these statements is meant to deny some reciprocal role of elites in the periphery in helping to shape the dominant world culture.

43. They form, for instance, a key element in Alker's conception of power. Alker, Hayward R., “Power in a Schedule Sense,” in Alker, et al. , eds., Mathematical Approaches to Politics (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1972)Google Scholar.

44. Stein, Arthur A., “Coordination and Collaboration: Regimes in an Anarchic World,” International Organization 36 (Spring 1982), p. 324CrossRefGoogle Scholar.