Editor: James Barber

The Financial Factor and the Balance of Power

Strange, Susan. In Foreign Policy: Policy Making and Implementation, edited by James Barber, Josephine Negro, Micheal Smith, 35-46. Milton Keynes: Open University, 1975.

Strange presents the Soviet-American balance of power alongside the balance of power in the international monetary system to make links between supposedly different sectors of the international system. While these balances function in different ways, Strange prefaces her remarks with a short argument for an International Political Economy approach to problems rather than a predominantly political or predominantly economic account. This short piece illustrates her argument about the applicability of her IPE approach, but does not include her more usual extended criticism of previous analyses from International Relations or International Economics.

Keywords: Money and Finance; Political Economy; Structural Power, Power

Contributor(s): Susan Strange, Editor: James Barber, Editor: Josephine Negro and Editor: Michael Smith
Keywords: Money and Finance, Political Economy, Structural Power, Power, 1970's, Susan Strange
Source and Medium: Book Chapter

Year of Publication: 1975

International Business and the EEC

Strange, Susan. In The Eruopean Economic Community, edited by James Barber, 82-95. Milton Keynes: Open University, 1974.

Strange discusses the relationship between international business and the EEC by briefly examining three partly overlapping assertions: that the main achievements of the EEC have resulted not from the community’s own work but from the impact of international business; that international business is a ‘Trojan horse’ for American influence and interest in Europe; and that the EEC is a necessary response to the problems brought by international business. She then concludes it is impossible to separate politics and economics, and that the indicators used to measure the level of European integration are unable to capture what is actually happening. Furthermore, the impact of international business is becoming a transnational process across states rather than an international process between them. Thus she advocates further moves to political unity in Europe to counter-balance the power of international business.

Keywords: Corporations; Europe; Transnational Corporations; European Integration

Contributor(s): Susan Strange and Editor: James Barber
Keywords: Corporations, Europe, 1970's, Susan Strange
Source and Medium: Book Chapter

Year of Publication: 1974

The Multinational Corporation and the National Interest

Strange, Susan. In Decision Making in Britain, edited by James Barber, 165-178. Milton Keynes: Open University, 1972.

In one of her earliest pieces to deal directly with multinational companies or corporations Strange argues that an analysis of the companies not only leads to both domestic and foreign policy making but also into the realm of international (regulatory) policy making. Much of the text is taken up with a discussion of the likely conflicts in interest between governments and corporations with multinational operations (as she prefers to term them). In the main she is concerned to note the national interest in control and the difficulty of trying to control non-national companies, but she notes the already troublesome problems of taxation and regulation. She concludes that rather than threats by other states, the main problems that states need to deal with are linked with the operations of international business in one way or another.

Keywords: Corporations; Political Economy; Transnational Corporations; International Economics

Contributor(s): Susan Strange and Editor: James Barber
Keywords: Corportations, Political Economy, 1970's
Source and Medium: Book Chapter

Year of Publication: 1972