Recent work suggests that the most fruitful approach to accounting for variations in interest system diversity of any type lies in understanding variations in interest system density (Lowery, Gray and Fellowes 2005). We build on this insight by examining the sources of variation in the substantive diversity of health interests in the American states, focusing on how the densities of several sub-guilds of health interest organizations vary in their responses to changes in the sizes of the constituencies that give rise to them and variations in the policy and political energy supporting their mobilization. We discuss the concept of interest system diversity in the first section of the paper, highlighting its multiple meanings and the limits of prior research. This is followed by a close empirical examination of 14 sub-guilds of state health interest organizations. We conclude by discussing the inherent difficulties of understanding interest system diversity.

This paper applies the insights of obsolescing bargaining theory to a situation in which a host country interacted with both multinational corporations and an international organization, the World Bank. Drawing on resource curse literature and the Rubinstein bargaining model, we demonstrate the continued usefulness of obsolescing bargaining theory by explaining why the World Bank had to renegotiate its initial bargain with Chad in the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline Project. The paper explores how specific bargaining parameters changed over time in this case and suggests how resource curse dynamics and their impact on domestic politics might be particularly relevant for bargaining between host countries and international actors. The case study serves as a warning to international financial institutions and corporations alike with regard to the ways in which obsolescing bargains can arise in the contemporary global political-economy.

A prominent variant of the compensation hypothesis rests on the premise that increased trade exposure heightens domestic economic volatility, prompting demands for compensation via generous systems of transfers and services. Economic theory suggests that because the expansion of international trade entails integration into larger, deeper, more stable markets, and may entail risk diversification, it may actually promote rather than reduce stability. By the same token, however, economic theory also suggests that smaller economies should experience greater levels of volatility than larger economies, and thus also greater levels of insecurity. The evidence presented here suggests that the level of domestic economic volatility in the developed economies, during the latter half of the twentieth century, may indeed have been driven by the size and depth of markets. And critically, for these countries international trade integration may have eased rather than accentuated domestic economic volatility.

By analyzing the interaction between a business firm and multiple government institutions (including a regulatory agency, an executive and a bicameral legislature), we develop predictions about how firms target their political strategies at different branches of government when seeking more favorable public policies. The core of our argument is that firms will target their resources at the institution that is ‘pivotal’ in the policy-making process. We develop a simple framework, drawing on the political science literature, which identifies pivotal institutions in different types of political environments. We find empirical support for our thesis in an analysis of how U.S. accounting firms shifted their political campaign contributions between the House and Senate in response to the threat of new regulations governing auditor independence during the 1990s.