Since the Second World War complex and changing sets of norms and rules have governed trade relations among most countries. They have largely originated from a unique and accidental international organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). We have labeled these norms, rules, and decision-making mechanisms the GATT regime or global trade barriers regime. The importance that GATT members have attached to certain norms has shaped the regime's procedural mechanisms, rules, and implementation of rules. Classifying those norms as sovereignty or interdependence norms, we posit that the strength or autonomy of the regime can be established by analyzing the prominence of the interdependence norms in the issue area. We close by exploring some of the functions of the regime in international trade and political relations.

Third World debt grew very rapidly in the 1970s. Many states, faced with sharply higher costs for energy and manufactured imports, borrowed aggressively in unregulated offshore capital markets. But what constrains sovereign states to repay this debt to commercial banks? Creditors do not turn to their home states to enforce payment; rather, the supervision of sovereign debt is largely a function of commercial banking arrangements, especially lenders' syndicates, and the International Monetary Fund's conditional lending. This political structure, which involves unified private sanctions, has ensured that no state defaults unless it is insolvent or is willing to accept a radical rupture in its international commercial relationships. When the problem is insolvency, creditors routinely convene ad hoc conferences. In conjunction with an IMFapproved stabilization program, creditors can renegotiate debt-service schedules and provide new financing if necessary. These arrangements are distinctive among international economic regimes because they rely on nonstate actors as the primary source of rules, norms, and procedures.

How have UN human rights goals and priorities evolved in the 1970s? The moderate compromise represented by the International Bill of Rights, as completed by the Covenants in 1966, has been undone in the seventies. A point-by-point examination of the major principles enunciated in General Assembly resolution 32/130 of 16 December 1977, which codified the trends of the decade and stands as the authoritative statement of the UN's strategic goals and priorities in the field of human rights, shows that the earlier moderation has been replaced by a one-sided, politicized, and often cynical approach. This development in UN doctrine merits polemical criticism.

In early 1972 Canada participated in an international uranium cartel designed to control the world price and supply of uranium through a complex scheme of pricefixing and bid-rigging. This study focuses on Canada's role in the formation and operation of that cartel, the domestic political reaction when its existence was discovered, and the implications of this for Canadian-American relations. Domestic economic considerations were a major factor that led to a break with traditional Canadian foreign policy. Related to this are the close corporate connections between the Canadian and American uranium industry and the enormous impact of American domestic policies on Canada. The uranium case also offers support to the theory that transnational relations and other multinational processes threaten democratic control of foreign policy.

A valuable source of data for the international organization researcher is interviews with delegates sent by their governments to participate in international conferences and meetings. With the appearance of many newly independent states in the 1960s and early 1970s, the size of international conferences and the workload of the individual delegate have grown to such an extent that it has become difficult to tap this resource effectively.

The dominant scholarly approach to the analysis of nationalization of foreign extractive industries in Third World countries employs game theory or bargaining models. A commonly used framework in bargaining theory is the so-called “bilateral monopoly model,” which posits the existence of two “non-colluding” parties—that is, the foreign investor and a government—each of whom has singular, noncontradictory objectives. The relationship is described in terms of a “balance of power” between the host country and the foreign investor based on the problem of joint-maximization. Each party has what the other needs to maximize their mutual benefits. The foreign investor has capital, organizational resources, expertise, international access to export markets, and marketing ability while the host government has control of natural resources such as ore and crude oil as well as the labor force, and control over taxation, the trade and foreign exchange regime, and other law and regulation.