Content area
Abstract
The existing conceptions of power in international relations commonly lack analytic leverage in explaining the outcomes of, and the actions of states in, power relations. The primary cause of such a lack of analytic leverage lies in the failure to conceive adequately three distinct types of power resources--the state's attributes, the attributes of exchange relations between states, and the structures of the international system. The three types of power resources are neither reducible to the others, nor interrelated in predetermined ways. Also the relative importance of each type of resources varies according to the context of the power relations.
This study attempts to develop a framework for power analysis in which multidimensional resources are incorporated into a single coherent concept of dependence in social exchange relations. In differentiating dependence as a resource for power, attention is given to the resources that reside in the state's attributes and the international system structures. Such a differentiation of dependence also makes it easier to comprehend states' strategic alternatives for maximizing power.
The suggested framework is employed for analyzing the consequences of power relations for foreign policy behavior in two different contexts--the trade and arms transfer relationships of the United States. The hypotheses about states' cooperative and conflictual behavior are derived by examining the conditions of dependence and the interactions between states' strategic alternatives for maximizing power.
Those empirical analyses show that the suggested framework is useful for pulling together various resources in the given power relations--many of which are otherwise unrelated to each other--into a coherent concept of dependence. The different aspects of dependence and the relevant strategic alternatives for maximizing power are shown to differ clearly in their effects upon the cooperative and conflictual foreign policy behavior of the states in power relations. It is also confirmed that the trade-off relationship between increasing power and obtaining the needed service is an important problem in the empirical analysis of power relations, as well as in the theoretical conceptualization of power.
