Note from the Chair

The editorial committee of World Politics depends on external reviews as the basis for making its decisions on articles. In this issue we acknowledge with gratitude the close to 250 outside referees who read for the journal in 2004. We realize the extensive commitment of time involved in giving a detailed and critical assessment of submitted articles.

The editors are also pleased to announce the selection of Manuscript Central/ScholarOne as their choice of a Web-based manuscript management system for World Politics. The data on such Web-based programs indicate that they facilitate a faster turnaround for authors, so we anticipate being able to speed up all stages of the review and publication process. We look forward to making the transition to the world of electronic submissions and expect to post instructions for authors and reviewers on our Web site soon.

In this issue, Joanne Gowa and Soo Yeon Kim reexamine the impact on trade of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and show how the older trading blocs that formed during the protectionist interwar years continued to influence the patterns of trade in the postwar world. The GATT bargaining mechanism allowed previous historically generated trade relations to be maintained. The article thus breaks with conventional wisdom on the liberalizing impact of the GATT as compared with the pre-1945 regime. Jon Hovi, Robert Huseby, and Detlef F. Sprinz also stand a conventional wisdom on its head in examining the circumstances under which economic sanctions work once imposed. Their explanation relies on the centrality of misperceptions by the target of sanctions: once sanctions are imposed, such a target finds itself forced to change its behavior.

Two articles look at the relationship between pressures on government and the quality of services that are delivered. Phyllis Dininio and Robert Orttung offer an important study of corruption in the Russian Federation that carries interesting policy implications in terms of the importance of decentralizing government activities. Finally, Jeffrey F. Timmons uses a large database to show how the spending of taxes is actually closely related to the source of taxation, so that taxes can be viewed as a fiscal contract in which payers get what they expect and what they paid for.