ABSTRACT
The process of interdependence affects each state both as a set of restraints on, and as a set of opportunities for, its domestic objectives and interests. On the one hand, students of world politics have tried to evaluate the extent to which interdependence changes the traditional, distinctive features of interstate relations, what Raymond Aron has called the logic of behavior of states competing in a "state of nature. On the other hand, conferences of statesmen, and meetings of members of national "establishments," have tried to find solutions to a vast number of highly complex problems, in the relations between OECD countries, in North-South relations, and in East-West relations. There are also vast variations in the distribution of the gains from interdependence across the population of a given state, or in the location of the losses incurred within a society, depending on the domestic and external strategies adopted by the governments.
