Ikenberry, G. J., D.A. Lake and M. Mastanduno, M. (1988) ‘Introduction: Approaches to explaining American foreign economic policy’, International Organization, Vol. 42, 1–14.

Ikenberry, G. J., D.A. Lake and M. Mastanduno, M. (1988) ‘Introduction: Approaches to explaining American foreign economic policy’, International Organization, Vol. 42, 1–14.

• There are 3 main theoretical constructs used to explain the creation of American economic policy: system-centered, society-centered, and state-centered.
• System-centered -- or international -- models explain American policy as a function of its capabilities relative to other states. In this model gov't officials are responding to new situations (1).
• Society-centered views American policy as reflecting the interests of the dominate class or social groups within government. This approach explain policy as essentially a result of domestic politics (1).
• State-centered approaches view economic policy as highly constrained by relationships between domestic institutions. This approach stresses the interests of bureaucratic actors and the constraints of each actor within the system (2). 
• Both system-centered and society-centered approaches tend to view the state as an arena in which actors compete, w/ the state itself being a fairly passive actor (2).
• This is a potential issue w/ these theories and could be solved by incorporating information about domestic roles and constraints of various actors into analyses (3).
• Source mine for papers claiming the primacy of each kind of approach to American economic policy from page 4 to page 14.
• All three theories need to focus more on the role of state mechanisms and bureaucrats are actors within policy generation. It is essentially absent from the first two theories, and recently state-centered approaches have overemphasized the 'weakness' of the American state as an actor (14).