Windows of Opportunity: From Cold War to Peaceful Competition in U.S.-Soviet Relations

Allison, Graham; Ury, William; Allyn, Bruce J.

doi:10.2307/20044020

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The superpowers exogenously imposed the number of alignment groups, with the Western bloc, USA and Western Europe, opposing communism and supporting free markets, while the Eastern bloc, the USSR, supported Soviet-style development and anticolonialism. 6 The superpowers viewed competition for Africa as a zero-sum game and neutral status of a particular country as temporary (Allison et al, 1989). They were eager to fill the political and economic void left by waves of independence and decolonization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Did the Cold War Produce Development Clusters in Africa?

Dower

Gokmen

Breton

et al. 2023

Preprint

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We examine the lasting impact of Cold War alignment on African economic development. Faced with the empirical challenge of ambiguous and interdependent international alliances during the Cold War, we introduce a non-cooperative game of social interactions to determine blocs. Employing computational methods for non-convex optimization, we solve for the unique equilibrium two-bloc partition. The partition predicts UN General Assembly voting patterns in Africa during the Cold War but not after, and is uncorrelated with pre-Cold War outcomes. Surprisingly, average incomes in these two groups of countries are similar today. Yet, the alignment does affect the shape of development. Western-aligned countries have greater financial development, inequality, and democracy than Eastern-aligned ones, reflecting the Cold War’s ideological divide. JEL codes: C62, C72, F54, F55, N47, O19, O57.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%