This project has had a long gestation. We first discussed editing a book on “what happened to interdependence theory” at the American Political Science Association meetings in Atlanta, 1989. The conversation led to the more ambitious plan of putting together a working group on internationalization and domestic politics, in which students of international relations and comparative politics would engage in a serious dialogue about these issues.

With the support of the Social Science Research Council, we convened a group for planning meetings at Columbia University in March 1990, and at the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, in September 1991. At those meetings we benefited from memos and comments from several scholars who did not become further involved in the project, in particular David A. Baldwin, Peter J. Katzenstein, Ian Lustick, and Walter W. Powell. Encouraged by the ideas expressed in those meetings and by widespread enthusiasm for the project, we commissioned papers for a larger meeting at Oxnard, California, in November 1992, cosponsored by the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation of the University of California. At that meeting, we benefited from the insights especially of Ellen Comisso, Kiren Chaudhry, and Timothy McKeown, who made presentations, as well as of commentators Alessandra Casella, Benjamin Cohen, Albert Fishlow, Haruhiro Fukui, Peter Gourevitch, Yasheng Huang, Miles Kahler, David Lake, John Odell, Manuel Pastor, Philip Roeder, Richard Rosecrance, Arthur Stein, and Michael Wallerstein.