Amy L. Widsten
PhD Candidate
Department of Political Science
Columbia University in the City of New York
7th floor, International Affairs Building
420 W. 118th St.
New York, NY 10027
(212) 864-2672
alw38@columbia.edu
                                                                              
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"The age of nations is past. It remains for us now, if we do not wish to perish, to set aside the ancient prejudices and build the Earth."
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I am currently an Andrew Wellington Cordier Fellow of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.  I was previously a recipient of the Jacob Javits Fellowship in the Humanities, an Associate Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, a Fellow of the Schiff Fellowship Fund, and a Presidential Fellow of the Department of Political Science at Columbia University.  I also have a BSFS in International Diplomacy from Georgetown University.

My research interests include U.S. foreign policy, international political economy of advanced industrialized countries, international institutions and international cooperation, and dynamics of bargaining and negotiation in international conflict resolution.  I am also interested in relationships between political economy and international security and the impact of global technology diffusion in both economic and military applications.

My dissertation, entitled, "Parties in Conflict: Domestic Politics, Dispute Settlement, and International Trade," deals with trade disputes between twenty-five advanced industrial economies asking, first, why countries initiate trade disputes and what explains variations in patterns of dispute escalation and settlement.  I argue that partisan governments (left versus right) make systematically different policy choices in the area of trade dispute initiation, escalation, and resolution.  Furthermore, I find that changes in international institutions also alter dispute patterns.  The dissertation uses statistical analysis to isolate a partisan divide in GATT/WTO disputes and employs case studies to process trace the causal mechanisms behind these patterns.