Steven Weber is associate professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley; affiliated professor of the Energy and Resources Group; and research director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE). His areas of special interest include international political economy, political and social change in the “new” economy, and the political economy of globalization and European integration. Professor Weber directs the MacArthur Program on Multilateral Governance at Berkeley’s Institute of International Studies. He has held academic fellowships with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. For 1992, he served as special consultant to the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London.

His publications include Cooperation and Discord in U.S.-Soviet Arms Control (Princeton University Press) the edited book Globalization and The European Political Economy (Columbia University Press); numerous articles and chapters in the areas of U.S. foreign policy, the political economy of trade and finance, politics of the post-Cold War world, and European integration. His recent research focuses on changes in the business cycle ("The End of the Business Cycle?," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1997) and implications for firms and governments, the development of new equity markets in Europe ("The Origins of EASDAQ," Review of International Political Economy, Fall 2000), the evolution of international organizations ("International Organizations and the Pursuit of Social Justice," Ethics and International Affairs, 2000) and the political economy of knowledge-based industries and open-source software models.

His new book, The Success of Open Source, will be published in 2003 (Harvard University Press). This book explains the cohesion of the open source software community as the outcome of a new concept of property rights and explores how that underpins the social organization of cooperation and production in a digital era. At present he is writing a book with John Zysman on the broader political economy of manufacturing in a digital era. He is also working on several smaller projects looking at the social and political ramifications of the shift in US military doctrines from an emphasis on deterrence to preemptive security.

Weber is a consultant with Global Business Network in Emeryville, California. Weber consults for global firms and governments in the areas of international trade, monetary and exchange-rate politics, security issues, and political-economy consequences of information technology, among others. Weber has worked in these areas for the U.S. State Department and other U.S. government agencies, the European Commission, NATO, AUSTRADE, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as a number of global firms, including Motorola, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Inland Steel, GTE, Cogema, Nissan, BHP, Texaco and Information Access.