Some of this co-operation is practical; it also reflects the legal principle of "comity", a type of reciprocity that results in one legal jurisdiction voluntarily deferring to another.
That congressional comity can be achieved only on matters of economic nationalism is not an encouraging sign.
South Sudan is a risk, but it should be wholeheartedly welcomed into the comity of independent states.
In particular, he favours greater use of "positive comity", which allows a competition watchdog in one country to ask its counterpart in another to investigate anti-competitive practices on its behalf.
Is American credit-worthiness strong, or are we going the way of Greece?Given the intricacy of the problem, it seems rather naive to suggest a little more comity would lead to compromise solutions that are obvious if only politicians took off their partisan blinders.
Joy division Paradise lost Smoke signals Still in the trenches Economics writer ReprintsWithout stretching the analogy too far, lessons are there for Congress, after members marked the holiday season with a moment of unusual comity.
In the next few months its leaders, nudged by its people at presidential polls in June, will have to decide whether to return to the comity of nations or stick to their angry, self-isolating revolutionary rhetoric.
But, also just by showing up, Mr Jiang provoked storms of protest everywhere.Both sides of the visit the comity and the conflict rubbed together uneasily wherever Mr Jiang went.
When Al Franken gently tried to suggest that Joe Lieberman might not be entitled to the smiling gratitude of Democrats for having vetoed their Medicare-at-55 compromise, John McCain got up to bloviate about the unprecedented violation of Senate comity.
But the hoped-for comity has yet to materialise.
STAND on the south side of the Peace Arch in Blaine, Washington, an old-fashioned monument to American-Canadian comity, and a mobile call placed within the United States costs nothing (with a monthly calling plan) to 10 cents per minute.
