Suchergebnisse

Today, more than half of international trade is regulated through preferential trade agreements (PTAs). While in the past, these agreements served as tools to eliminate further tariffs between the parties, today we witness the increasing inclusion of trade-related provisions such as Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) protection, competition clauses or behind-the-border regulation. This paper maps the variation of IPR provisions using three different concepts: the degree of IPR protection, IPR enforcement and multilateral coherence. In addition, it explores who are the main advocates of IPR protection and how successful are their approaches to embed IPR protection in PTAs? This paper presents novel fine grained data which captures the variation in the design of IPRs in 661 PTAs building on the DESTA database (www.designoftradeagreements.org). We review the literature and provide a descriptive look on.the new dataset and outline future research avenues.

In this article we compare US and EU support for bilateral and multilateral international trade law. We assess the support for international law of both trading blocs by focusing on the following four dimensions: leadership, consent, compliance and internalization. Although we find strong support for international trade law from both the US and the EU in general, we also witness some variation, most notably in relation to the design of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and compliance with World Trade Organization (WTO) law. Turning to explaining these (moderate) differences, we argue that outcomes in US trade policy can best be explained by a domestic political factor, namely the direct influence of interest groups. Although the involvement of societal interests also goes a long way in explaining EU behavior, it does not tell the entire story. We posit that, in EU trade policy, institutions are a particular conditioning factor that needs to be stressed. Moreover, we suggest that foreign policy considerations in managing trade relations have characterized EU's support for international trade law.

The creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s dispute settlement system (DSS) in 1995 remains one of the most puzzling outcomes in international politics and international law in the 1990s. We provide a new explanation for this move to law. We argue that important contextual variables of the negotiations have been largely overlooked by existing explanations, namely 'experiential learning'. While negotiations to create institutions are characterized by uncertainty about distributional effects, negotiators will look for clues that moderate uncertainty. In the context of the Uruguay Round negotiations, a significant amount of information was drawn from actual practice and experience with the existing General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) dispute settlement system. In short, experience gained with judicial institutions and outcomes is important to understand the key results of the negotiations: a legalization leap, more specifically a judicialization of the existing dispute settlement system. We focus on the two dominant actors in the negotiations (the United States and the (then) European Community) and provide evidence for our argument based on an analysis of GATT cases in the 1980s, GATT documents, and in-depth interviews with negotiators who participated in the negotiations.

Scholars have increasingly theorized, and debated, the decision by states to create and delegate authority to international courts, as well as the subsequent autonomy and behavior of those courts, with principal-agent and trusteeship models disagreeing on the nature and extent of states' influence on international judges. This article formulates and tests a set of principal-agent hypotheses about the ways in which, and the conditions under which, member states are able use their powers of judicial nomination and appointment to influence the endogenous preferences of international judges. The empirical analysis surveys the record of all judicial appointments to the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO) over a 15-year period. We present a view of an Appellate Body appointment process that, far from representing a pure search for expertise, is deeply politicized and offers member-state principals opportunities to influence Appellate Body members ex ante and possibly ex post. We further demonstrate that the Appellate Body nomination process has become progressively more politicized over time as member states, responding to earlier and controversial Appellate Body decisions, became far more concerned about judicial activism and more interested in the substantive opinions of Appellate Body candidates, systematically championing candidates whose views on key issues most closely approached their own, and opposing candidates perceived to be activist or biased against their substantive preferences. Although our empirical study is specific to the WTO, our theory and findings have implications for the judicial politics of a large variety of global and regional international courts and tribunals. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd. & ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research.]

Why do new EU democracies engage in multilateralism? The dominant explanation proposes that new democracies use international treaties to lock in domestic reforms. This article offers a novel explanation as to why new EU democracies participate in multilateral treaties. We argue that ratifying a treaty serves three external signaling purposes (addressing recognition concerns; increasing strategic autonomy, and pleasing the EU). We test our argument through a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods. First, we apply event history analysis. Drawing on a new ratification data set comprising 76 multilateral treaties, we illustrate the prominent role of new EU democracies in multilateralism as compared to other new democracies. Second, to assess the importance of external signaling in the decision to ratify multilateral treaties, we examine parliamentary ratification debates in selected Central and Eastern European countries. Third, we compare parliamentary discussions across European and non-European new democracies to demonstrate the different motives driving their approaches toward multilateralism.

Scholars have increasingly theorized, and debated, the decision by states to create and delegate authority to international courts, as well as the subsequent autonomy and behavior of those courts, with principal–agent and trusteeship models disagreeing on the nature and extent of states' influence on international judges. This article formulates and tests a set of principal–agent hypotheses about the ways in which, and the conditions under which, member states are able use their powers of judicial nomination and appointment to influence the endogenous preferences of international judges. The empirical analysis surveys the record of all judicial appointments to the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO) over a 15-year period. We present a view of an Appellate Body appointment process that, far from representing a pure search for expertise, is deeply politicized and offers member-state principals opportunities to influence Appellate Body members ex ante and possibly ex post. We further demonstrate that the Appellate Body nomination process has become progressively more politicized over time as member states, responding to earlier and controversial Appellate Body decisions, became far more concerned about judicial activism and more interested in the substantive opinions of Appellate Body candidates, systematically championing candidates whose views on key issues most closely approached their own, and opposing candidates perceived to be activist or biased against their substantive preferences. Although our empirical study is specific to the WTO, our theory and findings have implications for the judicial politics of a large variety of global and regional international courts and tribunals.

AbstractWho in the European Union drives the process of pursuing bilateral trade negotiations? In contrast to societal explanations, this article develops a novel argument as to how the European Commission manages the process and uses its position in strategic ways to pursue its interests. Rooted in principal–agent theory, the article discusses agent preferences and theorizes the conditions under which the agent sets specific focal points and interacts strategically with principals and third parties. The argument is discussed with case study evidence drawn from the first trade agreement concluded and ratified since the EU Commission announced its new strategy in 2006: the EU–South Korea trade agreement.