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AbstractMost accounts of international negotiations suggest that global agreements are individually crafted and distinct, while some emerging scholarship suggests a heavy reliance on models and templates. In this research, we present a comprehensive test of whether new international treaties are heavily copied and pasted from past ones. We specify several reasons to expect widespread copying and pasting, and argue that both the most and least powerful countries should be most likely to do so. Using text analysis to examine several hundred preferential trade agreements (PTAs), we reveal that most PTAs copy a sizable majority of their content word for word from an earlier agreement. At least one hundred PTAs take 80 percent or more of their contents directly from a single, existing treaty—with many copying and pasting 95 percent or more. These numbers climb even higher when we compare important substantive chapters of trade agreements, many of which are copied and pasted verbatim. Such copying and pasting is most prevalent among low-capacity governments that lean heavily on existing templates, and powerful states that desire to spread their preferred rules globally. This widespread replication of existing treaty language reshapes how we think about international cooperation, and it has important implications for literatures on institutional design, policy diffusion, state power, and legal fragmentation.

AbstractAlthough Members of Congress vote on few trade bills, they participate regularly in venues such as the International Trade Commission (ITC), where important trade policy decisions are made. We assert that once removed from the voting chambers of Congress, legislators are motivated overwhelmingly by the desire to advance constituents' trade policy interests, even those that contradict the member's established positions on trade. Utilizing an original dataset on legislator participation in antidumping cases, we find that both Democratic and Republican members advocate protection at the ITC when they have numerous firms and constituents in their district who benefit from trade restrictions, particularly when they receive sizeable financial contributions from them. Notably, self‐proclaimed free‐traders are just as likely to seek protection for their constituents as are trade opponents. Away from Capitol Hill, then, trade policymaking exhibits few partisan and ideological influences and serves as a means for members to expand political support.[Correction added on 21 August 2018, after first online publication: Abstract was added to article]

Twelve governments recently signed the much-anticipated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), sparking heated debate about its merits. As a primary motivation for this first "mega-regional" agreement, US President Barack Obama argues that the TPP is a way for the USA, and not China or someone else, to write the global trade rules of the future. This begs some important questions, namely which country or countries really did write most of the TPP and thus whose agenda for 21st century trade might it advance? To answer these questions, we compare the recently-released text of the TPP to the language in the 74 previous trade agreements that TPP members signed since 1995. Our text-as-data analyses reveal that the contents of the TPP are taken disproportionately from earlier US trade agreements. The ten preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that most closely match the TPP are all US PTAs. Moreover, the contents of controversial chapters, such as the one on investment, are drawn even more heavily from past US treaty language. Our study and findings apply power-based accounts of international institutions to a landmark new agreement, and portray a more active, template-based process of international diffusion.

Although many features of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) are consistent from one agreement to the next, a closer look reveals that treaties exhibit considerable variation in terms of their enforcement provisions, which legal scholars have singled out as the central component of the treaties. An original data set is compiled that captures three important treaty-design differences: whether the parties consent in advance to international arbitration, whether they allow treaty obligations to be enforced before an institutionalized arbitration body, and how many arbitration options are specified for enforcement. Drawing upon several relevant literatures on international institutions, three potentially generalizable explanations for this important treaty variation are articulated and tested. In sum, this foundational study of differences across investment treaties suggests that the design of treaties is driven by powerful states, which include elements in the treaties that serve their interests, regardless of the treaty partner or the current strategic setting. Adapted from the source document.

Although many features of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) are consistent from one agreement to the next, a closer look reveals that the treaties exhibit considerable variation in terms of their enforcement provisions, which legal scholars have singled out as the central component of the treaties. An original data set is compiled that captures three important treaty-design differences: whether the parties consent in advance to international arbitration, whether they allow treaty obligations to be enforced before an institutionalized arbitration body, and how many arbitration options are specified for enforcement. Drawing upon several relevant literatures on international institutions, three potentially generalizable explanations for this important treaty variation are articulated and tested. The strongest support is found for the theoretical perspective that emphasizes the bargaining power and preferences of capital-exporting states, which use the treaties to codify strong, credible investor protections in all their treaties. Empirical tests consistently reveal that treaties contain strong enforcement provisions—in which the parties preconsent to multiple, often institutionalized arbitration options—when the capital-exporting treaty partner has considerable bargaining power and contains domestic actors that prefer such arrangements, such as large multinational corporations or right-wing governments. In contrast, there is no evidence to support the popular hands-tying explanation, which predicts that investment-seeking states with the most severe credibility problems, due to poor reputations or weak domestic institutions, will bind themselves to treaties with stronger investment protections. likewise, little support is found for explanations derived from the project on the rational design of international institutions, which discounts the identities and preferences of the treaty partners and instead emphasizes the structural conditions they jointly face. In sum, this foundational study of differences across investment treaties suggests that the design of treaties is driven by powerful states, which include elements in the treaties that serve their interests, regardless of the treaty partner or the current strategic setting.

AbstractDuring the past few decades governments have signed nearly 2,700 bilateral investment treaties (BITs) with one another in an attempt to attract greater levels of foreign direct investment (FDI). By signing BITs, which contain strong enforcement provisions, investment-seeking governments are thought to more credibly commit to protecting whatever FDI they receive, which in turn should lead to increased confidence among investors and ultimately greater FDI inflows. Our unique argument is that the ability of BITs to increase FDI is contingent on the subsequent good behavior of the governments who sign them. BITs should increase FDI only if governments actually follow through on their BIT commitments; that is, if they comply with the treaties. BITs allow investors to pursue alleged treaty violations through arbitration venues like the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a heavily utilized and widely observed arbitral institution that is part of the World Bank. Being taken before ICSID, then, conveys negative information about a host country's behavior to the broader investment community, which could result in a sizeable loss of future FDI into that country. We test these contingent effects of BITs using cross-sectional, time-series analyses on all non-OECD countries during a period spanning 1984–2007. We find that BITs do increase FDI into countries that sign them, but only if those countries are not subsequently challenged before ICSID. On the other hand, governments suffer notable losses of FDI when they are taken before ICSID and suffer even greater losses when they lose an ICSID dispute.