Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have remained outside all the GATT rounds since the 1950s. In contrast, hundreds of NGOs have taken part in the current WTO round. This article maps the formal participation of NGOs in five ministerial conferences during the Doha round. It also analyzes various forms of NGO involvement in the WTO trade talks, such as lobbying and capacity-building of developing countries. An assessment of the current and potential capacities of NGOs in the Doha round requires that their performance be seen from an explicit negotiation perspective. Both NGO participation and involvement, as well the interaction between these two forms of NGO performance need to be considered. An assessment of how NGOs may have an impact on negotiation effectiveness and efficiency in WTO rounds should be approached from a long-term perspective and should consider other kinds of outcomes than formal final agreements. NGO performance in WTO may increase the complexity of negotiations or the significance of non-trade issues. NGO activities outside the WTO may disturb multilateral trade negotiations in the short term, such as during ongoing Ministerial Conferences. On the other hand, NGOs may also help to pave the way for constructive long-term changes in the WTO regime, which, in turn, may have a favorable impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of the overall WTO negotiation system.

The European Union (EU) is the only great power that has decisively promoted an international agreement requiring substansive emission reductions. It is possible that EU diplomacy has contributed to producing the inadequate but still encouraging results obtained in Kyoto. Although the 1997 UN conference in Kyoto produced an agreement to the effect that industrialized countries would collectively reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by more than 5%, a viable solution to the climate problem is not yet in sight. Scientists estimate that emissions of CO2, the most important greenhouse gas, will have to be cut by 60% if further climate warming is to be avoided. However, it is clear that the EU is not strong enough to move the climate negotiation decisively towards a more viable solution without the active support of other leading countries. A static assessment examining the circumstances explains why the EU has had difficulty taking a leadership role in the climate talks. A crippled actor capability and diverging domestic conditions prevailing in the various member countries have constrained its external performance in the talks. A more dynamic analysis will have to consider that the external performance of the EU could be enhanced by the interaction between its actor bahaviour and its actor capability.

Discusses extent to which the European Union can act as an effective, unitary actor in climate talks in cooperation or competition with non-member states and international organizations. Finds that EU behavior has been constrained by structural differences between member states, and by impact of external factors on its institutions and regulations in the environmental area.

The world economic-political system seems to be in a process of structural change. To some observers these developments are producing an increasing need for an expanded Nordic cooperation in the area of trade and international economic affairs. One manifestation of this has been the calls for the establishment of a true home market for Scandinavian exporting firms. The desirable, or predicted, future changes in forms and contents of Nordic cooperation should, however, not be considered in isolation. They have to be systematically inter-related to the modifications which are expected to occur in the systems for economic-political cooperation in Western Europe, as well as at the global level, in which Scandinavian countries participate: the EC, EFTA, OECD, GATT, etc. This comprehensive perspective is all the more important because institutionalized economic-political cooperation seems to have entered into a process of structural reform with possible far-reaching consequences. In order to pave the way for a strategic and comprehensive cost/benefit evaluation of Nordic cooperation in the future, a tentative model has been developed for the definition and assessment of the various types of relationships that may exist between Nordic cooperation and other forms of inter-related systems for economic-political collaboration. This "linkage analysis" is undertaken within two contexts: First, a number of theoretical propositions concerning the "anatomy" of institutionalized economic-political cooperation. Secondly, for the sake of empirical illustration, a concrete case: the demand for international cooperation pertaining to the formulation and conduct of Swedish trade policy.

The world economic-political system seems to be in a process of structural change. To some observers these developments are producing an increasing need for an expanded Nordic cooperation in the area of trade and international economic affairs. One manifestation of this has been the calls for the establishment of a true home market for Scandinavian exporting firms. The desirable, or predicted, future changes in forms and contents of Nordic cooperation should, however, not be considered in isolation. They have to be systematically inter-related to the modifications which are expected to occur in the systems for economic-political cooperation in Western Europe, as well as at the global level, in which Scandinavian countries participate: the EC, EFTA, OECD, GATT, etc. This comprehensive perspective is all the more important because institutionalized economic-political cooperation seems to have entered into a process of structural reform with possible far-reaching consequences. In order to pave the way for a strategic and comprehensive cost/benefit evaluation of Nordic cooperation in the future, a tentative model has been developed for the definition and assessment of the various types of relationships that may exist between Nordic cooperation and other forms of inter-related systems for economic-political collaboration. This "linkage analysis" is undertaken within two contexts: First, a number of theoretical propositions concerning the "anatomy" of institutionalized economic-political cooperation. Secondly, for the sake of empirical illustration, a concrete case: the demand for international cooperation pertaining to the formulation and conduct of Swedish trade policy.

The words 'power' and 'influence' are unusually frequent in literature on international politics, but despite this, these terms represent an area where intensified research still seems necessary. Power is too often considered synonymous with military power, and so certain aspects of international power have been neglected. There is little known about how power is exercised by means of non-coercive methods through the exploita tion of a non-military power base. What, for instance, are the conditions that will enable a nation to negotiate successfully about the international monetary system in the IMF and other organizations? Civil power is exercised when one nation makes another behave in accordance with its own preferences by employing only the non-military components at its power base. Civil power is a theoretical concept which only rarely exists in reality.