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International trade liberalization historically has taken many organizational forms--unilateral, bilateral, minilateral, and multilateral. Given the proliferation of normative views about which of these should be pursued, economists and political scientists have devoted surprisingly little attention to the reasons for the observed variation in the chosen forms. This book is the first to develop a single theoretical framework to account for past liberalization practices and also to anticipate ongoing changes in the international organization of trade policy. Growing out of a multidisciplinar

Without universally efficacious contract enforcement, contracting boundaries divide the world into 'insiders', with whom we contract freely, and 'outsiders', with whom contracting is circumscribed. Boundary types vary and vacillate between territorially defined ones and ones defined on nonterritorial margins (religion, ethnicity or functional specialization). Sovereignty, or sole legal constitutional authority, has always existed alongside other, less formal systems of contractual enforcement. Both early law and economics and early International Relations theory largely ignored this interacting, overlapping web of enforcement institutions; and recent world events highlight the limitations of theories in which the nature of boundaries — and hence the nature of entities themselves — has little impact on the nature of predicted interactions. The contracting branch of law and economics contains useful insights into the material functions of boundaries, the strengths and weaknesses of different types of boundary-maintenance devices, the characteristics necessary for 'successful' boundaries and why different types of boundaries might emerge or persist under different conditions. These insights suggest that the coexistence of and historical vacillation between territorially defined boundaries and ones defined on nonterritorial margins should not come as a surprise.

Nations dwell in perpetual anarchy, for no central authority imposes limits on the pursuits of sovereign interests. … Because as states, they cannot cede ultimate control over their conduct to an supranational sovereign, they cannot guarantee that they will adhere to their promises. The possibility of a breach of promise can impede cooperation even when cooperation would leave all better off. Yet, at other times, states do realize common goals through cooperation under anarchy.

Ausgehend von der Prämisse, daß internationaler Handel für alle Beteiligten von Vorteil ist, wird hinterfragt wie und in welcher Form Handelsliberalisierungen auftreten. Als entscheidende Faktoren werden die Transaktionskosten und hegemoniale Strukturen ausgewiesen. Geringe Kosten machen den Protektionismus unwahrscheinlich und führen zu unilateralen Formen analog zur Situation Englands im 19. Jahrhundert. Bei hohen Transaktionskosten kann eine Hegemonialmacht multilaterale Handelsliberalisierung herbeiführen, wie die USA nach dem 2. Weltkrieg. In den 80er Jahren sind minilaterale Kooperationen vorherrschend, die ein nichthegemoniales Umfeld bei niedrigen Transaktionskosten widerspiegeln

Multinational, unilateral, and "minilateral" forms of trade liberalization agreements. Uses "trade-specific assets and hegemonic cooperation to explain the historical variation in the forms of trade liberalization: unilateral by 19th-century Britain, multilateral by the postwar United States, and minilateral more recently."

U.S. trade policy. Argues that policies, which have been viewed as moves toward protectionism, can also be seen as mechanisms for dealing with the enforcement problem inherent in trade liberalization.