Alasdair R. Young

The EU and the new trade politics

Abstract Over the past twenty years trade politics within the European Union (EU) have changed in three ways. First, the concerns of traditional trade actors have shifted to more ‘behind-the-border’ issues, especially regulation and investment. Second, new actors – parliaments, non-trade agencies, and non-governmental organizations – have become more engaged. Third, the leadership of the EU (and the United States) has been challenged by influential developing countries. The EU has responded to the new trade politics by advocating a ‘deep’ trade agenda: seeking multilateral agreements on the making of domestic rules. This response reflects the EUs own experience of market integration. Where the new trade politics have affected EU policy it has been through changing views about the purposes and priority of trade policy at the highest political levels, rather than more directly via interest group lobbying. While the EU has been unsuccessful in promoting its agenda within the World Trade Organization, it is pursuing it through other forums where its influence is greater.

Trade Politics Ain't What it Used to Be: The European Union in the Doha Round

The European Union is a key player in the Doha Development Round of multilateral trade negotiations. This article argues that its negotiating position reflects distinctive patterns of politics underlying three aspects of trade policy - traditional trade policy, commercial policy and social trade policy - characterized by different sets of actors and political dynamics. Although there is significant variation in the substance of the EUs position within each aspect of trade policy, their distinctive patterns of politics help to explain why the EUs negotiating position is most liberal in traditional trade policy and least in social trade policy. Copyright (c) 2007 The Author(s); Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Not your parents' trade politics: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations

ABSTRACT The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations aspire to create the worlds most ambitious trade agreement between the worlds two largest economies. The politics associated with TTIP are different from those associated with previous trade negotiations. Moreover, they diverge from the prevailing International Political Economy (IPE) account of trade policy. The politics of TTIP diverge from the conventional IPE account of trade politics in two particularly noteworthy ways. First, rather than being rivals, American and European business interests are allies, adopting common positions on what they want the agreement to look like. Second, opposition within both the USA and the EU comes not primarily from firms and workers fearing increased economic competition, but from less traditional trade actors – consumer and environmental groups and citizens – concerned about the erosion of valued regulations. I argue that the unusual politics is the product of two distinct, but related factors. The first is the extraordinary level of cross-investment between the two economies. The second concerns the unique emphasis on addressing non-tariff barriers, particularly regulatory differences, and the significance of the negotiating partner. I test the plausibility of these arguments through within-case variation and by preliminary comparison to other contemporary negotiations of ‘deep’ preferential trade agreements.

The European Union as a global regulator? Context and comparison

ABSTRACT The European Unions (EUs) regulations affect how business is conducted and consumers and the environment protected in parts of the world far beyond its borders. Moreover, the external impact of its regulations informs understandings of the EU as a global actor. This contribution makes three main arguments. First, the EUs regulatory influence varies systematically across different forms of regulatory interaction: regulatory competition and different forms of regulatory co-operation. The form of regulatory interaction, therefore, is a critical intervening variable between the EUs regulatory power resources and its influence. Second, within the different forms of regulatory co-operation the EUs influence varies in line with expectations derived from the literature. But, third, the magnitude of the EUs influence seems to be considerably less in regulatory co-operation than suggested by the literature on regulatory competition; a finding that reinforces the first argument. The contribution also introduces the rest of the special issue, identifying three overarching conclusions: the utility of the EUs regulatory power resources is context specific; debates about what kind of power the EU is, at least as previously conceived, are unproductive; and that the EUs engagement in the world is better explained through general theories of international political economy.

Emerging Trends in WTO Dispute Settlement: Back to the GATT?

As the number of cases in the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system has increased, there has been a greater effort by the academic community to analyze the data for emerging trends. Holmes Rollo, and Young seek to develop this literature using data up to the end of 2002 to ask whether recent trends confirm previously identified patterns and to examine whether there are divergences from the overall pattern according to the type of dispute. They focus on three questions in particular: What explains which countries are most involved in complaints under the dispute settlement understanding? Is there a discernible pattern to which countries win? Is there a difference to these patterns depending on the type of measure at the heart of the complaint? The authors find that: A countrys trade share is a pretty robust indicator of its likelihood to be either a complainant or a respondent. The frequently remarked absence of the least developed countries from the dispute settlement system can be explained by their low volume of trade. There is not much, if any, evidence of a bias against developing countries either as complainants or respondents. Regulatory issues are fading as reasons for disputes and trade defense disputes are the rising issue. Complainants overwhelmingly win (88 percent of cases). There is no strong evidence that the rate of completion of cases is biased against newly industrializing countries or traditional less developed countries.

Perspectives on the Changing Global Distribution of Power: Concepts and Context:

Since the mid-2000s it has become common, although far from universal, to characterise the world as ‘multipolar’. There has, however, been scant attention to how the key protagonists view the changing distribution of power. This article sets the stage for this special issue of POLITICS, which begins to address that lacuna. It introduces the significance of a change in the global balance of power and explores how power in the international context is understood and assessed. It then makes the case for which actors are the key protagonists in the current global distribution of power and contextualises the subsequent articles by providing comparative indicators of power across a range of dimensions. Drawing on the contributions, this article concludes that while the ‘rules of the game’ of international politics probably will change, they are unlikely to do so beyond all recognition.

‘We Care About You, But …’: The Politics of EU Trade Policy and Development

The European Union (EU) is one of the most important markets for developing countries, and trade policy has long been one of its most important instruments for promoting development. There is, however, a paradox at the heart of the relationship between the EUs trade policy and development. On the one hand the EUs trade as development policy has undergone a paradigm shift, the objective shifting from supporting the former colonies of the EUs member states to addressing poverty and with a greater emphasis on reciprocal liberalization. On the other hand, the EUs conventional trade policy initiatives—particularly its market access objectives in the Doha Round and in commercially motivated bilateral trade agreements—have adverse consequences for developing countries, as does its tendency to adopt stringent product regulations. We argue that this paradox is explained by differences in how much traction the emphasis on the development implications of trade has had in the EUs various trade policy subsystems.

Of executive preferences and societal constraints: The domestic politics of the transatlantic GMO dispute 1

ABSTRACT When the transatlantic trade dispute over genetically modified organisms came to a boil in the late 1990s and early 2000s it was widely expected to be highly conflictual. The United States was, almost universally, expected to challenge fundamentally the European Unions regulatory system for GMOs before the World Trade Organisation, and was equally universally expected to win the case. The EU was widely, albeit not universally, expected to refuse to comply with the ruling. In keeping with most of the international political economy literature on trade disputes, both of these expectations were rooted in assessments of societal demands for action and resistance. Both expectations, however, were confounded; the US (and its co-complainants) filed a narrow challenge focusing on the EUs failure to apply its own procedures; and the EU, somewhat falteringly, has resumed approvals of GMOs. Applying a two-level game framework, this article argues that this relatively cooperative outcome is explained by the executives of both polities exercising their autonomy to pursue policies closer to the preferences of the other polity than their median domestic constituents would have preferred. This article, therefore, makes the case for taking government preferences and autonomy seriously when analysing the outcomes of trade disputes. Moreover, it emphasises that compliance with international rules engages with on-going internal policy processes and debates.

The Rise (and Fall?) of the EU's performance in the Multilateral Trading System

Abstract The multilateral trading system represents an excellent case for analyzing the factors influencing the EU’s performance in international institutions, because of the marked changes that have taken place both in the EU and in the multilateral trading system over the past six decades. Moreover, trade is the international policy arena in which the EU has greatest power resources and greatest institutional capacity. Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, the EU has long performed well in the multilateral trading system. The article, however, argues that internal changes in the late 1980s and early 1990s enabled the EU to advance a more ambitious agenda in the multilateral trading system. The enhanced ambition translated temporarily into enhanced performance within the multilateral trading system, but this was short-lived as the emergence of new trading powers hostile to the EU’s agenda in the late 1990s resulted in the erosion of its ambitious agenda in the Doha Development Round.

Liberalizing trade, not exporting rules: the limits to regulatory co-ordination in the EU's ‘new generation’ preferential trade agreements

ABSTRACT The European Union (EU) is considered both an influential global regulator and a trade power. There is thus a common, if rather casual, assumption that the EU exports its regulations through preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Based on a close textual analysis of four early ‘new generation’ PTAs – those with Canada, Central America, Singapore and South Korea – and the Commissions opening position in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations, this contribution challenges that assumption. Across a broad spectrum of regulatory issues there has been very limited regulatory co-ordination. Moreover, where it has occurred, it has focused on establishing the equivalence of different rules or on convergence based on international, not European, standards. This contribution thus demonstrates that the EU has not exported its regulations through ‘new generation’ PTAs. Moreover, it contends that the EU has not really tried to. It speculates that the EU has not sought to export aggressively its rules through new generation PTAs because of concern that opposition to regulatory change in its partners would jeopardize agreements that would benefit European firms.