Arlo Poletti

Drowning Protection in the Multilateral Bath: WTO Judicialisation and European Agriculture in the Doha Round

The existing literature on the EUs participation in the agricultural negotiations of the Doha Round assumes that EU policy-makers develop autonomous preferences in favour of liberalising agricultural trade, thus going against the preferences of the agricultural sector. This article challenges this view and argues that WTO judicialisation—the strengthened enforcement of rules introduced with the creation of the WTO—affects the domestic politics of trade in WTO members. My key contention is that WTO judicialisation confronts societal interests and public authorities with legal vulnerability, and that this elicits a willingness to co-operate with other WTO members and thus pre-empt foreign challenges to domestic policies. Empirically, the article shows that negotiations centred on offsetting the potentially disruptive effects of foreign legal challenges to EU farm policies.

WTO Judicial Politics and EU Trade Policy: Business Associations as Vessels of Special Interest?

This article: Contributes to the literature on interest groups showing how the interplay of domestic and international institutional structures critically affects the character of lobbying. Contributes to a better understanding of EU trade politics, highlighting how such processes are systematically affected by changes in global governance structures. Traces empirically how important institutional innovations were introduced in EU trade policy making in order to adapt to reform of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. Offers systematic empirical evidence about the evolution of the character of dispute settlement cases initiated by the EU in the WTO. Shows empirically how business associations traditionally active in EU trade policy making increasingly act as ‘vessels’ of narrow and specialized interests. This article focuses on the effects of the WTO’s quasi-judicial system of dispute resolution on the politics of trade policy making in the European Union (EU). We argue that this institutional innovation had a systematic transformative effect on EU trade politics, creating pressures for institutional adaptation and changing the character of organized trade policy lobbying. On the one hand, the new environment of the WTO created pressures for the EU to implement significant institutional innovations to ease access for private parties and generate an influx of information to strengthen offensive market access actions. On the other hand, this reform directly affected firms’ incentives to mobilize politically, creating incentives for specialized lobbying. The empirical analysis shows how these two processes ultimately led to a re-organization of trade policy lobbying in the EU and compelled European business associations to become increasingly receptive to the demands of special interests.

Explaining varying lobbying styles across the Atlantic: an empirical test of the cultural and institutional explanations

There is consensus in the literature that policymaking in the United States (US) and Europe generates different lobbying styles. Two explanations for these differences have been developed so far. The first posits that distinct lobbying styles reflect different political cultures . The second attributes distinct lobbying styles to variation in the institutional context in which lobbyists operate. Studies that have analysed lobbying within the US and Europe and assessed the relative importance of these arguments are problematic because both explanations are consistent with observed differences in lobbying style. In this article, we circumvent problems of observational equivalence by focussing on European and American lobbyists who are active in a similar institutional venue – that is, international diplomatic conferences. Relying on evidence collected at World Trade Organization Ministerial Conferences and United Nation Climate Summits, we tested the relevance of alternative explanations for the variation in lobbying styles between European and American lobbyists. Our results give robust support to the institutional argument.

Multinational Firms, Value Chains, and Trade Disputes: Explaining Dispute Onset at the World Trade Organization

In this paper we aim to explain World Trade Organization (WTO) members’ decision to initiate a dispute at the WTO. Since many potential violations of WTO law remain unchallenged, we explore the conditions under which WTO members complain about only some allegedly WTO-incompatible policies, while leaving a large majority of them unchallenged. While there may be different reasons why governments choose to initiate certain disputes, we are especially interested in the relationship between potential and actual trade disputes on the one hand and the degree of integration into so-called global value chains (GVCs) on the other. We demonstrate that decision-makers are more likely to try and eliminate barriers to cross-border trade by tabling WTO complaints when facing pressures to do so by firms and sectors highly integrated into such GVCs. Potential complainants’ policymakers act strategically when considering whether to initiate a formal dispute. Responding to demands of firms and sectors that are highly integrated in GVCs allows complainants’ policymakers to secure the support of politically powerful domestic constituencies while simultaneously minimizing the administrative burdens and the potential negative externalities for bilateral diplomatic relations that a WTO dispute can bring about. We test our hypothesis by examining data from the US using a binomial logistic regression and Cox proportional hazard model and find that trade barriers are both more likely to be filed as disputes and quicker in being tabled at the WTO in sectors highly integrated into GVCs, while controlling for other factors.