Chad Damro

Market power Europe

While the identity of the European Union (EU) may have normative and/or other characteristics, it is fundamentally a large single market with significant institutional features and competing interest groups. Given these central characteristics, the EU may be best understood as a market power Europe that exercises its power through the externalization of economic and social market-related policies and regulatory measures. Such an exercise of power, which may occur as intentional or unintentional behaviour, suggests the EU is fully capable of using both persuasive and coercive means and tools to influence international affairs. By scrutinizing the EUs identity, official documents and initial evidence, the article provides an analytical framework for understanding what kind of power the EU is, what the EU says as a power and what the EU does as a power.

Emissions trading at Kyoto: from EU resistance to Union innovation

The Kyoto summit witnessed vigorous EU–US disagreements over a new environmental policy instrument (NEPI)—an emissions trading system. This NEPI was promoted by the US and opposed by the EU. Unlike the US, after Kyoto, the EU surprisingly switched from resisting the NEPI to designing in earnest a domestic emissions trading system. This transition from resistance to policy innovation is best explained as a process of policy transfer. The current study identifies the important role of domestic policy paradigms for both shaping the formation of national interests in international arenas and determining the contours of the process of policy transfer.

EU Delegation and Agency in International Trade Negotiations: A Cautionary Comparison

The principal-agent (PA) approach is increasingly used to explain how and why the EU formulates its trade policy and engages in international trade negotiations. This article evaluates the utility of PA in trade policy through a comparative analysis of the EUs participation in two different international negotiations: the International Competition Network and World Trade Organization (2001-06). The comparison of EU institutions and activities in these two empirical cases suggests that while PA seems well suited to explain international negotiations in regulatory policies (competition), it seems less suited to explain developments in distributive policies (trade). The findings, which reveal potential problems of multiple agents and a greater likelihood of observational equivalence in trade policy, advise caution when using PA to explain the EUs behaviour in international trade negotiations. Copyright (c) 2007 The Author(s); Journal compilation (c) 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

The new trade politics and EU competition policy: shopping for convergence and co-operation

Abstract As firms increasingly trade and invest internationally, the decisions of competition regulators can increasingly interact with the political decisions that govern trade policy. Competition regulators prefer promoting international convergence and co-operation as a means to avoid trade-related and other political interventions in their regulatory decisions. This article employs a venue shopping model of policy change to identify those international organizations through which the European Unions Directorate General Competition is most likely to seek co-operation and convergence in international competition policy. The Directorate General Competition shops among four different international organizations – the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization and the International Competition Network. Five different legal features frame and determine Directorate General Competitions preference for selecting among these different venues, which, in turn, helps to explain the current and future dynamics of competition policy in the new trade politics.

Building an international identity: the EU and extraterritorial competition policy

The 1997 Boeing-McDonnell Douglas (BMD) merger is a remarkable case of international state-market interaction whereby the European Union (EU) intervened in a merger between two foreign firms. T his article offers an initial investigation into the development of the EUs international identity via the extraterritorial application of competition policy in the BMD case. Evidence from the case suggests that the EUs exercise of extraterritorial competition policy derives from reasonable objections to the merger, the practical desire co ensure market access opportunities for European firms and the need to enhance Union credibility in the eyes of member states. Evidence further suggests that when the EUs interests are exercised against a non-Union third party, the EU has greater opportunity to build an international identity. The article also assesses Union responses to the potentially destabilizing effects of extraterritorial competition policy by establishing bilateral agreements, lobbying for a multilateral regime, and encouraging informal co-operation.

Market power Europe: exploring a dynamic conceptual framework

ABSTRACT The conceptualization of the European Union (EU) as market power Europe reflects an understanding that the EU most consequentially affects the international system by externalizing its internal market-related policies and regulatory measures. While considerable evidence exists to support such an exercise of power, further elaboration of the conceptualization reveals a number of ways in which it may contribute to the EU-as–a-power debates. This contribution undertakes a crucial stock-taking exercise for employing market power Europe as a dynamic conceptual framework for understanding and researching the EU as a power. The findings suggest that the conceptualization may improve analytical clarity and advance our empirical and theoretical understanding of the EUs external relations across various policy areas. These insights on the dynamic nature of the conceptualization as an analytical tool reveal important considerations for future scholarly work on the EU as a global regulator and beyond.

Transatlantic Competition Policy: Domestic and International Sources of EU-US Cooperation

This article employs a cross-level approach to explain cooperation in transatlantic competition policy. The explanation reveals the important role of regulators as interfaces between the domestic and international levels of analysis. Economic internationalization is a system-level cause of this cooperation, the precise effect of which is accounted for by an intervening variable (domestic politics), which is simplified with a principal-agent model. The negotiations over the 1991 EU-US Bilateral Competition Agreement suggest that, while regulators remain constrained by domestic institutions, they play an important role in explaining why the formal, transatlantic cooperative framework is largely a discretionary one created by a non-treaty international agreement.

Transatlantic Merger Relations: The Pursuit of Cooperation and Convergence

Abstract The European Union (EU) and United States (US) are the world’s two largest and most influential legal jurisdictions for corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The pressures of international economic competition have lead to a flurry of M & A activity in these locales in the post-Cold War period. Given the economic impact and, in many cases, political sensitivity of some M&As, it has become critical that transatlantic regulators reach similar decisions with regard to M&A approval, denial, or modification. Incongruent decisions lead to uncertainty in the marketplace, and the possible loss of global economic competitiveness and respect for regulatory processes and outcomes. In this paper, we explore the efforts made by the US and EU over the past two decades to enhance cooperation in merger policies and processes. We argue that, despite a couple of high-profile cases to the contrary, the US and EU have made great strides in reducing uncertainty in the M&A regulatory process by institutionalizing a series of formal agreements and working groups that have served to provide the foundation for a transatlantic merger environment that may serve as a model for cross-border regulatory cooperation in the twenty-first century.

Regulators, firms and information: The domestic sources of convergence in transatlantic merger review

ABSTRACT Despite high-profile divergences, competition officials in the European Union and United States frequently state a desire to reach convergent substantive decisions when regulating individual transatlantic merger cases. The extent of transatlantic convergence depends largely on the role of two domestic actors involved in the merger review process: regulators and firms. This article employs two competing approaches (principal–agent and regulatory capture) to assess the ways in which these actors and domestic institutions shape convergence in transatlantic merger review. Empirically, the article investigates the work of the EU–US Mergers Working Group and explores the extent to which it conforms more closely to the preferences of regulators or merging firms. By increasing procedural convergence over information exchanges, the competition regulators increase the likelihood of convergence in substantive decisions, which reduces the likelihood of intervention by political principals. The findings suggest that regulators have used their discretionary authority to overcome domestic political and legal institutions that obstruct information sharing and have reduced the information asymmetry traditionally enjoyed by merging firms. As a result, it is the regulatory agents who have shaped the convergent process via their discretionary authority and captured the merging firms to serve their regulatory interests.

The European Union and the Politics of Multi-Level Climate Governance

While the European Union (EU) is a prominent player in the politics of climate change, it is neither a state nor an international organization in the traditional sense. Rather, it operates as a proactive and authoritative regional collective of affluent democracies that can influence policymaking in significant ways at the regional and international levels. This unique position also means that EU policy-making is subject to multiple pressures from both these levels. Despite – and possibly because of – this, the EU proudly promotes its collective efforts as an exemplar of how to tackle climate change through a combination of international and regional commitments.