Judith Goldstein

Introduction: Legalization and World Politics

In many issue-areas, the world is witnessing a move to law. As the century turned, governments and individuals faced the following international legal actions. The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britains ban on homosexuals in the armed forces violates the right to privacy, contravening Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia indicted Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic during a NATO bombing campaign to force Yugoslav forces out of Kosovo. Milosevic remains in place in Belgrade, but Austrian police, bearing a secret indictment from the International Criminal Tribunal, arrested a Bosnian Serb general who was attending a conference in Vienna. In economic affairs the World Trade Organization (WTO) Appellate Body found in favor of the United States and against the European Union (EU) regarding European discrimination against certain Latin American banana exporters. A U.S. district court upheld the constitutionality of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) against claims that its dispute-resolution provisions violated U. S. sovereignty. In a notable environmental judgment, the new Law of the Sea Tribunal ordered the Japanese to cease all fishing for southern bluefin tuna for the rest of the year.

Legalization, Trade Liberalization, and Domestic Politics: A Cautionary Note

If the purpose of legalization is to enhance international cooperation, more may not always be better. Achieving the optimal level of legalization requires finding a balance between reducing the risks of opportunism and reducing the potential negative effects of legalization on domestic political processes. The global trade regime, which aims to liberalize trade, has become increasingly legalized over time. Increased legalization has changed the information environment and the nature of government obligations, which in turn have affected the pattern of mobilization of domestic interest groups on trade. From the perspective of encouraging the future expansion of liberal trade, we suggest some possible negative consequences of legalization, arguing that these consequences must be weighed against the positive effects of legalization on increasing national compliance. Since the weakly legalized GATT institution proved sufficient to sustain widespread liberalization, the case for further legalization must be strong to justify far-reaching change in the global trade regime.

Institutions in International Relations: Understanding the Effects of the GATT and the WTO on World Trade

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have been touted as premier examples of international institutions, but few studies have offered empirical proof. This article comprehensively evaluates the effects of the GATT/WTO and other trade agreements since World War II. Our analysis is organized around two factors: institutional standing and institutional embeddedness. We show that many countries had rights and obligations, or institutional standing, in the GATT/WTO even though they were not formal members of the agreement. We also expand the analysis to include a range of other commercial agreements that were embedded with the GATT/WTO. Using data on dyadic trade since 1946, we demonstrate that the GATT/WTO substantially increased trade for countries with institutional standing, and that other embedded agreements had similarly positive effects. Moreover, our evidence suggests that international trade agreements have complemented, rather than undercut, each other.An earlier version of this article was presented at the 99th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, August 28–31, 2003. We thank Tim BA¼the, Joanne Gowa, Miles Kahler, Andrew Rose, Arthur Stein, Richard Steinberg, and seminar participants at Stanford University, the University of Chicago (PIPES), the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Virginia, for many helpful comments. We especially thank Claire Adida, Ashley Conner, Moonhawk Kim, Erin Krampetz, James Morrison, Mike Nardis, Natan Sachs, Rachel Rubinfeld, and Jessica Weeks for excellent research assistance. We are grateful for financial support from the National Science Foundation (CAREER grant SES-0548285 to Tomz), the Stanford Center for International Development, and the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education at Stanford.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF TRADE: INSTITUTIONS OF PROTECTION

Domestic support for a liberal commercial policy in the U.S. rests on a commonly accepted set of rules and norms. These rules and norms, best characterized as a defense of free and fair trade, arise from two different traditions. The first originated as a political reaction to high trade barriers preceding the Great Depression. Central decision makers took as a lesson from the depression period that short-term political forces should not determine the level of state intervention into the market. The second, to protect against unfair trade, emanates from a long history of state support for industries that claim foreign producers are pursuing unfair predatory practices. Established in statute before the Depression, these rules did not fundamentally change in the postwar period. Together, these decision rules are used to interpret American trade protectionism.

Interests or Institutions: An Inquiry into Congressional-ITC Relations

This essay examines the relationship between Congress and the International Trade Commission (ITC). Using the logic of principal-agent theory, we find that rising constituent pressures on Congress to increase trade protectionism have not led to increased political control over the trade bureaucracy. The essay suggests that the absence of this expected relationship between Congress and the ITC may be explained by the historical circumstances under which Congress originally delegated power. We provisionally argue that delegation in the 1930s established rules and norms which continue to influence the range of remedies to which Congress will turn to aid ailing industries. These rules and norms forestall direct congressional involvement in protectionism, thereby insulating the ITC.

Nativism or Economic Threat: Attitudes Toward Immigrants During the Great Recession

To better evaluate the weight of economic versus cultural factors in determining individual attitudes toward open borders, this article reports on a survey experiment conducted over the course of the Great Recession. Over the course of the recession, we measured changes in attitudes on both immigration and trade policies, controlling for economic circumstance. Based on the data provided by respondents on both their current salaries as well as a subjective assessment of their economic well-being, we illustrate how both objective and subjective perceptions of the economy interact with cultural factors and influence attitudes on open borders. The panel provides a unique picture of the “stickiness” of policy attitudes in hard economic times, and by extension, the level of commitment in the United States to globalization.

To Lobby or to Petition: The Political Environment of U.S. Trade Policy

The identification of an effective political strategy is of particular importance to firms seeking protection from import competition. The firms fundamental choice is whether to lobby the Congress or directly petition the International Trade Commission (the primary agency for administering trade protection). In this article we summarize a debate in the political science literature regarding the extent to which federal agencies respond to short-term changes in congressional preferences. Using this literature as a basis, we develop a model to test whether International Trade Commission (ITC) decisions in escape clause cases reflect the preferences of Congress at the time the petition is filed. The results suggest that the ITC acts independently from immediate changes in congressional preferences. We conclude thatfirms seeking protection from import competition would be advised to commit resources to strengthening the evidence in their petition rather than to directly lobbying congressional representatives with the expectation that the Congress will influence ITC decisions.

US national power and the post-war trading regime

This essay examines the effect of power asymmetries and imperfect markets on US trade policy, two issues often neglected in the conventional literature. We suggest that when the distribution of power is skewed and markets do not conform to the world of standard trade theory, open international markets will not exist unless the disproportionately most powerful state can make a credible commitment to free trade. We suggest that these two conditions characterized the post-World War II trade environment and partially explain why the United States encouraged the formation of the postwar international trade regime. To demonstrate this argument, we examine the voting rules, dispute settlement procedures, and regional trading arrangements that characterized the three postwar trade organizations: the stillborn International Trade Organization, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the World Trade Organization. We argue that the rules of these institutions empowered their member states to punish any US attempts to ‘cheat’. In so doing, it made free trade their welfare-maximizing strategy choice.

America and Trade Liberalization: The Limits of Institutional Reform

Among scholars, delegation of power to the US president in 1934 is widely believed to have been a necessary requisite for tariff reductions in ensuing years. According to conventional wisdom, delegation to the president sheltered Congress from constituent pressure thereby facilitating the opening of the US economy and the emergence of the United States as a world power. This article suggests a revision to our understanding of just how that occurred. Through a close study of the US tariff schedule between 1928 and 1964, focusing on highly protected products, we examine which products were subject to liberalization and at what time. After 1934, delegation led to a change in trade policy, not because Congress gave up their constitutional prerogative in this domain but because presidents were able to target the potential economic dislocation that derives from import competition to avoid the creation of a congressional majority willing to halt the trade agreements program.

Response to Finnemore and Toope

Mark Twain has been quoted as saying, “It is admirable to do good. It is also admirable to tell others to do good—and a lot less trouble.†Twains perhaps apocryphal aphorism could be adapted to contemporary social science scholarship: It is admirable to articulate and seek to apply new concepts. It is also admirable to tell others what is wrong with their concepts—and a lot less trouble.Martha Finnemore and Stephen Toope, in their comment on our summer 2000 special issue of IO, “Legalization and World Politics,†seem to be following this adaptation of Twains advice. They think that our definition of legalization focuses too much on formalized constraints, that it does not relate closely to broader concepts of law, that we are too committed to a rational-strategic approach to politics, and that we do not have a theory of what generates obligation. They do not attempt, in their critique, to produce an alternative conceptualization that attains the breadth they seek without sacrificing conceptual and theoretical coherence. We thought that our own argument was both “dynamic†and “process-oriented,†so we look forward with interest to their attempt to improve on our work. We particularly look forward to a carefully designed research program that will evaluate fairly the many empirical claims that they advance.