Suchergebnisse

"Dieser Artikel analysiert Verhandlungen zwischen der Schweiz und Deutschland im Bereich der Luftfahrtregulierung mit verhandlungstheoretischen Ansätzen. Eine Anzahl von Faktoren, welche in der Literatur zu Verhandlungsprozessen und Verhandlungsergebnissen prominent vertreten sind, werden dabei kritisch beleuchtet. Insbesondere Machtargumente, welche in der Frage zwischenstaatlicher Kooperation oft nicht genügend Berücksichtigung finden, werden in den Vordergrund gerückt. Der Autor argumentiert, dass strukturelle Machtfaktoren das Verhandlungsergebnis determinieren sowie subnationale Politikfaktoren und Informationsasymmetrien Nichtratifikation der ausgehandelten Verträge erklären. Die vorliegende Fallstudie zeigt auf, dass Einflüsse internationaler Normen und Institutionen marginal und Erklärungen zur Rolle von Verhandlungsstrategien von untergeordneter Rolle sind. Weiter deutet der Artikel an, dass das governmentale System auf Bundesebene für strategische Versuche des Schweizer Unterhändlers im Verhandlungsprozess zusätzliche Möglichkeiten zu nutzen nicht gerade förderlich war. Der Artikel endet mit Einschätzungen in einem breiteren Kontekt Schweizer Außenpolitik und wirft weitere Forschungsfragen auf." (Autorenreferat)

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have been proliferating for more than two decades, with the negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and a Trans-Pacific Partnership being just the tip of the iceberg. This volume addresses some of the most pressing issues related to the surge of these agreements. It includes chapters written by leading political scientists, economists and lawyers which theoretically and empirically advance our understanding of trade agreements. The key theme is that PTAs vary widely in terms of design. The authors provide explanations as to why we see these differences in design and whether and how these differences matter in practice. The tools for understanding the purposes and effects of PTAs that are offered will guide future research and inform practitioners and trade policy experts about progress in the scientific enquiry into PTAs

Like many other international organizations, the World Trade Organization stands at a crossroads. There is an obvious imbalance between the organization's dispute settlement arm and its negotiation platform. While its current rules, supported by a strong dispute settlement system, have provided some buffering against the negative effects of the financial crises, its negotiation machinery has not produced any substantial outcomes since the late 1990s. It has become obvious that the old way of doing business does not work any more and fresh ideas about governing the organization are needed. Based on rigorous scholarship, this volume of essays offers critical readings on the functioning of the system and provides policy-relevant ideas that go beyond incremental redesign but avoid the trap of romantic scenarios

AbstractFor a long time, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been seen as the privileged multilateral regime to regulate trade. However, given its slow progress in negotiating new trade rules, countries have increasingly shifted their focus to preferential trade agreements (PTAs) since the early 2000s. Focusing on a timely and increasingly important topic (digital trade), we explore how countries' interactions in the WTO impact on their approaches in designing rules in PTAs. Using newly collected data on digital trade‐related provisions in almost 350 PTAs signed since 2000, we find that countries' participation in digital trade‐related initiatives at the WTO spill over to the design of their PTAs. More precisely, we show that countries which actively participate in the discussions of the WTO Work Programme on Electronic Commerce are more likely to negotiate ambitious commitments on digital trade in their PTAs. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that countries which participate in the WTO‐based plurilateral Information Technology Agreement (ITA) are more likely to commit to deeper cooperation in the area of digital trade. More broadly, this article contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of regime complexity and how interaction in the multilateral system spills over to regional and bilateral trade regimes.

AbstractWhat explains the design of international institutions? Existing research has largely neglected how experience in cooperation in one set of international institutions impacts on design choices made by states in other globally-oriented institutions. We contribute to this evolving debate by analyzing spillovers in experience in international trade. We argue that countries' track record of interaction in multilateral trade disputes affects the design of their preferential trade agreements (PTAs). If a country participates in a complaint against a prospective PTA partner at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the challenge in Geneva alerts the defendant's import-competing industries with respect to potential challenges under the planned PTA. As a result, these industries exert pressure on their government to preserve leeway under the future treaty, leading to increased flexibility and a lower level of enforcement in the PTA. We find support for our hypotheses in an empirical analysis of 347 PTAs concluded post 1990.

For a long time, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been seen as the privileged multilateral regime to regulate trade. However, given its slow progress in negotiating new trade rules, countries have increasingly shifted their focus to preferential trade agreements (PTAs) since the early 2000s. Focusing on a timely and increasingly important topic (digital trade) we explore how countries' interactions in the WTO impacts on their approaches in designing rules in PTAs. Using newly collected data on digital trade-related provisions in almost 350 PTAs signed since 2000, we find that countries' participation in digital trade-related initiatives at the WTO spill over to the design of their PTAs. More precisely, we show that countries which actively participate in the discussions of the WTO Work Programme on Electronic Commerce are more likely to negotiate ambitious commitments on digital trade in their PTAs. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that countries which participate in the WTO-based plurilateral Information Technology Agreement (ITA) are more likely to commit to deeper cooperation in the area of digital trade. More broadly, this article contributes to our understanding of the dynamics of regime complexity and how interaction in the multilateral system is associated with regional and bilateral trade regimes.

AbstractMost accounts of international negotiations suggest that global agreements are individually crafted and distinct, while some emerging scholarship suggests a heavy reliance on models and templates. In this research, we present a comprehensive test of whether new international treaties are heavily copied and pasted from past ones. We specify several reasons to expect widespread copying and pasting, and argue that both the most and least powerful countries should be most likely to do so. Using text analysis to examine several hundred preferential trade agreements (PTAs), we reveal that most PTAs copy a sizable majority of their content word for word from an earlier agreement. At least one hundred PTAs take 80 percent or more of their contents directly from a single, existing treaty—with many copying and pasting 95 percent or more. These numbers climb even higher when we compare important substantive chapters of trade agreements, many of which are copied and pasted verbatim. Such copying and pasting is most prevalent among low-capacity governments that lean heavily on existing templates, and powerful states that desire to spread their preferred rules globally. This widespread replication of existing treaty language reshapes how we think about international cooperation, and it has important implications for literatures on institutional design, policy diffusion, state power, and legal fragmentation.

Innovation in information and communication technology (ICT) has been one of the key drivers of economic globalization. As a result, the numbers of goods and services and, therefore, cross-border data ows have been increasing at an exceptional speed. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and its Members have early on realized the importance of establishing global rules by launching a work programme on electronic commerce in 1998. The WTO and, in particular, the Secretariat has been instrumental in keeping the issue on the agenda, providing shared knowledge on the evolution of ICT-induced advances and by defining concepts which also act as focal points for trade regulation. Yet, we have witnessed that regulation has been late to address the dynamic market realities and if regulation has occurred, it was driven rather by unilateral approaches with limited international cooperation. Given the absence of progress in rule-making in the WTO for some time now, the negotiators of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have been tasked to fill the gap of writing the rule book for 21st century trade - rules that would address needs resulting from an ever more integrated and data-driven economy. The first PTA that had an electronic commerce provision was the Jordan-US PTA in 2000 and the first data flow provisions go back to the Korea-US PTA from 2007. So, these types of provisions are a rather recent phenomenon in trade agreements.

AbstractThe literature on international cooperation through legal commitments focuses chiefly on treaty ratification. What has received much less attention is that before states ratify treaties, they commit to treaties through the act of signature. This article addresses this research gap by investigating how a state's decision to sign a treaty is affected by its diplomatic representation during treaty negotiations. Conceptualizing signature as a commitment step, we argue that participation in treaty negotiations translates into a "ties-that-bind" effect creating incentives for diplomats to support the treaty text leading to treaty signature. Our empirical analysis uses a new data set on signature and tests the argument for 52 multilateral treaties concluded between 1990 and 2005. Results confirm that participation in treaty making matters for signature but not necessarily for ratification.