Suchergebnisse

This article asks why the dispute settlement provisions of the multilateral trading system underwent significant reforms during the negotiations that led to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. Why did the leading trading powers accept a highly legalized system that departed from established political–diplomatic forms of settling disputes? The contribution of this article is threefold. First, it complements existing accounts that exclusively focus on the United States with a novel explanation that takes account of contextual factors. Second, it offers an in-depth empirical case study based on interviews with negotiators who were involved and novel archival evidence on the creation of the new WTO dispute settlement system. Third, by unpacking the long-standing puzzle of why states designed a highly legalized system, it addresses selected blind spots of the legalization and the rational design literatures with the aim of providing a better understanding about potential paths leading toward significant changes in legalization.

Drawing on the European Union (EU) foreign policy literature on effectiveness, this article studies how the European Union chooses judges to serve on the World Trade Organization's key judicial institution: the Appellate Body. Conceptually, the article differentiates between effectiveness in representation and effectiveness in impact. The article shows how delegation to the European Commission has increased the strategic agenda-setting power for championing its preferred candidates. The article further compares European and US practice in nominating candidates. Overall, the article finds that effectiveness in representation has increased over time. In terms of effectiveness in impact, the article shows how the international environment conditions the EU's influence. The article also exposes the difficulties of studying the effectiveness of EU external relations due to the peculiar decision-making processes dominant in judicial bodies.

This article analyses the World Trade Organization within a principal-agent framework. The concept of complex agent is introduced to focus on the variety of actors that comprise an international organization. Special attention is paid to the relationship between contracting parties' representatives and the Secretariat. In the empirical part, the article analyses the role of the Secretariat in assisting negotiations and presents evidence of declining influence. It is shown how principal-agent theory can contribute to addressing this puzzle of 'missing delegation'. The article concludes with a cautionary note as to the 'location' of international organizations' emerging pathologies and calls for additional research to address the relationship between material and social sources to explain behaviour of the key actors within the complex agency. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd. & ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research.]

This article analyses the World Trade Organization within a principal–agent framework. The concept of complex agent is introduced to focus on the variety of actors that comprise an international organization. Special attention is paid to the relationship between contracting parties' representatives and the Secretariat. In the empirical part, the article analyses the role of the Secretariat in assisting negotiations and presents evidence of declining influence. It is shown how principal–agent theory can contribute to addressing this puzzle of 'missing delegation'. The article concludes with a cautionary note as to the 'location' of international organizations' emerging pathologies and calls for additional research to address the relationship between material and social sources to explain behaviour of the key actors within the complex agency.

AbstractThis article focuses on the EU's strategy for choosing regulatory venues to negotiate trade agreements. It analyses the existence of a clear venue hierarchy since the late 1990s and the recent change leading to a blurring of any clear preference for using bilateral, inter‐regional or multilateral settings. The article challenges domestic explanations of the EU's choice of venue, stressing the autonomy of the Commission as a major factor. Using a principal‐agent framework, it shows that the Commission's agenda‐setting powers, the existence of interest divergence among principals (e.g. Member States, business groups) and the multi‐level system facilitate agency.

Dieser Artikel analysiert Verhandlungen zwischen der Schweiz und Deutschland im Bereich der Luftfahrtregulierung mit verhandlungs-theoretischen 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 gouvernmentale 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 Kontext Schweizer Aussenpolitik und wirft weitere Forschungsfragen auf. (Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft / FUB)