Transatlantic Institutions: Can Partnership be Engineered?

The transatlantic alliance is widely viewed as being in a state of decline. Conflict over the war in Iraq highlighted a growing divergence between the Bush administration and European Union governments in their attitudes towards multilateralism. The rift severely tested institutions created to manage bilateral EU–US relations in the aftermath of the cold war. This article examines how well this institutional architecture has held up. It scrutinises the limitations of networked governance in transatlantic relations and acknowledges the quandary of trying to manufacture partnership using imperfect institutions. The Brussels–Washington channel is only one among many through which transatlantic relations flow, but we argue that it continues to gain in importance. Despite the limits of institutional engineering, we conclude that the US and the EU remain each other's most important ally.     

新时代中国外交理论建设与外交实践笔谈

从方法论、理论意义和制度创新三个角度把握新时代中国外交理论的丰富内涵和发展方向,是深化新时代中国外交战略和外交理论研究的重要保证。人类命运共同体思想不仅丰富了中国的国际关系理论,也有力推动着理论范式的创新。这种创新表现为中国国际关系理念与价值创新、思维创新、模式创新和话语创新。我们需要深刻辨识中国全球伙伴关系战略对开创国际关系新模式的理论意义和高质量共建"一带一路"对世界共同现代化的制度创新价值。21世纪的国际竞争具有新的特点,更多体现为纵向竞争、间接竞争、错位竞争。由于美国视中国为长期性的竞争对手,这使得国际体系中的大国战略竞争呈现长期化态势。我们应从更广阔的战略图谱中定位竞争,从管控竞争、化解竞争的角度去应对竞争,其中包括推动实现"真正的多边主义"。     

1945年美英贸易谈判和GATT的起源

1945年美英围绕战后国际贸易体制问题展开了一场外交攻防战,出于世界领导权、商业利益及对苏战略的需要,美国放弃了多边自由贸易纲领,转而采取多边谈判程序的安排,形成了美国构筑战后国际贸易体制的政策目标和方法,为多边贸易谈判体制———GATT的产生铺平了道路。     

Funding Global Public Goods: The Dark Side of Multilateralism

The funding of global public goods, such as climate mitigation, presents a complex strategic problem. Potential recipients demand side payments for implementing projects that furnish global public goods, and donors can cooperate to provide the funding. We offer a game‐theoretic analysis of this problem. In our model, a recipient demands project funding. Donors can form a multilateral program to jointly fund the project. If no program is formed, bilateral funding remains a possibility. We find that donors rely on multilateralism if their preferences are relatively symmetric and domestic political constraints on funding are lax. In this case, the recipient secures large rents from project implementation. Thus, even donors with strong interests in global public good provision have incentives to oppose institutional arrangements that promote multilateral funding. These incentives have played an important role in multilateral negotiations on climate finance, especially in Cancun (2010) and Durban (2011).     

Mega-Regional Trade Deals in the Asia-Pacific: Choosing Between the TPP and RCEP?

The emergence of “mega-regional” trade agreements has recently become the most significant trade policy issue in the Asia-Pacific. Since 2010, governments in the region have launched negotiations for two new trade agreements: the United States-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the ASEAN-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Differentiated by their membership, scope and level of ambition, the TPP and RCEP embody competing visions for how the Asia-Pacific trade system should evolve, and regional governments must now make choices over which initiative better serves their economic and political interests. This article explores the trade policy choice posed by these mega-regional trade negotiations, reviewing the evolution of the Asia-Pacific trade system, the recent emergence of the TPP and RCEP, and the competitive dynamics inherent in the development of the two proposals. It argues that four key considerations (trade policy ambition, the role of ASEAN, US-China geopolitical rivalry and defensive concerns) will be of key importance in informing regional governments’ decisions as the TPP and RCEP move towards completion in 2015.     

South Africa's Iran policy: ‘Poster child’ meets renegade

Compliance with universal norms is one of the most important aspects of the global order. Iran, through the conduct of its nuclear programme, is seen as a challenger of the global non-proliferation norms, which enjoy almost universal recognition. South Africa's policy on Iran has been extremely puzzling — a rising power in the international system, subscribing to a global norm of nuclear non-proliferation, but challenging the interpretation and application of that norm. This contribution asks why this is the case, and demonstrates that South Africa's policy towards the Iranian nuclear programme has been clearly marked by a strongly held belief regarding the value of negotiations, a distrust of the global North, and a preference for a wide multilateral approach in institutions.