Comparing regional organisations in global multilateral institutions: ASEAN, the EU and the UN

Structural change brought about by the end of the Cold War and accelerated globalisation have transformed the global environment. A global governance complex is emerging, characterised by an ever-greater functional and regulatory role for multilateral organisations such as the United Nations (UN) and its associated agencies. The evolving global governance framework has created opportunities for regional organisations to participate as actors within the UN (and other multilateral institutions). This article compares the European Union (EU) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as actors within the UN network. It begins by extrapolating framework conditions for the emergence of EU and ASEAN actorness from the literature. The core argument of this article is that EU and ASEAN actorness is evolving in two succinct stages: Changes in the global environment create opportunities for the participation of regional organisations in global governance institutions, exposing representation and cohesion problems at the regional level. In response, ASEAN and the EU have initiated processes of institutional adaptation.     

Trade, institutions, and the timing of GATT/WTO accession in post-colonial states

Prior to 1995, when the World Trade Organization (WTO) superseded the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a number of states took advantage of GATT Article XXVI:5(c), which allowed them—as former colonies or component territories of existing GATT members—to quickly and simply join the multilateral trade regime. The speed with which these post-colonial accessions took place, however, varied widely: some states joined immediately upon independence, while others joined much later. Still other post-colonial states passed on this opportunity, only to subsequently begin the longer, more onerous accession process required of other GATT/WTO applicants. Our paper seeks to explain this variation in the timing of post-colonial states’ accession to the GATT/WTO. We argue that three key variables explain the timing of accession decisions: 1) a country’s trade ties with existing member-states; 2) its existing preferential trade agreement (PTA) commitments; and 3) its domestic political institutions—specifically, the country’s level of democracy. Furthermore, we argue that the effects of these variables are conditional upon each other: post-colonial countries with more extensive trade ties to existing member-states were more likely to accede rapidly under Article XXVI:5(c), but only under specific conditions—namely, when they had not already locked in ties with key trading partners through bilateral or regional PTAs, and when they were governed by a more democratic regime. We test this argument empirically using an original dataset of 61 post-colonial states from 1951 to 2004. Our results strongly support this explanation of GATT/WTO accession and help to clarify the pattern of participation in the multilateral trading system that we have observed over the last half-century.     

Size matters: the need for human-scale economic institutions for development

Current mainstream development thinking, with the exception of a few areas like microcredit, tends to favour size over substance. This article aims to challenge the belief that large-scale companies, markets, and institutions are the most effective means of ‘delivering development’. We argue that, by designing institutions to meet different needs at different scales, long-term sustainable development outcomes are more likely. Through an analysis of ‘new economics’ thinking, we look specifically at how the concept of subsidiarity could be applied to development thinking at the community and business levels, and we draw on some examples of where the concept is already manifest in practice, such as energy and commodity production.     

Public support for the international economic organizations: Evidence from developing countries

Public opinions regarding the international economic organizations (IEOs; the IMF, World Bank, and WTO) are understudied. I contrast five lines of argument using a multi-country survey of developing countries, focusing on evaluations of the economy, skills, gender, and ideology and measures of involvement with the organizations themselves. At the individual level, respondents have negative views if they have negative views of the state of the economy. More educated respondents are more likely to have negative views of the IEOs. Women are more likely to have positive views of the IEOs than men. National levels of engagement with the IEOs also affect public evaluations of them. Evaluations of the state of the economy are more influential determinants of IEO evaluations in states that receive IMF and World Bank loans, as well as in states that are active in WTO dispute resolution.

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Analysis: Trade openness,economic development and civil war onset in the post-colonial world, 1950–1992

This article reinvestigates the effects of trade openness and economic development on civil war. While some scholars argue that economic openness increases domestic turmoil, others claim that it promotes domestic peace. Focusing on trade openness as a key indicator of economic openness, hypotheses derived from previous research are tested against data for 83 states in the post-colonial world from 1950 to 1992. Results show that increased trade openness and economic development reduce the risk of civil war. The effect of trade is slightly greater with higher economic development. Civil war is more likely with oil export dependence, increased militarization, mixed regimes, mountainous terrain, and increased ethnic fractionalization.     

Trade at the margin: Estimating the economic implications of preferential trade agreements

Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) have become the most prevalent form of international trade liberalization in recent decades, even though it remains far from clear what their effects on economies and their key units, firms, are. This paper evaluates the distributional consequences of trade liberalization within industries differentiating two distinct aspects in which trade liberalization could result in higher trade flows: the intensive vs. the extensive margin of trade. In particular, we analyze whether trade liberalization leads to increased trade flows because either firms trade more volume in products they have already traded before (intensive margin) or because they start to trade products they have not traded previously (extensive margin), or both. We test these arguments for the Dominican Republic–Central America–United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) and exporting firms based in Costa Rica for the time-period 2008–2014. The results of our study suggest that the effects of CAFTA-DR depend not only on whether we analyze the extensive versus the intensive margin of trade but also whether the product in question is homogenous or differentiated and whether the exporting firm under analysis is small or large. In particular, we find support for the theoretical expectation that firms exporting heterogeneous products, such as textiles, gain from trade agreements, such as CAFTA-DR, in that they can export more varieties of their products. Yet at the same time, they tend to lose at the intensive margin by a reduction in their trade volume while the opposite pattern occurs for firms exporting homogenous products.     

Non-compliance by design: Moribund hard law in international institutions

States often create international institutions that impose legally binding rules on member states, and then do not even attempt to enforce these rules. Why? In this article, we present a game-theoretic model of moribund hard law in international institutions. We show that if some states face domestic pressure to negotiate a hard law treaty, their incentive to insist on hard law in the negotiations is maximized when less enthusiastic states expect that the hard law will probably not be enforced. Domestic proponents of hard law reward states for negotiating a hard law treaty, while states that oppose hard law can accept it because they expect no enforcement. As a form of informal governance, moribund hard law allows non-compliance by design.     

The politicization of international economic institutions in US public debates

Recent research has noted a trend of increased “politicization” of international politics, i.e., decisions of international institutions are increasingly debated and contested within civil society. What is lacking so far are explanations for this trend. In this paper we derive four potential explanations and empirically test them. The first two, society-centered, hypotheses focus on the process of socio-economic modernization on the one hand and civil society structures on the other. The second pair of polity-centered hypotheses focuses on the decision-making power of international institutions and on their legitimacy. We measure politicization on the basis of a quantitative content analysis of US quality newspaper articles about four decisions of different international institutions in the issue area of international taxation. Our finding is that politicization is driven by the increasing decision making authority of international institutions rather than by the lack of legitimacy of their procedures or the factors emphasized by society-centered approaches.     

Boards of directors in international organizations: A framework for understanding the dilemmas of institutional design

This article develops an analytical framework for studying international organization (IO) boards of directors and applies the framework to a sample of 12 international organizations. It argues that the boards of IOs are asked by their political masters to play four distinct roles: (1) political counterweight, (2) performance police, (3) democratic forum, and (4) strategic thinker. Because there are trade-offs among them, no IO board can play all four roles effectively. Policymakers must therefore choose among them, and they must make choices of institutional design accordingly. The article also shows how in practice, international organizations fall into three governance “models” based on the characteristics of their boards of directors. Each model has a different combination of strengths and weaknesses. The analysis suggests that because trade-offs are inescapable, state actors sometimes willingly surrender a measure of control in order to strengthen other aspects of institutional performance. IO autonomy is often not something that surprises or annoys governments, but rather something that was been built into the institutional design as the result of a conscious trade-off.     

Alliances,Trade Discrimination,and the Global Trade Regime

Although nondiscrimination is a central tenet of the global trade regime, discrimination was in fact common under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, particularly against developing countries. The latter have recently sought to end such discrimination through World Trade Organization rules: for example, the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) prohibited quota discrimination in this sector. I examine the ATC's impact on US discrimination, asking whether the ATC ended the US policy of favoring allies with generous textile and clothing quotas. I find that, while the United States favored allies before the ATC, this favoritism vanished in the post-ATC period. The ATC thus accomplished its goal of ending explicit textile and clothing discrimination. This result underscores the potential for multilateral rules to control trade discrimination and implies that popular theories of trade policy may be contingent on such rules.     

Islam,institutions and insurgency: territorial and network jihad

Contemporary research and policies often reduce Islamic insurgency to a simpli?ed notion of jihad, and, simultaneously, the religious doctrine of jihad to pure militancy. Such an approach fails to consider the complexities that de?ne and di?erentiate Islamic insurgents, and hinders further understanding of when, how and if they implement jihad. This paper attempts to address these shortcomings by considering how the ideological histories in?uencing territorially-based movements yield either an adherence to a modern jihad doctrine or a secular nationalist doctrine. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian Territories provide the case studies wherein this distinction is manifest in their respective popular bases, institutions and military relations. Responding to assumptions of an emergent ‘third form’ of jihad—the network—this study applies the inverse model of the territorial doctrines to the Arab-Afghans and al-Qaeda (the network headed by Osama bin Laden) in order to elucidate its potential explanatory limitations, as well asto o?er some insights.     

Enhancing rural learning,linkages, and institutions: the rice videos in Africa

Africa Rice Center (WARDA) facilitated the development and translation of 11 rice videos. From 2005 to 2009, WARDA partners translated them into more than 30 African languages. Open-air video presentations enhanced learning, experimentation, confidence, trust, and group cohesion among rural people. The videos strengthened capacities of more than 500 organisations and hundreds of thousands of farmers. WARDA's integrated rural learning approach also helped women to access new markets and credit. Learning videos allow for unsupervised learning; unleash local creativity and experimentation; facilitate institutional innovations; and improve social inclusion of the poor, youth, and women.     

Control,soft information,and the politics of international organizations staffing

This article offers insights into the aggregate patterns of the geographical distribution of professional staff in some of the major international organizations (IOs). Building on the principal-agent framework, I argue that powerful member states seek dominant positions in IOs’ secretariats, in an effort to increase their ability to control them. At the same time, it is often the weakest low-income countries that are the IOs’ primary clients. Over-representation of the most powerful states is likely to lead to functional and legitimation problems for the IOs, in particular with regard to the IOs’ lack of access to ‘soft’ information about the countries in which they operate. Using a newly created dataset covering 19 major bodies of the United Nations family, I identify two aggregate patterns in the geographical distribution of their professional staff. First, the most powerful states dominate IOs’ secretariats. Second, however, many IOs systematically deviate in their staffing practices from this overall pattern, as well as from the existing rules that formalize it, and relatively over-represent also low-income countries. What results is a curvilinear (U-shaped) pattern where both powerful and very poor states are over-represented in many IOs’ professional staff.