New Changes in the International Situation and China's Strategic Choices

The international situation is evolving more impressively than it has at any time since the end of the Cold War.Globalization has been in decline.Nations are scrambling to gain greater influence.The international strategic pattern is being adjusted.Many countries have problems with public management,and are faced with a new array of social trends and increasingly popular movements.The world is entering a new era full of chaos and anxiety.Mankind once again faces significant trade-offs and choices in peace and conflict,development and recession,openness and isolation,liberalism and conservatism.China strives to advocate win-win cooperation and lead the trend of reform and opening to maintain a favorable external environment despite world chaos,and enhance status and institutional rights in the international system.China's 30 years of development was successful in the process of integrating into the existing international system;China is a participant as well as a builder of the international system,rather than a challenger or a subversive.In the future,with a constructive attitude,China will promote the international system in a more reasonable direction together with international partners,in order to better safeguard world peace and security,and promote sustainable development throughout the world.     

International Disorder and China's Strategic Thoughts

Since the 2008 international financial crisis,international political and economic disorder has become obvious.Major reasons are the decline of US-led Western developed economies' global influence;US and other Western countries inaction or ineffective actions;power diffusion allowing non-state actors to intervene;a global governance short of needed rules;and mainstream economic theory's overemphasis on market roles.International disorder is a long-term process posing a potential threat to China' s national interests.The situation challenges China to create an international economic and trade order,thereby shaping itself as prophet of global free trade,shaper of international economic and trade rules,and trendsetter for globalization.     

Administrative Styles in the OECD: Bureaucratic Policy-Making beyond Formal Rules

As we know from comparative public policy, bureaucracies contribute to a considerable degree to the contents and the ways of policy-making. One important driver of administrative policy-making are their specific “styles” or “cultures”. “Administrative styles” are understood here as the standard operating procedures and routines that characterize the behavior and activities of administrative bodies in initiating, drafting and implementing policy. In this article, we convey the concept of Administrative Styles to the level of International Organizations (IOs) and apply it to the Organization for Economic Development and Co-Operation (OECD). The article proceeds in three steps: First, the concept of administrative styles is introduced and refined. Drawing on expert interviews with OECD staff, we secondly show that consideration of OECD administrative styles significantly advances the literature’s understanding of the organization. Finally, we give an outlook on new research avenues and the relevance of our findings for the study of International Public Administrations (IPAs) more generally.     

Policy Analysis,International Relations,and European Governance – Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries

ABSTRACT

The article highlights the rationale of the special issue in terms of its objectives and guiding principles. It maps different evolutions and challenges within three analytical streams (1) regarding the field of policy analysis, (2) concerning the interaction between domestic and international affairs, and (3) with regards to the transformation of European Union governance in troubled times. These three research avenues highlight how not only European governance itself has evolved in a changing world, but also how the analysis of interests, institutions, and policy-making has morphed, oftentimes transgressing disciplinary and methodological boundaries.     

Bureaucratic Authority and Mimesis: The Eurasian Economic Union’s Multiple Integration Logics

Regional economic integration in the post-Soviet space stands in a complex relation with the European Union’s integration process. Multiple competing internal logics of integration, as well as the EU model are drivers of Eurasian regionalism. The Eurasian Economic Union illustrates how bureaucracies mobilise their technocratic authority in a process of mimesis that reconciles multiple internal and external integration logics: selective learning from the EU and successful incorporation of internal integration logics produce an organisational design and output that member states support to varying extents.     

The Reputational Impact of Investor-State Disputes

To what extent do alleged violations of international commitments damage state reputation? This article explore this question with specific reference to investor-state disputes arising under the protection of international investment agreements. Its main contributions are threefold. First, building on the political institutions literature, the study places the theoretical importance of information about the rules of the game, and the actions of the participants at the center of analysis. Second, in contrast to prior empirical research, the study systematically analyzes the costs of state involvement in investment treaty arbitration by examining all known disputes. Third, the study addresses the impact of investment disputes on both foreign investment flows and state reputational rankings. We show that the consequences of investment disputes vary with the transparency of the investor-state dispute settlement process. The central implication of these findings for the broader body of literature on international institutions is that reputational mechanisms for effective treaty enforcement cannot be taken as given but instead need to be explored on the basis of a nuanced approach that addresses the pivotal issues of institutional design and information costs.     

Seal the Deal: Bargaining Positions,Institutional Design,and the Duration of Preferential Trade Negotiations

Multilateral negotiations at the World Trade Organization have stalled. This has contributed to a steep rise in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). At the same time, negotiations for PTAs have not always proven quick and painless: While some treaties are sealed within a few months or days only, other agreements are preceded by protracted bargaining processes in trade and trade-related issue areas. In this article, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical variation. More specifically, we argue that PTA negotiations take longer the greater the distance between the prospective partners’ initial bargaining positions. Moreover, we contend that negotiation processes become more protracted the higher the relative ambition of the prospective PTA. Due to the limited links to the domestic political arena in autocracies, we expect this latter effect to play out for groups of democratic bargaining partners only. We test these two hypotheses for 198 preferential trade negotiations using novel measures for bargaining templates and the ambition of PTA clauses. In our two-stage survival models, we find support for our argument. In line with qualitative evidence from recent preferential trade initiatives, our models indicate that services, investment and intellectual property rights are particularly sticky agenda items for democratic leaders at the international bargaining table.     

Contestation and Transformation. Final Thoughts on the Liberal International Order

Abstract

The liberal international order, the inseparable mix of US geopolitical power and ideational project of organising international relations along normative frameworks such as internationalism, institutionalism and democracy, is reeling under the pressure of profound systemic changes such as greater interconnectedness and multipolarity. Predictions abound that increasing great power competition, most visibly at play in geographical areas of contested orders, will eventually tear it down. However, even if major actors – the US included – display a selective, irregular and often instrumental commitment to the liberal order, they are still repositioning themselves in that order and not outside of it. In addition, conflict is not the default outcome of order contestation, as hybrid forms of governance are possible even in troubled regions. No doubt, the world of tomorrow will be less American-shaped and less liberal, but transformation is a more plausible future than collapse for the liberal order.     

Secrecy and Self-Interest: When Mediators Act Deceitfully

3rd party intervention in interstate conflict is a common strategy for mitigating conflict and obtaining a final agreement. However, not all mediations are successful, leading to the development of a rich literature on the mechanisms which decrease the probability of failure in a 3rd-party intervention. Within this literature, some studies examine how a mediator’ behavior and incentives affect the result of the mediation. Virtually all these studies assume that the mediator is virtuous such that peace is the most desired outcome of a conflict for her. However, this study challenges this assumption and contends that a mediator can gain benefit from the conflict between disputants. If this benefit is adequately large to overcome the benefits of peace, then the mediator has enough incentive not to conduct the mediation toward a peaceful outcome. We develop a signaling game model to study this issue formally and test the proposed hypothesis empirically.