Level up: a history of regime-building at Gatt Club

Tras la creación del fragil Acuerdo General de Aranceles y Comercio (GATT) en 1947, la comunidad de delegados y representantes comerciales empezó a reforzarlo cuidadosamente, con crea­tividad. Desde la denominada “organización accidental”, sin una estructura institucional apropiada y bajo aplicación provisional durante décadas, los diplomáticos del comercio de la vieja escuela, y los juristas comerciales posteriormente, se las arreglaron para dar forma progresivamente a un poderoso régimen convencional y, por tanto, una infraestructura crítica de la interdependencia económica global. La historia del GATT y ahora la OMC puede entenderse mejor explorando los cambiantes roles que ha tenido en su interior, a lo largo del tiempo, la diplomacia y el derecho.Almost from the weak inception of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in 1947, the community of trade delegates and representatives that negotiated its provisions began to carefully reinforce it, with considerable creativity. From a so-called “accidental organization”, without proper institutional structure and under provisional application for decades, old-school trade diplomats, and trade lawyers subsequently, managed to progressively devise a powerful treaty-based regime and thus a critical infrastructure for international economic interdependence. The history of the GATT and now the WTO can be better understood by exploring the changing roles granted to diplomacy and law within

Spatial dependence in dyadic data: the cases of double taxation treaties, official development assistance, and asylum migration

The thesis analyses spatial dependence in dyadic data by the means of three applications. These have in common that they concern bilateral international relations or flows between two countries with a particular focus on the relationship between developing and developed countries. While the first chapter provides a general introduction to spatial dependence with a focus on dyadic datasets, the second chapter looks at double taxation treaties (DTTs) and analyses whether strategic interaction among capital importing countries can explain the widespread conclusion of double taxation treaties between an industrialised and a developing country. This is important since upon entering such a treaty, the net-capital importer can lose a significant amount of tax revenues from foreign direct investment (FDI), while the net-capital exporter is better off. The analysis reveals that a country is more likely to enter a DTT if competitor countries for FDI also negotiated such a DTT, providing evidence for the hypothesis that the group of net-capital importers finds itself in a situation which can be described as a prisoners’ dilemma: individually they would be better off if they refused to negotiate a treaty, but collectively they have an incentive to sign such a tax treaty. The third chapter is on official development assistance and deals with the question whether a specific donor tends to dedicate a larger share of its aid budget to a certain recipient if other donors give money to the same beneficiary. A considerable degree of spatial dependence is found in the form that donors tend to allocate their money to the same recipients. Donors particularly follow the example of the most important aid donors. This behaviour has negative implications for aid effectiveness, contributes to harmful aid volatility and leads to aid darlings and orphans. However, there is no evidence that donors strategically interact with each other in order to pursue their military strategic and economic goals. Spatial dependence in asylum migration is the third application, discussed in the fourth chapter. It is well documented in the literature that personal networks of migrants reduce the risk of migration and facilitate transition to the host country. So far it has always been assumed that these personal networks only exist for fellow countrymen. The empirical analysis, however, shows that the positive effects also operate across borders and that also migrants from other geographically close source countries make asylum migration from a given source country more likely. Furthermore, it is shown that a more restrictive asylum policy in one destination country provides a negative externality for other destinations. This is because asylum seekers are deflected by a tighter asylum regime and encouraged to lodge their application in more liberal target countries

Comments on the paper by Marcus Miller and Sayantan Ghosal 'Managing Financial Crisis in Emerging Markets: New Developments in Review'.

No abstract is available for this item.

Transnational power transmission and international law

تلعب شبكات نقل الطاقة دوراً بالغ الأهمية، وتحتاج كل دولة إلى وسائل لنقل الطاقة وتوصيلها، سواء كانت هذه الطاقة منتجة محلياً أو في بلدان أجنبية. يتناول البحث شبكات نقل الطاقة العابرة للحدود، والتي تهدف إلى توصيل الطاقة عبر الحدود الوطنية. ويلقي الضوء على التحديات التي تفرضها مسألة مراعاة الخصائص المميزة لشبكات الطاقة في المجالين القانوني والتنظيمي، وذلك بهدف تعزيز ترابط الشبكات عبر الحدود وانتقال الطاقة دون قيود بموجب القانون الدولي. وعلى الرغم من أن سياسة الطاقة التي وضعها الاتحاد الأوروبي لعام 2020 ونظام النقل الأوروبي لم ينجحا بعد في إنشاء سوق كهربي موحد، إلا أنهما يفيدان كدراسة حالة لنموذج محسّن من اللوائح التنظيمية التي تضع في اعتبارها إمكانية تنفيذ تداول الطاقة ونقلها عبر الحدود الوطنية. يطرح البحث رؤية تستند على أنه عند وضع نطاق عمل واختصاصات محددة بدقة وعلى أسس فنية لتفاعلات الشبكات الكهربية ونقل الطاقة عبر الحدود الوطنية، على المستوى الإقليمي، وإدراجها ضمن أنظمة تجارية دولية قائمة – مثل منظمة التجارة العالمية (WTO) أو معاهدة ميثاق الطاقة (Energy Charter Treaty ) المعدلة، فإن ذلك من شأنه أن يعزز تبادل الطاقة الدولي والتزامن بين منظومات الطاقة كعوامل محركة للقانون الدولي، مما يوفر قدر أكبر من المشروعية ويسهم في إمكانية تفعيل القانونPower transmission networks are crucial. Every country requires the means to transport and deliver energy, whether produced locally or in foreign countries. The paper deals with transnational power-transmission networks, those aimed at delivering energy across borders. It considers the challenges posed by transposing to the legal and regulatory fields the unique features of power grids in order to foster transnational network interconnections and unrestrained power transit under international law. The European Union 2020 Energy Policy and the European Transmission System, though still unsuccessful in achieving the creation of a single electricity market, serve as a case study for an enhanced model of regulation, with emphasis on the enforceability of power trading and transit across national borders. The research advances that a well-framed, technically-based, dedicated scope for transnational power grid interconnections and energy transit, at regional level, into ongoing international trading schemes such as the WTO or an improved Energy Charter Treaty, would further international power trading and synchronisation of energy matrices as drivers for international law to achieve greater legitimacy and enforceability

Russia's foreign policy: key regions and issues

Contents: Part I: Russia's relations with key regions of the world. Russia and the West - Andrei Zagorski: Moscow seeks to renegotiate relations with the West (7-10); Sabine Fischer: The EU and Russia: stumbling from summit to summit (15-17); Andrew Monaghan: Prospects for developing NATO - Russia relations (19-21). Russia and Central Asia - Aleksei Malashenko: Russia and Turkmenistan (25-28); Alisher Ilkhamov: Russia lures Uzbekistan as its strategic satellite in Central Asia (31-34); Martha Brill Olcott: The Kazakh-Russian relationship (37-40). Russia and Asia - Gilbert Rozman: Russia's resurgence in Northeast Asia: views from the region (45-48); Oksana Antonenko: Russia, Central Asia and the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (49-53). Nuclear proliferation - Adam N. Stulberg: Russia's nonproliferation tightrope (65-68). Maritime border conflicts - Vlad M. Kaczynski: US-Russian Bering Sea marine border dispute: conflict over strategic assets, fisheries and energy resources (75-78); Vlad M. Kaczynski: The Kuril Islands dispute between Russia and Japan: perspectives of three ocean powers (79-82); Geir Honneland: Norway and Russia in the Barents Sea - cooperation and conflict in fisheries management (82-85). Part II: pressing issues: WTO accession - Peter Rutland: Russia and the WTO: one step forward, one step back (89-91); Natalya Volchkova: Russia and the WTO: a Russian view (92-95); Documentation: World Trade Organization: principal objectives and functions, accession procedure (95); Documentation: Economic effects of Russian WTO accession (96-103)

Sustainable development and climate change

Depending on one's point of view, climate change is a serious global threat, a multi-billion dollar research industry, the subject of endless negotiations and lobbying, a potential source of North-South conflict, or a new basis for North-South co-operation. The last two are especially relevant to the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as it begins to focus on development, sustainability, and equity. The IPCC is an international scientific body charged with assessing the scientific literature on the existence, impact, and potential policy responses to climate change...