16 research outputs found
Letting the Sun Shine in at the WTO: How Transparency Brings the Trading System to Life
Equity Markets, Political Markets and the Changing Framework of US-Japanese Economic Relations
Role of labor, environmental, and human rights groups in trade: Is there a new protectionist cabal?
Social and Political Drivers of the Reorientation of U.S. Trade Policy: The Case of U.S. Withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
US Strategies of Institutional Adaptation in the Face of Hegemonic Decline
How do shifts in the global distribution of power affect the USā preferences for institutionalized cooperation? This article explains why and when the power shift creates incentives for the US to move cooperation out of universal multilateral institutions, such as the WTO, and into exclusive multilateral institutions where it seeks to create a leading consensus among a select group of ālikeāmindedā states. An agreement reached within the subāgroup imposes costs on those excluded from the deal. This increases the hegemonās power bargaining leverage visāĆ āvis outsiders who can join the new agreement as priceātakers. In this scenario, the hegemonās institutional response to the challenge of rising powers is a strategy of divide and conquer; that is, strategic cooptation based on inducements followed by power bargaining based on coercion. The double move, however, puts the hegemon in the position of challenging the institutional status quo with potentially negative consequences for the original institutional order. A case study of negotiations over a new trade in services agreement (TiSA) shows this strategy of divide and conquer at work as the US tries to first achieve a deal without emerging economies, notably China, that can later be imposed on them