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One of the most significant recent trends in global trade governance has been the increasing use of regulatory "reliance" arrangements as a significant element of trade alliances. Against this backdrop, an important set of questions are raised about how existing institutions of global trade governance – especially the World Trade Organization and international regulatory standards organisations – should respond. To what extent, and how, should such institutions facilitate reliance arrangements? And what role can they usefully play in overseeing and guiding their use? This paper begins to answer these questions through a focused case study of regulatory reliance in the agrifood sector. Four challenges are identified regarding the implementation of such arrangements: the high costs of establishment and maintenance; the lack of agreed and reliable assessment methodologies; the potential for arbitrary discrimination between trade partners; and the difficulties of dealing with regulatory change over time. In light of these challenges, the paper assesses the work of existing international organisations in governing reliance arrangements in the agrifood sector. The paper concludes with a number of preliminary suggestions as to how this architecture of global governance might be supplemented or harnessed to address some of the challenges posed by reliance arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The protection of a portion of a country's land is vital for sustainable economic growth and biodiversity, though land protection also imposes important costs. States have set aside a growing proportion of their land for protection over time, with wide variation among states. What explains this variation? Theoretically, we argue that states exist internationally in dependence networks with each other and that those networks provide pathways for influence on a state's environmental choices. A state's dependence network is the other states with which it regularly exchanges valued goods. We find strong evidence that increases in protected lands among trade partners and international organization partners (both weighted by importance) increase a given state's protected lands, with substantive effects larger than domestic-level variables like democracy. This paper expands our understandings of the ways that states may influence each other on environmental policy. La protección de una parte del terreno de un país es vital para el crecimiento económico sostenible y para la biodiversidad, aunque la protección de la tierra también conlleva unos costes importantes. Los Estados han estado reservando para su protección una proporción, cada vez mayor, de sus tierras a lo largo del tiempo. Sin embargo, existe una amplia variación a este respecto entre los Estados. ¿Qué explica esta variación? De forma teórica, argumentamos que los Estados existen internacionalmente en redes de dependencia entre sí y que esas redes proporcionan diversas vías que influyen en las elecciones ambientales de un Estado. La red de dependencia de un Estado está formada por otros Estados con los cuales intercambia regularmente bienes valiosos. Encontramos pruebas sólidas de que los aumentos en el número de áreas protegidas entre los socios comerciales y entre los socios de las organizaciones internacionales (ambos ponderados por importancia) aumentan también la cantidad de áreas protegidas de un Estado determinado. Estos aumentos conllevan unos efectos sustantivos mayores que las variables a nivel nacional como la democracia. Este artículo amplía nuestra comprensión acerca de las formas en que los Estados pueden influir mutuamente en la política ambiental. La protection d'une partie des terres d'un pays est cruciale pour une croissance économique durable et la biodiversité, mais elle impose aussi des coûts importants. Au fil des années, les États consacrent une part croissante de leur territoire à la sauvegarde, mais elle varie grandement de l'un à l'autre. Comment expliquer ces différences ? Sur le plan théorique, nous affirmons que les États existent à l'international au sein de réseaux d'interdépendances qui ont tendance à influencer les choix environnementaux étatiques. Le réseau d'interdépendances d'un État regroupe les États avec lesquels il échange régulièrement des marchandises de valeur. Nous trouvons nombre d'éléments probants pour justifier qu'une augmentation de terres protégées chez des partenaires commerciaux et des organisations internationales partenaires (en pondérant les deux en fonction de leur importance) débouche sur une augmentation des terres protégées dans un État donné. Cet effet se révèle plus important que les variables nationales comme la démocratie. Cet article enrichit notre compréhension des moyens par lesquels les États peuvent s'influencer mutuellement en politique environnementale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines China's path to joining the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), a private international organization founded in Paris in 1920, of which China was a member from 1931–1949 and from 1994 onwards. The article charts the actors and debates behind two meaningful encounters. The first took place while the Nanjing government was raising funds for economic reconstruction, and the ICC aimed to mediate China's fundraising efforts through private multilateral channels. The second was in the 1980s, when the People's Republic was seeking to enter the world trade system. ICC members acted as educators and facilitators of world trade practicalities for the People's Republic, which eventually rejoined the ICC in 1994. The article draws on Chinese, European, and American source material collected from governments, chambers of commerce, and private businessmen to make a twofold contribution. First, it adds nuance to the narrative of China's economic internationalization by identifying an important non-governmental diplomatic channel. Second, it questions the ICC's self-proclaimed identity as a non-political economic organization by showing how the political was indissociable from the economic when it came to China's membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union (EU) presented its new trade strategy in early 2021. This article assesses whether the strategy constitutes a path-altering development in EU trade policy. Drawing on concepts from Historical Institutionalism the article assesses the presence and influence of the permissive and productive conditions necessary for a critical juncture, meaning a path-altering policy development, to occur. The permissive conditions refer to the external environment, while the productive conditions are internal, referring to ideational (cognitive and normative) and instrumental developments. We find that although the EU responded instrumentally to changes in the international trading system, and a loosening of the liberal international order, the new trade strategy was not accompanied by a complete ideational change. The EU's normative outlook was little changed in 2021. The conclusion discusses how subsequent changes in the international environment and trade instruments may affect EU trade policy, and whether, over a longer time-period, the new strategy may nonetheless be identified as the start of a critical juncture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are over 250,000 international treaties that aim to foster global cooperation. But are treaties actually helpful for addressing global challenges? This systematic field-wide evidence synthesis of 224 primary studies and meta-analysis of the higher-quality 82 studies finds treaties have mostly failed to produce their intended effects. The only exceptions are treaties governing international trade and finance, which consistently produced intended effects. We also found evidence that impactful treaties achieve their effects through socialization and normative processes rather than longer-term legal processes and that enforcement mechanisms are the only modifiable treaty design choice with the potential to improve the effectiveness of treaties governing environmental, human rights, humanitarian, maritime, and security policy domains. This evidence synthesis raises doubts about the value of international treaties that neither regulate trade or finance nor contain enforcement mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes how democratic leaders cultivate an elite consensus in favor of participating in international institutions. We theorize two tactics to prevent elite dissent. Delegating early policy development to technocratic and nonpartisan experts can set a depoliticized tone. Later integration of opposition elites into the process can create powerful advocates that expand support to a consensus. We assess contrasting fates of the United Nations (UN) and International Trade Organization (ITO). Haunted by Woodrow Wilson’s failure to win approval for the League of Nations, leaders outsourced early planning for a UN to the Council on Foreign Relations. Later, Franklin D. Roosevelt and top aides tapped moderate Republicans for the US delegation to San Francisco, creating powerful Republican advocates. In contrast, leaders developed the ITO in-house and excluded legislative elites in final negotiations, provoking elite dissent. These tactics shed new light on leaders, elites, and the domestic politics of international order and hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main concerns of the International Community nowadays is the achievement of sustainable development, an aspect that is reflected in the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations General Assembly. Within the Objectives proposed by the Agenda, sustainable economic growth and decent work for all appear hand in hand, evidencing that all measures and policies that pursue greater economic growth worldwide must protect, at the same time, workers' core labour rights. Given that international trade is an engine for the economic growth of the countries that participate on it and poverty reduction, while contributing to the promotion of sustainable development, it is imperative to ask how the multilateral international trading system should adapt to the Sustainable Development Goals, or, in other words, how the World Trade Organization, a multilateral international organization mired in a deep institutional crisis, must be reformed to adapt to the postulates of the 2030 Agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Postdualist" approaches, such as the material turn in the humanities and social sciences, represent understandable reactions to the humanist and idealist traditions in Western thought, but tend to be deluded by a focus on individual artifacts rather than on the global, material relations on which their existence depends. The attribution of agency and even desires to abiotic objects, championed by posthumanist researchers such as Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway, is cognate to the category mistakes recurrently identified by social theorists as fetishism and anthropomorphism. Paradoxically, given their subversive ambitions, proponents of the new concern with materiality and artifactual agency are offering an ideology that ultimately buttresses the capitalist world order by ignoring the materiality of world trade and the causality inherent in the artifact of money. The concerns with distributed agency also tend to displace responsibility and accountability from humans to artifacts. Moreover, in converging with a deep genealogy of ideas that blur the boundary between nature and artifice, the material turn depoliticizes technology by naturalizing it. The article proposes a new anthropology of technology that acknowledges the reliance of modern technology on asymmetric global resource flows orchestrated by money and the fictive reciprocity of market prices. [material turn, posthumanism, fetishism, technology, postdualism] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One may ask whether such are compatible with the WTO, or if WTO rules are capable of regulating China's State capitalism and addressing its consequences for world trade. Engaging in the debate over whether China is a revisionist power, Shaffer offers a mixed answer based on his analysis of China's growing trade law capacity and participation in the WTO. Shaffer moves beyond the voluminous scholarship on how the WTO transformed Brazil, India and China, and considers how the evolution of these emerging powers is changing the WTO. [Extracted from the article]

There is much debate about the impending collapse of the liberal international order. It is provoked by the shifts in material and military capabilities from emerging peer and near-peer competitors, some of whom were not part of the original grand bargain and others that are in a stronger position to renegotiate the bargain. As one critical element of the liberal international order, we ask, during power shifts: is the liberal international trading order (LITO) durable and resilient? When and why will the LITO collapse? Does the relative decline of the hegemon alone explain these outcomes? In advancing a second-image reversed plus argument, we highlight how a shift in the nature of the foreign commercial orientation of peer and near-peer contenders can alter the domestic balance of power of two broad and logrolled coalitions competing to capture the state and thus affect whether the erstwhile leader defends, renegotiates, or abandons the trading order it created. To better understand these forces, we examine two paradigmatic cases: Britain in the 1930s and the United States in the 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes El crimen de la guerra by Juan Bautista Alberdi, work that is included in his Postume Writtings; in that book we find explained with precision and anticipation the main issues that constitutes the international law at present: United Nations, the codification of the international law, the European Union, the Principles of the International Law included in the United Nations chart and General Assembly Resolutions. Alberdi wrote more than a simple peace allegation: he stands the necessity of the existence of an international authority above the states' sovereignty in order to avoid the war among them. Throughout his work, Alberdi appeals to morality for reviling the war, especially, to whom order and execute it, comparing it with a common crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of recent reevaluations of the work of Hugo Grotius, this essay analyzes the respective roles of Francisco de Vitoria and Grotius in the construction of the "Grotian tradition" of international law and human rights. In contrast to conventional accounts which understand the two within a progression, this essay argues that Vitoria and Grotius can alternatively be understood as representing two distinct strains of international law and ethics, forms of which persist to this day. The first is that strain which privileges local governance based on the natural law and which insists that international law must have a moral or equitable valence (represented today by liberal internationalism). The second, competing strain which, with its focus on "neutral" rules of commerce and international order, presumes that it need not have such a valence (essentially, neoliberalism). In the process, this essay examines the role of the natural law in Vitoria's thought, which for him was most often a reason against interference or intervention, not for. The essay also highlights the role of the Eighty Years' War between the Dutch United Provinces and Spain in the development of Grotius's understanding of sovereignty, in contrast to the Thirty Years' War which is given more prominence in conventional accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we explore what a programme of 'reglobalization' could look like for the governance of global trade. Our focus is on the centrepiece of the current commercial order, the World Trade Organization (WTO). Our aim is to illustrate the potential value of a reformulated WTO not just for commercial relations globally but also for other areas of social concern. We seek to be both practical and challenging. We seek to be practical by establishing what a programme of WTO reform might look like in the near-to-medium term, including changes to the negotiating process and opening up the WTO to non-state actors. We seek to be challenging by setting the transformation of global trade governance within the context of a thorough process of reglobalization wherein the primary public mechanisms of global governance are reoriented towards the delivery of progressive social and environmental outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Witnessing power shifts among major countries in the world, scholars and policymakers alike are confronted with crucial questions about the international institutional order: Do power shifts expedite the collapse of the order? Who are its major challengers, and why? This article tackles these issues, drawing on rationalist theories of international institutions that include both realist and neoliberal thinking. I analyse how the making of the international institutional order, along with its evolution, informs us of the sources of challenges to that order. Accordingly, I explain why the country most powerful in making the international institutional order—thus the apparent beneficiary of that order—ends up nursing so many grievances against it. I illustrate this thesis in the areas of collective security, international trade, and democracy promotion. This article contributes to important debates on global governance and raises policy implications for the rewriting of international rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has drawn massive benefits via expanded trade since it acceded to the WTO in 2001. We might therefore reasonably expect it to have taken a more assertive lead in trying to rectify the travails in which the organisation finds itself mired, attendant with its rising power status, its active trade diplomacy elsewhere, the high levels of relative gains it has enjoyed since becoming a member, and its broader trade dependency. That China has not done so represents a puzzle, which is usually answered with reference to the international picture: i.e. that global trade has appeared to be holding up reasonably well throughout and beyond the global crisis, and, despite some inchoate protectionism, there generally exists a broad commitment to an open trading regime. Yet this only tells part of the story: China's approach cannot simply be 'read off' from the structural context and there are, in fact, a series of interesting domestic explanations for why China has remained a 'reluctant leader' of the WTO too. On the basis of a series of interviews with Chinese experts, we offer a more complete account of these processes that better recognises patterns of agency, and how China navigates a contingent international order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates discursive struggles over the boundaries of the categorisation of developing countries in the world trade regime. A key principle of the World Trade Organization (WTO) grants special rights to the group of developing countries. Recently, it has become highly contested whether emerging economies such as China can legitimately claim to belong to the group of developing countries. This article uncovers how old and new economic powers have tried to strategically (re)frame the boundaries of the developing country categorisation in the WTO. I argue that ongoing contestation reproduces inequalities because many developing countries are unwittingly negatively affected by the lack of formal criteria for classifying emerging economies—even if emerging economies themselves may benefit. In doing so, I illustrate how informal practices of classification may undermine the original intention of categorisation in International Organizations that aims to address inequality among its members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The life spans of international organizations (IOs) can take unexpected turns. But when we reduce IO life spans simply to their existence or lack thereof, or to formal change involving the addition of new members or the revision of charters, we miss the subtler dynamics within IOs. A broader continuum of IO life spans acknowledges life, death, inertia, and change as responses to crises, and affords a more nuanced perspective on international cooperation. Through this lens, the setbacks that many IOs are currently experiencing look less extraordinary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to identify trends in the world economy in terms of changes in periods of increasing globalization and deglobalization manifestations, supplementing them with a study of the factors that stimulate these manifestations. Economic-financial, social and political globalizations are singled out as planes of globalization processes development. It is shown that economic and financial globalization is characterized by the intensity and conditions of movement of goods and services in international trade flows; organizational and economic transformations of entrepreneurship in the context of innovative changes in the world's economic development; investment component of the economies functioning; formation of a common financial market, etc. Social globalization finds its expression through cross-cultural and behavioral aspects of interactions in the world; migration processes; the role of the information space in reformatting the world order, etc. Political globalization is manifested in the peculiarities of the influence of the institutional factor on market structures; decision-making procedures at the national and international levels, etc. The cyclical intensification of globalization and deglobalization manifestations in the world economy has been studied, which demonstrates the stability of the tendency to weaken the importance of fragmented supply chains in international trade. It has been proven that the ability to adapt is especially important for companies to be able to use the opportunities that are open to them as actors in today's interconnected world, and not lose their potential under the influence of often contradictory forces, which are due to them. Differences in perceptions of the benefits and threats of globalization forces by different population groups are shown, as well as changes in the geography of global demand, the drivers of skepticism about globalization are outlined, the most important of which are: inequality, and in the interstate context); certainty (vulnerability caused by the possible loss of national identity and its gradual replacement by cultural norms of other countries); impact (vulnerability due to difficult opportunities to counter the decisions and policies of international organizations and multinational companies). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluctuation in the price of oil has been an international concern for decades, because oil is the primary export and main economic driver for many States. OPEC as an international organization is practicing its role in controlling oil prices and oil market under the rules and norms of international law. In 2014, the price of oil decreased tremendously in a way that shocked the international market. OPEC tried to stem the losses and prevent prices from falling even further, and tried to facilitate international law in the current crisis. World markets were further shocked when OPEC announced that it would not cut production, and that the market would be supplied by the usual average amount of oil exports. In contrast, WTO cut its global trade in an attempt to shore up prices in the international markets, since low oil prices affected international trade as well. In this article, I analyze the oil crisis that hit the world from 2014 to the early year of 2016 period, and the role of international organizations such as OPEC and WTO in facing international economic crises, as well as the role of international politics to assure the implementation of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper peers backwards into the history of the multilateral trading system and its development over the past half century as a means of considering what may lie beyond the horizon for the future of global trade governance. Its purpose is to underscore the necessity and urgency for root-and-branch reform of the multilateral trading system. It achieves this by comparing and contrasting the global trading system of 50 years ago with its modern-day equivalent and its likely future counterpart half-a-century hence. In so doing, the paper throws into sharp relief not only the inadequacies of global trade governance today but also the damaging consequences of not fundamentally reforming the system in the near future, with a particular emphasis on the past, present and future development of the world’s poorest and most marginalised countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Few studies have systematically examined the international organization (IO)‐democracy nexus, except Pevehouse (2002, 2005), who found the democratizing impact of regional IOs. Our study extends previous research by investigating the indirect as well as the direct effects of IOs on democracy. Methods: We employ a two‐equation model, using the data for 112 developing countries for 1972–2002. Results: Regional IOs increase the level of economic openness, which in turn leads to improvements in democracy. Conclusions: IOs indeed facilitate democratic development in their member states both directly and indirectly by enhancing these countries’ international trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent does joint membership in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) matter for bilateral trade? How and under what conditions do the various types of IGOs — economic, socio-cultural and general purpose — influence bilateral trade between their members? How do complex interdependencies in world trade matter? Existing research tends to examine aggregate joint IGO memberships and has done little to analyze how specific types of IGO membership matter in trade. Using a detailed IGO dataset and a novel network analysis approach called the temporal exponential random graph model, I assess the importance of three main IGO types — economic, socio-cultural and general purpose — in helping members to establish major trading ties. The results provide support for general purpose and socio-cultural IGOs and point to the importance of network phenomena such as popularity, activity and transitivity effects. Moreover, joint economic IGO memberships exhibit slightly more complex relations with bilateral trade. A robustness test reveals that preferential trade agreements are significant in fostering trade, while the World Trade Organization and other economic IGOs such as development banks are not. This paper presents a nuanced way of analyzing IGOs and provides the impetus for the study of complex interdependencies in international trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the emerging economic powers of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) since December 2010 are bound to have an impact on global economic governance, whether individually, as in the case of China, or collectively. Collective international action, principally through club mechanisms, has been one means through which the individual BRICS states have pursued their overlapping goals. It notes that BRICS governments discovered focal points for their common interests during transgovernmental meetings of senior officials from the BRICS countries. It adds that BRICS collaboration includes ministers and deputy ministers of foreign affairs, finance, economy, and other government departments unrelated to financial and economic matters.

As macroeconomic stabilisation and structural adjustment policies have not been particularly successful, it becomes increasingly necessary to consider the role of additional economic parameters in the growth process. In this context, governance (the balance of powers, rational resource management, transparency of rules, involvement of civil society, etc.) has become inextricably linked to the analysis of the development of the countries of the South. Closely related to that of institutions, this notion of governance is a polysemous one. In spite of that, the concept of governance is currently the core question in debates about how international financial organisations use the idea of "good governance". This paper examines the need for "good governance" as a prerequisite for growth and development for developing countries and studies the possibilities of economic convergence at the international level (i.e. developing countries catching up with industrialised ones) based on the influence of socio-political variables on local governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'International commitments pay' could be the mantra of the current literature on international organisations: tying their hands at the international level is a means for governments to push through politically costly, but ultimately welfare-enhancing reforms. It is argued in this article that this logic has a limit, which can be empirically observed. Past a given point, further depth of integration increases odds of backsliding. This belief is tested in the context of accession to an institution whose rules have been heavily scrutinised: the World Trade Organization (WTO). Countries with low rule of law are imposed a risk premium in the form of demands for deeper concessions, making 'over-committing' possible. This relationship is used to assess the extent to which deeper commitments lead to backsliding. Industry-level analysis supports these beliefs: deep commitments lead to increased odds of backtracking through a range of legal and extra-legal mechanisms. Ambitious international commitments can backfire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In international relations, currently, the presence states are matched by the increasing activity of international intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental bodies, which resulted in a substantial change in the character of these relations. In the field of international economic relations and in particular on foreign investment in international relations identify as part: states, international organizations, especially those of an economic, international organizations and NGOs with economic vocation well-known multinationals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the global governance perspective with the food security and the international trade. Topics discussed include approach of World Trade Organization (WTO) towards food security, expansive power and authority of international institutions through different notions of imperialism, constitutionalism and administrative law and rules governing food and agriculture that led to the invention and proliferation of multilateral trade institutions.

While a number of prominent researchers have recently turned their attention to the likelihood or desirability of full world government, such an ideal has little current support in civic and popular discourse. This article seeks to identify some factors possibly reinforcing such ‘globoscepticism’. After first discussing why it should not be seen as prima facie absurd to support global political integration, and noting widespread popular support in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, it turns to some findings on the sources of Euroscepticism. This phenomenon involves negative attitudes expressed by political elites and ordinary citizens towards European Union integration. Also considered are the determinants of attitudes towards international trade liberalisation. Insights from both areas can be applied to a preliminary exploration of globoscepticism. Specifically, they can enrich an analysis of domestic biases which naturally arise and are reinforced within a sovereign states system, and which tend to diminish support for comprehensive projects beyond the state. These pose challenges that must be addressed by academic advocates of full global integration, as well as advocates of still-ambitious but far less comprehensive projects of suprastate institution building. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I examine the impact of depth and rigidity in international trade agreements. Increasing the depth of required cooperation lowers the likelihood of full compliance and the stability of a trade regime. In contrast, increasing the rigidity of an agreement raises the likelihood of full compliance and lowers stability. Both depth and rigidity can lower tariffs if a state does not defect from its treaty obligations. I argue that if we control for the benefits of trade liberalization, then observable treaties will have a negative relationship between depth and rigidity. Deep agreements will be flexible, while shallow agreements will be rigid. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article uses a global-level dataset with information across nearly two centuries to explore the factors associated with the expansion of international trade. The results of the autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity regressions show that trade since the early 1800s is strongly coupled with advancements in industrial technology and its ability to cut the cost of commodities transport. In addition, the spread of democracy and the geopolitical stability promoted by the hegemonic nation-state are additional factors that augment trade during the past two centuries. The findings also reveal that trade since the early 1900s is further enhanced by the growing membership base of the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, given their propensity to generate compatible national institutions and a uniform set of rules for cross-national commodities exchange. However, there is no support for the claim that advancements in communications technology or the expansion of international governmental organizations increases trade globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article compares and evaluates the contributions of middle range powers to global governance initiatives. Examining participation in terms of personnel, financial and ideational contributions, we test several hypotheses derived from neorealism, critical theory, liberalism, constructivism, and post-internationalism against six cases: Canada, Japan, China, Russia, India and Brazil. We find that material power has a negative impact on contributions, while a country’s leadership’s attitude towards the international order, the length of its membership in major international organisations and the strength of its civil society all seem to have positive effects on its participation in global governance. Trade dependence, however, does not seem to exhibit the expected impact. The article indicates that multiple theoretical approaches may prove useful for evaluating the behaviour of middle range powers, and that further research should be conducted on the relative importance of each of the factors mentioned above in explaining middle range power contributions to global governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prudential regulation is aimed to protect consumers of financial services and the preservation of the integrity and the stability of the financial system. The adoption of this type of regulation has been proven to be vital for the economic stability of countries. Since the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), international commitments towards the liberalization on trade in services, including financial services, have had a direct impact on the policy space of countries for adopting prudential regulation. Such is the case of Colombia, as Member of the WTO and as party of different regional trade agreements (RTAS). This article makes a comparative analysis of the scope of the prudential regulation exceptions that Colombia has negotiated in relevant RTAS vis-à-vis, the so-called ''prudential carve-out" under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). This comparative analysis intends to show that, from this perspective, Colombia's policy space for adopting prudential measures has been limited considerably, especially with respect to discriminatory measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greening public procurement involves more than just changes in the legislation, it requires changes in procurement practices. Three issues appear to be particularly significant: The greening of technical specifications, the development of life-cycle methodologies, and, at the organisational level, training of public officials. International organisations, and notably UNEP, UNOPS, ILO and ITC-ILO, have played and are playing a relevant role here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international cultural trade is a topic that causes hot disputes between countries and even integrationist organizations. The main cause is the different approach toward the value and the role of the cultural goods and services. On the one hand, there is the protectionism, supported by Canada and France, which demand movie industries, broadcasting and magazines to be treated separately from the other services, because an uncontrolled external flow could damage the national identity. On the other hand, the American liberalism promotes the idea that these products and services have to submit to the general trade agreements because an additional intervention would infringe the free competition, that is one of the main principles of a capitalist economy. The two main international organizations that regulate the cultural trade, from different points of view are the WTO and UNESCO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students of international relations interested in cooperation through international regimes and organizations very often devote their attention to the role of a few big states rather than the numerous small ones. Small states tend to possess fewer administrative and financial resources back home as well as smaller and less well-equipped delegations at the international negotiation table than big states. This can easily translate into difficulties in preparing positions for all items on the negotiation agenda and in developing negotiation strategies in great detail, which might inhibit small states from successfully influencing negotiation outcomes. Yet, since international negotiation often rest on a one-state, one-vote principle and since small states can adjust priorities and redirect their limited capacities, there is a window of opportunity for small states to turn into important international actors and achieve significant outcomes in international affairs. In order to systematically shed light on the role of small states in international negotiations, this article outlines the conceptual framework to answer the following question: How, and under which conditions, can small states successfully punch above their weight in international negotiations? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]