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The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union has prompted a global recalibration of treaty relations. Due to the Withdrawal Agreement and its transition period, the UK is expanding its international treaty-making powers as it is gradually released from the constraints of EU law. Practice to date shows the creation of many new international legal instruments through which governments have sought to address the novel questions that Brexit raises for the international law of treaties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the American decline, President Trump's trade war toward a rising China fits into the pattern of a declining hegemon, as predicted by hegemonic stability theory. Trump's trade policy is driven by his view of trade as a zero-sum game, his fixation on the trade deficit, and his "maximum pressure" negotiation approach. The result - the "phase one" deal - seems to be a trade ceasefire rather than a lasting trade peace between the declining hegemon and its ascending challenger because it stands on a shaky foundation. This "phase one" deal does not address the structural problems in the US-Sino trade relation. Moreover, its goals are unrealistic, and it is built upon a dispute settlement that favors deal determination over rule-based conflict resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the current discourses on China's diplomacy in the South China Sea disputes by asking: What does China want to achieve in the various negotiations? By comparing different versions of the multilateral Code of Conduct negotiations between 1992 and 2016, the authors find that the sovereignty issue has been shelved throughout the negotiations. We identify three factors that may account for this finding: the inconsistency of China's official claims over time, China's increased bargaining power, and the importance of the shelved sovereignty axiom since the era of Deng Xiaoping. The authors conclude that the normative game continues in the shadows of international norms represented by invalid sovereignty over the contested waters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines how Pietro Aretino used the rhetorical practices of ambassadorial exchange to bring the diplomatic periphery into the center. Drawing together a series of episodes in which Aretino had correspondence with, influence on, or direct dealings with the Tudor court and its representatives, William T. Rossiter shows them to be part of a sustained dialogue instigated by Aretino and maintained by his English respondents. Aretino's use of the printing press was a paradiplomatic force that bypassed traditional channels of influence. It gave agency to an individual who would normally be excluded from international negotiations. This demonstrates how the soft powers of paradiplomacy, exercised through the burgeoning print culture of pre-Tridentine Venice with its transnational reach, could serve as effectively as the hard powers of formal negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does technology influence international negotiations? This article explores "track-change diplomacy," that is, how diplomats use information and communication technology (ICT) such as word processing software and mobile devices to collaboratively edit and negotiate documents. To analyze the widespread but understudied phenomenon of track-change diplomacy, the article adopts a practice-oriented approach to technology, developing the concept of affordance : the way a tool or technology simultaneously enables and constrains the tasks users can possibly perform with it. The article shows how digital ICT affords shareability, visualization , and immediacy of information, thus shaping the temporality and power dynamics of international negotiations. These three affordances have significant consequences for how states construct and promote national interests; how diplomats reach compromises among a large number of states (as text edits in collective drafting exercises); and how power plays out in international negotiations. Drawing on ethnographic methods, including participant observation of negotiations between the European Union's member states, as well as in-depth interviews, the analysis casts new light on these negotiations, where documents become the site of both semantic and political struggle. Rather than delivering on the technology's promise of keeping track and reinforcing national oversight in negotiations, we argue that track-change diplomacy can in fact lead to a loss of control, challenging existing understandings of diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most accounts of international negotiations suggest that global agreements are individually crafted and distinct, while some emerging scholarship suggests a heavy reliance on models and templates. In this research, we present a comprehensive test of whether new international treaties are heavily copied and pasted from past ones. We specify several reasons to expect widespread copying and pasting, and argue that both the most and least powerful countries should be most likely to do so. Using text analysis to examine several hundred preferential trade agreements (PTAs), we reveal that most PTAs copy a sizable majority of their content word for word from an earlier agreement. At least one hundred PTAs take 80 percent or more of their contents directly from a single, existing treaty—with many copying and pasting 95 percent or more. These numbers climb even higher when we compare important substantive chapters of trade agreements, many of which are copied and pasted verbatim. Such copying and pasting is most prevalent among low-capacity governments that lean heavily on existing templates, and powerful states that desire to spread their preferred rules globally. This widespread replication of existing treaty language reshapes how we think about international cooperation, and it has important implications for literatures on institutional design, policy diffusion, state power, and legal fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a three-party game of conflict with potential alliance formation, introducing the concept of a stag hunt alliance and using the concept as a novel solution to the alliance formation puzzle in contests. In a stag hunt alliance, allied inputs interact as (multiplicative) complements in the contest success function, reflecting the idea that allied efforts are coordinated and targeted against non-allies. Allowing for asymmetry among conflicting parties, we find conditions for stable alliance formation and show that, in some circumstances, the formation of an alliance can improve the expected payoffs of both the allied and unallied parties relative to unallied conflict. At the same time, the expected payoffs of allied parties also can be greater than their payoffs under a three-party exogenous settlement division without conflict. Hence, the ability to form stag hunt alliances may not simply change conflict structures, but may sometimes generate conflict when settlements are possible. Our results depend on how allies divide the contest prize in the event of victory, and we consider both the case of exogenous division according to a pre-specified rule and endogenous division in a second-stage intra-alliance contest. We also show that the threat of the latter can be used to establish an intuitive exogenous rule by simple bargaining. Finally, we specify conditions that determine which parties choose to ally with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of third States occurs when two countries delimit their maritime boundary in a maritime area where there are more than two coastal States. The bilateral nature of maritime delimitation between two States requires the delimitation process not to prejudice the legal rights and interests of third States. On the one hand, at the procedural stage of international adjudication, third States may file an application for permission to intervene in the proceedings before a court or tribunal; at the merits stage, a third-party judicial organ may leave undecided the endpoint of a final boundary line to be delimited, so as not to affect the rights of a third State. On the other hand, in interstate maritime boundary agreements through international negotiation, in order to take care of third States' legal rights and interests, States may adopt several ways of addressing the existence of tripoints. This paper, in four parts, discusses the presence of third States in international maritime boundary delimitation. The first part gives a definition of a third State in the framework of maritime delimitation. The second part reflects on international adjudication relating to the presence of third States. The third part provides some observations on State practices relating to the existence of tripoints. The conclusion points out that there is a widening gap between maritime delimitation in theory and in practice, since recent case law particularly confines the delimitation to a purely bilateral status, without enough focus on the presence of third States, resulting in procedurally prejudicial impacts upon the legal rights and interests of third States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Yearbook of European Integration / Rocznik Integracji Europejskiej is the property of Faculty of Political Science & Journalism, Adam Mickiewicz University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Recent world events have lead to increased political tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. This fact, as well as significant cultural differences between the two nations, complicates U.S.-U.S.S.R. trade negotiations. This article explores the different attitudes of the two nations and considers some of the cultural variables which influence commercial negotiations. Within this context, the authors examine the Soviet licensing process and present a schema, developed by the Soviets, to illustrate the complexity of the negotiating process and show how it reflects the Soviet's cultural values and perspective. The authors contend that commercial negotiations can be improved if American business people overcome their own ethnocentrism and understand their Soviet counterparts within the context of the Soviet environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outside options can induce bargaining asymmetries that influence the outcome of international negotiations. This article focuses, however, on the impact of a regime-provided inside option on the willingness to cooperate and the distributive outcomes reached. Using a new data set covering 417 maritime boundaries, that fall under the Law of the Sea framework, this article shows that the ability to find agreement is closely linked to the distributional outcomes that states are able to realize. Different potential gains from cooperation result in bargaining asymmetries that influence both the ability to settle a maritime boundary and the distributive outcome reached when cooperation succeeds. Our evidence shows that the opportunity to invest in long-term projects that require legal certainty, such as offshore oil, facilitates cooperation and is associated with smaller distributional adjustments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A successful North Korea--U.S. summit is expected to make a breakthrough in the denuclearization of the North. Nevertheless, considering the lessons learned from past denuclearization negotiations, and Pyongyang's nuclear capacity and will for nuclear development, a solely optimistic outlook is not advisable. In order to pursue successful denuclearization negotiations, a precise understanding of new negotiation conditions, particularly each party's negotiation strategy and leverage, and application of them is very important. Also, a substantive negotiation strategy and roadmap for the denuclearization should be prepared to be able to pressure and reach an agreement with North Korea. Taking account of the negotiation leverage of North Korea and the United States, a one-sided negotiation with North Korea surrendering to the United States is not likely. This paper aims to provide a practical negotiation strategy and a roadmap for the denuclearization of North Korea reflecting the current security situation surrounding the Korean Peninsula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disputants might resolve their disagreements in a piecemeal fashion, addressing a subset of the issues at a time. How viable is such a strategy? I argue that partial settlements signal the desire to resolve disagreements and can lay the foundation for additional cooperation by building trust and/or demonstrating the benefits of dispute resolution. As a result, partial settlements should be associated with the resolution of remaining disagreements. Yet, scholars have questioned whether pursuing a piecemeal approach may be more harmful than helpful, and a systematic empirical test of these competing predictions is necessary. Using data from worldwide territorial claims between 1919 and 2001, I find a strong positive correlation between partial settlements and comprehensive dispute resolution. In the shorter run, partial settlements are also associated with an increased likelihood for peaceful negotiations, but there is only limited evidence that they reduce conflict before all aspects of the claim are resolved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explain trade policies, a large literature draws on domestic institutions. Institutions that are more responsive to narrowinterest groups are expected to succumb to protectionist demands, resulting in higher average tariffs. This literature has largely ignored the role of reciprocal trade agreements and of exporter interests. This joint omission results in a biased view of trade politics. Exporters benefit from expanding market access abroad. With reciprocity, they lobby for domestic tariff cuts in exchange for liberalization abroad, which alters the link between domestic institutions and trade policies. Institutions favoring narrow interests should privilege both protectionist groups and exporters and hence have an indeterminate effect on average tariff levels. Instead, more interest group influence should result in more dispersed tariff rates across products. This article provides empirical evidence for this proposition, helps reconcile existing findings in the literature, and offers a specific example of how international institutions affect domestic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the central, though understudied, role that a rapidly changing technology--mapping--plays in territorial conflict. As digital cartographic tools replace traditional paper maps, both the processes and outcomes of negotiation over territory change fundamentally. Digitization does not simply produce "better" maps that make settlements easier to reach. Instead, particular features of digital mapping reshape disputes over territory by altering the evaluation of possible solutions, changing the perceived value of territories, and bringing new actors into negotiation processes. Those effects are complex and context-sensitive. They promote conflict resolution in some circumstances but pose new obstacles to settlements in others. This article combines theory on mapping, negotiation, bargaining, and emotions in international relations. I first develop a set of general implications of digital mapping for the processes and outcomes of territorial negotiation. I then examine three illustrative cases: the 1995 Dayton Accords, the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission, and the 2010 border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. In each case, new features of digital mapping yielded unexpected effects on negotiation and dispute-resolution processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various aspects of the deliberations involving the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) as of 2017, and it mentions international lawmaking, the core values and interests of the global commercial mediation community, and the roles of epistemic communities in the UNCITRAL negotiation process. According to the article, an epistemic community is a network of professionals who have expertise and policy-related knowledge.

The article discusses international law in relation to United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 which states that Israel's settlement activities are illegal as of 2017. The path to a negotiated peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians is examined, along with the United States government's opposition to Palestine's use of law to achieve warfighting objectives (Palestinian lawfare), armed resistance, and the balance of power in global peace negotiations.

This article examines the role that groups played in the rise of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) within the United Nations (UN) system. It focuses in particular on the role of informal groups of states in advancing a consensus on R2P, contrasting their role with that of formal regional and political groups, which -- with the exception of the African Group -- played a more marginal role. R2P has given rise to a multiplicity of informal groups of states. These informal groups operate alongside the formal regional and political groups and, with one or two exceptions, have tended to be significantly more influential, the main reason being the principle's genesis. Arising out of fractious debates in the late 1990s about intervention and the relationship between sovereignty and fundamental human rights, R2P was from the outset a conscious attempt to bridge political divides between states in the UN -- especially the 'North-South' theatre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the international negotiations of sub-State governments (INSSG) in Mexico. It addresses five questions: 1) What factors explain the increasing number of INSSGs? 2) What is the impact of federalism on INSSG? 3) What are the levels of INSSG and how have they changed over the years? 4) How do Mexican sub-State governments (SSG) institutionalize their international negotiations? 5) What are the perceptions and capacities of the SSG in their internationalization process? The study explains the growth of INSSG due to democratization, arguing that renewed Mexican federalism has generated incentives for SSGs to participate more intensively in international negotiations. It analyzes the wide variation in the INSSG and explains how it has evolved over the last decade. It focuses on the analysis of Inter-Institutional Agreements (IIA) and explains the perceptions and capacities of Mexican SSG to conduct international negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paradiplomacy, federalism and international negotiation are increasingly prevalent phenomena that require more theoretical attention. Successful mobilization of noncentral governments has increased their relevance on the international stage. The rise of paradiplomacy complicates conditions for both international negotiation and the formulation of foreign policy in federal regimes. Westphalian state diplomacy is finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the proliferation of ad hoc and informal arrangements that bind non-central governments. The international arena is inhabited by an ever larger number of players that sometimes have significant autonomy from the central state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both threats and assurances can be useful in international negotiations. Threats help convince the adversary that a state will fight if challenged, and assurances can convince the adversary that a state will not attack if not challenged. We develop a model that analyzes when threats and assurances are used. Threats are widely useful because there is typically a range of outcomes that are preferable to war for each side, and threats can secure a better deal within that range by strengthening a state's bottom line. In contrast, assurances are only necessary when war would result without them because of insufficiently valued intermediate outcomes or shifting power. We discuss insights from the model, including the role of false assurances, in the context of both the Sudetenland crisis and Cold War Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compared the effects of three interventions and a no-intervention control on the settlement of resource and value conflicts. These variables were arranged in a two (conflict issue: resources vs. values) by four (no intervention vs. other affirmation vs. shared identity vs. transaction costs) between-dyads design in which 127 dyads engaged in a negotiation task. Negotiators reached generally lower joint outcomes in the value conflict compared to the resource conflict, but after the other-affirmation intervention, this pattern was reversed. The shared-identity intervention did not result in higher joint outcomes for value conflicts. Stressing positive concern for the other negotiator may be a more effective strategy than stressing commonalities between the parties: increased concern for self and decreased defense of own opinions may account for this result. Forcing and logrolling behavior are shown to be mediating variables between the type of conflict and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elucidates how domestic and external factors have shaped the negotiating policy of the Philippines in bringing about incremental gains not only for its benefit but also for other developing countries during the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture Doha Development Round (DDR). The internal factors include the following: (1) executive monopoly of the WTO negotiations; (2) issue-based fragmentation and dispersal of authority; (3) the autonomy and flexibility of the Philippine WTO negotiator; (4) the involvement of civil society in the WTO negotiations, and (4) the central role of the Department of Agriculture as the lead agency in the WTO negotiations. A major reason for this is attributed to an external factor which is the centrality of agriculture as a major WTO issue among developing countries. Other external factors, on the other hand, include the following: (1) the strong solidarity among developing countries and (2) the confinement to particular issues with regards to coalition-building. These factors helped to strengthen the bargaining leverage of the Philippines, a seemingly ‘weak’ country, vis-à-vis the developed countries in the WTO. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Preferences are crucial to the analysis of many key questions regarding international institutions. This article analyzes the key predictors of states' preferences over universal treaties. It does so by using a spatial-modeling approach that conceptualizes a treaty commitment preference space that includes agreements across multiple policy areas. I analyze the treaty commitment preference space in order to better understand the key dimensions of these preferences. I find that economics, and particularly trade, is the clearest and most consistent predictor of treaty commitment preferences, including with respect to many treaties in non-economic policy areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leaders who can accumulate audience costs can send costly signals that may help alleviate information problems associated with crisis escalation. We argue that research examining the effect of audience costs fails to appreciate the theoretical context in which audience costs matter. Audience costs may help alleviate information problems associated with international conflict. However, credible commitment problems are more central than information problems for some international conflicts. Theory does not expect audience costs to matter in this context; as a result, extant tests, and many criticisms, of the effect of audience costs on crisis escalation are flawed. We offer a more appropriate test of the effect of audience costs on crisis escalation. Consistent with extant theoretical arguments, we find that audience costs only reduce the likelihood of conflict when credible commitment problems are not the dominant concern motivating a dispute or crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new theory of interstate crisis bargaining. A country’s resolve is a function of intrinsic qualities of the government and external circumstances, both of which are unknown by the domestic electorate and the foreign country. When domestic political debate reveals that circumstances favor the use of force, the government can extract better terms than if circumstances are revealed to be unfavorable. The revelation of circumstances, however, exacerbates reputational incentives. Because governments can no longer hide behind unknown circumstances, voters can better discern the government’s type from its actions, strengthening the incentives to appear resolved. The model bridges the gap between audience costs and its critiques, showing how domestic audiences punish leaders for inappropriate policies rather than empty threats. At the same time, it highlights how the prospects for peace are worse if uncertainty about the circumstances is removed, suggesting that greater transparency does not always promote peaceful outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the outcome of the Paris, France Agreement formally adopted at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (COP21) and the influence of African countries on the agreement. Topics include the role played by the African Group of Negotiators in the UNFCCC process, comments from U.S. President Barack Obama on the need for an agreement, and how the final agreement seeks to control greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

Multiparty government in parliamentary democracies entails bargaining over the payoffs of government participation, in particular the allocation of cabinet positions. While most of the literature deals with the numerical distribution of cabinet seats among government parties, this article explores the distribution of individual portfolios. It argues that coalition negotiations are sequential choice processes that begin with the allocation of those portfolios most important to the bargaining parties. This induces conditionality in the bargaining process as choices of individual cabinet positions are not independent of each other. Linking this sequential logic with party preferences for individual cabinet positions, the authors of the article study the allocation of individual portfolios for 146 coalition governments in Western and Central Eastern Europe. The results suggest that a sequential logic in the bargaining process results in better predictions than assuming mutual independence in the distribution of individual portfolios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accession to the World Trade Organization differs from that of other international organizations in one major aspect: The WTO may prescribe more stringent rules of conduct for acceded members, based on individual accession negotiations. These country-specific rules are set out in the protocols of accession and now form a significant part of WTO law. However, questions concerning the legality and legitimacy of such rules remain unanswered. Legally, accession protocols effectively modify the rules of conduct contained in the WTO multilateral trade agreements, but the legal basis for so doing remains unclear and the relationship between accession protocols and the WTO agreements undefined. Normatively, differential treatment of acceded members derogates from the WTO principle of nondiscrimination, but does so without proper justification. Confusion over the legal nature of accession protocols and a lack of clear rationale for the country-specific rules have led to problematic jurisprudence, creating uncertainty in the rights and obligations of acceded members vis-à-vis other members of the WTO. This Article aims to resolve the conundrum of WTO accession protocols by systemically and comprehensively addressing these questions. Building upon existing literature, the author takes a broader comparative and historical approach to an examination of the legality and legitimacy of WTO accession practice. On the question of legality, the Article proposes that WTO accession protocols be best characterized as subsequent practice of an international organization modifying its underlying treaties, and on that basis defines the relationship between accession protocols and the WTO agreements. On the question of legitimacy, the Article identifies the lack of reason and transparency in the accession rules as the main issues, and critiques the "entry fee" theory offered by a WTO panel as justification for all accession rules. The Article then makes suggestions on what should and can be done to mitigate the deficit of legitimacy created by WTO accession practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who gets what in bargaining between states and international organizations (IOs)? Although distributional conflict is unavoidable in international cooperation, previous research provides few empirical insights into the determinants of bargaining outcomes. We test a simple bargaining model of cooperation between states and IOs. We expect that nonegalitarian international organizations, such as the World Bank, secure more gains from bargaining with economically weak than with economically powerful states. For egalitarian international organizations, such as most United Nations (UN) agencies, the state’s economic power should be less important. We test these hypotheses against a novel data set on funding shares for 2,255 projects implemented under the auspices of the Global Environment Facility, from1991 to 2011. The data allow us to directly measure bargaining outcomes. The results highlight the importance of accounting for the interactive effects of international organization and state characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International treaty negotiations and domestic politics are interrelated. We show that negotiators can strategically select treaties to mobilize domestic interest groups and support particular candidates for office. Interest groups will support (oppose) political parties that will ratify treaties benefiting (harming) them. By designing treaties that mobilize these “swing” groups, negotiators can affect different parties’ chances of assuming power. Our model produces specific predictions for treaty design, contingent on the preferences of negotiators, parties, and interest groups. With conservative and moderate interest groups, the results may be counterintuitive—for instance, foreign governments pushing liberal treaties on liberal incumbents they dislike, intentionally mobilizing interest groups against the treaty and in favor of conservative challengers. Highly competitive systems, particularly those where moderate interest groups’ support is in play, give treaty negotiators leeway to shape political outcomes. Powerful interest groups may exert strong influence or no influence, depending on the cost of appeasing them and whether domestic and foreign negotiators are willing to gamble the incumbent’s political future for the achievement of their policy ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the origins of farmers' rights in relation to negotiations involving the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Plant Treaty), and it mentions the legal obligations of farmers and the efforts to close a gap between developing and developed countries. The United Nation's Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order is examined, along with distributive justice, international law, and plant breeders' rights.

An essay is presented on conflict resolution (CR). Topics include the application of conflict resolution in multiple geographies in the Europe and the U.S. practices, the important contribution of CR on integrative bargaining, problem-solving workshops and conflict assessment, and the challenges on conducting analysis of conflict resolution in intercultural communication. Information regarding the conflict resolution's advances with respect to interfaith dialogue and terrorism, is presented.

This article uses a fine-grained anthropological and linguistic analysis to expose the routine negotiating practices and power games behind the conclusion of paragraph 115 on responsible agricultural investments during the Rio+20 Conference in June 2012. These negotiations are simultaneously a telling example for the quotidian stuff of international governance-an arena in which much larger forces are played out through small language-based tactics, and they are representative of an exceptional moment when global multilateral policy making in the frame of the United Nations was challenged by the legitimation of private authority and corporate self-regulation. Combining anthropological and linguistic methods, the article focused on language use, analyzing the ways in which people interact in a highly coded language, how they 'perform,' by exploring, playing with, and twisting the grammatical structures of the spoken language. At issue is the large-scale appropriation of agricultural land all over the world by multinational corporations, investment funds, and foreign governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global demand for biofuels (liquid or gas fuels deriving from biomass) has grown dramatically in recent years. European Union policies that promote biofuels as more sustainable sources of transport fuel are partly driving this development. In this article, we analyze how Brazil, as a key producer of biofuels, navigates an emerging global governance context for sustainable biofuels. We do so by examining how Brazil responds to EU biofuel sustainability imperatives, including by evoking World Trade Organization disciplines in questioning their transnational validity and reach. While domestically Brazil emphasizes the social and developmental objectives of its biofuel policies, globally it frames itself as a leading producer of sustainable biofuels. In so doing, it navigates intersecting spheres of authority in a manner that promotes its own biofuel policy agenda, partly by seeking to reframe "sustainability" debates internationally to reflect its developmental agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are hardly any instances of international negotiations, in which states do not at least partially recur to bargaining strategies. This article argues that bargaining power is ultimately a social construction, depending on perceptions about the plausibility of the realisation of a threat. Effective bargaining rests on the credibility of the threats made (e.g. no-vote, veto). Thus, even weak states can sometimes manipulate the threat-potential of seemingly more powerful actors and, thereby, punch above their weight in international negotiations. To trigger a loss of bargaining power, these states need to apply lock-in strategies that create linkages between the issue on the international negotiation agenda and other international or sub-level norms or policy commitments. Once such linkages are made, international-level bargaining threats of formerly powerful actors lose credibility as carrying them out would bring about severe reputation damages. This article distinguishes between different lock-in strategies and draws on three case studies (UNGA resolutions on African descend, on Myanmar, and on the Latin American Nuclear-Weapons-Free-Zone) to provide an empirical plausibility probe on the scope conditions under which the lock-in strategies are effective in reducing the power of seemingly strong actors in international negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Federal preemption is often controversial and international negotiations are often difficult. Yet both are necessary in the case of liability issues surrounding the nascent U.S. commercial space industry. In 2012-2014, with the retirement of the U.S. government's Space Shuttle, two U.S. commercial companies began ferrying cargo to the International Space Station for the U.S. government. Commercial human spaceflight will soon begin in earnest. In 2016, a company will begin suborbital space flights from the United States for tourism and research purposes. The current U.S. approach to third-party liability and space-flightparticipant (or passenger) liability suffers from unnecessary uncertainty. This uncertainty is caused by federal legislation governing third-party liability issues and by a patchwork of divergent state statutes and common law rules regarding liability of commercial space operators to space-flight participants. Because the growing commercial space industry is important to U.S. national security and the U.S. economy, enhanced liability protections should be afforded to the nascent industry to avoid "crushing liability" on U.S. space companies and to place them on a level playing field with foreign competitors in the case of a massive, catastrophic accident. Accordingly, the Article recommends preemptive federal legislation that would create a liability cap on thirdparty liability and prevent suits by space-flight participants or their heirs against space companies except in cases of willful misconduct or gross negligence. However, the Article also cautions that federal preemption should not extend to workers' compensation claims against employers that send their employees to space, since protection of the myriad of companies that might possibly sponsor flights to space for their employees is not critical to incentivizing and maintaining commercial space activity in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a novel concept, humanitarian security regimes, and enquires under what conditions they arise and what is distinctive about them. Humanitarian security regimes are driven by altruistic imperatives aiming to prohibit and restrict behaviour, impede lethal technology or ban categories of weapons through disarmament treaties; they embrace humanitarian perspectives that seek to prevent civilian casualties, precluding harmful behavior, protecting and ensuring the rights of victims and survivors of armed violence. The article explores how these regimes appear in the security area, usually in opposition to the aspirations of the most powerful states. The existing regimes literature has mostly taken a functional approach to analyzing cooperation, lacks a humanitarian hypothesis and does not explore the emergence of new regimes in the core area of security. The author argues that in the processes of humanitarian security regime-making, it is the national interest that is restructured to incorporate new normative understandings that then become part of the new national security aspirations. This article intends to fill this gap and its importance rests on three reasons. First, security areas that were previously considered to be the exclusive domain of states have now been the focus of change by actors beyond the state. Second, states have embraced changes to domains close to their national security (e.g. arms) mostly cognizant of humanitarian concerns. Third, states are compelled to re-evaluate their national interests motivated by a clear humanitarian impetus. Three conditions for the emergence of humanitarian security regimes are explained: marginalization and delegitimization; multilevel agency, and reputational concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents a case for a public forum at the United Nations (UN) in order to negotiate with terrorists for world peace and as a counter-terrorism strategy. The article analyzes issues associated with terrorism including its political, social, and economic aspects and states the need for a debate on negotiation with terrorists. Groups including the Irish Republican Army and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria(IS) are also mentioned.

Copyright of Dirasat: Human & Social Sciences is the property of University of Jordan and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the late 1990s, the European Union (EU) has aspired to provide climate leadership to further the international negotiations taking place within the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on the limitation or reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation sector. To address the issue of international aviation emissions, the EU tried to diffuse the idea of a global market-based approach among ICAO members and advanced its emissions trading system (ETS) as a global model. Employing a concept of leadership that emphasises the relevance of voluntary followership, I analyse the EU’s activities within ICAO during 1998–2013. Although the EU was in a good position to provide directional leadership on the basis of the ETS, its leadership performance was rather modest. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent research on external perceptions of the European Union ( EU) has not explored sufficiently the implications of its findings for the effectiveness of EU external policies. To address this gap, this article explores the relationship between external perceptions and effectiveness by considering the case of climate change in which, despite broadly favourable external perceptions, EU external effectiveness has been somewhat limited. It uses the case of Chinese and Indian relations with the EU on climate change to illustrate that the findings of the external perceptions literature should be interpreted in the light of the dynamics of specific policy areas as well as broader changes in the context of world politics. The argument is illustrated using the example of negotiations on the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012, which shows how, under certain circumstances, positive external perceptions may in fact limit external effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas some researchers emphasize how World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement reduces complexity and clarifies legislation, others argue that dispute rulings promote co-operation by providing an enforcement mechanism. This article identifies empirical implications from these distinct arguments and tests them on WTO disputes from 1995 to 2006. The study's analytical approach combines a three-step coding of dispute escalation with a strategic bargaining model and statistical backwards induction to account for governments’ forward-looking behavior. It finds strong support for the argument that WTO dispute settlement primarily serves as an enforcement device. It finds much less support for the argument that dispute settlement reduces complexity and clarifies trade law. These results suggest that the role of WTO dispute settlement in generating information on acceptable trade policy standards is less relevant than proponents of the complexity argument tend to assume. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the evolution of western policy towards the idea of pursuing negotiations with the Taliban, or 'reconciliation', in Afghanistan and the role that research and expert opinion played in that process. The official western position has evolved iteratively from initial rejection to near complete embrace of exploring the potential for talks. It is widely assumed that the deteriorating security situation was the sole determinant of this major policy reversal, persuading decision-makers to rethink what had once been deemed unthinkable. Moreover, given the politicized and sensitive nature of the subject, we might expect the potential for outside opinion to influence decision-makers to be low. Nevertheless, this article demonstrates that it would be a mistake to underestimate the role that research and expert knowledge played-the story is more nuanced and complex. Research coalesced, sometimes prominently, with other key drivers to spur and shape policy change. Importantly, it often took experts to make sense of events on the ground, especially where the failure of the military approach was not recognized, understood or palatable to those in official circles. Research interacted with changing events, policy windows, the emergence of new personalities and the actions of various intermediaries to shape emerging positions. More broadly, the case of reconciliation in Afghanistan reveals the difficulties and challenges, but also the variety of opportunities and techniques, for achieving research influence in conflict-affected environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of the European Union "as a rule-generator" in the negotiation and conclusion of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) by tracing the European Energy Network proposal advanced by Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers through the Hague Conference to the signing of the Energy Charter Treaty. This article unfolds the complex relationship between EU law and the ECT by looking at intra- and extra-EU BITs and the status of the ECT as both an intra- and extra-EU BIT. By analysing Eastern Sugar, the Commission v. Austria and Electrabel v. Hungary, this article demonstrates how attitudes have shifted in the relationship between EU law and the ECT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]