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How the trade space being occupied by Least Developed Countries (LDCs) would be affected by Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) is discussed. The EPAs are proven to lead LDCs towards effective graduation from special and differential treatment. Policy tools for addressing underdevelopment are being innovated upon by these EPAs.

In contrast to fields such as development, peace and security, and corporate governance, questions of gender equality have only recently begun entering into trade policymaking. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of initiatives aimed at leveraging trade for gender equality and addressing the adverse impacts of trade on women and other vulnerable populations. In this article, we assess whether the new gender and trade agenda marks a transformative moment in global trade governance or reproduces the trade orthodoxy, thereby perpetuating existing inequalities. We build upon critical trade and feminist IPE literatures to develop an analytical framework to examine whether gender and trade initiatives reproduce or disrupt the orthodoxy. Its four key markers are: market rationality, technocracy, legalization, and abstraction. We find that while most gender and trade initiatives that we study reproduce and further entrench the trade orthodoxy, there are openings that could lead towards a more transformative trade politics. Future research should examine the policy processes that produced these openings and investigate if and how they could be transferred into policy instruments that lead to real changes to how the world trades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reasons behind the paradox of nearly four hundred private interest groups considering it important to lobby a practically powerless organization such as the Council of Europe are examined. Three theoretical explanations from literature that were tested were found to be insufficient to explain the puzzle and a fourth hypothesis of 'ideological mission' was thought to play a crucial role in the analysis of the interest groups' behavior.

Building on feminist International Political Economy scholarship, my paper traces the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the trade and health nexus, taking into account the global productive economy and the realm of social reproduction. I argue that COVID-19 has exacerbated the socio-economic inequalities, including the crisis in social reproduction, that characterised the trade and health nexus prior to COVID-19. However, no ideational shift has taken place during the pandemic whereby trade policy communities conceive of trade as a tool for equitable and sustainable forms of social reproduction, as advocated by feminists, environmentalists, and others. This leaves the exploitative nature of global trade relations and their ambivalent relationship with health and social reproduction intact. I conclude that building back better from COVID-19 requires an ambitious redrawing of global trade relations and discuss a number of reforms that could be applied by global trade institutions today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Irish and Portuguese protesters' perceptions of the EU in the decade since the European debt crisis. Building on EU politics, social movement and protest literatures, we ask how domestic protesters in both countries perceive the EU during its age of crisis protest timescape. We find that critical Europeanism, which rejects technocratic and neoliberal Europe and works towards an alternative, social Europe, has travelled beyond austerity/bailout protests into women's rights and housing protests in both countries, although to varying degrees. We suggest that the expansion of critical European perceptions in these traditionally Europhile member states forms part of the social and political legacy of the European debt crisis, but also contributes to the continued Europeanization of the European social movement space. It could have positive impacts on the EU's legitimacy deficit if EU institutions engaged meaningfully with critical European voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socially progressive globalization in a post-neoliberal era must recognize the centrality of gendered and other social hierarchies to the deeper workings of the global political economy and actively seek to dismantle them. In practice, this involves: (i) redefining the purpose of global trade in ways that value, prioritize and support progressive forms of social reproduction; (ii) centreing trade policy on a holistic understanding of the economy; and (iii) democratizing global trade relations. In this article, we outline a feminist International Political Economy theoretical perspective for understanding global trade, take stock of a range of gender and trade initiatives pursued by various trade actors and organizations to show where progressive reforms have already been taken and where these fall short, and make concrete suggestions on how to formulate trade policies in line with globalist, feminist prerogatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across Europe, resistance to austerity takes place in the household, the local community, and the everyday. Disruptive practices of refusal and subversion leave elite domination incomplete in the age of austerity. Under what conditions, disruptive resistance affects national and international policy-making is less clear. The article uses the analytical concept of scalar politics to engage this question. Exploring anti-water charges/anti-austerity protests in the Republic of Ireland, I highlight the importance of the scalar dimensions of materiality and culture in making disruptive resistance partially successful in this case. Economic crisis allowed Irish elites to transfer water reforms onto international and European political scales. The physical conditions required for reform meant that sustained local disruptions rendered implementation impossible. Irish history and culture provided semiotic signifiers to mobilise against an overwhelming force of domination. Scalar politics constitutes a useful theoretical frame for analysing the social embeddedness of the economy beyond the Irish case. If political economists acknowledge the social construction of scalar arrangements, we can investigate how political actors use dimensions of scale strategically to pursue their goals. We can also pay analytical attention to how certain normative preferences come to dominate certain policy domains through processes of scalar contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international political environment will inevitably affect the UK government's ability to pursue its trade policy goals after Brexit. Global trade politics is marked by significant institutional fragmentation, creating a difficult environment for a 'middle power' like the UK. In order to safeguard progressive policy objectives, the UK should pass a Trade Bill that would bring trade policy under domestic public scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crises of representative democracy and of state-based politics have been declared many times and ‘participation’ is often advocated as a remedy for the shortcomings of both. While the literature has extensively discussed representative practices in relation to territorial states, we argue in this article that more attention should be paid to the question of representation within transnational social movements striving for a politics that transcends current territorially bounded representative democracy. Analysing the World Social Forum and West African participatory trade policy-making, we find that as transnational social movements aiming at democratic goals deepen their interactions, they can face demanding questions such as: who or what has a right to be made present in a given political process and how is this established? We claim that avoiding the question of representation in transnational non-state-centred politics leaves power too many places to hide. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2009, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) challenged the European Union (EU)'s interpretation of Article XXIV GATT in bilateral trade talks. Based on a legal analysis that West African activists initially provided, ECOWAS established that the clause allowed for more flexibility on market opening than the EU expected. Since then, market access constitutes one unresolved issue slowing down negotiations between the trade power Europe and trade- and aid-dependent ECOWAS. The example challenges the political economy literature dealing with trade policy-making on at least two accounts, namely the role of typically sidelines actors such as poor countries and transnational activists; and the role of the law in mediating strategic and discursive aspects of trade political processes. To assess the evidence and its theoretical implications, I combine the analytical concept of political opportunity structure developed in the transnational studies literature with pluralist approaches to law. I argue that trade political actors can become aware of the pathways to influence that legal uncertainty opens, in particular under conditions of multi-level governance where national, regional and international legal orders are intertwined. Overall, the way in which the law mediates ideas and interests thus deserves scrutiny in political economy approaches to trade. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The literature on civil society interaction with European trade policy-making limits its analysis on Brussels-based campaigning and finds low impact levels. At the same time, the EU identifies global civil society as one factor of explaining the stalling of trade negotiations with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. This article presents a case study of NGO campaigns on the EU-West African trade negotiations to suggest that the growing complexity of global governance presents the same political opportunities for non-state actor participation in trade as they have been shown to skilfully use in other policy domains. It concludes that political economy studies should integrate insights from the transnational activism literature in order to better grasp the effects of ongoing globalisations on trade policy-making. La literatura sobre la interaccion de la sociedad civil con la elaboracion de politicas comerciales europeas, se limitan a analizar las campanas basadas en Bruselas, encontrando niveles de bajo impacto. A su vez, la UE identifica a la sociedad civil globalizada, como un factor que explica el estancamiento de las negociaciones comerciales con los paises africanos, caribenos y del Pacifico. Este articulo presenta un estudio de caso de las campanas de una ONG sobre las negociaciones comerciales entre la UE y Africa occidental, que sugiere que la creciente complejidad de la gobernabilidad global, provee las mismas oportunidades politicas de participacion en el comercio de actores no estatales, como lo han utilizado habilmente en otros campos politicos. El articulo concluye que los estudios de politica economica deben incluir conocimientos de la literatura sobre el activismo trasnacional, con el fin de comprender mejor como se afecta la elaboracion de politicas comerciales en el ambito de una globalizacion cada vez mayor. 关于市民社会与欧洲贸易政策制定互动作用的文献将其分析局限于以布鲁塞尔为基地的运动，研究发现其影响力处于低水平。与此同时，欧盟将全球市民社会认定为是解释欧盟与非洲、加勒比以及太平洋国家贸易谈判停滞的一个作用因素。本文展现欧盟-西非贸易谈判中一个非政府组织运动的案例，认为全球治理的日益复杂表明，非国家行为体在贸易中的政治参与机会，正如在其他政策领域已表明熟练运用的机会一样。本文的结论是，政治经济研究应当将跨国政治活动主义文献中产生的洞见整合进来，更好地捕捉正在经历的全球化对贸易政策制定的影响。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]