Credibility and Conditionalities: Effectiveness of Human Rights Provisions in European Union's Trade Agreements.

The European Union has been a major proponent of linking trade benefits to human rights. Then why have preferential trade agreements (PTAs) by the EU have not improved protection of human rights in their partner states? I argue in this paper that the effectiveness of social conditionalities in PTAs--linking of trade benefits to protection of human rights--depends on the credibility of those conditionalities. Reciprocal PTAs, in which states mutually exchange trade concessions, increase interdependence also increase states' vulnerability to interrupting trade with each other. The common knowledge about this vulnerability renders any social conditionalities in the agreement non-credible. Ubiquitous PTAs--agreements with a large number of similar agreements around the world--lead to problems in consistent monitoring, enforcement and implementation. The inconsistency undermines the credibility of any social conditionalities in these PTAs. In contrast, trade agreements that are neither reciprocal nor ubiquitous likely maintain the credibility of social conditionalities. Thus, such PTAs are likely to lead to measurable improvements in partner states' protection of human rights. I test this argument examining the effects of three types of PTAs the EU has pursued--reciprocal PTAs, non-reciprocal benefits granted under GSP and Lom'e and Cotonou Agreements with ACP countries--on three different measures of human rights protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]