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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
112458
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Governments have joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in vastly different ways: some have taken mere days to join without undertaking any trade liberalization, while others have taken more than a decade and been forced to undergo significant liberalization. We argue that the more rigorous a state's accession to an international organization (IO), and thus the greater policy change required to join, the greater the benefits it will receive from membership in the organization. In the trade context, states facing greater scrutiny from the WTO and thus engaging in greater trade liberalization as part of the WTO accession process should experience greater trade on joining compared to those who face little scrutiny and engage in little if any liberalization. We develop a three-part classification of WTO members based on type of accession-early, automatic, and rigorous-and then compile detailed original data on the accession experiences of each relevant state, including length of time, number of veto players, rounds of questions, and tariff and nontariff commitments. Results of exhaustive quantitative tests on all countries from 1950 to 2006, which are robust to estimator, sample period, and model specification choices, consistently demonstrate that those who engage in the greatest amount of accession-driven liberalization experience the greatest trade increases from WTO membership, particularly in the years right after joining. In contrast, those who do little or nothing to join do not see any trade gains from being a WTO member. These findings reconcile previous findings on the effects of WTO membership on trade, highlight the causal importance of IO accession, and illuminate the conditions under which IOs will have beneficial effects for member states.
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| 2 |
ID:
162499
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since the EU has expanded its common security focus in the 1990s, this important regional organisation has become the most frequent mediator in low-level civil conflicts worldwide. Under what conditions is the European Union (EU) likely to become involved in mediation in civil conflicts? Is the participation in mediation only explained by the EU's bias toward its near abroad, or is the EU more strategic? Some scholars have suggested that the EU's regional bias for its near abroad is the key explanation for the onset of EU mediation, but we propose that the reality of EU mediation presents a more nuanced story. We posit three explanations based on mediator bias: regional bias, economic bias, and normative bias. Overall, we argue that the EU will mediate in civil conflicts that are in its near abroad, but also where the EU has economic bias and where the EU can exercise its normative power in highly intractable conflicts. We test our hypotheses using statistical analysis of the UCDP low-level civil conflicts data from 1993 to 2004 and Civil War Mediation data from 1974 to 2005. We find strong support for our hypotheses, determining key factors that reveal the EU's strategic onset of mediation.
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