Why Adjudicate?: Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO

Why Adjudicate?: Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO

by Christina L. Davis
Why Adjudicate?: Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO

Why Adjudicate?: Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO

by Christina L. Davis

Paperback(New Edition)

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Overview

The World Trade Organization (WTO) oversees the negotiation and enforcement of formal rules governing international trade. Why do countries choose to adjudicate their trade disputes in the WTO rather than settling their differences on their own? In Why Adjudicate?, Christina Davis investigates the domestic politics behind the filing of WTO complaints and reveals why formal dispute settlement creates better outcomes for governments and their citizens.


Davis demonstrates that industry lobbying, legislative demands, and international politics influence which countries and cases appear before the WTO. Democratic checks and balances bias the trade policy process toward public lawsuits and away from informal settlements. Trade officials use legal complaints to manage domestic politics and defend trade interests. WTO dispute settlement enables states and domestic groups to signal resolve more effectively, thereby enhancing the information available to policymakers and reducing the risk of a trade war. Davis establishes her argument with data on trade disputes and landmark cases, including the Boeing-Airbus controversy over aircraft subsidies, disagreement over Chinese intellectual property rights, and Japan's repeated challenges of U.S. steel industry protection. In her analysis of foreign trade barriers against U.S. exports, Davis explains why the United States gains better outcomes for cases taken to formal dispute settlement than for those negotiated. Case studies of Peru and Vietnam show that legal action can also benefit developing countries.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780691152769
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication date: 05/27/2012
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Christina L. Davis is associate professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University. She is the author of Food Fights over Free Trade: How International Institutions Promote Agricultural Trade Liberalization (Princeton).

Table of Contents

List of Figures ix

List of Tables x

Acknowledgments xi

List of Abbreviations xv

Chapter 1:.Introduction 1

The Enforcement of International Trade Law 6

Overview 20

Chapter 2: Domestic Constraints and Active Enforcement 26

Trade Institutions and Liberalization 29

Political Origins of Demand for Trade Enforcement 39

Hypotheses for Trade Strategies 57

Conclusion 60

Chapter 3. The Democratic Propensity for Adjudication 62

Why Are Democracies Litigious? 66

Data 72

Democratic Challengers 80

Democratic Defendants 88

Alliances and Dyadic Dispute Patterns 92

Conclusion 100

Chapter 4:The Litigious State: U.S. Trade Policy 102

U.S. Role as Enforcer of Multilateral Trade Rules 104

Legislative Constraints in U.S. Trade Policy 111

The Kodak-Fuji Film Dispute 118

Foreign Trade Barrier Dataset 123

Statistical Analysis of U.S. Forum Choice 132

Boeing-Airbus Dispute 138

The China Problem 158

Conclusion 182

Chapter 5: The Reluctant Litigant: Japanese Trade Policy 185

Defending Market Access for Japanese Exports 187

Delegation in Japanese Trade Policy 195

Statistical Analysis of Japanese Forum Choice 210

Active Adjudication Targeting U.S. Steel Protection 225

Other Solutions for China 233

Conclusion 241

Chapter 6: Conflict Management: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Adjudication 244

Solving Hard Cases 246

Analysis of Progress to Remove Barrier 248

Analysis of Trade Dispute Duration 253

Conclusion 256

Chapter 7: Level Playing Field? Adjudication by Developing Countries 258

Peru Challenges European Food Labeling 262

Vietnam and the Catfish Dispute 267

Conclusion 279

Chapter 8: Conclusion 281

The Political Role of Adjudication 281

Conflict and Cooperation 293

Toward a Broader Theory of Legalization 297

Bibliography 301

Index 319

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Christina Davis provides fresh insight into the adjudication of trade disputes. She convincingly argues that governments routinely file such disputes as a response to domestic political pressure, and she furnishes an impressive array of empirical evidence to substantiate this claim. The result is a book that will make a significant contribution to research on the political economy of international trade."—Edward Mansfield, University of Pennsylvania

"Many scholars and professionals are focused on the question of the effectiveness of the WTO as a mechanism for resolution of trade disputes. This book offers particular insight into this question and also considers the implications for new entrants in the international trading system, such as China. Why Adjudicate? is an extremely insightful volume and a pleasure to read."—Merit E. Janow, Columbia University

"Why Adjudicate? makes an important set of arguments about the WTO, putting forth a novel theory of domestic politics to explain state behavior in the institution. This compelling book dovetails nicely with existing WTO studies in law, economics, and political science, yet moves beyond analyses of wins and losses."—Jon C. Pevehouse, University of Wisconsin-Madison, coauthor of While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers

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