Twelve governments recently signed the much-anticipated Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), sparking heated debate about its merits. As a primary motivation for this first "mega-regional" agreement, US President Barack Obama argues that the TPP is a way for the USA, and not China or someone else, to write the global trade rules of the future. This begs some important questions, namely which country or countries really did write most of the TPP and thus whose agenda for 21st century trade might it advance? To answer these questions, we compare the recently-released text of the TPP to the language in the 74 previous trade agreements that TPP members signed since 1995. Our text-as-data analyses reveal that the contents of the TPP are taken disproportionately from earlier US trade agreements. The ten preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that most closely match the TPP are all US PTAs. Moreover, the contents of controversial chapters, such as the one on investment, are drawn even more heavily from past US treaty language. Our study and findings apply power-based accounts of international institutions to a landmark new agreement, and portray a more active, templatebased process of international diffusion.
Are the rules in the Canada‐European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) largely copied from past trade agreements, or are they new and potentially groundbreaking? Some critics charge that CETA merely replicates the failures of past trade deals, while others worry that CETA is specifying new ‘behind the border’ rules that threaten state sovereignty. Using text analysis we compare the contents in CETA to those in previous trade agreements signed by both parties. Unlike many other recent trade deals, we find that much of the content in CETA is indeed novel. On average only about 7 per cent of CETA language is copied directly from any of the 49 previous trade agreements we analyze. This same pattern holds across many of the most controversial issue areas, like investment. Some recent agreements like EU‐Singapore (30%) and Canada‐South Korea (24%) are replicated in part in CETA, although recycled text is more likely to come from past Canadian PTAs than EU ones. Our results suggest that fears that CETA is ‘more of the same’ are overblown and indicate that if ratified CETA likely will play an important role as a model in future trade agreements.
Why do developing countries commit to costly international agreements? Massive arbitral awards and the discovery that rich countries write investment rules have led to a newfound appreciation of the costs of bilateral investment treaties (BITs). Yet, developing countries continue to sign them. This article advances a novel argument for why governments sign potentially costly agreements. We argue that civil conflict changes the decision calculus of governments by rendering them domestically insecure. This insecurity makes governments more willing to sign agreements, like BITs, that sacrifice future policy autonomy. BITs can attract foreign direct investment (FDI) and signal competence, which have important domestic political benefits. BITs are also attractive postconflict since they can be copied quickly from past templates and require few ex ante policy changes. Empirical tests of over 150 countries from 1960 to 2012 demonstrate that governments sign more BITs after civil conflict. Additional tests indicate that postconflict BITs increase FDI inflows, especially after devastating conflict. Our results provide a unique perspective on why governments cede sovereignty to international institutions.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) was politicised in the United States (US) by Donald Trump in an effort to deflect blame as the virus spread. In this paper, we empirically investigate media coverage of the WHO in the US to better understand how negative evaluations of international organisations (IOs) spread. To do so, we perform quantitative text analysis on an original corpus of over 11,000 news articles on the WHO from the New York Times and the Washington Post between 1980 and 2020. Our text-as-data analyses yield several noteworthy findings. First, we show that media coverage of the WHO in the US has become more negative over time. Second, we show that negativity increases during global health crises. Third, we provide evidence that explicit criticisms also increase during crises. Fourth, we show that "blameshifting" by Trump and allies was clearly observable in the US news media. Finally, we show that negative stories about the WHO are shared more than positive ones on social media. Our results provide unique evidence, suggesting that the WHO has become more politicised in the US, which we argue creates opportunities for politicians seeking to blame IOs during crises.
The investment chapter in the recently signed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has the potential to affect investment decisions in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Yet, we know relatively little about the pathways through which countries determine the content of investment law in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). In this article, we use quantitative text analysis to test theoretically informed conjectures about the negotiation process. We focus on which of the signatories’ past agreements most influenced RCEP, and whether countries chose to draw more from treaty practice through their previous PTAs or bilateral investment treaties (BITs). Our analyses yield several noteworthy findings. First, we show that no single country dominated the negotiation process, instead RCEP represents an effort to reconcile overlapping agreements around a more common template. Second, contrary to the fears of some observers, we show that larger powers such as China and Japan did not overwhelmingly impact the agreement, instead portions were influenced by Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreements, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, and others. Finally, we show that, on average, countries drew more from PTAs than BITs, but that they switch strategically between them to reuse language that they deem important for the development of investment law.
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