We examine the effectiveness of environmental provisions in North-South preferential trade agreements (PTAs) focusing on their important design featuredifferent enforcement mechanisms. These mechanisms vary significantly across PTAs signed by the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). We argue that both US and EU PTAs with environmental provisions will be effective in instigating environmental policy change in partner countries, although the timing of the effect will vary significantly. We predict that environmental reform in US PTA partner countries will occur during the negotiation process due to a fear of sanctions, while similar reform in EU PTA partners will happen during agreement implementation as a result of the EU's approach emphasizing policy dialogue. However, we also argue that the success of these provisions in North-South PTAs across developing countries will depend on the strength of civil society. Specifically, we expect that EU PTAs will be effective only in countries with strong institutional structures supporting civil society learning, while the sanctions approach in US PTAs ensures effective environmental reform even in partners with weak civil societies. We test our hypotheses using statistical estimations of EU and US PTAs with environmental provisions on countries' environmental policy reform measured by Yale University's index of environmental protection and the signing of multilateral environmental treaties.
North–South preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have proliferated rapidly in the past decades. Despite a common focus on trade liberalisation, these preferential trade agreements differ greatly in their inclusion of labour and environmental provisions. A difference in the enforcement of these social standards is also puzzling: some preferential trade agreements envision sanctions for non-compliance while others do not. What explains this variation? We argue that Northern governments have their hands tied by domestic constituents demanding social standards as a key protectionist instrument. However, different electoral rules moderate the success of these demands. Because majoritarian systems provide a more efficient channel for the mobilisation of protectionist interests, they are more prone to social protectionist bias than their proportional representation counterparts. We assess our hypotheses using panel regressions of all North–South preferential trade agreements. Our analysis refines previous findings on tariff and non-tariff protectionist bias in majoritarian systems and shows how it is manifested in the design of preferential trade agreements.
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