The explosive proliferation of trade forums poses fundamental questions about why states forum-shop as they pursue liberalization. We advance a novel argument linking the institutional design of international trade forums directly to domestic politics. If industrialized democratic states have to appease conflicting forces in the domestic political marketplace as economic liberalization proceeds apace, they should prioritize forums that allow them to exert greater control over the pace and scope of liberalization. This prioritization is influenced by a tradeoff between two critical dimensions that combine differently across all international trade forums: the gains dimension, which determines the extent to which states can increase economic welfare based on the forum's rules; and the control dimension, which determines the extent to which they have power to set the forum's rules in line with their political concerns. We use the case of Japan to demonstrate the importance of the gains-control tradeoff.Why do states forum-shop in international trade? More specifically, the explosive proliferation of regional and cross-regional preferential trade agreements urges us to ask, what makes states gravitate away from a multilateral forum toward alternative regional and bilateral ones that intrinsically offer lower economic gains? Research in the field of international political economy (IPE) has thus far concentrated on issues such as the origins, impact, and more recently, design of Authors' note: We are grateful to the following people for their constructive criticism and advice:

In the context of an ongoing global power shift, the largest emerging economies (China, Russia, India, Brazil) formed an exclusive and informal club called the BRICs. Subsequently joined by South Africa, the BRICS have exercised collective financial statecraft, defined as the use of financial and monetary policies by sovereign governments for the purpose of achieving larger foreign policy goals. This volume identifies four types of such financial statecraft, ranging from pressure for inside reforms of either multilateral institutions or global markets, to outside options exercised through creating new multilateral institutions or jointly pushing for new realities in international financial markets. The joint actions of the BRICS have been largely successful. Although each member has its own unique rationale for collaboration, the largest member, China, controls resources that afford it the greatest influence in intraclub decision-making. The BRICS hang together due to common aversions (resentment over being perennial junior partners in global economic and financial governance, resistance to infringements on their autonomy and dollar dominance) and common interests (obtaining greater voice in international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund). The BRICS are neither revolutionaries nor shirkers. The group seeks reforms, influence, and leadership roles within the existing liberal capitalist global economic order. Where blocked, they experiment with parallel multilateral institutions in which they are the dominant rule-makers. The future of the BRICS depends not only on their bargaining power and adjustment to market players, but also on their ability to overcome domestic impediments to the sustainable economic growth that provides the basis for their international positions.

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