The increasing density of international regimes has contributed to the proliferation of overlap across agreements, conflicts among international obligations, and confusion regarding what international and bilateral obligations cover an issue. This symposium examines the consequences of this “international regime complexity” for subsequent politics. What analytical insights can be gained by thinking about any single agreement as being embedded in a larger web of international rules and regimes? Karen Alter and Sophie Meunier's introductory essay defines international regime complexity and identifies the mechanisms through which it may influence the politics of international cooperation. Short contributions analyze how international regime complexity affects politics in specific issue areas: trade (Christina Davis), linkages between human rights and trade (Emilie Hafner-Burton), intellectual property (Laurence Helfer), security politics (Stephanie Hofmann), refugee politics (Alexander Betts), and election monitoring (Judith Kelley). Daniel Drezner concludes by arguing that international regime complexity may well benefit the powerful more than others.

The European Union (EU) project of combining a single market with a common currency was incomplete from its inception. This article shows that the incompleteness of the governance architecture of Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was both a cause of the euro crisis and a characteristic pattern of the policy responses to the crisis. We develop a “failing forward” argument to explain the dynamics of European integration using recent experience in the eurozone as an illustration: Intergovernmental bargaining leads to incompleteness because it forces states with diverse preferences to settle on lowest common denominator solutions. Incompleteness then unleashes forces that lead to crisis. Member states respond by again agreeing to lowest common denominator solutions, which address the crisis and lead to deeper integration. To date, this sequential cycle of piecemeal reform, followed by policy failure, followed by further reform, has managed to sustain both the European project and the common currency. However, this approach entails clear risks. Economically, the policy failures engendered by this incremental approach to the construction of EMU have been catastrophic for the citizens of many crisis-plagued member states. Politically, the perception that the EU is constantly in crisis and in need of reforms to salvage the union is undermining popular support for European integration.

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Do political tensions harm economic relations? Theories claim that trade prevents war and political relations motivate trade, but less is known about whether smaller shifts in political relations impact economic exchange. Looking at two major economies, we show that negative events have not hurt U.S. or Japanese trade or investment flows. We then examine specific incidents of tensions in U.S.-French and Sino-Japanese relations over the past decade-two case pairs that allow us to compare varying levels of political tension given high existing economic interdependence and different alliance relations. Aggregate economic flows and high salience sectors like wine and autos are unaffected by the deterioration of political relations. In an era of globalization, actors lack incentives to link political and economic relations. We argue that sunk costs in existing trade and investment make governments, firms, and consumers unlikely to change their behavior in response to political disputes. D o political tensions have economic consequences? The relationship between economic interdependence and conflict has been a central debate in international relations. Leading scholars contend that "states with good relations should have more trade than states with poor relations" and import decisions of firms will respond to "the climate of friendliness or hostility that exists between the importer and exporter" (Morrow, Siverson, and Tabares 1998, 650; Pollins 1989b, 739). Analysis of trade and conflict in a simultaneous equations model concludes that "political relations are driving commerce, not the other way around" (Keshk, Pollins, and Reuveny 2004, 1175). We reexamine these arguments in the current globalization era to show that sunk costs reduce incentives for state and private actors to link political and economic relations. 1 Political relations vary along a continuum from cooperative normal relations, to political tensions, to threats as well as three anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this article. We are especially grateful to Raymond Hicks for help with collecting the data. Min Ye, Jennifer Oh, and Ledina Gocaj provided valuable research assistance. 1 Supporting Information files and replication data are available at http://www.princeton.edu/∼cldavis/research/. of force, and to war. While most analysis of the interdependence debate focuses on militarized disputes, we analyze the shift at the lower level from normal relations to political tensions. As noted by Pevehouse, "much of the nuance of interdependence theory has been discarded" in recent empirical studies that use dichotomous measures for conflict, and new insights may be gained by returning to the earlier approach in the literature that measured conflict and cooperation with events data (2004, 247). A large range of interactions determines the status of political relations between states. By political tensions, we mean disagreement over policy issues, hostility between leaders, and negative public sentiment. In the contemporary world, occ...

The member states of the European Union (EU) have transferred their sovereignty over trade policymaking to the supranational level. When entering into trade negotiations with third countries, they must first reach a common bargaining position among themselves and later defend that position with a “single voice” at the international table. How do the institutional rules, through which the fifteen different voices are aggregated into a single one, affect international outcomes? Differentiating between a “conservative” and a “reformist” negotiating context, I argue that voting rules and negotiating competence in the EU determine both the probability that the negotiating parties conclude an international agreement and the substantive outcome of the negotiations. The recent EU–U.S. trade negotiations on agriculture, public procurement, and open skies are all evidence that, for a given distribution of preferences, internal EU institutional mechanisms affect the outcomes of international trade agreements.