Inter‐Governmental Regimes and Recruitment to Private Regimes:GATT/WTOand theISO, 1951–2005

Abstract

Scholars of international relations and public policy recognize that quasi-private actors supply governance services alongside governmental actors. We explore how membership in the dominant trade regime, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/the World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) influences countries' incentives to join the quasi-private regime, International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Both global regimes seek to remove trade barriers; the former focuses on tariff and non-tariff obstacles, and the latter on technical barriers. While any firm can subscribe to over 18,000 ISO standards, only national standards bodies, one per country, can become ISO members. We posit that given the substantial political costs of joining GATT/WTO and the relatively low entry barriers to joining the ISO, high trading countries might view the ISO as a (partial) functional equivalent of the GATT/WTO. Our empirical analysis of ISO membership dynamics over the period 1951-2005 lends support to our argument. Policy Implications• When faced with barriers to entry at the dominant trade regime, exporting firms and their governments may consider participating in private regimes to influence the trade environment.• As evidenced in the debates over the reform of UN Security Council and the emergence of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the institutional architecture and the rule-making powers of global regimes should reflect the power configurations of the 21st century, and not of the post-World War II order.• Creating private regimes in a policy area requires factoring in potential participants' positions with regard to the existing intergovernmental regimes.• While existing intergovernmental regimes are the key pillars of global governance, their rule-making systems privilege certain perspectives over others. Private regimes can foster polycentricity and bridge democracy deficits by allowing multiple stakeholders to create regimes with different rule structures.

Saving the Canadian Fur Industry’s Hide: Government’s strategic use of private authority to constrain radical activism

“…Trade treaties and agreements such as GATT/WTO are supranational institutions that restrict individual governments’ ability to impose trade barriers, including bans, on products from other countries – referred to as non-tariff barriers to trade. Both inter-governmental regimes such as the GATT/WTO and private regimes such as the ISO are concerned with facilitating trade via harmonization (Lim & Prakash, 2018) which implies ‘moving towards a single standard’ (Slaughter, 2005, p. 59). As the ISO is recognized by inter-governmental bodies, including the EU parliament and the WTO, as an international rule-making body, the creation of an ISO standard to deal with an issue provides the grounds to challenge a product ban in the WTO system.…”

International Standardization and Trade Regulation

“…Since the mid-1990s, ISO received increased attention in the political science and international relations literature. Most studies, with the notable exception of Morikawa and Morrison (2004) and Lim and Prakash (2018), are based on case studies on individual standards such as ISO 14001 (Environmental management) (Kollman and Prakash, 2001;Potoski and Prakash, 2005b,a;Potoski, 2006a,b, 2007) or ISO 9000 (Quality management) (Casper and Hancké, 1999;Guler et al, 2002). Other contributions focus on selected technical committees such as ISO TC 228 (Tourism) and ISO TC 229 (Nanotechnologies) (Graz and Hauert, 2019).…”

“…Furthermore, the ISO website only provides information on the current status of members and cooperation organizations but not on their engagement over the almost 70 year long history of the organization. Even studies on members' ISO membership, which can vary yearly between no membership, full-, subscriber-, or correspondent membership, only appeared relatively recently (Lim and Prakash, 2018).…”

“…Two notable exceptions are presented byVeggeland and Borgen (2005) andLim and Prakash (2018) Veggeland and Borgen (2005). provide a descriptive analysis of countries' participation in the Codex Alimentarius Commission and the Codex Committee on General Principles (CCGP) for the years between 1985 and 2003.…”

Who drives the international standardisation of telecommunication and digitalisation? Introducing a new data set

“…The standards of ISO, for instance, affect almost every part of life, ranging from quality management and information security management to occupational health and safety and social responsibility. Yet, with a few exceptions (Büthe & Mattli, 2011; Klotz, 2021; Lim & Prakash, 2018; Murphy & Yates, 2009), there is relatively little scholarly work on ISO and the actors driving standardisation. The same can be said about the Codex Alimentarius, a standardisation organisation that governs a long list of food safety topics including the minimum amount of cocoa in chocolate or the maximum residue limits of pesticides in food.…”