Review: Regionalism, Multilateralism, and Economic Integration
| Published date | 01 June 2005 |
| Date | 01 June 2005 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200506000241 |
| Author | Fiona McGillivray |
| Subject Matter | Review |
I
Reviews
|
REGIONALISM,
MULTILATERALISM,
AND
ECONOMIC
INTEGRATION
The
Recent
Experience
Edited
by Gary P. Sampson and Stephen
Woolcock
Tokyo
and New
York:
UN University Press, 2003. xiv,
364pp.
US$37.95
paper
(ISBN
92-808-1083-9)
Regional
trade agreements (RTA) continue to proliferate in the trading sys-
tem, yet economists are still scratching their heads over whether or not
regionalism
is a good idea. There are
hundreds
of regional trading agree-
ments and a bewildering array of overlapping rules and accords. Scholarly
debate continues to focus on whether or not
RTAs
liberalize border barriers
to trade. However, many
RTAs
push
at internal barriers to trade, liberaliz-
ing or harmonizing regulatory obstacles that exist within borders. The
effect
of domestic regulatory change on trade is much harder to assess than
the
effect
of shifting border barriers, such as tariffs or quotas. Sampson and
Woolcocks'
edited volume provides an analytical framework to assess the
deepening of regulatory structures across a diverse set of regional trade
agreements.
Their
main question is an empirical one: what is the impact of regional
agreements in the area
of
regulatory policy? The authors
turn
to World Trade
Organization (WTO) guidelines on regional agreements—rules on coverage,
procedural and substantive provisions, and implementation/enforcement
guidelines—as a baseline for their qualitative assessment. They create the
concept
of a WTO-plus to indicate whether a regulatory procedure
adds
to,
or
detracts from, WTO obligations. This is a tricky task as in some areas,
such as enforcement, WTO rules are vague or inconsistent. However,
Woolcock
pours over WTO articles and rulings in multiple-issue areas, such
as services, food safety, and public procurement, to define exactly what it
means to be WTO-plus. The six individual case-study chapters apply the
WTO-plus
standard to assess the extent of deepening across regulatory
issue areas in a particular RTA. These
RTAs
include the association agree-
ment between the EU and Poland, the Euro-Mediterranean association
agreement between the EU and Tunisia, the North American free trade
agreement, the European Union-Mexico agreement, the Chile-Canada free
trade agreement, and the closer economic relations agreement between
Australia and New Zealand. In addition, two of the chapters compare the
approach of multiple
RTAs
to regulatory deepening in single-issue areas,
services
and food safety/eco-labelling respectively.
I International
Journal
|
Spring
2005
| 615 |
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