The EU as an effective trade power? Strategic choice of judicial candidates in the context of the World Trade Organization
| Date | 01 September 2013 |
| Published date | 01 September 2013 |
| Author | Manfred Elsig |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117813497301 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Relations
27(3) 325 –340
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117813497301
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The EU as an effective trade
power? Strategic choice of
judicial candidates in the
context of the World Trade
Organization
Manfred Elsig
University of Bern
Abstract
Drawing on the European Union (EU) foreign policy literature on effectiveness, this article studies
how the European Union chooses judges to serve on the World Trade Organization’s key judicial
institution: the Appellate Body. Conceptually, the article differentiates between effectiveness in
representation and effectiveness in impact. The article shows how delegation to the European
Commission has increased the strategic agenda-setting power for championing its preferred
candidates. The article further compares European and US practice in nominating candidates.
Overall, the article finds that effectiveness in representation has increased over time. In terms of
effectiveness in impact, the article shows how the international environment conditions the EU’s
influence. The article also exposes the difficulties of studying the effectiveness of EU external
relations due to the peculiar decision-making processes dominant in judicial bodies.
Keywords
court, effectiveness, European Union (EU), foreign policy, international organization, legalization,
World Trade Organization (WTO)
Actor, power, and effectiveness
The European Union in trade politics: actorness from day one
In the area of external trade, the European Community (EC1) has been an influential inter-
national actor from its very beginning. As Member States decided to create a Common
Corresponding author:
Manfred Elsig, World Trade Institute, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 6, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland.
Email: Manfred.Elsig@wti.org
497301IRE27310.1177/0047117813497301International RelationsElsig
2013
Article
326 International Relations 27(3)
Market and a functioning Customs Union, the step of delegating sufficient power to the
Community institutions in order to enable them to speak with ‘one voice’ in trade nego-
tiations was a logical act. Not only was there a need to coordinate foreign economic poli-
cies among Member States, but also in the area of trade policy, it was necessary to pursue
a single policy on the treatment of imports and exports of goods (in particular adminis-
trating a single tariff system and implementing uniform product standards).
The EC quickly became accepted as a heavyweight in multilateral trade talks con-
ducted in the context of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The EC
was recognized as a trade power, and its presence in the 1960s, defined by the influence
it exerted on other actors, was felt instantly. While Member States continue to be official
members of the GATT and its successor organization, the World Trade Organization
(WTO), to this day, other contracting parties quickly accepted the European Commission
as the representative voice and chief negotiator of the Community in the respective trade
rounds (e.g. the Dillon Round (1960–61) and the Kennedy Round (1964–67)).2 Therefore,
the mainstream trade literature did not pay particular attention to concepts related to
actorness that developed in the foreign policy literature.3 Today, the European Union
(EU) has achieved (facilitated by various rounds of enlargement) the status of the most
powerful trading entity as measured in terms of overall trade flows in goods and services
and the market access it can offer to foreign products.
Notwithstanding the strong presence of the EC (and later the EU) as a trade actor,
there was surprisingly little research into the functioning and the effects of trade
policy until the second half of the 1990s.4 In addition, many authors started to place
EU trade policy in a comparative perspective in order to avoid falling into some
romantic N = 1 trap.5 To sum up, a growing number of students of European trade
policy accepted the similarities to statehood and questioned a potential sui generis
character of the polity.
What type of trade power?
In recent years, a growing number of scholars have studied extensively the EU’s position
in various regulatory venues (multilateral, regional, and bilateral) as well as its use of
unilateral trade measures (e.g. in the area of anti-dumping or related to preferential
schemes such as duty-free access for certain products from least-developed countries).
As the study on EU trade policy had a late start, the younger generation of scholars was
strongly socialized within an international relations literature that took domestic politics
seriously. Research focused on societal preferences and the effect of the institutional set-
ting on preference aggregation. Various middle-range theories from comparative politics
and international relations were successfully applied in the field (e.g. principal–agent
theory, historical institutionalism, or pluralism). Interestingly and ironically, discussions
on civilian or normative power, while prominent in other foreign policy fields, were
largely absent among students of trade policy, even though the raison d’être for these
concepts relied heavily on the attractiveness of Europe’s economic success. With the
exception of a few scholars using critical political-economy approaches (in the tradition
of neo-Marxist and dependency theories), the field has hardly focused on (normative)
concepts related to the nature of EU trade policy.
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