The Americanisation Of The World Trade Order

This book provides insights into the world trading order that is informed by power --- in particular, the unidirectional norm imparting impact of US foreign trade law and practice on its trading partners and non-State actors. In this context, the recent tensions between the US and China, has brought to the fore, several fundamental and systemic questions. Underpinning these is the challenge of accommodating economic power under the rule of international economic law, including inculcating responsibility in its engagement. In the light of the recent US challenges to the world trading order, this timely publication will help us understand how U.S. will continue to shape the international economic order.

A critical insight into the politics and economics of relations between the EU and Latin America, particularly Mercosul, highlighting the significance of such relations for multilateralism and the international order.

Global business interacts efficiently despite the heterogeneity of social, economic and legal cultures which, according to widespread assumptions, cause insecurities and uncertainties. Breaches of contracts may occur more frequently and business relationships may be terminated more often in international than in domestic trade. But most business people engaged in exporting or importing products or services seem to operate in a sufficiently predictable environment allowing successful ventures into the global market. The apparent paradox presented by cultural/institutional diversity and contractual efficiency in cross-border business transactions is the focus of this volume of essays. The wide range of approaches adopted by contributors to the volume include: the Weberian concept of law as a tool for avoiding the risk of opportunism; economic sociology, which treats networks and relationships between contractual parties as paramount; representatives of new institutional economics who discuss law as well as private governance institutions as most efficient responses to risk; comparative economic sociologists who point to the varieties of legal cultures in the social organisation of trust; and national and international institutions such as the World Bank which try to promote legal certainty in the economy. The purpose of the volume is to build on this interdisciplinary exercise by adding empirical evidence to ongoing debates regarding enabling structures for international business, and by critically reviewing and discussing some of the propositions in the literature which contain interesting hypotheses on the effects of the internationalization of markets on market co-ordination institutions and on the role of the state in the globalising economy.

In the decades following World War II, American liberals had a vision for the world. Their ambitions would not stop at the water’s edge: progressive internationalism, they believed, could help peoples everywhere achieve democracy, prosperity, and freedom. Chastened in part by the failures of these grand aspirations, in recent years liberals and the Left have retreated from such idealism. Today, as a beleaguered United States confronts a series of crises, does the postwar liberal tradition offer any useful lessons for American engagement with the world? The historian Leon Fink examines key cases of progressive influence on postwar U.S. foreign policy, tracing the tension between liberal aspirations and the political realities that stymie them. From the reconstruction of post-Nazi West Germany to the struggle against apartheid, he shows how American liberals joined global allies in pursuit of an expansive political, social, and economic vision. Even as liberal internationalism brought such successes to the world, it also stumbled against domestic politics or was blind to the contradictions in capitalist development and the power of competing nationalist identities. A diplomatic history that emphasizes the roles of social class, labor movements, race, and grassroots activism, Undoing the Liberal World Order suggests new directions for a progressive American foreign policy.

The World Trade Organization is a central player in international trade regulation. The rights and duties that form WTO law are not created in a vacuum, however, and there exists a complex network of domestic, regional and international influences on the development of WTO law that go beyond the disciplines found in the covered agreements or the interpretations given by panels and the Appellate Body. As such, understanding the development of WTO law in a wider institutional context is critical to comprehending WTO law in a new age of legal globalization. The Development of World Trade Organization Law: Examining Change in International Law examines the development of WTO law through an analysis of competing global actors, norms, and institutions. Taking a different approach to social-scientific or traditional legal models, this book argues that such globalized actors are the driving force behind the development of WTO law yet not in control of it. Identifying causal language as key to understanding this development, the volume examines three different causal influences: instrumental, systemic, and constitutive. It applies this causal methodology to three key areas of WTO law: safeguard measures, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, and subsidies. The volume provides detailed explanations of why the law has developed as it has and offers insights into the future functioning of the WTO system.

One of the main features of the world economy since the late nineteenth century has been the growing dominance of the American economy in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Aspects of this development - e.g. rationalization or the world-wide diffusion of Coca-Cola - have been researched, but largely in isolation. Americanization of the European Economy provides a comprehensive yet compact survey of the growth of American economic influence in Europe since the 1880s. Three distinct but cumulative waves of Americanization are identified. Americanization was (and still is) a complex process of technological, political, and cultural transfer, and this overview explains why and how the USA and the American model of industrial capitalism came to be accepted as the dominant paradigm of political economy in today's Europe. Americanization of the European Economy summarizes the ongoing discussion by business historians, sociologists, and political scientists and makes it accessible to all types of readers who are interested in political and economic development.

Since the Treaty of the European Union was ratified in 1993, the European Union has become an important factor in an ever-increasing number of regimes of pooled sovereignty. This Handbook seeks to present a valuable guide to this new and unique system in the twenty-first century, allowing readers to obtain a better understanding of the emerging multilevel European governance system that links national polities to Europe and the global community. Adopting a pan-European approach, this Handbook brings together the work of leading international academics to cover a wide range of topics such as: the historical and theoretical background the political systems and institutions of both the EU and its individual member nations political parties and party systems political elites civil society and social movements in European politics the political economy of Europe public administration and policy-making external policies of the EU. This is an invaluable and comprehensive resource for students, scholars, researchers and practitioners of the European Union, European politics and comparative politics.

Education is a key political issue and seen as a crucial factor in ensuring economic productivity and competitiveness. In this enthralling book, Stephen J. Ball offers an analysis of the flood of government initiatives and policies that have been introduced over the past 20 years, including Beacon Schools, the Academies programme, parental choice, Foundation Schools, faith schools and teaching standards. He looks at the politics of these policy interventions and how they have changed the face of education. This bestselling book makes essential reading for student-teachers, other students of politics and social policy courses and for the general reader who wants to get beyond the simplistic analyses of the newspapers.