Donna Lee and Heidi Ullrich

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Helen Hawthorne

Abstract

Least-developed countries (LDCs) have been included in the multilateral trade regime since the days of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), with the majority joining during the 1960s and 1970s following their independence. The Doha Round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has focused significant attention on the role and impact of LDCs that are currently WTO members as well as the process of accession for those remaining outside the organization. This article examines the accession experiences of LDCs joining both the GATT and the WTO with regard to international development norms, and demonstrates that the manner in which the majority of LDCs acceded to the multilateral trade regime has enabled them to have a greater impact on the multilateral trade organization than would otherwise have been possible.

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Chen-wei Huang

Abstract

Whether or not bilateralism and regionalism have threatened multilateralism has been debated in the literature. In recent years, the United States has argued that the increasing numbers of regional and bilateral trading arrangements made under the Bush administration are 'complementary' to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Accordingly, the case of Taiwan's bilateral trade negotiations with the United States and its accession to the WTO provide a useful case study for examining the relations between bilateralism and multilateralism. This article not only aims to study the role of bilateralism and multilateralism in Taiwan's liberalization process, it also seeks to compare the two types of trade diplomacy in terms of power relations, decision-making and negotiation, and the influence of negotiation on economic liberalization. The article is divided into three sections: the first section focuses on US–Taiwan bilateral trade negotiations during the 1970s and 1980s; the second section mainly discusses the process of Taiwan's WTO accession; and the final section examines Taiwan's bilateral and multilateral trade diplomacy after its accession.

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Chieh Huang

Abstract

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the Word Trade Organization (WTO), have been the main forum of international trade since the end of the Second World War. The regime is unquestionably based on free-market rules and principles. Yet in the last two decades, formerly planned economies — including Eastern European countries, former Soviet countries and China — have attempted to join the GATT/WTO. To encourage their transition under the influence of free-market principles, and to be a truly global trade organization, the GATT/WTO has accepted applicants with a reforming planned economy. This article studies the evolution of the GATT/WTO's approaches to integrate non-market economies and shows that the approach to integrate non-market economies during the WTO era is significantly different than during the GATT. While special mechanisms were provided in GATT accession protocols to bridge different market structures, WTO accessions require non-market economies to convert their own market structures. This article holds that this intolerance of different market structures in the WTO reflects the collapse of embedded liberalism and the rise of coercive trade diplomacy. Multilateral trade diplomacy has therefore become a means of imposing a domestic restructuring of economic structures rather than providing a negotiation forum for trade liberalization.

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David Dyker

Abstract

Why would Russia, a major power, be thwarted for fourteen years in its attempt to join the World Trade Organization (WTO)? Through a detailed examination of Russia's WTO accession negotiations, the diplomatic processes of the WTO's accession procedures are uncovered, showing that this diplomacy is best understood as a complex process where state-level factors and international regime-level factors, such as the rules and conditions of accession, interact. In the Russian case, the dialogue's length partly reflects technical difficulties in specific elements of the negotiations and partly a degree of ambivalence in the Russian government's attitudes towards accession. The Russian economy's high degree of dependence on oil and gas exports has taken the short-run urgency out of the negotiations from the Russian point of view, while reinforcing the medium-term case for accession within the context of a diversification policy. Russia's new President Dmitry Medvedev and new Minister for the Economy Elvira Nabiullina are strongly committed to WTO accession as a basis for developing the Russian economy as an innovation-based economy. Meanwhile, Russia's former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is sympathetic to that idea, but is inconsistent in his pronouncements. At the regime level, the key obstacles to accession in the past have been Russia's insistence on the freedom to maintain government agricultural subsidies and the reluctance of other WTO members to compromise on this issue. Since the Georgian crisis of August 2008, the United States has tended increasingly to use WTO accession as an instrument of political leverage vis-à-vis Russia. It must be assumed that Georgia will veto any Russian application for membership unless a satisfactory solution to the Abkhazia/South Ossetia issue can be found.

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Peter Milthorp

Abstract

Drawing on his thirteen years of experience as a Counsellor in the Accessions Division of the WTO Secretariat, Peter Milthorp describes accession as consisting of 'government-to-government negotiation, conducted at two mutually interactive levels'. The multilateral negotiations among the acceding country and the collective WTO membership correspond to Putnam's Level I; while the bilateral negotiations between the acceding country and individual members to agree on market access commitments require domestic bargaining and coalition building, and provide evidence of Putnam's Level II schema. Milthorp argues that the most arduous negotiations fall upon the government of the acceding country (that is, Level II), as it must develop a focused yet flexible negotiating mandate, implement economic reforms that may cause short-term hardship to some previously protected sectors, and ensure that negotiations progress steadily — all in order to retain political support for ratification. For accession negotiations to reach the end-game, negotiators must thus engage in both international and domestic diplomacy to create a balanced package that is acceptable to both WTO members as well as domestic stakeholders.

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Brian Hocking and Jozef Bátora

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Rebecca Adler-Nissen

Abstract

Most scholars are inclined to assume that the diplomatic practices of the European Union's member states remain fundamentally unchanged. The EU's Council of Ministers is accordingly seen as a setting where sovereign states speak with one another. Yet if state interaction in the EU is only viewed from this perspective, a number of important qualitative changes will remain underexposed. This article argues that leading political forces in the European states have come to view their nations as anchored so deeply within the supranational institutions of the EU that their diplomats merge the promotion of national interests with those of the Union. In this late sovereign phase of diplomacy, political and legal authorities overlap, territorial exclusivity is replaced with functional boundaries, and states begin to speak with one voice. The article explores three interlinked aspects of late sovereign diplomacy: the teleological interpretation of the EC and EU treaties; the intense socialization of state representatives; and the negotiation process, which promotes national positions as part of a European cause, thereby delocalizing the national interest. While the EU has not rendered national diplomacy obsolete, it has profoundly changed its meaning and consequences.

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Stephan Keukeleire, Arnout Justaert and Robin Thiers

Abstract

Diverse shifts have taken place in both the daily practice and academic analyses of diplomacy. The authors argue that the various conceptualizations do not sufficiently take into account that diplomacy is increasingly concerned with influencing or shaping structures. The aim of this article is therefore to reappraise the nature of diplomacy in general and of the European Union in particular by elaborating on the concept structural diplomacy. This concept refers to the process of dialogue and negotiation by which actors in the international system seek to influence or shape sustainable external political, legal, economic, social and security structures at different relevant levels in a given geographic space (from the level of the individual and society, to the state, regional and global levels). The EU's institutional and diplomatic set-up allows it to conduct structural diplomacy. However, the extent and effectiveness of this diplomacy strongly differ depending on the regions in question.

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Alan Hardacre and Michael Smith

Abstract

This article explores the diplomatic implications of a central pillar in EU external relations: the development of interregional relations. In particular, the article investigates the emergence of a specific pattern of interregional relations — 'complex interregionalism' — and develops an initial framework for the analysis of this phenomenon. This framework allows for a detailed investigation of how the EU has simultaneously engaged in bilateral, multilateral and interregional relations across the globe. The EU — notably the Commission — is found to have a consistent and coherent complex interregional strategy that it employs across three world regions: Asia; Africa; and Latin America. This strategy embodies multi-level interregional relations, but aspires to the creation of 'pure interregionalism' between the EU and other customs unions. Such a strategy presents two key tensions that lie at the heart of 'complex interregionalism': the first tension is between the reality of multi-level diplomacy and the desire for 'pure interregionalism'; and the second is between the Commission's strategic vision and the realities of Council-shaped diplomacy. Analysis of the internal and external dynamics of the strategic pursuit of interregionalism, and the failure to implement it fully, can thus offer important insights for the study of both the EU's external relations and EU diplomacy.

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Knud Erik Jørgensen

Abstract

This article examines the role of the European Union in multilateral diplomacy. By means of synthesizing and summarizing research on seven selected policy fields, the article aims to make more general claims than single policy or single case studies allow. The analysis focuses on five analytical dimensions: governance (that is, how the EU handles multilateral diplomacy in different international institutions); the role of EU domestic politics; negotiation style(s); outreach; and impact. As the seven policy fields comprise some very diverse issue-areas, it would not be wise to expect any uniform approach or general findings. However, the analysis does show that the EU is increasingly engaged in multilateral diplomacy, actually playing a leadership role in some policy fields. Findings do not correspond to traditional expectations concerning the EU's engagement in politico-economic and security issues, as the EU plays a limited role in financial and macro-economic diplomacy and a fairly significant role in non-proliferation and crisis management. The article suggests that an extension to more policy fields and more analytical dimensions would provide the comprehensive understanding of the European Union's role in multilateral diplomacy that the engagement deserves.

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Simon Duke

Abstract

The Lisbon Treaty may well be on ice, may perhaps even be moribund, but there remain compelling reasons to think through the identified shortcomings of the European Union in external relations. Many of the innovations in the area of external relations that are contained in the treaty are dependent upon ratification by the EU's member states, but some are not; the European External Action Service (EEAS) falls into the latter category. Although the actual implementation of the EEAS will face formidable hurdles, as has been outlined in this contribution, the exercise of thinking through these challenges is essential if the EU and its members are to begin grappling with many of the issues examined in this special issue — ranging from the role of national diplomats in today's world to the successful pursuit of structural diplomacy and the effectiveness of the EU in multilateral organizations.

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David Spence

Abstract

The assumption that the European Union is creating a new diplomacy begs many questions. However, it is clear that the role of national diplomats in the integrative processes has changed dramatically during the last 50 years, producing a blueprint for a new form of European diplomacy. It is apparent that European diplomacy has been characterized by the existence of two broad but distinct diplomatic career paths, each with a separate and specific mindset, and that there are, arguably, two identifiable epistemic communities of European diplomats — national and supranational — sometimes cooperating willingly, sometimes reluctantly, in an interplay between national and EU diplomacy. Against this background, in the short term a 'variable geometry' of representation is likely to continue, as member states refashion their networks of representation, influenced by a combination of international involvement, perceptions of national need and, at times, the unwelcome dictates of diminishing national resources. But a new European diplomacy already exists alongside the old, and its distinctive feature is the withering away of explicit national interests.

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Mark Rolfe

Abstract

The Danish cartoons' controversy of 2006-2008 was not a unique storm that has fortunately passed over the world into history. It exhibited reactions that had much in common with previous transnational disputes involving satire, such as the movie Life of Brian and Holocaust cartoons, but there is now the potential for global communications to accelerate and exacerbate such clashes. The media amplify clashes between the various actors and the taboos involved in such disputes. There is also a 'dialogue of the deaf', in which political elites are more concerned with speaking to their own constituencies or refuse to withdraw from problematic statements and policies rather than engaging in dialogue. Such discursive conflict has implications for transnational democracy and public diplomacy.

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Jason Rancatore

Abstract

This article explores the concept of pace in social interaction in order to gain traction for explaining the conditions and consequences of diplomatic activity. Two recent analyses related to diplomacy and pace are reconsidered. In the First World War case, the different environments in which Maurice Paléologue and Wilhelm von Schoen were socialized regarding the pace of diplomatic activity explain the selection of particular activities and objectives. In the 2001 EP-3 case, the mediation of tension between the United States and China is explained through the interpretive process of understanding diplomatic action, which includes particular notions of pace. Because this article specifies the continuities that make identification of accommodation and resistance possible, it is part of a growing body of literature that urges researchers to consider normal practice and what meanings are constituted by them.

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Richard Langhorne

Abstract

Alberico Gentili was a significant academic lawyer of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. He was an Italian religious refugee who fled to England and became professor of law at Oxford. Among his works are three books on diplomacy dating from 1585. These have never attracted the same degree of interest as his other works and this article discusses both why this has been so and indicates ways in which they are worthy of more attention — particularly that they are peculiarly accurate representatives of the contemporary discussion of diplomacy and that there are two real and original contributions that Gentili made. One concerns the rights and privileges of resident ambassadors and the other rests on his clearly expressed conviction that diplomacy could know no bounds set by religion or culture. In both these opinions he was ahead of his time.

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John Young

Abstract

In analysing British policy towards the creation of the European Council from 1973-1975, this article will argue that British leaders were supporters of the idea of regular summits regardless of party affiliation and that policy on this issue suggests that, in this area at least, British policy was consistent and positive about European Community membership. In so doing, the article will also show how the British government wrestled with the idea of how to make leaders-level meetings work most effectively — in terms of frequency, organization and atmosphere — as a means of doing business in an international organization. The result was the creation of a system of serial summits that helped the Community to escape the economic doldrums of the 1970s.

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Jonathan Colman

Abstract

The US Embassy in London has long played a leading institutional role in the Anglo-American relationship, but few historians have examined that role. This article covers the early Cold War era of 1945-1953 — a formative period in the Anglo-American relationship — and considers issues such as the Embassy's organization, the range of work in which it participated and the contributions of the successive ambassadors. Prominent policy issues during this period included the European Recovery Plan and the Berlin Crisis. It is contended that the Embassy reached the peak of its peacetime importance under US Ambassador Lewis Douglas from 1947-1950, and that its most important role was in policy liaison. This liaison function stemmed from the need to coordinate British and US policies in the developing Cold War, and helped to lay the foundations for the long-term 'special relationship'. The article provides fresh insights into Anglo-American diplomatic bonds in a formative period.

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Kishan Rana

Abstract

Countries are increasingly conscious that their diaspora is a powerful asset in their pursuit of external objectives. Several factors have contributed. Everywhere the diplomatic process is more open than before; foreign ministries routinely network with a wide array of official and non-state partners. Thanks to rising migration, and growth in foreign employment opportunities, many countries have expanding overseas communities. A number of small and medium-sized countries find that such communities are even larger than the home population. We also observe that in many states, these groups, whether they have taken up the citizenship of the country of residence or whether they remain citizens of their home countries, find it easier than in the past to participate actively in social, economic and political activities in their adopted homes. Finally, the example of Israel — that is, the support that it mobilizes from the global Jewish community — resonates with many countries that would like to develop their own links with their overseas communities, as feasible.

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