 |
Banana Splits: Nested and Competing Regimes in the Transatlantic Banana Trade Dispute
| |
| | Unformatted Document Text:
3
Section I describes the “problem” of nesting and overlapping commitments, and
examines the scholarly political science literature regarding how the nesting of institutions influences politics. Section II explores the EU banana regime, first showing how the contested policy was itself an artifact of nested commitments and then chronicling the multi-venue efforts undertaken to challenge the EU policy and thus resolve the dispute. Section III examines how the nesting of international commitments shaped decision-making by a variety of actors. We employ two analytical strategies. First we identify the decisions made by different actors, highlighting puzzling aspects of the decisions that we believe are explained in large part by the nested nature of the international commitments. Second we employ counterfactual analysis, stripping away each of the institutional levels—the Lomé convention, the EU, and the WTO—to examine how the absence of each level might have led to different politics.
The analysis yields insights for the banana case. But our hope is that our focus on
how the nested nature of commitments complicated the resolution of the banana dispute will increase scholarly attention on how the fact of nesting/overlapping commitments influences decision-making, shedding light on the politics of decision-making and dispute-resolution in what is an increasingly complex international environment where countries have enmeshed themselves in a variety of bi- and multi-lateral institutions. Our conclusion seeks to draw out general insights and hypotheses from the analysis. [Section III and the conclusion are extremely tentative at this point especially because we are conducting our European interviews just after the APSA meeting.]
1. The Problem of Nested and Overlapping Institutions
The “nesting of institutions” refers to a situation where regional or issue-specific
international institutions are themselves part of multilateral frameworks that involve more states or multiple issues. Institutions are imbricated one within another in concentric circles, like Russian dolls. For instance, European states have formed the European Union, which is part of the World Trade Organization. International institutions need not be nested, however, to overlap in authority. With their multiple institutional commitments, member countries stand at the intersection of independent jurisdictions, like in the overlapping middle part of a Venn Diagram. To continue with the example of trade, European states are members of the EU, but they also belong to the WTO and the ILO, they are part of many bilateral trade agreements with third countries, and some of them are constituting members of the G8. Overlapping is distinct from nesting. In an overlapping jurisdiction context, a conflict across agreements does not per se mean that one rule is a violation of the other. When institutions are nested, however, conflicting policies of the subsumed regime do constitute a violation of the more encompassing institution. Thus nesting is a subset of the more general problem of overlapping commitments, with the conflicting rules more clearly labeled “violations” of the more encompassing institution. The diagram below captures the difference.
Nested vs. Overlapping institutions
|
| |
| |
|
|
3
Section I describes the “problem” of nesting and overlapping commitments, and
examines the scholarly political science literature regarding how the nesting of
institutions influences politics. Section II explores the EU banana regime, first showing
how the contested policy was itself an artifact of nested commitments and then
chronicling the multi-venue efforts undertaken to challenge the EU policy and thus
resolve the dispute. Section III examines how the nesting of international commitments
shaped decision-making by a variety of actors. We employ two analytical strategies.
First we identify the decisions made by different actors, highlighting puzzling aspects of
the decisions that we believe are explained in large part by the nested nature of the
international commitments. Second we employ counterfactual analysis, stripping away
each of the institutional levels—the Lomé convention, the EU, and the WTO—to
examine how the absence of each level might have led to different politics.
The analysis yields insights for the banana case. But our hope is that our focus on
how the nested nature of commitments complicated the resolution of the banana dispute
will increase scholarly attention on how the fact of nesting/overlapping commitments
influences decision-making, shedding light on the politics of decision-making and
dispute-resolution in what is an increasingly complex international environment where
countries have enmeshed themselves in a variety of bi- and multi-lateral institutions. Our
conclusion seeks to draw out general insights and hypotheses from the analysis. [Section
III and the conclusion are extremely tentative at this point especially because we are
conducting our European interviews just after the APSA meeting.]
1. The Problem of Nested and Overlapping Institutions
The “nesting of institutions” refers to a situation where regional or issue-specific
international institutions are themselves part of multilateral frameworks that involve more
states or multiple issues. Institutions are imbricated one within another in concentric
circles, like Russian dolls. For instance, European states have formed the European
Union, which is part of the World Trade Organization. International institutions need not
be nested, however, to overlap in authority. With their multiple institutional
commitments, member countries stand at the intersection of independent jurisdictions,
like in the overlapping middle part of a Venn Diagram. To continue with the example of
trade, European states are members of the EU, but they also belong to the WTO and the
ILO, they are part of many bilateral trade agreements with third countries, and some of
them are constituting members of the G8. Overlapping is distinct from nesting. In an
overlapping jurisdiction context, a conflict across agreements does not per se mean that
one rule is a violation of the other. When institutions are nested, however, conflicting
policies of the subsumed regime do constitute a violation of the more encompassing
institution. Thus nesting is a subset of the more general problem of overlapping
commitments, with the conflicting rules more clearly labeled “violations” of the more
encompassing institution. The diagram below captures the difference.
Nested vs. Overlapping institutions
|
|
 Convention | | All Academic Convention makes running your annual conference simple and cost effective. It is your online solution for abstract management, peer review, and scheduling for your annual meeting or convention. | | Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. | | Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! | | Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! | | Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. | | Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! | | Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! | | Click here for more information. |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
