Can trade agreements integrate innovations and progressive dispositions? In this era of fast changes linked to globalization and technological changes which fuel discontent, this question has emerged in the literature and in the negotiation processes of many recent agreements. In the first section of this article, we will introduce the structural changes that are beneath the surface of recent trade agreements using a typology of trade agreements enabling comparative analysis. In the second section, we will discuss some of the most important innovations of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) negotiated by Canada and the European Union. In the third section, we will see that part of the innovative nature of CETA, its evolutionary nature, brings many unsettled trajectories. In the fourth section, we will discuss how CETA is further unsettled in its trajectory because it puts into relation two distinctive integration models highlighted in our typology, one developed in Europe and the other in North America and, furthermore, because of the more general context that also puts into play Asia and China as emerging shapers of economic trade agreements.

No abstract

Multinationals affirm corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a way to go further than national and international law to build a social compact. While CSR can contribute to an effective global labor governance scheme, we argue that national and international laws must be engaged to regulate CSR private governance schemes. We will support this argument and, furthermore, we will argue that international trade agreements can provide, if effectively enforced, grounds for the articulation. It can be argued that hybrid governance schemes could ensure that result-oriented and pragmatic developmental processes are at the core of the CSR–development nexus. In this article, we argue for the need to socialize CSR to make it more efficient, and that trade agreements can be part of this process. CSR is not an autonomous regulatory trajectory, and it will probably become increasingly regulated through institutional means.

No abstract

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have become the most powerful drivers of integration and structural changes in today's global economy. MNCs have not completely subordinated States and markets in shaping the global economy, but they have transformed the world and given rise to a new set of economic, political, social, cultural and legal problems. Yet, quite ironically, MNCs are now facing a recombination that tends to subordinate them to transnational networks of corporate economic power. The thorny issue of regulating the global economy is, in this context, even more complex as regulatory systems of global governance must be built to fit those transnational networks superseding States and firms. This article presents an overview of the most important theories in international political economy on MNCs in order to situate the new theoretical challenges pertaining to the understanding of contemporary structural changes in the world economy and their incidences on global governance. The first section presents three configurations of globalization and concludes on the theoretical challenges of explaining and understanding the emergence and development of transnational economic networks. A second section discusses some current issues of regulation. The overall statement of this article is that globalization has, during the last decades, transformed international political economy in ways that now require new theoretical paradigms and new modes of global regulation that are adapted to a truly global economy made of networks rather than nations or firms.