Making sense of the legal and judicial architectures of regional trade agreements worldwide

Abstract

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) constitute one of the most important elements of the international economic order. Researchers have accordingly embarked on comparative analyses of their design. Yet one fundamental question remains unanswered: how have officials in different RTAs responded to the challenge of regulatory misalignments among the member states? In this article, I turn to 10 of the most established RTAs in the world and document three types of responses. Some RTAs rely on the principle of mutual recognition or references to existing international standards; the same agreements also rely on technical dispute resolution mechanisms. Other RTAs, by contrast, make use of extensive harmonization and permanent courts charged with interpreting law. Yet a third group exhibits a hybrid design. This heterogeneity in legislative and judicial design invites explanation. I show that there is a remarkable correspondence between the legal traditions of the member states (common vs. civil law) and the design of RTAs. This correspondence undermines the claims of world polity theorists about the nature of the international order, but is consistent with other strands of sociological institutionalism and certain elements of rationalist and neoliberal institutionalism. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of different RTA designs for the regulation of everyday life in the member states, the World Trade Organization as an international regulatory body, and national sovereignty and democracy.

Understanding the ASEAN way of regional qualification governance: The case of mutual recognition agreements in the professional service sector

“…First, the variation in the national approach toward regulations in professional services seems to suggest why the mixture of harmonization and mutual recognition is suitable to ASEAN. In general, we support the argument presented by Duina () that civil law countries prefer harmonization while common law countries tend to adopt mutual recognition. While providing a ground theory that explains the difference in approaches to harmonization and mutual recognition preferred by different legal traditions is beyond the scope of this paper, we can logically infer their preferences by looking into the way in which professionals are entitled to supply services; hence the issue is not limited to substantive requirements and also includes procedural requirements.…”

“…What about a regional group that includes both civil and common law countries? When a regional group includes countries with various legal backgrounds, the combination of harmonization preferred by civil law countries and mutual recognition preferred by common law countries seems to be suitable (Duina )…”

“…While Duina () does not analyze service MRAs, by conducting a general analysis of regional trade agreements (RTAs) he finds that ASEAN follows the mixed approach of mutual recognition and harmonization, which is in sharp contrast to the European (harmonization) and the North American (mutual recognition) models.…”

“…Based on comparative analysis of regionalism, Duina () argues that the SADC that includes both common and civil law tradition countries follows a mixed approach of mutual recognition and harmonization, just like ASEAN. According to Keevy (), the SADC is likely to develop MRAs similar to ASEAN's hub‐and‐spoke model.…”

Frame diffusion and institutional choice in regional economic cooperation

“…Besides bilateral trade agreements, an important part of this development occurs in the context of regional organizations, many of which have come to endorse ambitious objectives for economic cooperation such as common markets and even economic unions since the early 1990s (Haftel 2013;Duina 2016). Curiously, these decisions often mirror basic institutional choices of the European Union (EU 1 ), the most prominent and successful 'institutional pioneer' of regional economic cooperation (Lenz and Burilkov 2017).…”