Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-44mx8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-09T12:50:33.530Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What Single Voice? European Institutions and EU–U.S. Trade Negotiations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2003

Sophie Meunier
Get access

Abstract

The member states of the European Union (EU) have transferred their sovereignty over trade policymaking to the supranational level. When entering into trade negotiations with third countries, they must first reach a common bargaining position among themselves and later defend that position with a “single voice” at the international table. How do the institutional rules, through which the fifteen different voices are aggregated into a single one, affect international outcomes? Differentiating between a “conservative” and a “reformist” negotiating context, I argue that voting rules and negotiating competence in the EU determine both the probability that the negotiating parties conclude an international agreement and the substantive outcome of the negotiations. The recent EU–U.S. trade negotiations on agriculture, public procurement, and open skies are all evidence that, for a given distribution of preferences, internal EU institutional mechanisms affect the outcomes of international trade agreements.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , Winter 2000 , pp. 103 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Clark, William, Duchesne, Erick, and Meunier, Sophie. Forthcoming. Domestic and International Asymmetries in U.S.–EU Trade Negotiations. International Negotiations Journal.Google Scholar
Devuyst, Youri. 1995. The European Community and the Conclusion of the Uruguay Round. In The State of the European Union. Vol. 3, Building a European Polity?, edited by Rhodes, Carolyn and Mazey, Sonia, 449–68. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobson, Alan P. 1995. Flying in the Face of Competition: The Policies and Diplomacy of Airline Regulatory Reform in Britain, the USA, and the European Community 1968–94. Aldershot, England: Avebury Aviation, Ashgate Publishing Ltd.Google Scholar
Evans, Peter B., Jacobson, Harold K., and Putnam, Robert D., eds. 1993. Double-Edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Franchino, Fabio. 1998. Institutionalism and Commission's Executive Discretion: An Empirical Analysis. European Integration Online Papers 2 (6). Available at <http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1998-006.htm>.Google Scholar
Garrett, Geoffrey. 1995. From the Luxembourg Compromise to Codecision: Decision Making in the European Union. Electoral Studies 14 (3): 289–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, Geoffrey, and Tsebelis, George. 1996. An Institutional Critique of Intergovernmentalism. International Organization 50 (2): 269–99.Google Scholar
Garrett, Geoffrey, and Tsebelis, George. 1999. Why Resist the Temptation to Apply Power Indices to the EU? Journal of Theoretical Politics 11 (3): 291–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hampson, Fen Osler, with Hart, Michael. 1995. Multilateral Negotiations: Lessons from Arms Control, Trade and the Environment. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Hocking, Brian, and Smith, Michael. 1997. Beyond Foreign Economic Policy: The United States the Single European Market, and the Changing World Economy. London: Cassell/Pinter.Google Scholar
Hosli, Madeleine O. 1996. Coalitions and Power: Effects of Qualified Majority Voting on the Council of the European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies 34 (2): 255–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Michael. 1998. European Community Trade Policy and the Article 113 Committee. London: Royal Institute for International Affairs.Google Scholar
Jupille, Joseph. 1999. The European Union and International Outcomes. International Organization 53 (2): 409–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keeler, John T. S. 1996. Agricultural Power in the European Community: Explaining the Fate of the CAP and GATT Negotiations. Comparative Politics 28 (2): 127–49.Google Scholar
Martin, Lisa L., and Simmons, Beth A.. 1998. Theories and Empirical Studies of International Institutions. International Organization 52 (4): 729–57.Google Scholar
Mayer, Frederick W. 1992. Managing Domestic Differences in International Negotiations: The Strategic Use of Internal Side-Payments. International Organization 46 (4): 793–818.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meunier, Sophie. 1998a. Europe Divided but United: Institutional Integration and EC–U.S. Trade Negotiations Since the 1960s. Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Meunier, Sophie. 1998b. Divided but United: European Trade Policy Integration and EU–U.S. Agricultural Negotiations in the Uruguay Round. In The European Union in the World Community, edited by Rhodes, Carolyn, 193–211. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Meunier, Sophie, and Nicolaïdis, Kalypso. 1999. Who Speaks for Europe? The Delegation of Trade Authority in the European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies 37 (3): 477–501.Google Scholar
Milner, Helen V. 1997. Interests, Institutions, and Information Domestic Politics and International Relations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Moravcsik, Andrew. 1991. Negotiating the Single European Act. In The New European Community edited by Keohane, Robert O. and Hoffmann, Stanley, 41–84. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Nicolaïdis, Kalypso. 1999. Minimizing Agency Costs in Two-Level Games: Lessons from the Trade Authority Controversies in the United States and the European Union. In Negotiating on Behalf of Others, edited by Robert Mnookin Larry Susskind, and Pacey Foster. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.Google Scholar
Paarlberg, Robert. 1997. Agricultural Policy Reform and the Uruguay Round. International Organization 51 (3): 413–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paemen, Hugo, and Bensch, Alexandra. 1995. From the GATT to the WTO: The European Community in the Uruguay Round. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press.Google Scholar
Patterson, Lee Ann. 1997. Agricultural Policy Reform in the European Community. International Organization 51 (1): 135–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, John, and Cowles, Maria Green. 1998. Clinton, Europe and Economic Diplomacy: What Makes the EU Different? Governance 11 (3): 251–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollack, Mark A. 1996. The Engines of Integration? Supranational Autonomy and Influence in the European Community. Working Paper 2.41. Berkeley: Center for German and European Studies, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Pollack, Mark A. 1997. Delegation Agency, and Agenda setting in the European Community. International Organization 51 (1): 99–134.Google Scholar
Putnam, Robert D. 1988. Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games. International Organization 42 (3): 427–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carolyn, Rhodes, ed. 1998. The European Union in the World Community. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Schelling, Thomas C. 1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Staniland, Martin. 1996. Open Skies—Fewer Planes? Public Policy and Corporate Strategy in EU–U.S. Aviation Relations. Policy Paper No. 3. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Center for West European Studies, University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Walton, Richard E., and McKersie, Robert B.. 1965. A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations: An Analysis of a Social Interaction System. Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press.Google Scholar
Woolcock, Stephen, and Hodges, Michael. 1996. EU Policy in the Uruguay Round. In Policy making in the European Union, edited by Wallace, Helen and Wallace, William, 301–24. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar