Bulletin n. 2/2008
September 2008
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Saksena Jyotika, Anderson Liam
    Explaining Variation in the Use of NTBs in Developed Countries: The Role of Political Institutions
    in International Politics , Volume 45, Issue 4, July ,  2008 ,  475-496
    Despite the much-touted celebration of the successes of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization in liberalizing free trade, these successes have been limited due to the increasing use of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) as a form of 'protectionism in disguise.' Among advanced industrial economies, the use of NTBs varies considerably. The purpose of this paper is to explain what accounts for this variation. We locate the issue of international trade in its appropriate theoretical context — as a two-level game in which politicians simultaneously face pressure at the international level to fulfill commitments to international free trade agreements, and domestic pressures for protectionist relief. We conduct a statistical analysis using a simple, multivariate regression model examining data at three points in time, 1988, 1993, and 1996, to highlight the causes of the rise in NTBs and variation in their usage. We hypothesize that PR-based systems are associated with lower rather than higher levels of NTBs.
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