Regional Trade Agreements

Name 

Institutional Affiliation

Regional Trade Agreements

In the recent few decades, one of the most notable institutional developments has been the rise and spread of the concept of regionalism. This social aspect all over the globe is yet to be fully understood and maximized. This is portrayed by the ineffectiveness of the regional trade agreements and their occurrence rate. Nations turn into regional trade agreements as means of solving the domestic and international challenges in the political and economic field that confronts groups of interest, leaders and nations. The traditional view description of RTA views these as direct arrangements that are negotiated by actors within the same region and serves by prescribing, proscribing, and authorizing behavior (Mansfield & Milner, 1999). This have been in time been expanded to view RTA as formal agreements that entails trade liberalization commitments among three or more neighboring signatories such as states. RTAs are understood not as a reflection of the particularities of the members forming it (Jupille et al., 2013). This indicates that the RTA is composed by members who are diverse form each other. It is views that the regions are developed more from within than from without. Regionalism is thus seen are established as a functional response to the needs of the nation and interest, related to domestic and international economic & political affairs (Mattli, 1999).

The concept of regionalism and regional trade agreements may be better understood when viewed in the perspective of the world polity theory. The theory has three major elements being script of modernity, institutional isomorphism, and decoupling (Jupille et al., 2013). The scripts of modernity consider the actors to regionalism as rational actors with the rights and competence to act in autonomy. This implies that the process of entering into regional trade agreements in influenced by professionals who facilitate the rational, scientific and bureaucratic negotiations and decision-making process. The institutional isomorphism is a character portrayed by the signatories in RTA requiring them to be understood and structured in similar ways. Here, nations and other actors are moved to include the practices and procedures as depicted by the prevailing rationalized concepts of organizational tasks and the institutionalized in the society. The third element of the world polity theory seeks to differentiate the agreed forms and goals from the daily action and tangible outcomes. One factor that makes the RTA ineffective is the due to the difficulty in ensuring the process in decoupling (Jupille et al., 2013). This occurs as these players are organized on an external culture which cannot just be adopted internally as whole. This makes the members of a regional trade agreement not achieve the desired goals nor adhere to the stated and developed self-conceptions and objective. This means that the actual performance of the RTA is below the promise.

The World Polity Theory attempts to analyze the reason behind the ineffectiveness of the RTA by taking a different approach from the conventional political science. The regional institutions are mostly constructed in similar way despite the fact they tackle different demands. The RTA keeps occurring because the concept of regionalism has been integrate in the society as a script of modern statehood whose adoption is seen as a reflection of the institutional change that entails highly variegated and decoupled practices. By using the World Polity Theory, one can recognize the fact that institutions considered as RTA are initially designed to help achieve other goals such as conflict management and yet expected to derive trade benefits (Jupille et al., 2013). The occurrence of the regional trade agreement is also considered to be prevalent due the shortcomings in GATT/WTO such as increased membership, regular multilateral trade negotiations, and losses in the arising disputes (Mansfield & Reinhardt, 2003).

References

Jupille, Joseph, Brandy Jolliff, and Stefan Wojcik. “Regionalism in the world polity.” Working Paper.2013.

Mattli, Walter. “The logic of regional integration.” Europe and beyond (1999). Intro chapter

Mansfield, Edward D., and Eric Reinhardt. “Multilateral determinants of regionalism: The effects of GATT/WTO on the formation of preferential trading arrangements.” International organization 57.04 (2003): 829 862.

Mansfield, Edward D., and Helen V. Milner. “The new wave of regionalism.” International organization 53.03 (1999): 589-627