Dirk De Bièvre

University of Antwerp | UA · Department of Political Science

In this paper we seek to advance the debate on the conditions under which the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body can bring about trade-liberalizing policy change in WTO members. Under what conditions do WTO members change domestic policies or measures that are challenged in WTO litigation? Starting from the assumption that polic...

The European Union is the world's largest trading entity and donor of official development aid, and its Common Commercial Policy is one of the oldest and most integrated common policies. This accessible and up-to-date new text provides the first comprehensive assessment of EU trade policy, its relationship to other policies, and of the EU's multile...

Over the last decade, trade negotiations with Canada and the United States met with considerable resistance from non-governmental organisations (NGO). Moreover, the negotiation mandates given to the European Commission were so broad as to include topics falling under so-called mixed competence of the EU and the member states, necessitating not only...

The European Commission keeps track of foreign trade barriers through its Market Access Strategy. In this study, we examine some of the key political-economic conditions under which the European Union decides whether and how to address these trade issues. Drawing on an original dataset of (allegedly) illegal foreign trade barriers faced by European...

The global trading regime is characterized by the co‐existence of bilateral and multilateral politics. In this article, we offer a political economy explanation for this regime complex, by tracing public actors’ institutional choices back to political incentives for economic sectors and the firms active within them. First, we argue that product dif...

In an era of intense geopolitical competition, concerns about the impact of foreign investments in strategic sectors of the European economy have led policymakers to review European investment screening mechanisms (ISMs). In doing so, European institutions and member states have to find a balance between security and economics, maintaining a favora...

This chapter examines trade and development in line with European trade politics. It explains that the European Union holds full sway over external trade policy, a truly supranational competency equivalent to the powers of a federal state. Most European political economy scholars have engaged with the substantive area with an Open European Economy...

How do actors react to the politicisation of trade policy? This special issue aims to tackle this question, considering a broad set of actors including members of parliament, political parties, regional and national governments, interest groups, and the European Commission. To set the stage for the contributions to the special issue, in this introd...

There has been no shortage of critiques of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) signed on 30 December 2020. Many have perceived the CAI as a snub in the face of the Biden administration, which has the potential to jeopardise one of the most important strategic goals of the transatlantic alliance: setting aside four years of Trum...

Constitutionally, Belgium represents the most extreme case of regional entities wielding power over EU external trade policymaking. Formally, the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels regions can wield veto power over Belgian positions. Yet, only once has a Belgian region actually made use of this capacity, when Wallonia temporarily blocked the conclusion...

Internationale samenwerking tussen staten lijkt één van de meest gepaste manieren om de opwarming van de aardatmosfeer tegen te gaan. Nochtans hebben decennia lange pogingen daartoe helemaal niet genoeg opgeleverd. In dit hoofdstuk over de politieke pijler van duurzaamheid leggen we uit hoe dat komt. Beleid in de vorm van vrijwillige internationale...

This editorial provides an introduction to the thematic issue "Politicization of EU Trade Policy Across Time and Space." The academic editors place the issue in the context of the current literature, introduce the contributions, and discuss how the articles, individually and jointly, add to the state of the art.

Over the last decade, European Union trade agreement negotiations in the form of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CETA) with Canada have been strongly contested. By contrast, many other EU trade negotiations have sailed on with far less politicization, or barely any at a...

The EU conducts its external trade policy under close scrutiny by member-states. Yet, what about the role of regional authorities in federal states? To answer, we look at the principal-agent chain of delegation and explore to which extent regions with stakes and competencies in the matter exert control over EU policies. We distinguish three ideal-t...

Why did English lords build gothic ruins, did Belgian-Flemish textile barons reconstruct medieval cities, and why did the German-Prussian elite engage in the restauration of knights’ castles? This essay shows that these architectural projects tell us something about the trade dependencies of the political coalitions governing these nascent European...

Contemporary studies on interest group politics have mainly used single interest organizations as their central objects of study. This has led to a rich body of knowledge on the motivations of interest group mobilization, strategy development and even policy access and influence. The focus on single interest groups, however, has resulted in limited...

https://www.coleurope.eu/system/files_force/research-paper/de_bievre_gstohl_vanommerencepob_final.pdf?download=1 Despite vocal contestation and fears of domestic institutional deadlock over its trade negotiations, the European Union has proven resilient in its trade policy, notably by concluding bilateral trade and investment agreements with impor...

The empirical record of dispute settlement cases under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on energy subsidies consists only of cases against renewable energy (RE) subsidies, whereas WTO members have not challenged others’ much larger and environmentally harmful fossil fuel energy subsidies. Yet, the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing M...

In their response to Héritier's chapter, Dirk De Bièvre and Peter Bursens explore the dividing lines between the different patterns of covert integration she distinguishes, and provide some reflections about combinations of these different patterns. They do so by illustrating the great usefulness and wide applicability of these seemingly simple ana...

1. Existing literature: on effects, rather than origins of WTO dispute settlement 2. The politics of WTO dispute settlement and identifying the key dimensions of international judicial institutions 3. Some problematic, seemingly self-evident explanations for the origin of WTO dispute settlement: The end of the Cold War? Incrementalism? Functionalis...

Siles-Brügge and De Ville (this issue) argue that the politics of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations are entirely new, and that it will lead to 'unacceptably disembedding' outcomes. We take the view that these two statements are untenable from a logical and empirical standpoint. While political conflict along dis...

What affects lobbying patterns in trade policymaking? Existing explanations focus mainly on economic determinants, like the rise of intra-industry trade. We argue that the international trade institutions of the WTO themselves are also key for understanding which type of interest aggregation of firm and interest group preferences is likely to arise...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) recently celebrated twenty years of existence. The general wisdom is that its dispute settlement institutions work well and its negotiation machinery goes through a phase of prolonged crises. Assessing the World Trade Organization overcomes this myopic view and takes stock of the WTO's achievements whilst going be...

This article: Contributes to the literature on interest groups showing how the interplay of domestic and international institutional structures critically affects the character of lobbying. Contributes to a better understanding of EU trade politics, highlighting how such processes are systematically affected by changes in global governance structur...

This article explains varying levels of transnational advocacy initiated by domestic organized interests. Theoretically, we integrate the constraining and enabling impact of the domestic context with factors related to global opportunity structures. We test our hypotheses with an original dataset consisting of all national organized interests that...

International institutions have acquired an almost obvious presence in international politics and the question of their design has received prominent attention in recent years. Apart from key organizational characteristics like size of their membership, policy scope, depth of cooperation, decision-making rules, and their degree of openness towards...

In this article, we explore the conditions under which firms engage in transnational lobbying and foreign venue shopping in the framework of WTO dispute settlement. Classical WTO dispute settlement cases mostly originate in domestic firms instigating their public authorities to bring a complaint against foreign trade barriers incompatible with WTO...

In the current multilateral trade regime, members often negotiate under the shadow of WTO law. This article develops a formal explanation of the way in which the credible threat to resort to and the actual use of WTO litigation can influence multilateral trade negotiations. We contend that the ability to impose costs on a defendant by way of litiga...

This chapter assesses the central role of the European Commission in EU trade policy. It analyses the Union's predominance in trade policy making on the international scene, and presents the internal division of labour within the European Commission, especially the Directorate-General (DG) for Trade, as well as important developments within it over...

The European Union is one of the most important members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and an active complainant as well as defendant in WTO dispute settlement proceedings. In this paper, we ask whether the EU upholds the rule of (WTO) law and leads by example in responding to WTO complaints brought by developing countries. We do so by inve...

The regulation of intellectual property rights takes place in a range of international venues. This proliferation of international venues greatly enhances the potential for venue shopping. We argue that different levels of domestic regulation and differing degrees of judicialization account for actors' preferences over institutional venues. We take...

Nongovernmental actors with a focus on environmental, social and development concerns have been credited with influence over the global trade regime. Referring to such issue groups as ‘social movements’ or ‘global civil society’, some have considered the influence of civil-society organizations (CSOs) over outcomes to be a glass half full. A more s...

Given the increasing relevance of judicial politics in the WTO, the relative scholarly neglect of EU performance in WTO litigation stands out as a surprising gap in the literature. With this article we contribute towards filling this gap. We do so by teasing out the conceptual distinction between dispute escalation and dispute outcome and by making...

In the current multilateral trade regime, members often negotiate under the shadow of WTO law. In this article, we develop a systematic explanation of how the legal vulnerability of members’ domestic policies affects the prospects for cooperation in the trade regime. First, we show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, increased enforcement does n...

Graag wordt er in België gezegd dat het land één van de allerbeste systemen voor sociale zekerheid ter wereld heeft, hoewel dit bij nuchtere vergelijking met andere EU landen moeilijk stand houdt. Er wordt ook graag naar verwezen dat de inkomensongelijkheid in België sinds het begin van de bankencrisis bijna niet is toegenomen, wat wel helder aanto...

In this literature review, Arlo Poletti and Dirk De Bièvre provide a helicopter view of political science literature on EU trade policy over the last two decades. They sketch the transition from a largely sui generis and empirical literature, to a comparative and theory-guided type of political science. They also sketch promising avenues for future...

Why did the European Union (EU) attempt yet fail to reform its anti-dumping legislation between 2006 and 2008? We analyse this attempt to reform a legislative act regulating interest groups' access to public decision-makers by relying on collective action and principal – agent theory. Contrary to approaches assuming that the European Commission enj...

In this paper, we provide a political economy account of the European Union's failed attempt to reform its anti-dumping legislation between 2006 and 2008. We review the role played by different interest groups, and the way public authorities at both European Commission and member state level responded to conflicting societal demands. Despite declin...

When CONNEX set out to explore the conditions for “Efficient and Democratic Governance in a Multi-level Europe” it was widely agreed that it will not be sufficient to simply study the institutional architecture of the European Union. Rather, EU-society relations and the societal preconditions for a well functioning democracy should also be at the...

"Interest groups are a major channel through which citizens can express their opinions to decision-makers. Their participation in policymaking may improve decision-making processes by supporting policies that are in line with citizen preferences and blocking policies that solely reflect the interests of the governing elite. At the same time, howeve...

Interest groups are a major channel through which citizens can express their opinions to decision-makers. Their participation in policymaking may improve decision-making processes by supporting policies that are in line with citizen preferences and blocking policies that solely reflect the interests of the governing elite. At the same time, however...

Recently, we have witnessed the mobilisation of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) concerned with such issues as development, human rights, and the protection of the environment voicing their concerns to public authorities. Have these newly mobilised societal actors managed to influence EU trade policy outcomes? We answer in the negative, arguing...

Introduction: how to change a tire while riding your bicycle Changing a tire while riding your bicycle would seem like an impossible task. And indeed it is. In this chapter, however, I intend to show that in the course of empirical social research, it can be extremely useful to change your theory in the middle of the research process. I intend to s...

The European Union has increasingly called for regulatory agreements in the World Trade Organization in areas such as investment, competition, environment, and labour. Why has the EU attempted to satisfy these new demands by pursuing regulatory goals within the WTO rather than within other international organisations? I suggest two reasons for the...

There is considerable variation along the institutional dimensions of delegation, inclusiveness and publicness within the World Trade Organization (WTO), a governance arrangement with virtually universal state membership.1 Decision making in the WTO ranges from bilateral deal making in the reciprocal exchange of market access concessions, and membe...

Trade policy in the EU and the United States is to a large extent delegated to executive agents. Existing explanations claim that legislators delegate because they wish to liberalize but are unable to achieve this on their own. The authors show that legislators delegate powers to obtain foreign market access for exporters and protection for import-...

In this paper, I analyze the impact of international trade institutions on domestic coalition formation. I argue that the size of coalitions crucially depends on the degree of institutionalization and judicialization of international trade institutions. The traditional political instrument of international trade negotiations fosters broad, sector-w...

Positive integration among states, defined as the correction of negative externalities from liberalisation, is generally assumed to be very difficult to achieve on the European level, let alone on the international or global level. The political transaction costs of achieving positive integration legislation indeed seem daunting in an organisation...

Trade policy in the EU and the United States is to a large extent delegated to executive agents. Existing explanations claim that legislators delegate because they wish to liberalize but are unable to achieve this on their own. The authors show that legislators delegate powers to obtain foreign market access for exporters and protection for import-...

In this essay I first show that the WTO dispute settlement system is the most appropriate forum to resolve transatlantic trade disputes. With input from private industry, the EU and the US monitor each other's implementation record of WTO commitments and rules. This brings about enforcement of previous agreements. I go on to identify two major shor...

In this article, I first show that the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system is the most appropriate forum to resolve transatlantic trade disputes.1 With input from private industry, the European Union (EU) and the United States monitor each other's implementation record of WTO commitments and rules. This brings about enforcement...