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3476 results in UN and International Organisations

Page 73 of 174

  • 3 - Rules on market access

  • Peter Van den Bossche, WTO Appellate Body, Geneva, Denise Prévost
  • Book:
    Essentials of WTO Law
    Published online:
    11 September 2021
    Print publication:
    02 April 2016, pp 49-82

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Secure and predictable access to markets is essential for international trade. However, access for goods and services from other countries to the market of a WTO Member is frequently impeded or restricted in various ways. These restrictions can be in the form of either tariffs or non-tariff barriers to trade. The most common tariff barriers to trade are – at least for goods – customs duties. Tariff barriers to trade can also take the form of other duties and charges on imports and exports. Non-tariff barriers to market access – for goods as much as for services and service suppliers – comprise:

  • • quantitative restrictions, such as quotas and bans; and

  • • other non-tariff barriers, such as technical barriers to trade, lack of transparency of national trade regulation, unfair and arbitrary application of national trade regulation, customs formalities and procedures and government procurement practices.

    • Different WTO rules are applicable to these various tariff and non-tariff barriers to market access. This different treatment reflects a difference in the economic impact of these trade barriers.

    Customs duties and other duties and charges on imports

    A customs duty, or tariff, on imports is a financial charge or a tax on goods, due because of their importation. Market access for the goods concerned is conditional upon the payment of the customs duty. Most customs duties on imports are ad valorem (i.e. a percentage of the value of the imported product).

    For example, the customs duty of Agricola on imports of chocolate bars is 12 per cent ad valorem. Therefore, the importation of chocolate bars to the value of €10000 will be subject to a customs duty of €1200.

    Customs duties may also be specific, that is based on a unit of quantity such as weight (kg), length (m), area (m2), volume (m3 or l) or numbers (pieces, pairs, dozens or packs) of that product. Some customs duties are a combination of ad valorem and specific duties and are called compound or mixed customs duties.

    For example, Industria applies a duty of €1 per kilogram of imported chocolate and a duty of €30 on each imported smartphone. Both of these are specific customs duties.

  • 4 - Trade liberalization and other societal values and interests

  • Peter Van den Bossche, WTO Appellate Body, Geneva, Denise Prévost
  • Book:
    Essentials of WTO Law
    Published online:
    11 September 2021
    Print publication:
    02 April 2016, pp 83-140

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Trade liberalization often facilitates the promotion and protection of other important societal values and interests, such as public health, consumer safety, the environment, employment, economic development and national security. More trade often means that more, cheaper, better, healthier, safer and/or environmentally friendlier products and services will be available on the domestic market. More trade also means more economic activity and development and generates the resources that enable governments effectively to promote and protect societal values and interests.

    Trade liberalization, with its principles of non-discrimination and rules on market access, however, also regularly clashes with the aforementioned other societal values and interests. Governments frequently adopt legislation or take measures that restrict trade in goods and/or services in order to protect, for example, public health, public morals, employment or national security.

    WTO law provides rules to reconcile trade liberalization with other important societal values and interests. These rules take the form of wide-ranging exceptions to, inter alia, the basic WTO disciplines discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 (the non-discrimination obligations and the market access rules). There are five main categories of exceptions:

  • • the ‘general exceptions’ of Article XX of the GATT 1994 and Article XIV of the GATS;

  • • the exceptions for national and international security of Article XXI of the GATT 1994 and Article XIV bis of the GATS;

  • • the exceptions for safeguard measures of Article XIX of the GATT 1994 and the Agreement on Safeguards;

  • • the exceptions for balance of payments measures of Articles XII and XVIII:B of the GATT 1994 and Article XII of the GATS;

  • • the exceptions for regional trade agreements of Article XXIV of the GATT 1994 and Article V of the GATS; and

  • • the exceptions for economic development set out in ‘special and differential treatment’ provisions and the ‘Enabling Clause’.

    • These exceptions differ in scope and nature. Some allow deviation from all GATT or GATS obligations; others allow deviation from specific obligations only; some are of indefinite duration; others are temporary. However, all these exceptions have in common that they allow WTO Members, under specific conditions, to adopt and maintain measures that protect other important societal values and interests, even though these measures conflict with substantive disciplines imposed by the GATT 1994 or the GATS.

Essentials of WTO Law
  • Peter Van den Bossche, Denise Prévost
  • Published online:
    11 September 2021
    Print publication:
    02 April 2016
  • At a time when developments in WTO law have made this field increasingly complex, this concise and non-technical introduction provides a timely and carefully considered overview of the substantive rules and institutional arrangements of the WTO. A variety of text features enables a rich understanding of the law: illustrative examples clarify important issues of the law and demonstrate the law's practical application; boxed summaries of key rulings in WTO case law highlight the interpretation of the relevant provisions and lead readers to a deep understanding of the meaning and application of legal rules; and recommendations for further reading allow readers to engage with current debates. Online resources include links to useful sources of information for work and research within the field. Co-written by a leading authority in the field, this is essential reading for anyone who wants to get to grips with this fascinating yet challenging field of law.

  • 8 - The field logics of multilateral pecking orders: NATO and the UN compared

  • from Part IV - Positions
  • Vincent Pouliot, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    International Pecking Orders
    Published online:
    05 March 2016
    Print publication:
    10 March 2016, pp 226-253

  • Summary

    What are the field logics of the NATO and UN pecking orders? Put differently, how do the positions that countries occupy in various social distributions (thanks to multilateral practices) associate with their standing within the organization? Starting from the premise that each field rewards particular kinds of state practices and markers of standing, I argue that certain ways of doing things associate more closely with pecking order dynamics than others. This chapter makes use of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) in order to understand these positional dynamics at the macro-level. What kind of statistical relations are there between the ways in which capitals channel their assets to IO headquarters and position themselves, on the one hand, and the local hierarchy of standing, on the other?

    The chapter unfolds into two main sections. I begin with a discussion of the basic principles of MCA and provide a few guidelines to help interpretation of the figures that it generates. Turning to the empirical analysis itself, I then look into the main structuring principles that organize the NATO and the UN multilateral fields. Some distributions are much more closely related to the local pecking order than others. My next step is to look into what may be called “positional anomalies,” that is to say, social forces whose distributions do not follow the hierarchy of standing in a purely positional logic. I show that functional contributions produce intriguing practical logics of emancipation and compensation; that country experience connects with pecking order more than any other variables; and that position-takings associate remarkably strongly with social stratification, suggesting that hierarchies of standing have a strong epistemic dimension. I conclude the chapter with a comparative discussion of the NATO and UN field logics, which points to both similarities and differences in the operation of multilateral pecking orders. While each organization has its own set of organizing principles, overall the connections with broader systemic patterns are worth noticing.

    Multiple correspondence analysis

    The purpose of this section is to accompany the reader in the interpretation of the MCA analysis presented in this chapter. Going through the next few pages is not an absolute necessity in order to make sense of my empirical analysis. Although I tried my best to reduce the technical complexity of what follows to a strict minimum, some elementary understanding of statistics may be required.

  • 3 - The diplomatic sense of place

  • from Part II - Dispositions
  • Vincent Pouliot, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    International Pecking Orders
    Published online:
    05 March 2016
    Print publication:
    10 March 2016, pp 71-85

  • Summary

    Chapter 2 showed that the social situation within which practices are enacted generates opportunities and places constraints on the struggle for competence. But the working consensus that grounds interaction orders is not the only force that organizes the emergence of pecking orders in practice. In Part II of the book, I want to show that social structures are also located within ourselves. We generally think of structures as somehow floating above our heads. And yet, building on Goffman, I theorize the micro-mechanism of the pecking order as the “sense of place.” As a basic diplomatic skill, the sense of place allows delegates to figure out the distribution of ranks and roles around the multilateral table. This practical feeling is both constraining – as a sense of limits – and enabling – as a display of socially recognized competence. Take, for instance, the advice that Colin Keating (an experienced former New Zealand diplomat) gives to incoming small elected members of the UN Security Council. In order to exert some influence, he writes, a competent delegation from a small country “absolutely shuns grandstanding.” For Keating, standing may be achieved by smaller delegations by striking a delicate balance between taking initiatives and contributing to the debate, on the one hand, and refraining from exaggerating one's importance and role, on the other. As they struggle for practical mastery, diplomats self-regulate their moves through the sense of place.

    The diplomatic sense of place relates not only to individual delegates but also to the countries being represented at the table. At the dispositional level, practical mastery for the multilateral diplomat consists of skillfully embodying the state – making the most of its standing while making up for its lapses. Although some aspects of practical mastery accrue to individual practitioners, others would seem to attach to corporate actors. This is due to the basic nature of diplomacy, which is about representing states. While diplomats show unequal dexterity in working with (or around) their country's standing, when it comes to defining what counts as valued markers, they are at the receiving end of political dynamics that mostly escape their control. On the one hand, diplomats must put up with the moves that governments make, for instance in providing (or not) certain resources to the IO at hand. This theme I will explore at length in Part IV (Chapters 7 and 8).

  • Introduction: All the world's a stage

  • Vincent Pouliot, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    International Pecking Orders
    Published online:
    05 March 2016
    Print publication:
    10 March 2016, pp 1-24

  • Summary

    Being a state diplomat – that is, speaking and acting as the recognized representative of a country – can be as exhilarating as humbling. Thanks to his unusual professional trajectory, Carne Ross experienced both sides of the coin, first as a British delegate to the United Nations (UN) and later as consultant for stateless peoples for the non-governmental organization (NGO) Independent Diplomat. The contrast could not have been starker: “When I was with the British mission, officials of the UN or other countries paid attention when we spoke. Doubtless this was often faked, but it was perhaps felt to be required, given Britain's place in the UN pecking order. With the Kosovars, no such deference is necessary. Junior officials become impatient with our demands and even on occasion allow themselves a perceptible sneer when they talk to us.” Ross tells of his everyday encounters with patterns of social stratification in diplomacy: “Meeting a national diplomat at the UN or a UN official is, like an audience with the King, a more difficult matter, its ease or difficulty a signifier of one's status in the obscure hierarchies of international diplomacy.” In the practice of multilateral diplomacy, he concludes, some ambassadors are “spectators at the main fight.”

    For those state delegates operating along the corridors of international organizations’ (IOs’) headquarters, it is a basic fact of life that diplomacy takes place on a deeply unleveled playground. The principle of sovereign equality notwithstanding, in any multilateral setting, some state representatives weigh much more heavily than others. Practitioners often refer to this hard-nosed reality as the international “pecking order” – a term originally coined by a zoologist to describe the dominance hierarchy of hens. In his ethnographic account of UN Security Council dynamics, Ambrosetti describes a “daily social division of multilateral labor”: “The precise moment when the delegations were speaking during private consultations and public meetings and the kind of arguments and concerns they broached were not accidental. There was a pervasive form of influence at stake in the course of the interaction and in the achievement of preliminary tasks that were collectively expected.” How are international pecking orders produced, reproduced and at times contested in the course of multilateral diplomacy?

    As a category of practice, pecking order stands for an analytical concept that has recently gained much currency in International Relations (IR): that of hierarchy.

  • 7 - State practices and multilateral fields

  • from Part IV - Positions
  • Vincent Pouliot, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    International Pecking Orders
    Published online:
    05 March 2016
    Print publication:
    10 March 2016, pp 193-225

  • Summary

    The diplomatic processes out of which international pecking orders emerge take place on a playing field that is structured in a number of ways. Local rules of the game enable and constrain the struggle for practical mastery (Part I: Situations). The diplomatic sense of place orients practices in some directions instead of others (Part II: Dispositions). The morphology of permanent representation generates a set of practical logics within the configuration (Part III: Relations). In Part IV of the book (Positions), I look at how multilateral diplomacy is also structured positionally, in terms of the countries that are being represented at the table. State representatives are not equal to each other in terms of the corporate entity that they are speaking and acting for. Representing a given country may grant certain opportunities that other delegates do not have. This and the next chapters explore how diplomatic practices are imbricated with the broader field of states.

    How exactly do states make their way to the multilateral table? In this chapter, I seek to identify the kinds of practices by which governments may benefit, or not, permanent representatives and their team on the ground. The basic insight is that what governments do (and do not do) provide opportunities and constraints in the practice of multilateral diplomacy. I start from the observation that states position themselves within the membership with unequal dexterity and channel their resources to IOs in variable amounts. Some capitals invest a lot, materially or symbolically, in a given platform, while others are much more constrained. On a different plane, governments may take positions (and send attendant instructions) that are more or less mainstream compared to that of other partners, thereby facilitating or complicating the work of delegates. Some state practices are much better attuned to local requirements, for instance by providing the kind of expertise needed at the permanent mission and inside the multilateral group. In all of these cases, state practices (including the resources they mobilize) need to be converted by the diplomats on the ground in order to have any impact on pecking order dynamics. Bringing states back in need not push diplomacy out.

  • 4 - A working consensus: the negotiation of the 2010 Strategic Concept and the NATO pecking order

  • from Part II - Dispositions
  • Vincent Pouliot, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    International Pecking Orders
    Published online:
    05 March 2016
    Print publication:
    10 March 2016, pp 86-116

  • Summary

    NATO is the archetype of a multilateral organization structured by very strong patterns of pecking order. Everything takes place as if each state representative knew its place in the distribution of ranks and roles around the multilateral table. As I show in this chapter, at the North Atlantic Council (NAC) the practice of diplomacy is structured by a largely unspoken yet very real hierarchy of standing in which some ambassadors (and the countries they represent) weigh more than others. The anchoring practice of consensus is structured by a deeply embodied sense of place on the part of ambassadors. Thanks to this working consensus on the distribution of ranks and roles, open spats – such as during the 2008 Bucharest Summit, when France and Germany openly challenged the United States (US) on future enlargements – are relatively rare occurrences in the Alliance's long history.

    To be as clear as possible, my argument is not that the Alliance is free from politics – quite the contrary. I contend that NATO's working consensus is the result of intense political work and social stratification. But these politics often hide from sight in Brussels because of the fact that the pecking order operates through the embodiment of the sense of place. Indeed, what is peculiar about this multilateral organization is that, while a “contentious alliance” by some accounts, its internal rifts get systematically solved through a non-violent politics that remains mostly hidden from public sight. This is the story that I tell in this chapter: At first a highly contentious matter, the negotiation of the 2010 Strategic Concept (StratCon) saw every national delegation in Brussels and its capital gradually brought back into the fold, producing a document with all the “gloss of harmony.”

    This hard political work is all the more intriguing as, formally, Alliance decision-making rests on sovereign equality and consensus, which technically endows each member with a veto. How is it possible for a twenty-eight-members organization making its decisions consensually to function as smoothly, at least in appearance, as NATO does? From a political point of view, consensus is eminently puzzling, as the parity in participation that it would seem to presume clashes with the social prevalence of domination. To make sense of this, I show how Alliance diplomacy rests on various practices generative of social stratification.

  • 6 - Clan politics: Security Council reform and the UN pecking order

  • from Part III - Relations
  • Vincent Pouliot, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    International Pecking Orders
    Published online:
    05 March 2016
    Print publication:
    10 March 2016, pp 154-190

  • Summary

    As the “parliament of man,” the UN is the centerpiece of contemporary global governance. Its many organs, specialized agencies, departments and bureaus form a particularly complex organizational patchwork. In the limited scope of this chapter, I make no claim to capture UN politics writ large. In any case, at the UN there is not one pecking order but several of them, depending on the organ of interest, the topic under discussion and the participating members. My more limited objective is to put some more empirical meat on the theoretical bones that I assembled in Chapter 5. More specifically, I want to show how the practical logics of multilateral diplomacy, as enabled and constrained by its peculiar relational structure, actually play out in a large setting such as the UN. To this purpose, I look at one specific site and topic in order to open a window onto UN pecking order dynamics: ongoing General Assembly debates over the reform of the Security Council.

    The case of the reform of the Security Council offers a unique vantage point on social stratification in world politics. Nowhere else do states debate as explicitly on the international pecking order and the principles by which a privileged few are granted special status and powers. Debates about the Security Council are all the more important in that the organization “is the most powerful international institution in the history of the nation-state system.” Not only is its sphere of authority continually expanding, the Council has also become a placeholder for a new form of sovereignty, which states generally acknowledge. For these reasons, the Security Council is probably the multilateral site around which countries and delegates strive the most intensively for recognition and standing. In that sense, the Security Council reform process constitutes an unprecedented instance in the history of world politics in which states attempt to transform the centerpiece of the institutional architecture of global security governance not through war, but by peaceful means.

    The chapter shows how the relational peculiarities of UN diplomacy limit the potential for meaningful Security Council reform. The clan structure of the negotiations leads to rigid group dynamics that are little conducive to compromise. What is more, the tight leash under which the negotiating chair is held, as well as the heavy formalism of the local rules of the game, significantly blunt the possibility for progress.

  • 5 - Permanent representation: relational structure and practical logics

  • from Part III - Relations
  • Vincent Pouliot, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    International Pecking Orders
    Published online:
    05 March 2016
    Print publication:
    10 March 2016, pp 119-153

  • Summary

    The NATO case study presented in Chapter 4 illustrated how pecking orders owe to situated struggles for competence (Part I) and embodied diplomatic feelings (Part II), as well as peculiar features of permanent representation to IOs. In critical ways, social stratification is imbricated with the ways in which multilateral diplomacy is organized at the level of relationships. Part III of the book seeks to characterize permanent representation to IOs as a social form. Taking the structure of social ties seriously, this chapter focuses on two key dimensions: morphology and attendant practical logics. What are the relational specificities of permanent representation and what social dynamics do they spark? As a social form, does multilateral diplomacy generate a distinctive set of pecking order dynamics? While each multilateral setting comes with its own peculiarities at the level of practice, in this chapter I seek to theorize some commonalities in the relational structure and practicality of permanent representation that can travel across multilateral sites.

    Despite the abstract nature of the exercise, the modeling of multilateral diplomacy that follows is the result of deep induction and prolonged immersion in the social theaters of interest. During fieldwork, it appeared that the practice of permanent representation takes place within a particular kind of relational structure. Looking for a framework to organize empirical findings along analytically general categories, I settled on Nexon's “relational analytics” in order to ideal-typify the otherwise very messy and complex social context of multilateral diplomacy. As Chapter 6 will illustrate with the case of UN Security Council reform debates, this framework provides useful analytical tools to make sense of a key set of structural forces in the multilateral diplomatic process.

    Drawing from social network theory, relational analytics conceives of structures as “ongoing, dynamic patterns of transaction between actors and other social sites.” The key insight is that the ways in which social ties are organized help understand political dynamics, including the relational sources of standing that players may cash out in and through practice. I look at four main relational dimensions of permanent representation: (1) the size and reciprocity of the configuration; (2) its connections to the outside; (3) the density of its ties; and (4) the distinctive position of the head. Taken together, I argue, these four dimensions capture the peculiar morphology of permanent representation to IOs.

  • 1 - The politics of multilateral diplomacy

  • from Part I - Situations
  • Vincent Pouliot, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    International Pecking Orders
    Published online:
    05 March 2016
    Print publication:
    10 March 2016, pp 27-47

  • Summary

    This chapter sets the stage for the book by delineating its main object: multilateral diplomacy and more specifically permanent representation to IOs. In the first section, I argue that multilateral diplomacy is an increasingly pervasive set of practices in the twenty-first century. In recent decades, global governance has “multilateralized,” so to speak, with significant political consequences. As part of this trend, the practice of permanent representation to IOs has established itself as a major form of global governance. In the second section of the chapter, I discuss the relationship between sovereign equality and multilateralism, which is often misunderstood in both academia and policy circles. From the practitioner's point of view, the founding myth of diplomacy is premised on egalitarian rituals that euphemize pecking order dynamics. Among liberal scholars, there is an echoing belief that multilateralism reinforces sovereign equality. In line with realist and critical IR theory, I argue instead that multilateral diplomacy is shot through with power politics. In the final section, I show how a practice theory of international pecking orders builds on, and improves upon, the new research agenda on “informal governance” in multilateral organizations.

    Multilateralism: evolution and forms

    At the most basic level, multilateralism is “the practice of coordinating national policies in groups of three or more states.” This nominal definition, however, reduces the practice to a strict question of numbers. Ruggie's seminal study adds a qualitative dimension conceiving of multilateralism as “an institutional form which coordinates relations among three or more states on the basis of ‘generalized’ principles of conduct.” In this influential statement, multilateralism rests on a certain degree of institutionalization, which renders the application of rules as systematic instead of ad hoc. Still missing in my view, though, is the active side of multilateralism – the fact that it is a way of performing world politics that differs from others. Building on Ruggie, I define multilateralism as “a global governance practice characterized by an inclusive, institutionalized and principled form of political dialogue.” This formulation helps differentiate multilateral diplomacy from more exclusive forms (unilateral, bilateral or “minilateral”), from ad hoc and issue-specific configurations, as well as from Concert-type arrangements, which set certain self-appointed participants above the others.

    The multilateralization of world politics

    Multilateralism has come of age – to the point that it now “incontestably dominates international life,” according to two prominent observers.

Page 73 of 174