Crisis, Compromise and Institutional Leadership in Global Trade: Unfair Trade, Sustainable Trade, and Durability of the Liberal Trading Order

Abstract

The transformations of the current liberal order is fiercely order debate among liberals and realists in International Relations (IR). The article examines how the liberal claim of institutional leadership, even in complex networked orders, is challenged by realists and the reality of forum-shifting and institutionalized hegemonic power. Yet, the article advances the constructivists argument that order and leadership rests on the compromise of social purpose and power, even if much IR tends to prioritize the domestic sources of leadership at the expense of international sources of institutional leadership. The substantive issues discussed in the article concerns the current trading disorder of fragmented, unsettled and uncertain trade relationship. The article discussed the future of the trading order in the context of new articulated demands for tougher regulation of environmental and social sustainable trade, and in light of recent modernization debate in Europe on the desirability of US-style enforcement provisions in future EU trade agreements.