Abstract
Over the last decade, European Union (EU) trade agreement negotiations in the form of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade 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 all. In this contribution, we assess a series of plausible explanation for these very varying degrees of politicization across EU trade agreement negotiations—conceived of as the combination of polarization of opinions, salience given to them in public debate, and the expansion of the number of societal actors involved therein. Through a review of existing explanations, we show how each of these explanations faces a set of challenges. In the third section, we argue it is useful to conceive of these existing explanations as structural background conditions enabling agency on the part of interest group and civil society organizations. We therefore close by sketching how literature on the relationship between interest group mobilization and public opinion could inform further comparative research on trade policy negotiations, and on politicization of EU policy making in general.
Highlights
Over the last two decades, the European Union (EU) has conducted an external economic policy very much in line with that of other major trade powers by prioritizing bilateral trade agreements over multilateral trade opening within the World Trade Organization (WTO)
We argue it is useful to conceive of these existing explanations as structural background conditions enabling agency on the part of interest group and civil society organizations and sketch how literature on the relationship between interest group mobilization and public opinion could inform further comparative research on trade policy negotiations, and on politicization of EU policy making in general
We have sought to advance the stateof-the-art on the explanation of different degrees of politicization of EU trade agreement negotiations during the last decade
Summary
Over the last two decades, the European Union (EU) has conducted an external economic policy very much in line with that of other major trade powers by prioritizing bilateral trade agreements over multilateral trade opening within the World Trade Organization (WTO) This strategic shift to preferential trade agreements, economic partnership or association agreements has been motivated by various factors, including the decline of the WTO’s ability to deliver negotiated trade liberalization and regulation (Poletti & De Bièvre, 2016), the competition with other trading partners in emerging markets (Dür, 2007). The growing integration of the EU’s economy in global value chains (Eckhardt & Poletti, 2016) These EU trade agreement negotiations have generated significant domestic political turmoil, and observers and analysts have contended that EU trade policy has evolved into a highly politicized policy area (Laursen & Roederer-Rynning, 2017; Young, 2017). We argue it is useful to conceive of these existing explanations as structural background conditions enabling agency on the part of interest group and civil society organizations and sketch how literature on the relationship between interest group mobilization and public opinion could inform further comparative research on trade policy negotiations, and on politicization of EU policy making in general
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
