Global Rules Research Articles

How do global trade rules evolve? Strategic sequencing in international economic law

How do global trade rules evolve? This article argues that agreements create precedent that shapes subsequent negotiations, and policymakers exploit this precedent. Specifically, states sequence agreements, using negotiations with likeminded or relatively less important partners to establish model rules for subsequent use where negotiations will be more challenging. By institutionalizing negotiating positions where stakes are low, negotiators seek to improve the odds of replicating preferred terms in later, more challenging deals. A two-stage regression analysis on trade agreement design from 1965 to 2016 and qualitative probes from the UK and New Zealand support the argument: agreements with less important partners are presented as strategic opportunities to innovate and set precedent. Legal language has a way of sticking around, and states know it. States sign agreements with an eye to the future.

Interval timing in a hierarchical violation-of-expectation task: Dissociable effects of local and global predictions.

Predictability associated with an event influences its perceived time. The two forms of predictions that are often discussed and have a dissociable influence on perceived time are repetition and expectation. However, predictions based on expectation can be seen at multiple levels, potentially leading to an inconsistency in the pattern in which expectation influences perceived time. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate how different levels of predictions impact perceived time. In two separate experiments utilizing visual and auditory stimuli, we used a hierarchical violation-of-expectation paradigm that can dissociate two types of predictions based on local and global rules. Results from analysis of variance computed with local and global predictions revealed a pattern of local and global predictions having a distinct influence on perceived time. More specifically, while the local predictions that consider the immediate stimulus exposure reduced the perceived time, the global predictions that consider the overall regularities of a given context increased the perceived time. These results integrate well with the recent theoretical models rooted in a predictive coding framework that emphasizes the opposing effects of the first order and second order predictions on perceived time.

Causes and Impacts of Global Minimum Tax

To address remaining Base Erosion and Profit Shifting problems and challenges arising from the digitalisation of the economy, the OECD conceives an inclusive framework on the Two-Pillar approach, in which Pillar Two envisages a global minimum tax, also known as Global Anti-Base Erosion Rule, setting a floor for enterprises’ tax-avoidance structures and jurisdictions’ tax race to the bottom. This essay adopts study methods of literature review, case study, and data analysis, trying to make a comprehensive study on the causes, concrete rules, and potential impacts of the global minimum tax thus providing ideas for its implementation.

Dance with Glauthoritarian Urbanization: An Entrepreneurial Megacity in the Making through the Lenses of Civic Organizations

How do formal civic organizations shape—and how are they shaped by—the making and transformation of urban space? Place-oriented civil society research emphasizes the central role of civic organizations in producing and changing unequal political and economic orders of cities but largely ignores the intercity connections and competitions that contribute to these local civic dynamics in a global capitalist system. Critical urban studies, in contrast, recognizes the influences of global capitalism and local city boosterism on city development but overlooks the paradoxical roles of formal civic organizations. Bringing the two scholarly camps in dialogue, this article explores how formal civic organizations are situated in entrepreneurial city-making in the Global South, when city governments promote their competitive advantage by boosting “social innovation” through nonprofits. Drawing on survey, interview, and social media data from a random sample of nonprofits in Shenzhen, China, our preliminary results highlight that the Shenzhen municipal government’s agenda to promote both global capitalism and authoritarian rules have shaped the urban spaces where nonprofits form and operate. In turn, nonprofits mediate the negotiations between the local state, market, and urban residents to create, transform, and reinvent unequal physical, social, and digital urban space in this Silicon Valley of China.

The growing pains of actorness: the European Union in global investment governance

ABSTRACT Foreign investment is governed by thousands of international investment agreements (IIAs), many of which include investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions. Member states have played a prominent role in the evolution and shape of this decentralized global investment regime. The EU itself has become an actor in this regime since gaining competence in this area in 2009. This article examines the manners by which investment policies of the EU and its member states have evolved over time and their implications for the EU’s actorness. Using, first, the concept and metric of state regulatory space, we show that the EU is more enthusiastic than its member states about reforms, but that a lack of internal cohesiveness and a competitive external environment limit its actorness. Second, drawing on recent discussions on ISDS reforms, we highlight the increasing ability of the EU to speak up with one voice on global investment rules.

Beyond abortion: impacts of the expanded global gag rule in Kenya, Madagascar and Nepal

Since 1984, Republican administrations in the US have enacted the global gag rule (GGR), which prohibits non-US-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from providing, referring for, or counselling on abortion as a...

Viral Governance: How Unilateral U.S. Sanctions Changed the Rules of Financial Capitalism

This article presents how global governance went viral as its targets moved from sovereign to corporate entities and its source from multilateral financial institutions to domestic U.S. institutions. It argues that viral governance describes how the United States rewrote global rules through its sanctions program first against Iran, then against Iran-affiliated global banks and businesses, and finally against the daily compliance practices of global money, information, and technology flows in general. Utilizing over 150 interviews with international experts in the field of sanctions and banking, the article describes the recursive process that led the U.S. government to assume global regulatory powers and to initiate deglobalization in its trade war against the European Union and China. The article concludes that viral governance perpetuates crises, whereas multilateral governance seeks to extinguish crises; it operates through sustained legal uncertainty over the jurisdictional limits of the hegemonic power, while multilateral governance seeks to absorb legal uncertainty; it requires the abolition of all regulatory counterpowers, whereas multilateral governance can allow strong states to assume the equality of sovereign powers.

TAPED를 활용한 글로벌 디지털무역규범의 형성과 아시아-태평양 지역무역협정의 역할에 관한 연구

As digital trade negotiations have been stalemated at the multilateral level, major countries started to utilize regional trade agreements to establish new and innovative trade rules in the digital era. Using ‘Trade Agreements Provisions on Electronic-commerce and Data (TAPED)’, this paper finds out that the Asia-Pacific (AP) region plays a positive and leading role in shaping global digital trade rules. In each five categories, such as ‘General and Dispute Settlement’, ‘Digital Trade Facilitation’, ‘Digital Trade Regulatory Frameworks and Digital Trust Policies’, ‘Reducing Digital Trade Barriers’, ‘Innovative Technology, Digital Development and Inclusion, and Institutional Coordination’, AP regional trade agreements contain more diverse rules and superior in quantity to American or European ones. The AP region, which was marginalized in the process of shaping traditional trade rules, now leads global negotiations on the new trade agenda. To see a new global trade regime in the digital era, it is crucial to keep a close eye on Asia-Pacific.

A Primary Research on Legislation of Leading Maritime City Development of Xiamen

Based on the relatively comprehensive evaluation system and definition constructed by Menon Economics and DNV in "The leading maritime cities of the world"[1], the government needs to consider shipping, finance and law, maritime technology, attractiveness&competitiveness when building a global leading maritime city five dimensions. This article will study from a legal point of view, taking Xiamen as a case study.
 If Xiamen wants to build a leading maritime city of the world, the legislation of the sea is an area that cannot be ignored. The Xiamen Municipal Government is very concerned about areas that can significantly increase GDP, such as maritime technology and marine industries. While, insufficient attention has been paid to the Legislation of the Sea. Like Shenzhen's political status, Xiamen is a "Special Economic Zone" and "Independent Planning Status". The Xiamen government enjoys legislative powers beyond that of general cities. However, due to the late start of constructing the Maritime legal system in Xiamen, there are many shortcomings: marine lack of collaboration mechanism, lack of soft power of the maritime rule of law, etc. Therefore, the Xiamen Municipal Government should first understand the importance of the legislation of the sea and then make up for the shortcomings as soon as possible. While reasonably learning from advanced international experience such as British law, we should promote the process of China's "Basic Law of the Sea" legislation and promote the progress of Xiamen's legislation of the sea to promote Xiamen's relevant laws such as sea-related dispute settlement. The establishment of service institutions enables Xiamen to actively participate in the governance of the global marine legal system, enhance the public's awareness of marine legal affairs, and cultivate specialized marine legal elites. (Independent Planning Status： Municipalities with Independent Planning Status under the National Social and Economic Development. ) Under the background of Xiamen's concentrated resources to build the world-leading maritime city, this paper analyzes the challenges faced by Xiamen's marine economic development, combined with China's national strategy. It analyzes the current situation of Xiamen from the perspective of law construction. Learn from experience with U.K. marine-related law. The feasibility of legislation in Xiamen is analyzed.
 The path of law construction is put forward: ① Constructing the legal system of the maritime rule of law; ② Constructing a settlement center for maritime disputes; ③ Paying attention to the global maritime rule of law governance; ④ Enhancing the soft power of the maritime rule of law.
 Legislative suggestions for local governments are put forward: ① Clarify the development orientation of the marine economy; ② Form a planning system and structural layout; ③ Establish an incentive mechanism and supporting measures; ④ Form a financial support service system; ⑤ Formulate safeguard measures for coordinated development; ⑥ Clarify the content of Taiwan cooperation and international development.

Art World Fields and Global Hegemonies

AbstractThis paper investigates the art world as a setting for hegemonic status or prestige politics. Powerful states engage in art world status-seeking but appear to face challenges distinct to the art world in so doing. To explain, I adopt a Bourdieusian forms of capital approach, framing the art world as a social field with distinctive contentious dynamics and symbolic politics. I argue states must work through art world networks and institutions to pursue status there, observing local rules in so doing. I frame art world prestige as symbolic capital—the overt, observable pursuit of which tends to undermine any gains. Hegemonic incumbents and challengers face differing such constraints. The existing global art world models rules and standards by homology on that of the current hegemon. A challenger must adapt to this status quo before they can revise it. I unpack these dynamics in the cases of America, China, and India. I focus on their shifting standing in the global art market and performances of national aggrandizement at a recurring global art world event: the Venice Biennale.

Trade Compliance Diagnosis in a Small Exporter Mexican Company

An indicator of business competitiveness, at a global level, is the presence in international markets. It results in an extremely complex issue when the legal framework for this purpose is not known. Trade Compliance is defined as the observance of tariff and non-tariff barriers for the legal compliance of the considered country in the international planning of a company's operations. The objective of this work was to carry out a Trade Compliance diagnosis in a small, Mexican company of the chemical industry for construction with 15 years in the market, through the revision of the procedures that the company performs for the development of international markets, based on the changes in the Mexican legislation to the year 2022. It is an applied case study with descriptive scope and non-experimental design. A verification guide was used to collect information based on the current legal framework, in addition to documentary information from secondary sources. The results show that the company complies with the guidelines of both Mexican regulations and global rules of origin. A continuous review of the import-export processes and their consequent adaptation to the International Treaties on International Trade is proposed.

The Nuremberg Trials Public Communications Apparatus

Abstract If the Nuremberg Trials represent the birth of international criminal law (ICL), then the public relations efforts of their personnel represent the birth of ‘communication in international criminal justice’. This aspect of the Allied post-World War II prosecutions of Nazi war criminals has been hitherto underexplored in the literature. This article fills the gap by examining the origins and development of American efforts to give an account of the Nuremberg Trials while they were unfolding and in their immediate aftermath. It begins with the public relations (PR) efforts of Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the initial International Military Tribunal (IMT) trial of the major Nazi war criminals, and his PR ‘right hand man’, Gordon Dean. Jackson and Dean took a multi-prong approach to messaging about the IMT, seeking to educate their Allied partners about the strategic advantages of a due-process-oriented proceeding, while persuading the American political establishment about the nascent Cold War-positioning advantages of such a justice strategy, as well as disabusing the global citizenry of the ‘victors’ justice’ narrative in favour of a ‘global rule of law’ mythology. Once the IMT trial was concluded, and confrontational US-Soviet bipolar reality became entrenched, American personnel for the subsequent Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT) trials took a different tact. In terms of outreach efforts, PR now focused on German attitudes toward prosecution efforts: NMT staff used appeals to justice in a heroic effort to keep resources flowing and the trial timelines open-ended. Bureaucratically, the PR apparatus eventually flowed to the creation of a ‘Special Projects Branch’, which sought to present the public with key excerpts from the NMT trials and provide various German prosecutors’ offices with transcripts and evidence for potential future trials. From its inception, therefore, ICL’s embryonic PR-sphere served as a battleground for competing concerns of transnational justice versus global realpolitik. Between those diametrically opposed policy poles, it carved out a space for education efforts vis-à-vis the local population, preservation of the historical record, and creation of a nascent bureaucratic structure for PR efforts. These modest achievements would lay the groundwork for the modern development of the field of communication in international criminal justice.

The U.S. Global Gag Rule in Ethiopia: a foreign policy challenging domestic sexual and reproductive health and rights gains

BackgroundEthiopia’s government and civil society have driven crosscutting initiatives in the last 15 years to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes, including passing a 2005 abortion law that facilitated reduced rates of maternal death due to unsafe abortion. However, both the government and nongovernmental organizations have relied on external funding for sexual and reproductive health and rights, particularly from the U.S. government, which has been Ethiopia’s largest global health donor. This article explores how the implementation and expansion of the 2017–2021 U.S. foreign policy “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance,” also known as the Global Gag Rule—which attached itself to a nongovernmental organization’s funding—impacted sexual and reproductive health and rights, including safe abortion care, in Ethiopia.MethodsThis article is based on research conducted by PAI staff in Ethiopia in 2018 with follow-up in 2019. PAI held in-depth semistructured interviews with representatives of 30 organizations in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Among these groups were U.S.-based and non-U.S. nongovernmental organizations, including community-based organizations, non-U.S. government donors, and Ethiopian government officials.ResultsNongovernmental organizations have been essential to sexual and reproductive health service provision and advocacy in Ethiopia. Because of the sector’s reliance on U.S. global health assistance, these organizations; their activities; and, consequently, the wider health system were negatively impacted by the Global Gag Rule. Certain vulnerable groups, particularly adolescents and youth, have traditionally relied on the private sector for sexual and reproductive health services. PAI’s research demonstrates that U.S. policy disrupted activities and service delivery, threatened the closure of private clinics, stalled mobile outreach, and impacted safe abortion training of health personnel. Additionally, the Global Gag Rule dismantled partnerships, affected non-U.S. government donors’ investments, and caused confusion that limited activities permissible under the policy.ConclusionsThe Trump administration’s Global Gag Rule forced non-U.S. organizations to choose between providing comprehensive care or losing U.S. global health assistance, ultimately impacting populations in need of services. Ethiopia provides a clear example of how the Global Gag Rule can threaten a country’s domestic health agenda by targeting nongovernmental organizations that are vital to health service delivery and safe abortion care.

Impact of the Trump Administration's Expanded Global Gag Rule Policy on Family Planning Service Provision in Ethiopia.

The Global Gag Rule (GGR) makes non‐U.S. nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) ineligible for U.S. Government global health funding if they provide, refer, or promote access to abortion. This study quantitatively examines the impacts of the GGR on family planning service provision in Ethiopia. Using a panel of health facilities (2017–2020), we conduct a pre–post analysis to investigate the overall changes in family planning service provision before and after the policy came into effect in Ethiopia. Our pre–post analyses revealed post‐GGR reductions in the proportions of facilities reporting family planning provision through community health volunteers (−5.6, 95% CI [−10.2, −1.0]), mobile outreach visits (−13.1, 95% CI [−17.8, −8.4]), and family planning and postabortion care service integration (−4.8, 95% CI: [−9.1, −0.5]), as well as a 6.1 percentage points increase in contraceptive stock‐outs over the past three months (95% CI [−0.6, 12.8]). We further investigate the impacts of the GGR on facilities exposed to noncompliant organizations that did not sign the policy and lost U.S. funding. We do not find any significant additional impacts on facilities in regions more exposed to noncompliant organizations. Overall, while the GGR was slow to fully impact NGOs in Ethiopia, it ultimately resulted in negative impacts on family planning service provision.

Perfect cycles in the synchronous Heider dynamics in complete network.

We discuss a cellular automaton simulating the process of reaching Heider balance in a fully connected network. The dynamics of the automaton is defined by a deterministic, synchronous, and global update rule. The dynamics has a very rich spectrum of attractors including fixed points and limit cycles, the length and number of which change with the size of the system. In this paper we concentrate on a class of limit cycles that preserve energy spectrum of the consecutive states. We call such limit cycles perfect. Consecutive states in a perfect cycle are separated from each other by the same Hamming distance. Also the Hamming distance between any two states separated by k steps in a perfect cycle is the same for all such pairs of states. The states of a perfect cycle form a very symmetric trajectory in the configuration space. We argue that the symmetry of the trajectories is rooted in the permutation symmetry of vertices of the network and a local symmetry of a certain energy function measuring the level of balance and frustration of triads.

Emerging Powers, Leadership, and South–South Solidarity: The Battle Over Special and Differential Treatment at the WTO

AbstractEmerging powers, such as China and India, have used claims of developing world leadership and South–South solidarity to strengthen their bargaining position in WTO negotiations. Yet analysis of the growing battle over special and differential treatment (SDT) suggests that such claims are increasingly tenuous. The question of how emerging economic powers should be classified and treated under global trade rules has become an acute source of conflict in the trade regime. The emerging powers insist on access to SDT as an unconditional right of developing countries. But in a debate dominated by the emerging and established powers, the interests of most developing countries have been largely overlooked. Drawing on the cases of agriculture and fisheries – two areas of international trade of particular importance to the developing world – I show that extending SDT to the emerging powers is increasingly problematic for global development. In these areas, many emerging economies are now among the world's largest subsidizers, and the harmful effects of their policies are felt most keenly by other developing countries. Granting SDT to exempt emerging subsidizers from WTO disciplines would therefore undermine efforts to use global trade rules to promote global development, as well as to protect the environment.

Analysis of distribution path optimization algorithm based on big data technology

The traditional e-commerce logistics distribution path optimization algorithm has the problem of a long time to find the optimal path. To solve this problem, this paper designs an e-commerce logistics distribution path optimization algorithm in the context of big data, introduces NSGA-II evolutionary algorithm for solving multi-objective optimization problems, combines improved genetic algorithm to solve multi-objective terminal distribution path optimization model in new retail mode to obtain the Pareto optimal solution set of the research problem in this paper, and then establishes a multi-objective function for logistics distribution path optimization through five aspects: weight index, time efficiency index, customer importance index. In this paper, in the process of using the ant colony algorithm to solve the optimization of the end-delivery path of e-commerce logistics, global pheromone update rules such as the ant-perimeter model will be used for the pheromone update in the ant pathfinding process. Then, the multi-objective function of logistics distribution path optimization is established by five aspects: weight index, timeliness index, customer importance index, time window index, total path index, and finally, the distribution target weights are set to find the better distribution path in the objective function according to the different demands of e-commerce logistics, to complete the e-commerce logistics distribution path optimization. We were able to save 6.6% on the route optimized by the ant colony algorithm over the empirical route under the condition of path optimization with the ant colony algorithm. The experimental comparison results show that the designed e-commerce logistics distribution path optimization algorithm in the context of big data is shorter than the traditional algorithm to find the optimal path, which can reduce the e-commerce logistics distribution time and has certain practical application significance.

After compliance in India and beyond: a theory of implementation dilemmas and comparative institutional analysis

ABSTRACT Using India as a theory building case, this paper puts forward a theoretical framework for understanding countries’ responses to global rules and implementation effects across diverse global governance regimes and contexts. The initial premise for this paper is that the strategic structure of implementation dilemmas faced by states and actors within countries need to be understood in addition to design dilemmas. Successful global regimes must not only solve cooperation and uncertainty problems at the initial stages in choosing the right institutional matrix, but also ‘require changes in domestic institutions.’ The need to change domestic institutions creates certain implementation dilemmas. These dilemmas are a joint product of the institutional design, specific policy issue and the domestic logic of responses after international agreements have been signed. This broader idea helps understand a wide variety of India’s interactions across global governance institutions. I also suggest a novel empirical strategy of cross-institutional analysis to assess implementation dilemmas. While we have numerous cross-national studies of how compliance occurs in a wide variety of countries, we lack theory-driven, empirically grounded, comparative studies of a single country or a group of countries across diverse global regimes. Such a framework can help us better understand how countries interact with a variety of global institutions and the reciprocal effects. This framework is then used to understand India’s interactions with diverse global regimes in an illustrative manner in this article, and in greater detail by other authors in the section published in this issue of Contemporary South Asia.

A novel shuffled frog-leaping algorithm with reinforcement learning for distributed assembly hybrid flow shop scheduling

Distributed hybrid flow shop scheduling (DHFS) problem has attracted much attention in recent years; however, DHFS with actual processing constraints like assembly is seldom considered and reinforcement learning is hardly embedded into meta-heuristic for DHFS. In this study, a distributed assembly hybrid flow shop scheduling (DAHFS) problem with fabrication, transportation and assembly is considered and a mathematic model is constructed. A new shuffled frog-learning algorithm with Q-learning (QSFLA) is proposed to minimise makespan. A three-string representation is used. A newly defined Q-learning process is embedded into QSFLA to select a search strategy dynamically for memeplex search. It is composed of four actions based on the combination of global search, neighbourhood search and solution acceptance rule, six states depicted by population evaluation on elite solution and diversity, and a newly defined reward function. A number of experiments are conducted. The computational results demonstrate that QSFLA can provide promising results on the considered DAHFS.

Влияние политики лидеров цифровизации – членов «Группы двадцати» на механизмы международного регулирования и условия развития цифровой экономики

Given the increasing importance of the digital economy, competition for digital technologies and solutions, as well as the contest to influence norms, standards, and regulatory mechanisms, is escalating. This influence is distributed unevenly—digitalization leaders, primarily the key Group of 20 (G20) members, gain significant advantages, increasing their potential for shaping digital regulation through the consistent inclusion of domestic standards and norms in the documents of multilateral institutions, including the G20, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the United Nations (UN) At the same time, Russia’s impact on the most important aspects of digital economy regulation at the global and regional level is currently limited. The article presents an assessment of the influence wielded by the leading G20 members (the U.S., Canada, the UK, the European Union (EU), Japan, Korea, China and India) on the digital economy’s development and regulation. This assessment serves as the basis for recommendations on Russia’s approaches to the specific aspects of regulation (digital infrastructure development, cybersecurity, regulating digital platforms, regulating global stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), data governance, and artificial intelligence (AI) policies) at the national level, as well as its engagement in the G20 and other multilateral institutions. The analysis indicates that the leading countries affect the digital economy mainly by determining conditions for activities in their domestic digital markets and participating in shaping new global standards and rules. In the areas of digital infrastructure development, cybersecurity, and data governance, there are growing contradictions between the approaches of the U.S., the UK, Japan and partly the EU and Korea on the one hand, and Russia, China and India on the other. Recommendations in these areas are related to strengthening coordination within the BRICS group of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to develop common positions and collectively promote them in the G20 and other multilateral institutions. The main recommendations on other regulatory aspects include using the experience of digitalization leaders to minimize the risks posed by competitors and to strengthen Russian positions in the global digital economy.