International Trade Negotiations and Domestic Politics: The Intermestic Politics of Trade Liberalization

In spite of many years of negotiation on trade liberalization, progress seems to have stalled. This book explores why resistance to further market liberalization seems so strong, given that the benefits are seen to outweigh the costs.

This volume argues that in order to understand the slow progress of World Trade Organization negotiations, we need to take into consideration the ’intermestic’ character of trade politics, that is, the way in which international and domestic aspects of politics and policies have been woven together and become inextricably related to each other. This is a general trend in our globalizing world, and one that is most pronounced in the case of trade politics and policy.

International Trade Negotiations and Domestic Politics therefore presents an in-depth analysis of institutions, ideas, interests and actors in the interplay between international trade negotiations and national negotiating positions. At the international level the authors focus on the multilateral negotiations within the World Trade Organization, together with the plurilateral and bilateral negotiations on free trade agreements. At the regional and domestic level they analyze the trade politics and policies of two established powers, the European Union and the USA; two rising powers, China and India; and a small industrialized country with an open economy, Norway.

Oluf Langhelle is Professor of Political Science at the University of Stavanger, Norway.