Pardee Center Fellows Publish in Denver Journal of International Law and Policy

Rachel Denae Thrasher and Kevin P. Gallagher, both fellows from the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, published their research on 21st Century trade agreements in the Denver Journal of International Law and Policy. The article builds upon and refines the arguments the authors had first made in their Pardee Paper (# 2) on “21st Century Trade Agreements: Implications for Long-Run Development Policy.”

The published article, (Citation: Rachel Denae Thrasher and Kevin P. Gallagher. ’21st Century Trade Agreements: Implications for Development Sovereignty.’ Denver Journal of International Law and Policy. Vol. 38.2, pp. 313-350, Spring 2010) is available for academic use. Please contact the Pardee Center if you would like a PDF version of it.

Download Pardee Paper #2 here.

The paper examines the extent to which the emerging world trading regime leaves nations the “policy space” to deploy effective policy for long-run diversification and development and the extent to which there is a convergence of such policy space under global and regional trade regimes. The paper demonstrates that there is a great divergence among trade regimes over this question. While South-South agreements provide ample policy space for industrial development, the WTO and EU agreements largely represent the middle of the spectrum in terms of constraining policy space choices. On the far end, opposite South-South agreements, US agreements place considerably more constraints by binding parties both broadly and deeply in their trade commitments.