Emerging Powers and the World Trading System

Product Description

Victorious after World War II and the Cold War, the United States and its allies largely wrote the rules for international trade and investment. Yet, by 2020, it was the United States that became the great disrupter – disenchanted with the rules’ constraints. Paradoxically, China, India, Brazil, and other emerging economies became stakeholders in and, at times, defenders of economic globalization and the rules regulating it. Emerging Powers and the World Trading System explains how this came to be and addresses the micropolitics of trade law – what has been developing under the surface of the business of trade through the practice of law, which has broad macro implications. This book provides a necessary complement to political and economic accounts for understanding why, at a time of hegemonic transition where economic security and geopolitics assume greater roles, the United States challenged, and emerging powers became defenders, of the legal order that the United States created.

Review

‘Gregory Shaffer has written a superb analysis of the crisis in the legal order governing world trade. The core of the book consists of co-authored studies of the engagement with the trading system of China, most significantly, but also of Brazil and India. But the decisive actor now turns out to be the US, which has increasingly lost faith in the system it created. In future, suggests Shaffer, international rules must grant countries greater room to act and also to react to the actions of others. Yet an agreed interface between systems is also vital if the world is to enjoy a measure of stability and peace.’ Martin Wolf, Financial Times

‘Emerging Powers and the World Trading System is essential reading for policymakers and academics alike.’ Ian Bremmer, President of Eurasia Group, founder of GZERO Media

‘Gregory Shaffer unpacks an extraordinarily complex set of facts, rules, politics, and decisions across multiple countries in the service of three basic and important questions about power shifts in the global trading system. His focus on ‘legal capacity’ is striking, merging legal, political and sociological analysis to demonstrate the ways in which private power – the training and deployment of lawyers and arbitrators – and public power intersect. Emerging Powers and the World Trading System makes an important theoretical as well as empirical contribution.’ Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO New America

‘This fascinating book shows how international trade law changed China, India, and Brazil – and how these countries in turn changed trade law. It thereby sheds light on an important puzzle: how is it that the United States, the predominant power behind the shaping of the current international trade regime, came to see itself as a victim of it? Shaffer’s superb account is a model of how to analyze the constitutive aspects of the law without ignoring the role of economic and political power.’ Dani Rodrik, Ford Foundation Professor of International Political Economy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

‘Shaffer broadens our gaze, deepens our knowledge, and connects the micro to the macro in explaining how the international trade regime works. In doing so, he not only furnishes us with critical knowledge of Brazil, India, and China, and their relation to the trade law system; he also provides a masterclass in how to undertake transnational research.’ Anthea Roberts, Professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance, Australia National University

‘A monumental achievement! Not only does Shaffer provide a comprehensive elucidation of how we got to where we are on trade law, but he also lays out a broader framework and methodology for understanding how the international system changes over time. A superb example of work that is both theory-generating and empirically grounded, with implications for multiple disciplines.’ Tom Ginsburg, Leo Spitz Professor of International Law and Professor of Political Sc