Parochial global Europe

Surprisingly, while trade policy has been one of the first and most important supranational competences of the European Union, a comprehensive book on this policy domain was not on the market before this project by Alasdair Young and John Peterson. It is, therefore, an understatement that this is a timely contribution—all the more because trade policy has come to the centre of political and public attention in the EU lately, with the negotiations on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US since 2013. Young and Peterson have been working on this project since 2003. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that this is like having started a book on social media in the same year as Facebook or Twitter were founded. Many things have changed in global and EU trade politics over the past ten years, all of which Young and Peterson skilfully incorporate into this book; its subtitle is indeed apposite. But this book provides much more than a simple historical overview of EU trade policy, a description of how EU trade policy is made or an analysis of EU policy positions vis-à-vis diverse trading partners. What distinguishes this book from articles or book chapters on the subject is its analytical depth. The authors argue that it is inappropriate to speak of one homogenous EU trade policy field, rather the domain is composed of very different trade policies, or ‘trade policy sub-systems’. These trade policy sub-systems are clusters of decisions that impact on EU trade flows with different interest group constellations and on decision-making rules and dominant policy objectives. How these variables produce trade policy positions is also influenced by the relative power of the EU, which varies over time and relative to that of trading partners. Consequently, decisions on the EU's unilateral trade programme with developing countries—the Generalized System of Preferences—have a completely different dynamic than bilateral trade negotiations with the United States or anti-dumping measures against China. Overall, the authors convincingly show that EU trade policy can be understood as a composite domain. Their approach demonstrates that the inconsistencies and puzzles within EU trade policy, often the object of scholarly analyses, are not surprising and obscure, but understandable and even predictable

Brexit · Commercial policy · Economics · European union · International trade · Political science · Politics · Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership · European Union Policy and Governance · Law · Regional Development and Policy