Over the past two decades the world economy has been dramatically reshaped by the proliferation of regional and bilateral agreements and by the rise of new economic powers. The growing economic weight of Brazil, China and other emerging economies is well documented. These countries’ insertion into the system of international trade regulation and their role in the structures of global economic governance is however less well understood. This paper looks at attempts of two of these new economic powers (Brazil and China) to transform international trade governance through i.a. unilateral measures, bilateral agreements, and regime-shifting. These efforts respond to attempts by the European Union and the United States to include investment provisions, intellectual property rights and cooperation in non-economic areas in both multilateral and bilateral agreements.
This paper will look at two of the most salient emerging economies representing different constellations of regional integration, regulatory capacity, domestic interests and foreign policy culture. It investigates these countries’ behaviour, and the motivations behind it, in two salient and contested issues of global trade: intellectual property rights (IP) and competition policy. Both issues are at the centre of ongoing and future trade negotiations at the multilateral, regional and bilateral level and are likely to be significantly influenced by the positions taken by emerging markets. Drawing on the theoretical literatures on policy transfer/diffusion, institutional complexity, and external governance the paper also looks at the explanatory potential of power-based, institutionalist and domestic hypotheses.
