Professional Affiliation

Eric Dennis Memorial Professor of Government and Political Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

Expert Bio

When I finished my doctoral studies, I thought the two subjects with legs in international studies were nationalism (the formation and destruction of nation states) and negotiation (the primary means, outside of war, that national governments deal with each other). I decided to pursue negotiation because of the greater prospect of blending theoretical study with practical application. And I further chose to focus on non-conflictual economic negotiations because it was there I thought the instrument had the greatest opportunity to change, rather than merely maintain, our inherited world system. I initiated a study of the GATT Kennedy Round trade negotiation in the early 1970s. This subject was so complex that I needed to create a laboratory simulation of multilateral trade negotiations to better understand the process. This simulation was later adapted for the training of foreign service officers in Canada and the U.S., and a revised version continues to be used in three languages for training trade officers from developing countries at the World Trade Organization. Modeling a trade negotiation provided a valuable glimpse on the process that was not reflected in the theoretical literature on negotiation. In the late 1970s, I wrote a series of articles that explored negotiation as a bureaucratic and two-fronted process (international and domestic), and which analyzed generally the management of complexity in negotiation. At the same time I commenced a study of the Tokyo Round trade negotiation, and pursued in the analysis of a real negotiation some of the ideas I had developed in theoretical work. In the early 1980s I joined the research team of the Macdonald Royal Commission on the Economy, which called for bilateral free trade with the U.S., a reversal of Canada's traditional stance. I subsequently served on an advisory committee to the trade minister, worked on legislative changes to Canada's Trade Act (SIMA) for a Parliamentary Committee, and served as a panelist on seven NAFTA (and FTA) dispute settlement panels. These experiences helped to move my interests toward trade policy and away from negotiation theory. What also shifted my interests was the excitement of the completion of the Uruguay Round negotiation (which I am researching) and the intellectual and institutional innovations brought by the creation of the World Trade Organization. Trade policy is said to be an amalgam of politics, economics, and law, but because trade is an increasingly mature system, law and rules-based behavior are increasingly emphasized. Accordingly, in about 1990, I started teaching a course on international trade law at Dalhousie Law School. In the project on food safety I will tackle at the Wilson Center, the case arguably begins with a legal conflict between trade and environmental treaties in international politics, but it invokes the political and economic interests of major trading powers, for which the eventual solution will necessarily be a negotiated agreement. This project thus represents an amalgam of the interests I have pursued throughout my academic career. Along the way I have carried out my share of administrative tasks, including seven years as director of Dalhousie's Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, three years as department chair, and five years as chair of the Budget Advisory Committee, where I was tasked, along with two university vice-presidents, to prepare the university operating budget for the president. One learns much from these tasks, especially that while one might like to be inspired by Kant, one must nevertheless grapple with Machievelli.

Expertise

International political economy; international trade policy and law; negotiation behavior

Wilson Center Project

"International Trade, Environment, and the Politics of Regime Conflict"

Project Summary

This research project will examine conflict between the trade and environment regimes in international relations, particularly on the issue of food safety. The focus will be on the apparent inconsistency of the "precautionary principle" in the recently-negotiated Cartegena Protocal on Biosafety (January, 2000) and the principle of "scientific risk assessment" in the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Even though this issue is not as visible as some public demonstrations (eg, Seattle), it could have profound effects on international institutions, cross-national politics, and the incorporations of technology in a globalizing world. More generally, regime conflict, which is relatively new in international relations, should be examined because of its practical and theoretical consequences.

Major Publications

• International Trade and the Tokyo Round Negotiation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
  
  
• The Evolution of International Trade Agreements. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.
  
  
• "The World Trade Organization: Institution-Building in the Multilateral Trade System." World Economy 21:3, May 1998.