From the Room Where It Happens to the Street: Explaining the Gradual Publicization of Trade Policy-Making in Europe

Abstract

Trade policy-making in Western democracies has become increasingly publicized and politicized over the past two decades, particularly in the European Union (EU). From the first Internet-fueled protests around the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) in 1998 to the parliamentary rejection of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in 2012 and most recently with the massive street protests against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) in 2016, the European public has become increasingly vocal about trade policy. In response, European policy-makers have tried to integrate the public into decision-making through promoting greater negotiating transparency and creating various channels to encourage citizen involvement.

Trade has always been a hotly contested political issue, but in the postwar era it was by design insulated from public influence in order to promote liberalization. Trade policy was made by technocratic experts and lobby groups, and imposed top-down on the general public for three main reasons: insulation from politics leads to liberalization; trade negotiations are highly technical; and secrecy is important to bargaining power. Deals were made in “the room where it happens” by technocrats and approved by politicians tasked with selling the deals to the public. In other words, the policy-making arrow went from the technocrats to the politicians to the public. In recent years, however, it seems that the direction of the public-politician arrow has been reversed.

This thesis analyzes why trade policy-making has become more publicized in Europe in recent years. Using interviews, primary sources, and media reports, this thesis considers six factors to explain this shift: the changing nature of trade and investment negotiations; the rise of social media and online information availability; growing discontent with globalization; institutional changes brought about by the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, including empowerment of the European Parliament in trade and supranational competence over foreign direct investment; external influence; and anti-Americanism.

This thesis concludes that all six explanations, in synergy, have contributed to the publicization of new generation trade deals in Europe, playing out differently in the context of the three most contested deals: ACTA, CETA and TTIP. The publicization of trade policy-making, which in the past has been insulated by design in order to promote liberalization, will undoubtedly have consequences on the nature of globalization. Specifically, it will likely lead to a liberalization slow-down, at least in the transatlantic domain, and it will weaken the legitimacy of European institutions.