Financial Services in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) can deepen the already substantial ties that bind the United States and the European Union in the world's largest economic and strategic alliance. Since both sides have included financial services in prior trade pacts, they implicitly recognized that the TTIP would also cover this sector. But what will be included in the financial services chapter is still subject to debate. Particular concerns arise about how the TTIP could impact the still unsettled European financial reforms and the introduction of new US rules pursuant to the Dodd-Frank legislation of 2010 or other potential US regulatory initiatives. The authors believe that the TTIP can complement the extensive efforts already in train in financial forums by making regulatory policies more transparent and by creating opportunities for trade and investment in financial services in both markets. A broader role for TTIP in harmonizing financial regulation is not an appealing idea—and not one that sits well with current US official thinking.
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership: Limits on negotiating behind the border barriers
Abstract This special issue focuses on the difficulties of negotiating the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), with contributions by scholars from different perspectives. This introductory article briefly examines the trend to mega-FTAs of which TTIP is a leading example. It then reviews the contributions to this special issue, drawing on an analytical approach that reflects extant work on transnational and transgovernmental relations. This approach, we contend, helps to understand the stark mismatch between the desire of some parties to negotiate binding trade rules on behind-the-border regulatory policies in certain key sectors of national economies and the progress made in TTIP talks. We then highlight the significance of some key actors in a case study of failed E.U. attempts to include financial sector reforms and associated regulatory processes in TTIP.
Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, the Trujillo Regime, and Modernity in Dominican History
This book explores the history of the Dominican Republic as it evolved from the first European colony in the Americas into a modern nation under the rule of Rafael Trujillo. It investigates the social foundations of Trujillo's exceptionally enduring and brutal dictatorship (1930-1961) and, more broadly, the way power is sustained in such non-democratic regimes. The author reveals how the seemingly unilateral imposition of power by Trujillo in fact depended on the regime's mediation of profound social and economic transformations, especially through agrarian policies that assisted the nation's large independent peasantry. By promoting an alternative modernity that sustained peasants' free access to land during a period of economic growth, the regime secured peasant support as well as backing from certain elite sectors. This book thus elucidates for the first time the hidden foundations of the Trujillo regime.