Publications

Working Paper
Christina L. Davis. Working Paper. “Competitive Liberalization meets the East Asian Growth Model: the Evolving Trade Order in the Asia-Pacific”.
Christina L. Davis. Working Paper. “Defining Statehood: Exclusion from Universal Organizations ”.
Christina L. Davis. Working Paper. “Deterring Disputes: WTO Adjudication as a Tool for Conflict Management”.Abstract

An eective legal system not only solves specic disputes but also inhibits future violations. This paper examines how the WTO dispute settlment process resolves specic disputes and reduces their future occurrence. First, the process of selecting cases to escalate in the legal venue reveals information about the preferences of defendant and complainant. A third party arbitrator and multilateral membership adds international obligation and reputation as new leverage for compliance. Second, a formal dispute mechanism may have broader impact if the adjudication of one case leads to other countries reforming policies. Each dispute case claries interpretation of the law and enhances the credibility of enforcement.

This paper examines WTO dispute settlement to assess the role of courts to solve disputes and prevent future incidents. The eectiveness of WTO dispute settlement to resolve disputes is tested with statistical analysis of an original dataset of potential trade disputes coded from U.S. government reports on foreign trade barriers. Evidence shows that taking a dispute to the legal forum brings policy change in comparison with outcomes achieved in bilateral negotiations. In addition, past WTO disputes shape the subsequent pattern of trade barriers. Looking more broadly, the declining frequency of complaints led by all members from 1995 to 2015 is consistent with the deterrence argument. While some areas of law encounter repeat litigation, standards and new agreements have shown more resilient enforcement. Furthermore, analysis of the ling patterns from 1975 to 2012 suggests that the increase of legalization in the WTO has established deterrence eects that were absent in the GATT period. Looking more closely at individual cases, the paper evaluates how past complaints serve to clarify the law and increase the credibility of enforcement.

davis2016.pdf
Christina L. Davis. Working Paper. “Flexibility by Design: Institutional Provisions for Accession to International Organizations.”.
Christina L. Davis. Working Paper. “Membership Conditionality and Institutional Reform: The Case of the OECD”.Abstract
Conditional membership may be one of the most important sources of leverage for IOs. What underlies the terms of selection and the willingness of applicants to pay the price of entry? The influence of accession conditions has been studied in the context of EU and NATO, where sizable benefits motivate major concessions by applicants. This paper examines a much less powerful organization, the OECD. The organization provides both public goods in the form of policy information and club goods in the form of status. Through a process of self-selection by applicants and screening by members, the organization has managed gradual expansion while preserving its value as an elite club of like-minded states. Informality of accession criteria has allowed flexibility to raise and lower the bar for entry. Statistical analysis highlights broad conditions related to income, democracy, and geopolitics that correlate with earlier entry into the OECD relative to other countries while there are less clear patterns for the role of trade and financial openness. Case studies of Japan, Mexico, Korea, and the Czech Republic are used to examine how prospective OECD membership motivated reforms in regulatory policies and trade. These countries sought to benefit from the status of association with the advanced industrial democracies. On the basis of shared liberal orientation and geopolitical alignment, these outsiders were accepted into the club. At the same time, a case study of Brazil highlights how its refusal to seek OECD membership reflects a political preference to remain distant from the advanced industrial nations even as its economy and policies are more integrated with these states.
davis2016b.pdf
Christina L. Davis. Working Paper. “What Defines a Region? Meritocratic and Club Politics in Regional Organizations”.
Christina L. Davis, Yon Soo Park, and Diana Stanescu. Working Paper. “Foreign Policy or Industrial Policy? The Design of Trade Bureaucracy”.
Christina L. Davis, Jialu Li, and Sayumi Miyano. Working Paper. “Peer Conformity and Competition: How Business Managers Evaluate Firm Withdrawals from Russia”. peerconformity_davislimiyano.pdf
Christina L. Davis and Jialu Li. Working Paper. “Shining Light on Regulatory Policies: The Impact of WTO Rulings on Notification Patterns”. davisli_shininglight.pdf
2023
Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations
Christina L. Davis. 2023. Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations. Princeton University Press.
Yeling Tan and Christina L. Davis. 2023. “The Limits of Liberalization: WTO Entry and Chinese State-Owned Firms.” International Studies Quarterly .Abstract

Does state ownership limit the liberalizing effects of the WTO? We examine the case of China, which is not only the largest exporting state but also lends active support to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that could distort global trade. Using data on import purchases disaggregated by ownership from 1993 to 2012, we analyze how WTO entry affects the commercial orientation of state-owned and private imports. We demonstrate that after WTO entry, tariff cuts have a larger effect on private compared to SOE trade. We then show that state ownership alone does not block the WTO’s liberalizing effects. For most industries, SOEs and private firms are alike in their commercial orientation. However, where strategic goods targeted by industrial policy hold a large share of bilateral trade, lowering tariffs has no impact on SOE trade. These findings highlight the tensions between state-led economic models and global trade law premised upon market principles.

tandavis_isq_2023.pdf
2022
Christina L. Davis and Tyler Pratt. 2022. Description of dataset used in “The Forces of Attraction: How Security Interests Shape Membership in Economic Institutions.”. Political Economist Newsletter. APSA. penewsletter_forces.pdf
Christina L. Davis, Charles Crabtree, Amy Catalinac, Shinju Fujihira, Yusaku Horiuchi, Phillip Y. Lipscy, Frances McCall Rosenbluth, and Daniel M. Smith. 2022. “Workshops Without Borders: Building an Online Community of Japan Scholars”. workshops_without_borders_building_an_online_community_of_japan_scholars76.pdf
2021
Christina Davis. 7/19/2021. To Exit or Remain? The High Stakes of Membership in International Organizations. The Japan Institute of International Affairs . Publisher's Version Japanese Translation
Christina L. Davis. 2/2021. “Japanese Trade Policy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Politics , edited by Robert J. Pekkanen and Saadia M. Pekkanen. Oxford University Press. Publisher's VersionAbstract
This chapter examines Japanese trade policy to explain how economic interests and domestic political institutions have supported the resilience of free trade policies in Japan. The mercantilist ideas and the reactive state model of past years have been replaced by strong support of free trade and Kantei diplomacy to lead in setting rules for the trade regime complex. Once dependent on the United States and mired in bilateral trade friction, Japan has emerged as an active supporter of engagement with China and the pursuit of free trade agreements, alongside continued commitment to the multilateral rules. Japanese-style trade adjustment and the slow path to liberalization served to balance economic efficiency with political stability as the government has supported narrow interests along with long-term trade strategies for economic growth.
davis_japanese_trade_policy_ouphandbook.pdf
Christina L. Davis and Tyler Pratt. 2021. “The Forces of Attraction: How Security Interests Shape Membership in Economic Institutions.” The Review of International Organization, 16, Pp. 903–929.Abstract

The link between security and economic exchange is widely recognized. But when and how much do geopolitical interests matter for economic cooperation? While existing work focuses on bilateral trade and aid, we examine how geopolitics shapes membership in multilateral economic organizations. We demonstrate that substantial discrimination occurs as states welcome or exclude states based on foreign policy similarity. Biased selection of members can politicize economic cooperation despite multilateral norms of non-discrimination. We test the geopolitical origins of institutional membership by analyzing new data on membership patterns for 231 economic organizations from 1949 – 2014. Evidence shows that security ties shape which states join and remain in organizations at both the formation and enlargement stages. We use a finite mixture model to compare the relative power of economic and geopolitical considerations, finding that geopolitical alignment accounts for nearly half of the membership decisions in economic institutions.

davis-pratt_roio2020.pdf
2020
Landscapes of Law: Practicing Sovereignty in Transnational Terrain
Carol J. Greenhouse and Christina L. Davis. 2020. Landscapes of Law: Practicing Sovereignty in Transnational Terrain. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press. Publisher's Version
2019
Christina L. Davis, Andreas Fuchs, and Kristina Johnson. 2019. “State Control and the Effects of Foreign Relations on Bilateral Trade.” Journal of Conflict Resolution, 63, 2, Pp. 405-438.Abstract
Can governments still use trade to reward and punish partner countries? While World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and the pressures of globalization restrict states’ capacity to manipulate trade policies, politicization of trade is likely to occur where governments intervene in markets. We examine state ownership of firms as one tool of government control. Taking China and India as examples, we use new data on bilateral trade disaggregated by firm ownership type as well as measures of political relations based on bilateral events and United Nations voting data to estimate the effect of political relations on import flows since the early 1990s. Our results support the hypothesis that imports controlled by state-owned enterprises are more responsive to political relations than imports controlled by private enterprises. This finding suggests that politicized import decisions will increase as countries with partially state-controlled economies gain strength in the global economy. Extending our analysis to exports for comparison, we find a similar pattern for Indian but not for Chinese exports and offer potential explanations for these differential findings. 
davisetal2019_jcr.pdf
Christina L. Davis. 2019. “Japan: Interest Group Politics, Foreign Policy Linkages, and the TPP.” In Megaregulation Contested: Global Economic Ordering After TPP, edited by Benedict Kingsbury, David M. Malone, Paul Mertenskötter, Richard B. Stewart, Thomas Streinz, and Atsushi Sunami, Pp. 573-591. Oxford : Oxford University Press. davis_oup2019_ch26.pdf
2018
Christina L. Davis. 9/5/2018. “Boeiki senso no yukue, (On the Way to a Trade War).” Nihon Keizai Shimbun. davis_nihonkeizaishimbun_5sept2018.pdf

Pages