Policy space

作者：黄心谷 律师助理

Introduction

After the hype of win-win due to globalization, there have been increasing concerns in the developing countries in terms of their abilities to control their social and economic development, which is being circumscribed by economic integration at a global level (Faundez & Tan, 2010). This is because many of the policy instruments which were used by mature industrialised countries for reaching their current development level are not available anymore due to the international obligations and rules. In addition to this, the increasing reliance on global markets has not been able to generate improvements in living conditions. Hence, policy space has been the most interesting topic for me in terms of international trade policy as it has strongly affected countries like China and India in different aspects in terms of adopting international policies. Therefore, I will provide an overview of policy space followed by the theoretical underpinnings of this topic, along with the reasons due to which it is an important topic in the economic relations at a global level. Based on this analysis, I will highlight the way members of WTO can address this issue.

Understanding Policy Space

Policy space as a term appeared in the documents of UNCTAD, which attained its official status in 2004 in the Consensus of Sao Paulo. It is defined as the scope of policies at the domestic level in terms of industrial, investment, and trade development, which can be framed by international commitments, disciplines, and market considerations at a global level (ODI, 2007). Therefore, it is essential to determine the impact that policy space has on the national policies as well as the freedom of developing countries.

Theory of Economic Policy

The theory of economic policy is considered to serve as an important basis to address the policies’ effectiveness in terms of the evolution of the national economy. Both economists, as well as policymakers who offer policy advice, tend to generally adopt implicitly or explicitly the main elements of this theory. These main elements are the set of instruments which can be controlled directly by the policymakers, the targets which tend to describe the national economy evolution and a model that tends to describe the economic relationship present between targets and instrument (Mayer, 2009). Moreover, this theory also focuses on the choices available for the policymakers for attaining the values which are desired through the application of different instruments. In addition to this, there are two main rules related to the economic policy in which the first is that the policy instruments need to be as many as the targets if the focus is on attaining all the targets.

In the closed economies, policymakers tend to have full command over the different policy instruments, but they might not be able to have complete control over the specific policy targets. In addition to this, the relationship present between the policy instruments and their targets can be unstable while the information and knowledge related to these types of relationships can be incomplete (Mayer, 2009).

Furthermore, to study the relationship between target and instrument in an economy that is internationally integrated, it is important to understand and differentiate between de jure sovereignty and de facto control. The former focuses on the formal authority that national policymakers have over the policy instruments. Hence, it can be stated that policy space refers to the combination of de facto national policy and the de jure policy sovereignty.

This shows that international economic integration tends to affect the policy space due to different forces in opposite directions. The integration process in the global economy tends to restrict the policy space due to the reduction in the number of instruments available due to the legal commitments to the international practices and rules, which shows that it places a constraint on the de jure. In addition to this, it results in a reduction in the effectiveness related to macroeconomic instruments, which is a constraint to the de facto autonomy (Mayer, 2009).

Asymmetry in Following Rules and Policy Spaces

Studies have revealed the way there is an asymmetry in the enforcement of rules between different countries based on resources and economic power (Lee et al., 2013). Moreover, when policies tend to be challenged by WTO members and are not consistent with the rules of WTO, the policies need to be adjusted or abandoned. However, when the defeated nations decline the rulings, retaliation is allowed, but it needs to be done by the interest countries in an individual manner (Lee et al., 2013).

However, there is a case of the US that has been actively using the legal system of WTO in both offensives as well as defensive way. This leads to a continuous problem of noncompliance. Due to this zeroing practice of US, there are many developing countries that have been affected. The main issue behind this US zeroing practice was that the developing countries were forced to bring their cases to WTO for settlement in which US continued to reject the application of WTO ruling.

The scholars can be divided into pragmatic and structural views based on their perception of the possibilities to implement development policies that are effective. On the other hand, pragmatists tend to argue that there is room for manoeuvring the policies of development in the trading system.  

Addressing the Issue

Based on these arguments, I, however, think that there is a limited room in WTO for developing countries for promoting industrial policy. Moreover, both developed as well as developing countries tend to have the same use of policy space (Bora et al., 2000). However, the developing countries are not able to attain a comparative advantage over the developed nations. This is because the different countries tend to have different objectives due to which they require different policy tools for developing their economy. Hence, I believe that level of flexibility should be increased for the developing countries in the WTO to ensure that it accounts for the diversity in the objectives and types of countries. All of these considerations need to be highlighted as the issue can be resolved through some changes in the multilateral agreements.

Conclusion

The most interesting one for me was the concept of policy space, which I considered to be an important element to differentiate between the developed and developing nations. In this regard, the analysis has revealed the way policy space leads to a reduction in the autonomy and control of the policymakers. In addition to this, the analysis revealed that it is a major issue in the present times in which there are large numbers of multilateral agreements that are being used by WTO. It is, however, important to highlight that the policy space available for developed and developing countries need to be different. This will help thee developing countries to achieve autonomy as well as the right to determine which WTO policies they want to implement based on their own specific goals and objectives.

References

Cooper, R. N. (1968), The Economics of Interdependence: Economic Policy in the Atlantic Community. New York: McGraw Hill for the Council on Foreign Relations.

Faundez, J. & Tan, C. (2010). International economic law, globalization and developing countries, Edward Elgar Publishing.

Lee, K.; Shin, W. & Shin, H. (2013). How large is the policy space? WTO regime and industrial policy. Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/cdp/cdp_news_archive/policy_space_klee.pdf.

Mayer, J. (2009). Policy space: what, for what, and where? Development Policy Review, 27(4), pp. 373-385.

ODI (2007). Policy space:  Are WTO rules preventing development? Retrieved from www.odi.org.uk.

Siqueira, PBA & Martins, C.J. (2015). Policy space and policy autonomy under the WTO: A comparison of post-crisis industrial policies in Brazil and the US, Law and Development Review, 8(2), pp. 389-432.

 译文：

介绍

在全球化带来的双赢炒作之后，发展中国家控制其社会和经济发展的能力受到了全球层面经济一体化的限制(Faundez & Tan, 2010)。这是因为成熟工业化国家为达到其目前的发展水平而使用的许多政策工具由于国际义务和规则而不再可用。此外，对全球市场的日益依赖也未能改善生活条件。因此，就国际贸易政策而言，政策空间一直是我最感兴趣的话题，因为它在不同方面对中国和印度等国家采取国际政策产生了强烈影响。因此，我将概述政策空间，然后是本课题的理论基础，以及它成为全球经济关系中重要课题的原因。基于这一分析，我将强调世贸组织成员解决这一问题的方式。

理解政策空间

政策空间一词出现于贸发会议的文件中，该文件于2004年在《圣保罗共识》中获得正式地位。它被定义为国内在产业、投资和贸易发展方面的政策范围，可以由国际承诺、纪律和全球层面的市场考虑来确定(ODI, 2007)。因此，确定政策空间对国家政策和发展中国家自由的影响至关重要。

经济政策理论

经济政策理论被认为是研究国民经济发展过程中政策有效性的重要依据。无论是经济学家，还是提供政策建议的决策者，通常都倾向于含蓄或明确地采纳这一理论的主要要素。这些主要要素是一组可以由决策者直接控制的工具，倾向于描述国民经济演变的目标和一个倾向于描述目标和工具之间的经济关系的模型(Mayer, 2009)。此外，该理论还侧重于决策者可选择的方法，以通过应用不同的工具获得所需的价值。除此之外，与经济政策有关的两条主要规则是，如果重点是实现所有目标，那么政策工具的数量必须与目标的数量相同。

在封闭经济体中，政策制定者往往对不同的政策工具有完全的控制权，但他们可能无法对具体的政策目标有完全的控制权。此外，政策工具与其目标之间的关系可能不稳定，而与这些关系类型相关的信息和知识可能不完整(Mayer, 2009)。

  此外，要研究国际一体化经济中目标和工具之间的关系，了解和区分法定主权和实际控制是很重要的。前者关注的是国家决策者对政策工具拥有的正式权力。因此，政策空间是指事实上的国家政策与法律上的政策主权的结合。

这说明，国际经济一体化由于不同力量的作用，往往会对政策空间产生相反的影响。全球经济的一体化进程往往限制政策空间，因为由于对国际惯例和规则的法律承诺，可用的文书数量减少，这表明它对法律上的限制。除此之外，它还导致了与宏观经济工具相关的有效性的降低，这是对事实上的自治的限制(Mayer, 2009)。

遵循规则和政策空间中的不对称性

研究表明，基于资源和经济实力的不同国家之间的规则执行存在不对称(Lee et al.， 2013)。此外，当政策容易受到WTO成员的挑战，不符合WTO规则时，政策需要调整或放弃。然而，当战败国拒绝裁决时，可以进行报复，但需要利益国以个人的方式进行报复(Lee etal .， 2013)。

然而，有一个例子，美国一直在积极利用WTO的法律体系，无论是在进攻方面还是在防御方面。这将导致持续的不遵从性问题。由于美国的这种归零做法，很多发展中国家都受到了影响。美国这种归零做法背后的主要问题是，发展中国家被迫向世贸组织申诉，而美国继续拒绝世贸组织裁决的适用。

根据他们对实施有效发展政策的可能性的认识，学者们可以分为实用主义和结构性观点。另一方面，实用主义者倾向于主张，在贸易体系中存在着操纵发展政策的空间。

解决这一问题

然而，基于这些论点，我认为，在世贸组织中，发展中国家促进产业政策的空间有限。此外，发达国家和发展中国家倾向于使用相同的政策空间(Bora et al.， 2000)。然而，发展中国家无法获得相对于发达国家的比较优势。这是因为不同的国家有不同的目标，因此他们需要不同的政策工具来发展他们的经济。因此，我认为，应该提高世贸组织中发展中国家的灵活性，以确保它考虑到各国目标和类型的多样性。所有这些考虑都需要强调，因为这个问题可以通过对多边协定作一些修改来解决。

结论

对我来说，最有趣的是政策空间的概念，我认为这是区分发达国家和发展中国家的一个重要因素。在这方面，分析揭示了政策空间导致决策者自主权和控制力减少的方式。此外，分析显示，这是目前的一个主要问题，因为有大量的多边协议正在被世贸组织使用。然而，重要的是要强调发达国家和发展中国家可用的政策空间必须有所不同。这将帮助发展中国家实现自主，并有权根据自己的具体目标和目标来决定要实施哪些WTO政策。