Chaire de recherche du Canada en ÉPI

Université Laval

chair holder

Jean-Frédéric Morin is Full Professor at the Political Science Department of Laval University (Québec City, Canada). Before holding the Canada Research Chair in International Political Economy, he was professor of international relations at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) from 2008 to 2014.

Jean-Frédéric's research looks at international institutions. He is particularly interested in how international institutions innovate, interact and evolve. Empirically, he looks at institutions in the fields of trade, outer space, and environmental governance. 

He is the creator of the TREND dataset (on trade/environemnt), the SAGE dataset (on space institutions) and he co-directs the IEADB (on environmental agreements) 

His publications have appeared in journals such as International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Organizations, International Interactions, Global Governance, Global Environmental Politics, and Review of International Political Economy.

Committed to public communication and interdisciplinary collaborations, Jean-Frédéric is Fellow of the Trudeau Foundation, Member of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) College, Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Member of the Steering Committee of the Environmental Politics & Governance (EPG) network, Senior Research Fellow at the Earth System Governance (ESG) Project, Fellow of the Canadian International Council (CIC), member of McGill University's Center for Intellectual Property Policy (CIPP), member of Université de Montréal's Centre de recherche en droit prospectif (CRDP), member of the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative (CIREQ) affiliated with the Ostrom Workshop at University of Indiana, alumnus of Action Canada (2004-2005) and alumnus of the Fulbright Scholar program (2018-2019). At Université Laval, he is a member of ESEI, EDS and CREATE.

Jean-Frédéric has (co)supervised more than one hundred master students, 20 PhD candidates and 8 postdoctoral fellows. He is the recipient of the FSS award for graduate students mentorship (2020) and the UL award for excellence in graduate student supervision (2023). He is available to supervise PhD candidates working on international institutions or global governance.

Canada Research Chair in International Political Economy
Political Science Departement
Building De Koninck, 1030 av. des Sciences-Humaines, office 2439
Université Laval

Québec (Québec) G1V 0A6, CANADA
Email : jean-frederic.morin@pol.ulaval.ca

Research interest

Global governance; global environmental politics; trade agreements; capacity building; biodiversity; global commons; investment treaties; institutional interactions; transnational network;  policy diffusion; complex adaptive systems, regime complexes; space debris; polycentric governance;  

Teaching

POL-1005 Introduction to International Relations (in French)

POL-7036 Global Environmental Governance (in French)

Books

  • Brandi, C & JF Morin (2023) Trade and the Environment: Drivers and Effects of Environmental Provisions in Trade Agreements. Cambridge University Press. 


    The mushrooming of trade agreements and their interlinkages with environmental governance calls for new research on the trade and environment interface. The more than 700 existing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) include ever more diverse and far-reaching environmental provisions. While missed opportunities remain and harmful provisions persist, numerous environmental provisions in PTAs entail promising potential. They promote the implementation of environmental treaties and cover numerous environmental issues. New concepts, data, and methods, including detailed content analysis across multiple institutions, are needed to explain these interlinkages and understand whether and how PTAs with environmental provisions can contribute to tackling global environmental challenges. Making use of the most extensive coding of environmental provisions in PTAs to date and combining quantitative data with qualitative analyses, this Element provides a comprehensive yet fine-grained picture of the drivers and effects of environmental provisions in PTAs. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.


    Voir la publication originale

  • Coman, R., A. Crespy, F. Louault, J-F Morin, J-B Pilet et Emilie, van Haute (2022), Méthodes de la science politique: De la question de départ à l'analyse des données, de Boeck. (2e edition)


    Un manuel qui met l'accent sur les méthodes et méthodologies propres à la science politique, avec des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche.

    Une initiation à la recherche en science politique à travers :

    • une présentation pédagogique des méthodes de collecte et d’analyse des données
    • des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche
    • des exemples concrets extraits de la littérature récente
    • des tableaux de synthèse, des mises en situation et des définitions des termes clés

    Pour apprendre à :

    • réaliser un travail scientifique
    • élaborer une stratégie de recherche
    • choisir et collecter les données pertinentes
    • analyser et interpréter les résultats
    • identifier les forces et les faiblesses de chaque méthode

    Avec exercices interactifs en fin de chapitres pour intégrer et réviser la matière

    Table des matières

    • Chapitre 1 : La science politique, une mosaïque de postures
    • Chapitre 2 : Les approches théoriques
    • Chapitre 3 : Les grandes options méthodologiques
    • Chapitre 4 : Les étapes de la construction d’une stratégie de recherche
    • Chapitre 5 : Enquêtes et bases de données
    • Chapitre 6 : Les méthodes expérimentales
    • Chapitre 7 : Les entretiens
    • Chapitre 8 : L’analyse de discours et de contenu 
    • Chapitre 9 : L'analyse des réseaux sociaux
    • Chapitre 10 : Le traçage de processus dans une étude de cas
    • Chapitre 11 : L’observation empirique

    Voir la publication originale

  • Morin, J-F and J. Paquin (2018) Foreign Policy Analysis: A Toolbox, Palgrave.


    This book presents the evolution of the field of foreign policy analysis and explains the theories that have structured research in this area over the last 50 years. It provides the essentials of emerging theoretical trends, data and methodological pitfalls and major case-studies and is designed to be a key entry point for graduate students, upper-level undergraduates and scholars into the discipline. The volume features an eclectic panorama of different conceptual, theoretical and methodological approaches to foreign political analysis, focusing on different models of analysis such as two-level game analysis, bureaucratic politics, strategic culture, cybernetics, poliheuristic analysis, cognitive mapping, gender studies, groupthink and the systemic sources of foreign policy. The authors also clarify conceptual notions such as doctrines, ideologies and national interest, through the lenses of foreign policy analysis.


    Voir la publication originale

  • Coman, R., A. Crespy, F. Louault, J-F Morin, J-B Pilet and Emilie, van Haute (2016), Méthodes de la science politique: De la question de départ à l'analyse des données, de Boeck.


    Manuel mettant en évidence les méthodes et méthodologies propres à la science politique, avec des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche.

    Une initiation à la recherche en science politique à travers : 
    - des conseils pratiques pour mener à bien un travail de recherche 
    - une présentation pédagogique des méthodes de collecte et d’analyse des données 
    - des exemples concrets extraits de la littérature récente 
    - des tableaux de synthèse, des mises en situation et des définitions des termes clés

    Pour apprendre à : 
    - élaborer une stratégie de recherche 
    - choisir et collecter les données pertinentes 
    - analyser et interpréter les résultats 
    - identifier les forces et les faiblesses de chaque méthode


    Voir la publication originale

  • Morin, J-F et A. Orsini (2015) Politique internationale de l'environnement, Presses de Sciences Po.


    Controverses scientifiques, sommets mondiaux, débats Nord/Sud, mouvements sociaux, équité intergénérationnelle, efficacité de la coopération, etc. La politique internationale de l'environnement constitue un domaine foisonnant qui ne cesse de s'enrichir depuis la fin du XXe siècle. Ce manuel permet de s’initier et de mieux comprendre les débats qui animent les spécialistes de la gouvernance internationale de l’environnement. Les changements climatiques sont-ils des facteurs de déclenchement de conflits armés ? La coopération multilatérale doit-elle être considérée comme un échec ? Les firmes transnationales peuvent-elles devenir les alliées des ONG ? La souveraineté nationale est-elle un obstacle à la coopération internationale dans le domaine de l’environnement ? Résolument pédagogique, il favorise la compréhension de concepts et de réalités complexes en proposant des tableaux, des cartes, des diagrammes, des repères chronologiques, des encadrés, un lexique et des liens vers des ressources spécialisées.


    Voir la publication originale

  • Morin, J-F (2012) Politique étrangère : Théories, méthodes et références. Armand Colin. 315 p.


    Pourquoi les pays occidentaux versent-ils davantage d’aide au développement aux autocraties qu’aux démocraties ? Pourquoi le Danemark réussit-il à exercer une influence disproportionnée au sein de l’Union européenne ? Pourquoi le Canada a-t-il fait du maintien de la paix la pierre angulaire de sa politique étrangère ? Ce manuel propose une introduction aux théories et aux méthodes de l’analyse de la politique étrangère. Il passe en revue les principales approches, des classiques aux plus récentes. Plus qu’une simple synthèse, il identifie les courants émergents, les lacunes qui doivent être comblées, les données qui peuvent être mobilisées, les pièges à éviter et les références bibliographiques à creuser. C’est le point d’entrée incontournable pour tous les étudiants, les doctorants et les chercheurs qui entament un projet de recherche sur la politique étrangère.


    Voir la publication originale en format pdf

  • Morin, J-F (2007) Le bilateralisme américain: la nouvelle frontière du droit des brevets, Larcier, 577 p.


    À l’ère de l’économie du savoir, le contrôle sur les richesses immatérielles est devenu un enjeu central des relations internationales. Le droit international des brevets soulève les controverses et les passions. Alors que de vifs débats animent les négociations multilatérales de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce, les États-Unis court-circuitent ces antagonismes et recourent à la voie, plus discrète mais redoutablement efficace, du bilatéralisme. Bien que les traités bilatéraux américains soient encore méconnus, ils se multiplient à tout azimut et se répercutent sur les politiques nationales de développement économique, d’accès aux médicaments, de protection des savoirs autochtones, d’agriculture traditionnelle et de transferts technologiques. Jean-Frédéric Morin dresse un nouveau portait du droit international des brevets en analysant ce bilatéralisme en émergence. Cette étude détaillée arrive à point, à l’heure où de nombreux pays s’apprêtent à lancer à leur tour des négociations bilatérales avec les États-Unis


    Voir la publication originale Voir la publication originale en format pdf

Edited volumes

  • Morin, JF. C. Olsson, and EÖ Atikcan, eds (2021), Research Methods in the Social Sciences: An A-Z of Key Concepts, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 


    Research Methods in the Social Sciences is a comprehensive yet compact A-Z for undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking qualitative and quantitative research across the social sciences, featuring 71 entries that cover a wide range of concepts, methods, and theories


    Voir la publication originale

  • Morin, J-F and A. Orsini, eds.(2021), Essential Concepts of Global Environmental Governance (2nd edition), Routledge, 310 p.


    Aligning global governance to the challenges of sustainability is one of the most urgent international issues to be addressed. This book is a timely and up-to-date compilation of the main pieces of the global environmental governance puzzle.

    Essential Concepts of Global Environmental Governance synthesizes writing from an internationally diverse range of well-known experts. Each entry defines a central concept in global environmental governance, presents its historical evolution and related debates, and includes key bibliographical references. This new edition takes stock of several recent developments in global environmental politics including the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the UN Global Pact for the Environment attempt in 2017, and the 2018 Oceans Plastics Charter. More precisely, this book:

      • offers cutting-edge analysis of the state of global environmental governance;

        • presents an up-to-date debate on sustainable development at the global level;

          • gives an in-depth exploration of current architecture of global environmental governance;

            • examines the interaction between environmental politics and other policy fields such as trade, development, and security;

              • provides a critical review of the recent global environmental governance literature.

                Innovative thinking and high-profile expertise come together to create a volume that is accessible to students, scholars, and practitioners alike.

                "Essential Concepts of Global Environmental Governance is an incredibly useful resource for students. It provides short introductory entries for students new to the field or from a related field. The authors compiled an impressive and cohesive list of entries that provides an excellent foundation for all students of global environmental governance." -- Gabriela Kuetting, Professor of Global Politics, Rutgers University, USA

                "This volume provides an essential glossary of critical terms and concepts in the field of international environmental politics for diplomats, analysts and students. The interdisciplinary array of expert authors provides terse and authoritative overview of the key concepts and debates that have defined the field of international environmental governance over the years. The entries carefully survey the intellectual ecosystem of the concepts applied to understanding and managing our global environmental crisis." –Peter M. Haas, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

                "This volume is an indispensable resource for distilling what is most important for understanding the vast terrain of global environmental policy. Written by leading scholars, this book offers an authoritative lexicon to which one can turn for a quick, in-depth, and reliable reference. I wish this book was around when I was a student. I’m glad it is around now that I’m a professor." – Paul Wapner, Professor of Global Environmental Politics, American University, USA 


                Voir la publication originale

              1. Coman, R. and J-F Morin, eds.(2015), Political Science in Motion: The Evolution of a Discipline Through its Journals, Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles.


                This book examines recent developments in political science research. What are the new influences to which the discipline opens itself up? Is political science research converging towards a single model or splitting into different streams? What are the new challenges at the beginning of the 21st century? By addressing these questions, this collection of essays discusses three interrelated topics: the relationship between political science and the problems of politics, the relationship between political science and other fields of research, and the transformation of the profession. In so doing, this volume traces the major trends in contemporary political science research since the end of the Cold War.

                 

                As part of this approach, the authors rely on the academic journals as a field of investigation. Each of the eight chapters focuses on a different journal, including the American Political Science Review,West European Politics, the British Political Science ReviewSecurity Dialogue, the Journal of Common Market StudiesInternational SecurityElectoral Studies and the Revue française de science politique.

                 

                The book is intended to scholars with an interest in the historiography of political science, the epistemology of knowledge, the sociology of the profession as well as the evolution of the field in terms of research agendas, theoretical approaches and methodological debates. 


                Voir la publication originale

              2. Morin, JF, T. Novotna, F. Ponjaert and M. Telò, eds.(2015), The Politics of Transatlantic Trade Negotiations, Routledge. 


                By focusing on the wider process of negotiations, this novel volume presents the first systematic analysis of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The authors include scholars and practitioners from across disciplines and various academic institutions around Europe and North America, but also from outside of the transatlantic basin. While presenting a thorough examination of the process of TTIP negotiations, the volume is divided into four parts with each part examining a broader theme and offering three or four shorter exploratory chapters that are accessible to academics, students, policy-makers and a wider audience.

                The volume explores historical and theoretical aspects of TTIP (with chapters by Gamble, Keohane and Morse, Telò), the beginnings of the TTIP talks and the role of individual actors (Mayer, Novotná, Dür and Lechner, Strange), TTIP’s possible knock-on effects and consequences for third parties (Aggarwal and Evenett, Duchesne and Ouellet, Zhang, Ponjaert) as well as impact on multilateral institutions and regimes complexes (Mavroidis, Mortensen, Meunier and Morin, Pauwelyn).

                Endorsement:  

                "This volume addresses a crucial issue of global and interregional trade governance by including an international team of   leading scholars from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints. Collectively the authors identify the major stakes and provide a comprehensive and highly competent overview of the main political implications of the ‘Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’ negotiations from both sides (North America and Europe), while keeping in mind the controversial interplay with global governance and emergent economies. Highly recommended for students, scholars, practitioners and informed citizens looking for critical and solid orientation in a very sensitive and uncertain matter."

                - Pascal Lamy, Honorary President of Notre Europe, former Director general of the WTO and European Commissioner for Trade 


                Voir la publication originale

              3. Morin, J-F and A. Orsini, eds.(2014), Essential Concepts of Global Environmental Governance (1st edition), Routledge, 252 p.


                "This volume provides an essential glossary of critical terms and concepts in the field of international environmental politics for diplomats, analysts and students. The interdisciplinary array of expert authors provide terse and authoritative overview of the key concepts and debates that have defined the field of international environmental governance over the years. The entries carefully survey the intellectual ecosystem of the concepts applied to understanding and managing our global environmental crisis."

                    –  Peter M. Haas, Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA

                "In a truly unique way, this book helps to connect the dots and navigate between the concepts, ideas and schools of thought in global environmental policy today. As environmental issues climb higher on the global agenda, I would highly recommend this book to all who wish to better understand the insights of sustainable global governance." 

                     – Connie Hedegaard, European Union Commissioner for Climate Action

                "The global community is at a crossroads in respect to addressing climate change. A solid understanding of global environmental governance empowers people to better shape positive democracy that determines a safer future. This book makes a valuable contribution to societal understanding and societal change. Those who care about the world we leave to our children should take inspiration from its many and varied contributors drawn from so many disparate but interlocking disciplines."

                     – Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change


              4. Carta, C. and J-F Morin, eds. (2014), Making Sense of Diversity: EU’s Foreign Policy through the Lenses of Discourse Analysis, Ashgate, 272 p


                "Honouring both the plurality and fecundity that characterises discursive approaches, this book demonstrates the pertinence of focussing on discourses, in their many different hues, for understanding one of the most salient developments of the contemporary international system: the production, reproduction and transformation of Europe."  - Charlotte Epstein, University of Sydney

                ‘"With its unique collection of essays, this book celebrates two kinds of diversity: the highly diverse discursive environment that constitutes the EU's multifaceted identities, and the many academic approaches to analysing these multiple intersecting narratives." - Kalypso Nicolaïdis, University of Oxford

                ‘"his book represents an excellent contribution to the literature. First, it unpacks discourse analysis and demonstrates the diversity of the various discursive approaches. Second, it uses these discourse analytical lenses to shed new light on EU foreign policy" - Thomas Risse, Freie Universität Berlin

                "EU Foreign Policy through the Lens of Discourse Analysis is the most comprehensive collection to date covering the broad array of discourse analytic approaches to the study of international relations and foreign policy" - Roxanne Lynn Doty, Arizona State University


                Voir la publication originale en format pdf

              Peer-reviewed articles

              • Morin, JF, N. Laurens, C. Brandi and J. Schwab (2025) "Using Trade Provisions to Make Environmental Agreements More Dynamic". International Studies Quarterly. accepted for publication. 


                This paper examines the impact of trade provisions on treaty dynamism. It differentiates between static treaties, which remain unaltered, and dynamic treaties, which generate new commitments, either by bringing about additional rules or attracting new parties. We argue that incorporating trade provisions into multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) enhances their dynamism. Such provisions can empower interest groups to advocate for new international commitments and can prompt businesses in non-party states to pressure their governments to join the MEA. Analyzing a dataset of 647 MEAs, we find that provisions that restrict trade flows are associated with higher numbers of amendments and accessions. This insight is crucial for resolving the so-called ‘ambition/participation dilemma’ and designing more adaptable treaties, particularly at a time when there is increasing enthusiasm for using trade measures to set up international climate clubs.


                Voir la publication originale en format pdf

              • Morin, JF & G. Beaumier (2024) "The Organizational Ecology of the Global Space Industry", Review of International Political Economy, tbp. 


                The global space industry is booming. While governmental agencies used to dominate outer space activities, private space organizations (PSOs) now launch rockets, operate strategic satellites, and even take tourists on space expeditions. How can we explain this emergence of PSOs? Building on organizational ecology theory and drawing on a novel dataset of 1,751 space organizations and 52 semi-structured interviews, this paper finds that mutualistic relations between governmental space agencies and PSOs have been instrumental in the rise of PSOs. This emphasis on mutualism challenges the prevailing belief that a few visionary private entrepreneurs create the space industry from the ground up. It also refutes the notion that PSOs simply out-compete a stagnant public sector. PSOs have not superseded governmental space agencies; they are nurtured by and develop with them. This paper is one of the first to explain how private actors can emerge in a field historically dominated by governmental actors. In doing so, it contributes to studies on public-private interactions by showing how mutualism can structure a nascent industry. It also opens up new avenues for research on the political economy of outer space by making available a rich dataset of space actors


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              • Beaumier, G., C. Couette & JF Morin (2024) "Hybrid organisations and governance systems: the case of the European Space Agency," Journal of European Public Policy, DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2024.2325647 


                The constitutive organisations of governance systems tend to multiply and diversify over time. In parallel, a tendency toward homophily favours the creation of clusters of homogeneous organisations. Yet, few systems drift to the point of disconnection or dislocation. Several remain sufficiently cohesive to allow adaptation and other complex properties to emerge. To maintain equilibrium between order and chaos, some organisations must create bridges between otherwise homogeneous groups. This paper argues that hybrid organisations are ideally suited for this role. By their nature, hybrids share characteristics with different types of organisations in global governance, allowing them to overcome strict homophily and create bridges across clusters. Hybrids benefit from acting as brokers and in doing so, they facilitate the exchange of material and ideational resources across the governance system. Even if it is not their intention, they contribute to holding governance systems together and counterbalance the effect of homophily. We illustrate this argument by examining the space governance system and the hybrid nature, bridging activities, and brokerage role of the European Space Agency.


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              • Morin, JF, J. Allan and S. Jinnah (2024) "The Survival of the Weakest: The Echo of the Rio Summit Principles in Environmental Treaties". Environmental Politics. 33(3), 486–507.


                This article examines the influence of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, known as the Rio Summit, on the design of subsequent international environmental agreements (IEAs). In particular, it investigates the extent to which the principles outlined in the Rio Declaration were integrated into IEAs concluded in the following years. We focus our investigation on three principles: the precautionary principle, common but differentiated responsibilities, and the polluter pays principle. Analyzing a collection of 2,211 IEAs and their 509 amendments, we find that the Rio Summit catalyzed the dissemination of these principles. However, our study also reveals that the Rio Conference was an inflection point, wherein weaker expressions of these principles became more prevalent. Stronger expressions, which were included in some IEAs prior to the Rio Summit, became relatively less common thereafter. We call this evolutionary process the “survival of the weakest”.


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              • Morin, JF, C. Brandi and J. Schwab (2024) "Environmental Agreements as Clubs: Evidence from a New Dataset of Trade Provisions" Review of International Organizations, vol 19: 33–62.


                Creating intergovernmental environmental clubs is a prominent policy proposal for addressing global environmental problems. According to their proponents, environmental clubs provide an incentive to join them and accept their environmental obligations by generating exclusive “club goods” for their members. Yet, the existing literature considers environmental clubs as a theoretical idea that still has to be put into practice. This article asks whether, in fact, the numerous international environmental agreements (IEAs) containing trade-related provisions provide club goods to their parties. It does so by investigating the effects of these provisions on trade flows among parties compared to flows with non-parties. We introduce an original dataset on 48 types of trade provisions in 2,097 IEAs that we make available with the publication of this article. Based on this new data and a panel of worldwide bilateral trade flows, we find evidence that existing IEAs and their trade-liberalizing content are associated with increased trade among their parties relative to trade with non-parties. We conclude from this finding that systems of IEAs provide club goods to their parties. Uncovering the existence of environmental clubs has significant methodological and policy implications. It is an important first step for future research on the actual effectiveness of clubs in attracting participation and raising environmental standards.


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              • Beaumier, G, M Papin and JF Morin (2024) "A Combinatorial Theory of Institutional Invention". International Theory. 16(1): 50-76.


                From climate change to disruptive technologies, policymakers constantly face new problems calling for unprecedented institutional solutions. Yet, we still poorly understand the inventive process leading to the emergence of new institutional forms. Existing theories argue that exogenous changes provide incentives and opportunities for institutional invention. However, they fail to explain how the inventive process itself endogenously structures their emergence. Drawing from complexity theory and Brian Arthur’s work on technological inventions, we develop a structural theory recasting the process of inventing new institutions as the combination of pre-existing institutions. Building on three assumptions related to this combinatorial process, we argue that the distance between institutions shapes the emergence of new institutional forms and their regime’s trajectory. Following the initial take-off in the number of institutional inventions at the creation of a regime, we expect the rate of institutional inventions over replications will slow down as nearby institutions are combined and accelerate as distant ones are combined. We illustrate these expectations by looking at three regimes: data privacy, climate governance, and investment protection. Together, they showcase how our combinatorial theory can help make sense of the emergence of unprecedented institutions and, more generally, the pace of unfolding complexity in various international regimes.


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              • Bélanger L and JF Morin (2024) "Treaty Amendment Procedures: A Typology from a Survey of Multilateral Environmental Agreements". Leiden Journal of International Law.37(1): 62-87


                Treaty amendments constitute a critical but under-researched aspect of international law. In this article, we present a comprehensive survey of 491 amendment procedures across 691 multilateral environmental agreements. We use this data collection to build a typology of amendment procedures based on various combinations of control, adaptability, and flexibility. We introduce the property space reduction method as a valuable tool for building typology and analysing international law. We find a clear trend towards the inclusion of amendment procedures, which makes treaties increasingly adaptable. This adaptability is generally coupled with flexibility to avoid infringing on consent. As a result, amended treaties risk being increasingly fragmented into differentiated bundles of obligations split among subsets of members. We also examine how key features of treaty membership, such as power distribution, correlate with the occurrence and types of amendment procedures.


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              • Morin, JF and E. Tepper (2023) "The Empire Strikes Back: Comparing US and China’s Structural Power in Outer Space". Global Studies Quarterly, Volume 3(4), ksad067,


                This article assesses the structural power of the United States and China in the field of space governance. While much of the literature on space power focuses on their technologies and capabilities, we take a complementary approach and explore their capacity to shape the regulatory landscape. Possessing structural power has far-reaching implications for global power projection as well as for various industries, such as telecommunications, transportation, and remote sensing. To assess structural power, we gathered and analyzed three types of data: a dataset featuring 1,709 space organizations, a second dataset comprising 1,764 international space arrangements connecting them, and insights from fifty-two interviews with key space actors. Our findings indicate that the United States holds significant structural power thanks to its thriving commercial space sector and extensive international network. This has enabled the global diffusion of its preferred norms while simultaneously constraining China’s space cooperation network. Despite its remarkable technological capabilities, China has not been able to translate them into substantial global structural power. To encourage further exploration in this domain, we make available our original dataset of 1,764 space arrangements, including 970 in full-text format, inviting fellow researchers to investigate other facets of outer space governance.


                Voir la publication originale

              • Pic, P. P. Evoy and JF Morin (2023) "Outer Space as a Global Commons: An Empirical Study of Space Arrangements" International Journal of the Commons, 17(1), pp. 288–301.


                The designation of outer space as a global commons is a contentious issue. Some argue that officially recognizing it as such could discourage private investment, while others claim that it would not sufficiently promote sustainability. To address these debates, this article examines how space actors use a global commons framework in their institutional arrangements. Based on a collection of 1042 space arrangements, we characterize a subset of arrangements that explicitly reference concepts related to the notion of global commons. We observe that this framework is seldom used in bilateral arrangements and is mostly absent from recent agreements made by influential players. Furthermore, we find that employing principles related to global commons in arrangements does not result in significantly different operational rules. As a result, we conclude that a clearly defined global commons perspective has yet to be articulated and institutionalized. 


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              • Laurens, N., J. Hollway and JF Morin (2023) "Checking for Updates: Ratification, Design, and Institutional Adaptation" International Studies Quarterly, vol. 67(3) sqad049,


                Although most international agreements are concluded for indefinite periods, the issues they address and parties’ preferences are constantly evolving. In some cases, parties seek to close any growing gaps between negotiators’ expectations and the changing context by updating their original agreement to its new circumstances. States have several formal tools at their disposal to do so, such as protocols, amendments, and addenda. We refer to this process as institutional adaptation. This paper seeks to explain why some agreements are adapted numerous times during their lifetime while others are not. It argues that state parties are more likely to adapt their international agreements when they acquire new information about their partners’ behavior, preferences, or the state of the environment. We focus on two key elements facilitating this process. The first consists of unexpected variation in treaty participation, and the second concerns the design features of the agreement. Relying on event history analysis and an original dataset of design features and membership of 371 multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), we find that low levels of ratifications, high levels of accessions, highly institutionalized MEAs, and anticipatory design features are associated with more frequent institutional adaptation. These findings provide important lessons for the design of dynamic treaties.


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              • Morin, JF, V. Fournier and S. Paquin (2022) "The Federated Entities in Environmental Treaties Dataset: Questioning Conventional Wisdom on Green Paradiplomacy" Canadian Journal of Political Science 55(1): 226-241.


                The existing literature underestimates the contribution of federated entities to international environmental agreements. This research note introduces a novel dataset on the role of federated entities in 2,077 environmental agreements. We demonstrate the value of this dataset by revisiting common assumptions that stem from the literature. According to conventional wisdom, 1) federated entities’ participation in environmental agreements is a recent phenomenon; 2) this phenomenon is led by federated entities in Western democracies; 3) it has accelerated as a response to the climate crisis; and 4) it is driven by the same movement that favors the participation of diverse stakeholders. This research note questions these preconceived ideas and illustrates how the new dataset sheds light on the role of federated entities in environmental governance.


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              • Stender, F. C. Brandi and JF Morin (2022) "Do Greener Trade Agreements Call for Side-Payments", Journal of Environment and Development. 31(2): 111-138.


                Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) increasingly include environmental provisions. While the existing literature documents these provisions’ environmental impacts, this paper sheds light on their relation with aid flows. Using an event-specification and data on bilateral Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments for a sample of 147 developing country recipients in the period from 2002-2017, we find evidence that the number of environmental provisions in PTAs is positively associated with aid during negotiation phases. With high-income countries typically pre-determining the extent of environmental provisions in their upcoming PTAs, this suggests that aid serves as a side-payment for recipients to sweeten the pot and agree upon already formulated PTA content. While both aggregate ODA and its subcomponent environmental aid a priori qualify as candidates for pre-signature side-payments, we find that only the former fulfills this expectation, presumably reflecting more leeway to exploit aid fungibility.


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              • Laurens, N, C. Brandi & J-F Morin (2022) "Climate and Trade Policies: From Silos to Integration" Climate Policy 22(2): 248-253.


                This paper investigates linkages between trade and climate policies by examining commitments made in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. While environmental protection and economic growth are often perceived as conflicting policy goals, PTAs and NDCs have the potential to encourage mutually supportive approaches to climate and trade governance. Building upon three recent datasets, the paper locates a sample of 21 countries in a typology of four issue-linkage strategies across both types of instruments: policy integration, policy silos, asymmetry in favor of trade policy, and asymmetry in favor of climate policy. It finds that countries that reveal a preference for strong linkage with climate in their PTAs typically do not reveal a preference for strong trade linkage in their NDCs, and vice versa. No state from the sample favors strong policy integration. After sketching out possible explanations for this observation, the paper concludes that policy-makers have significant room for enhancing synergies between trade and climate commitments and that scholars have a role to play in this endeavor.  


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              • Morin, JF and B. Richard (2021) "Astro-Environmentalism: Toward a Polycentric Governance of Space Debris", Global Policy, 12(4): 568-573


                The Earth’s orbital space is increasingly threatened by debris. It is frequently described as a common-pool resource vulnerable to a ‘tragedy of the commons’ scenario. Scholars have suggested ambitious policy proposals to tackle the tragedy of space debris and assure the sustainability of the Earth’s orbits. Their proposals can be classified into three categories: hierarchical regulations, economic incentives and property rights. All three categories require some form of central coordination. However, there might be an alternative approach to the problem and other potential solutions. Elinor Ostrom suggested that decentralized, polycentric systems are appropriate for governing common-pool resources. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a polycentric form of governance can encourage a more sustainable use of the Earth’s orbits.


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              • Kim, R. and JF Morin (2021) "Massive Institutional Structures in Global Governance: A Bird's-eye View of the Trade-Environment Supercluster Complex", Global Environmental Politics, 21 (3): 26–48.


                Global governance is a complex web of institutions. It consists of elementary regimes that form regime complexes, which in turn give rise to what we call superclusters around broad policy domains such as trade and environment. In recent years, scholars have explored what these macroscopic structures look like and how they evolve over time. Yet the complex ways in which entire governance superclusters interact and coevolve with one another through multiple interlinkages, and what might emerge through this process, have not received much attention. In this paper, we expand the ontological frontier of global governance research by offering a first bird’s-eye view on supercluster-level institutional interaction with an empirical focus on trade and environment. We constructed and analyzed a dynamic network-of-networks model consisting of 694 trade and 2,731 environmental agreements joined by 2,305 treaty citations. Our analysis reveals what we call a supercluster complex, which is a massive institutional structure in global governance consisting of two or more interlocking superclusters that exert a measurable influence on each other’s course of development. Based on our exploratory analysis, we argue that the supercluster complex serves as an institutional fabric that enables the degree of self-organized coordination observed between the trade and environment policy domains. Our preliminary findings warrant more research on supercluster complexes as an important but little-noticed phenomenon in global governance.


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              • Morin, JF, B. Tremblay-Auger, and C Peacock (2022) "Design Trade-Offs Under Power Asymmetry: COPs and Flexibility Clauses ", Global Environmental Politics, 22 (1) 19-43. 


                Negotiating parties to an environmental agreement can manage uncertainty by including flexibility clauses, such as escape and withdrawal clauses. This article investigates a type of uncertainty so far overlooked by the literature: the uncertainty generated by the creation of a Conference of the Parties (COPs) in a context of sharp power asymmetry. When negotiating an agreement, it is difficult for powerful states to make a credible commitment to weaker states, whereby they will not abuse their power to influence future COP decision-making. Flexibility clauses provide a solution to this credibility issue. They act as an insurance mechanism in case a powerful state hijack the COP. Thus, we expect that the creation of a collective body interacts with the degree of power asymmetry to make flexibility clauses more likely in environmental agreements. To test this argument, we draw on an original dataset of several specific clauses in 2,090 environmental agreements, signed between 1945 and 2018. The results support our hypothesis and suggest that flexibility clauses are an important design feature of adaptive environmental agreements.


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              • Blümer, D., JF Morin, C. Brandi and A Berger (2020) "Environmental provisions in trade agreements: Defending regulatory space or pursuing offensive interests?" Environmental Politics 29(5): 866-889


                The increasing uptake of environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) is well documented, but little is known about why countries prefer certain types of provisions over others. Exploiting a fine-grained dataset on environmental provisions in PTAs and hypothesizing that environmental provisions are more likely to be adopted when they aim at preserving countries’ regulatory sovereignty,  the likelihood of adoption is indeed higher for defensive provisions, but this likelihood decreases if there is a large variation in PTA members’ stringency of environmental regulations, and in particular, for PTAs with asymmetric power relationships. While countries first and foremost attempt to preserve their regulatory sovereignty when adopting environmental provisions, countries with stringent environmental regulations and strong bargaining power vis-à-vis their trading partners also try to level the playing field and pursue more offensive interests.


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              • Morin, JF and M Cartwright (2020) "The US' and EU's Intellectual Property Inititiaves in Asia: Competition, Coordination or Replication?" Global Policy 11(5): 557-568.


                Intellectual property rights (IPRs) have been a priority for the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). However, over the past two decades, the EU and US have failed to advance their preferred IPR standards through multilateral forums and have pursued bilateral alternatives instead. How have the EU and US pursued their strategies in this fragmented environment? Looking specifically at the Asia-Pacific, we compare their bilateral initiatives on IPR across three strategies: treaty-making, coercion and socialization. Through this analysis, we examine whether the EU and US’ bilateral actions indicate regulatory competition, coordination or replication. We find that the overall tendency has been towards replication, which raises questions about the reasons for this redundancy and its policy consequences. As the rise of bilateralism is not unique to IPR, our findings have implications for global governance more generally.


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              • Morin, JF (2020) "Concentration Despite Competition: The Organizational Ecology of Technical Assistance Providers", Review of International Organizations 15(1): 75-107.


                When international organizations expand and proliferate, why do they fail to spread more evenly in their policy sphere? To answer this question, this article builds on organizational ecology theory, which was recently introduced into the study of international organizations. However, rather than studying each population separately, as previous studies have done, this article investigates how distinct populations with overlapping niches shape each other’s evolution. It argues that when inter-population competition occurs, the first population to occupy its niche at a high density limits the long-term development of other populations. This is the case even if emerging populations may temporarily enjoy a higher growth rate. The argument is illustrated by a study of the relations between four populations of technical assistance providers in the field of intellectual property. By doing so, the article brings for the first time inter-population relations in the study of international organizations and provides an explanation for the persistent concentration of international organizations in specific areas of the governance space.


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              • Morin, JF and J Surbeck (2020) "Mapping the New Frontier of International IP Law: Introducing a TRIPs-plus Dataset" World Trade Review 19(1): 109-122.


                This article introduces a new dataset on the intellectual property (IP) provisions included in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and makes it available for research and policy communities alike. Several PTAs include IP commitments that go well beyond the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). A sound knowledge of these TRIPs-plus commitments is essential in order to improve our understanding of what drives them and of their legal, social and economic consequences. Yet, until now, these provisions have not been mapped in a comprehensive and systematic way. The T+PTA dataset fills this gap by documenting the existence of 90 types of IP provisions in 126 agreements signed between 1991 and 2016. We show that, even for like-minded countries, significant variations exist in their reliance on TRIPs-plus provisions, their degree of consistency across PTAs, and their preferences for some IP rights. We also find that strong TRIPs-Plus provisions are correlated with the depth of PTAs, the asymmetry between trade partners, and the strength of their domestic IP law. By making the T+PTA dataset available, we hope to create the opportunity for a new generation of research on TRIPs-plus agreements.


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              • Brandi, C, Schwab, J, Berger, A and JF Morin (2020) "Do Environmental Provisions in Trade Agreements Make Exports from Developing Countries Greener?" World Development. 129, 104899.


                Environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) are increasing in terms of their number and variety. The economic effects of these environmental provisions remain largely unclear. It is, therefore, necessary to determine whether the trend to incorporate environmental provisions in PTAs counteracts the goal to spur economic development through trade via these PTAs. This is the first article in which the trade effects of environmental provisions in PTAs are thoroughly investigated. The spotlight is put on developing countries for which the assumed trade-off between economic development and environmental protection is particularly acute. This article uses a new fine-grained dataset on a broad range of environmental provisions in 680 PTAs, combined with a panel of worldwide bilateral trade flows from 1984 to 2016. We show that environmental provisions can help reduce dirty exports and increase green exports from developing countries. This effect is particularly pronounced in developing countries with stringent environmental regulations. By investigating how environmental provisions in PTAs affect trade flows, this article contributes to the literature on the following topics: international trade and the environment; design and impacts of trade agreements; and greening the economy in developing countries. It also shows that the design of trade agreements matters. Environmental provisions can be used as targeted policy tools to promote the green transformation and to leverage synergies between the economic and environmental effects of including environmental provisions in trade agreements.


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              • Hollway, J, JF Morin and J Pauwelyn (2020) "Structural Conditions for Novelty: The Introduction of New Environmental Clauses to the Trade Regime Complex" International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 20(1): 61-83.


                When do parties introduce novel clauses to a system of contracts or treaties? While important research has investigated how clauses diffuse once introduced, few empirical studies address their initial introduction. Drawing on network theory, this paper argues that novel clauses are introduced when agreements are concluded in certain structures of earlier agreements and the clauses they include. This paper demonstrates this argument using the example of 282 different environmental clauses introduced into the trade regime complex through 630 trade agreements concluded between 1945 and 2016. We find that trade agreements are more likely to introduce novelties when they involve parties with a diversity of experience with prior environmental clauses, and introduce more novelties when more parties are less constrained by prior trade agreements between them. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, power asymmetry between the negotiating parties is not statistically significant.


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              • Mitchell, R, L. Andonova, M. Axelrod, J. Balsiger, T. Bernauer, J. Green, J. Hollway, R. Kim and JF Morin (2020) "What We Know (And Could Know) About International Environmental Agreements", Global Environmental Politics.  20(1) : 103-121.


                Initiated in 2002, the International Environmental Agreements Data Base (IEADB) currently contains information on over 3,000 multilateral and bilateral environmental agreements, including their full texts, membership actions, and design attributes. IEADB data allows us to produce a more detailed, comprehensive, and accurate description of the evolution of international environmental law than was previously possible, including the number, subjects, and memberships of IEAs that states have negotiated. The IEADB makes full texts of large numbers of IEAs available in ways that allow better typologies of how IEA designs vary and facilitates the coding of IEAs into those categories. We highlight the considerable scholarship that already has used the IEADB to contribute insights into international environmental governance and institutional design, including research on IEA membership, formation, and design as well as the structure of international environmental law generally. We briefly note the pedagogic value of the IEADB as a means to support both undergraduate and graduate teaching and research. We end by identifying broad research realms and specific research questions that are opened up by the particular structure and content of the IEADB, noting ways that scholars can use the IEADB to answer those questions of greatest interest to them.Initiated in 2002, the International Environmental Agreements Data Base (IEADB) currently contains information on over 3,000 multilateral and bilateral environmental agreements, including their full texts, membership actions, and design attributes. IEADB data allows us to produce a more detailed, comprehensive, and accurate description of the evolution of international environmental law than was previously possible, including the number, subjects, and memberships of IEAs that states have negotiated. The IEADB makes full texts of large numbers of IEAs available in ways that allow better typologies of how IEA designs vary and facilitates the coding of IEAs into those categories. We highlight the considerable scholarship that already has used the IEADB to contribute insights into international environmental governance and institutional design, including research on IEA membership, formation, and design as well as the structure of international environmental law generally. We briefly note the pedagogic value of the IEADB as a means to support both undergraduate and graduate teaching and research. We end by identifying broad research realms and specific research questions that are opened up by the particular structure and content of the IEADB, noting ways that scholars can use the IEADB to answer those questions of greatest interest to them.


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              • Laurens, N and JF Morin (2019) "Negotiating Environmental Protection in Trade Agreements: A Regime Shift or a Tactical Linkage?" International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics 19(6), 533-556.


                The prolific literature on the relationship between the trade and environmental regimes suffers from three shortcomings. First, it myopically focuses on multilateral institutions while the vast majority of trade and environmental agreements are bilateral. Second, when studies consider preferential trade agreements’ (PTAs) environmental provisions, they are often limited to US and EU agreements. Third, it examines how the trade and environmental regimes negatively affect each other, leaving aside their potential synergies. Conversely, this article assesses the potential contribution of PTAs to international environmental law. Several PTAs include a full-fledged chapter devoted to environmental protection and contain detailed commitments on various environmental issue areas. One possible scenario is that countries that are dissatisfied with traditional settings for environmental lawmaking engage in a process of “regime shifting” toward PTAs to move forward on their environmental agenda. The alternative is that PTAs’ environmental provisions are the result of “tactical linkages” and merely duplicate extant obligations from international environmental law to serve political goals. We shed light on this question by building on two datasets of 690 PTAs and 2343 environmental treaties. We investigate four potential contributions of PTAs to environmental law: the diffusion of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), the diffusion of existing environmental rules, the design of new environmental rules, and the legal prevalence of MEAs. The article concludes that the contribution of PTAs to the strengthening of states’ commitments under international environmental law is very modest on the four dimensions examined.


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              • Laurens, N, Z Dove, JF Morin and S. Jinnah (2019) "NAFTA 2.0: The Greenest Trade Agreement Ever?", World Trade Review 18(4) : 659-677.


                The renegotiation of what US President Trump called “the worst trade deal ever” has resulted in the most detailed environmental chapter in any trade agreement in history. The USMCA mentions dozens of environmental issues that its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), overlooked, and in line with contemporary US practice, brings the vast majority of environmental provisions into the core of the agreement, and subjects these provisions to a sanction-based dispute settlement mechanism. It also jettisons two controversial NAFTA measures potentially harmful to the environment. However, this paper argues that the USMCA only makes limited contributions to environmental protection. It primarily replicates most of the environmental provisions included in prior agreements, and only introduces three new environmental provisions. Moreover, it avoids important issues such as climate change, it does not mention the precautionary principle, and it scales back some environmental provisions related to multilateral environmental agreements.


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              • Morin, JF and C. Blouin (2019) 'How Environmental Treaties Contribute to Global Health Governance", Globalization and Health 15:47.


                Background

                Recent work in international relations theory argues that international regimes do not develop in isolation, as previously assumed, but evolve as open systems that interact with other regimes. The implications of this insight’s for sustainable development remains underexplored. Even thought environmental protection and health promotion are clearly interconnected at the impact level, it remains unclear how global environmental governance interacts with global health governance at the institutional level. In order to fill this gap, this article aims to assess how environmental treaties contribute to global health governance.

                Methods and results

                To assess how environmental treaties contribute to global health governance, we conducted a content analysis of 2280 international environmental treaties. For each of these treaties, we measure the type and number of health-related provisions in these treaties. The result is the Health and Environment Interplay Database (HEIDI), which we make public with the publication of this article. This new database reveals that more than 300 environmental treaties have health-related provisions. 

                Conclusions

                We conclude that the global environmental regime contributes significantly to the institutionalization of the global health regime, considering that the health regime includes itself very few treaties focusing primarily on health. When reflecting on how global governance can improve population health, decision makers should not only consider the instruments available to them within the realm of global health institutions.  They should broaden their perspectives to integrate the contribution of other global regimes, such as the global environmental regime.


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              • Brandi, C, D. Blümer and JF Morin (2019) "When Do International Treaties Matter for Domestic Environmental Legislation?" Global Environmental Politics 19(4): 14-44.


                While thousands of environment-related treaties have been concluded, it remains unclear whether they have been implemented. This paper investigates the relationship between the conclusion of treaties, namely international environmental agreements (IEAs) and preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that include environmental provisions, and the adoption of domestic environmental legislations. Thanks to datasets that are significantly more comprehensive and fine-grained than those previously used, we can focus on the direct link to environmental legislations rather than the less direct link to environmental outcomes. We are also able to study the relationship between international obligations on specific environmental issue areas and legislation in the same issue areas. As expected, we find a significant and positive relationship between both IEAs and PTAs with domestic legislation. Moreover, the link between treaties and domestic legislation is more pronounced in developing countries and, in these countries, more pronounced before rather than after entry into force. This relationship can be observed for many specific environmental issue areas, but not all of them. These findings contribute to the literature on environmental regime effectiveness and the domestic impact of treaties.


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              • Morin, JF, D Blümer, C. Brandi, and A. Berger (2019) "Kick-starting diffusion:Explaining the varying frequency of PTAs’ environmental clauses by their initial conditions", World Economy 42(9): 2602-2628. 


                An increasingly comprehensive set of environmental provisions is being integrated in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Interestingly, while a number of these environmental provisions are included only rarely, others are duplicated in more than 100 PTAs. We still lack a convincing explanation for the conditions that fuel the uptake of specific provisions. This paper contributes to the growing literature on the design, interaction, and diffusion of international institutions and introduces two key innovations. First, our level of analysis is the provision level rather than the agreement level. Second, while the diffusion literature typically tries to explain how diffusion occurs, we investigate what makes diffusion more likely. We hypothesise that the initial conditions – relating both to agency and institutional factors – under which provisions first emerge determine the scope of their diffusion. Our results indicate that provisions originating from intercontinental agreements diffuse more often, and provisions first introduced by environmentally credible countries are more frequently duplicated than provisions introduced by economically powerful countries.


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              • Morin, JF and L. Gomez-Mera (2019) "The Evolution of Governance Systems: the Case of the Trade Regime" International Studies Review, 22(4):15-20.


                This collection of essays brings together scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds, based on three continents, with different theoretical and methodological interests but all active on the topic of complex systems as applied to international relations. They investigate how complex systems have been and can be applied in practice and what differences it makes for the study of international affairs. Two important threads link all the contributions: (i) To which extent is this approach promising to understand global governance dynamics? (ii) How can this be implemented in practice?


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              • Morin, JF, H Dobson, C. Peacock, M. Prys-Hansen, A. Anne, L. Belanger, P. Dietsch, J. Fabian, J. Kirton, R. Marchetti, S. Romano, M. Schreurs, A. Silve et E. Vallet (2019), "How Informality Can Address Emerging Issues: Making the Most of the G7", Global Policy, vol. 10(2): 267-273.


                The Group of Seven (G7) leaders met for their 44th annual summit in Charlevoix, Canada in June 2018. Although the G7 has outlived many institutions of global governance, perennial doubts are cast upon it, particularly regarding its legitimacy and achievements. The Think 7/Idées 7 is a group of 35 scholars from all over the world who met from 21 to 23 May, 2018 at Laval University, Quebec City to identify key themes to be addressed at the Charlevoix Summit, communicating its findings to the G7 leaders’ personal representatives. This Policy Insights paper builds on these discussions and looks ahead to the 2019 Biarritz Summit by making recommendations of how the G7 can play a leadership role. We argue that it should address new, unprecedented and highly disruptive issues that characterise our complex world, rather than well-understood international problems that fit into existing categories. We argue that the G7 can do this by playing to its strengths – informality and like-mindedness in particular – in addressing emerging and transversal issues such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cryptocurrencies.


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              • Gold, R., J-F Morin and E. Shadeed (2019) "Does Intellectual Property Lead to Economic Growth? Insights from an Improved IP Dataset" Regulation & Governance, vol. 13(1): 107-124.


                While policymakers often make bold claims on the positive impact of intellectual property (IP) rights on both developed and developing country economies, the empirical literature is more ambiguous. IP rights have both incentive and inhibitory effects that are difficult to isolate in the abstract and dependent on economic context. To unravel these contradictory effects, this article introduces an index that evaluates the strength of IP protection in 124 developing countries for the years 1995 to 2011. We illustrate the value of this index to economics study and show evidence that is consistent with IP leading to increased growth. Our results are further consistent with two causal pathways highlighted in the literature: that IP leads to greater levels of technology transfer and increased domestic inventive activity. Yet, other aspects of our study fit uneasily with this simple story. We find, for example, evidence suggesting that increased levels of growth lead to greater levels of IP protection, contradictory evidence in the literature linking IP with growth, a lack of evidence that increased levels of IP protection lead to actual use of the IP system and problems with what IP indexes measure. Because of this, we suggest another – and so far undertheorized – explanation of the links between IP and growth: that IP may have few direct effects on growth and that any causality is due to belief rather than actual deployment of IP.


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              • Morin, JF, A Dür, L. Lechner (2018) "Mapping the Trade and Environment Nexus: Insights from a New Dataset", Global Environmental Politics, vol. 18(1). 


                Environment and trade are increasingly linked through preferential trade agreements. Despite the encompassing nature of environmental provisions in trade agreements, studies on causes and consequences of the trade and environment linkage are scarce. A main cause hindering research in this area is the lack of data. By dint of this research note we introduce an original dataset on environmental provisions found in 630 trade agreements signed between 1947 and 2016 – that is the most comprehensive in terms of both variables coded and agreements covered. We illustrate the dataset’s usefulness by assessing the question of why countries include environmental provisions in trade agreements. Are trade negotiations opportunities to promote stringent environmental standards? Or are environmental provisions window-dressing covering protectionist interests? We find evidence that democracies, countries that face import competition, and countries that care about the environment are more likely to include environmental provisions in trade agreements. The database is of particular relevance for research on international institutional design, policy innovation, regime complexity, policy diffusion, and regime effectiveness.


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              • Morin, JF, O. Serrano, M. Burri, and S. Bannerman (2018) "Rising Economies in the International Patent Regime: From Rule-Breakers to Rule-Changers and Rule-Makers", New Political Economy, 23(3): 255-273.


                Rising economies face a crucial dilemma when establishing their position on international patent law. Should they translate their increasing economic strength into political power to further developing countries’ interests in lower levels of international patent protection? Or, anticipating a rising domestic interest in stronger international patent protection, should they adopt a position that favors maximal patent protection? Drawing on multiple case studies using a most similar system design, we argue that rising economies, after having been coerced into adopting more stringent patent standards, tend to display ambivalent positions, trapped in bureaucratic politics and caught between conflicting domestic constituencies. We find that the recent proliferation of international institutions and the expansion of transnational networks have contributed to fragmentation and polarization in domestic patent politics. As a result, today’s emerging economies experience a more tortuous transformative process than did yesterday’s. This finding is of particular relevance for scholars studying rising powers, as well as for those working on policy diffusion, regulatory regimes, transnational networks and regime complexes.


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              • Morin, JF and S. Jinnah (2018) "The Untapped Potential of Preferential Trade Agreements for Climate Governance", Environmental Politics, vol. 27(3): 541-565.


                The regulatory contribution that Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) make to global climate governance is assessed through an analysis of climate-related provisions found in 688 PTAs signed between 1947 and 2016. Provisions are analyzed along four dimensions: innovation, legalization, replication, and distribution. Innovative climate provisions are found in several PTAs that are in some cases more specific and enforceable than the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. Nonetheless, these climate provisions offer limited progress because they remain weakly ‘legalized’, fail to replicate broadly in the global trade system, and were not adopted by the largest greenhouse gas emitters. Despite the inclusion of innovative climate provisions in a number of PTAs, their poor design and weak replication position them as some of the weakest environmental provisions within PTAs.


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              • Meunier, S. and JF Morin (2017) "The European Union and the Space-Time Continuum of Investment Agreements", Journal of European Integration, vol. 39(7): 891-907. 


                The 2009 Lisbon Treaty transferred the competence over Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) policy from the national to the supranational level. This article analyses the impact of this transfer on the content of international investment agreements and, more broadly, the shape of the investment regime complex. Is the competence shift expected to have an independent impact or simply reproduce and continue existing trends? Exploring these two conjectures through a combination of text analysis, primary materials, and interviews, we are making a Historical Institutionalist argument focusing on the timing and sequencing of international investment negotiations. While the competence shift has allowed the EU to innovate in developing its own approach to negotiating international investment agreements, notably with the proposal to create an Investment Court System, the novelty may be only at the surface as the constraints of past, current, and future negotiations restrict the options available to EU actors- we call this the space-time continuum. The result of this learning-and-reacting process is a new European approach which simultaneously duplicates and innovates and could eventually favour greater centralization within the investment regime complex.


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              • Morin, JF and M. Rochette (2017) "Transatlantic Convergence of PTAs’ Environmental Clauses" Business and Politics, vol. 19(4): 621-658.


                The United States (US) and the European Union (EU) include several environmental clauses in their respective preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Building on an exhaustive and fine-grained dataset of PTAs environmental clauses, this article makes two contributions. First, it show that the US and the EU have initially favored different approaches to environmental protection in their PTAs. US concerns over regulatory sovereignty and level playing field have conducted to a legalistic and adversarial approach, while EU concerns for policy coherence have led to a more procedural and cooperative approach. Second, this article provides evidence that European and American trade negotiators have gradually converged on a shared set of environmental norms. Although the US and the EU initially pursued different objectives, they learned from each other and drew similar lessons. As a result, recent American agreements have become more European-like, and European agreements have become more Americanized. This article concludes that US and EU approaches, far from being incompatible, can usefully be combined and reinforce each other.


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              • Morin, JF, J. Pauwelyn, and J. Hollway (2017) "The Trade Regime as a Complex Adaptive System: Exploration and Exploitation of Environmental Norms in Trade Agreements", Journal of International Economic Law, vol. 20(2): 365-390.


                While the trade regime is often analyzed under the metaphoric assumptions of Newtonian mechanics, we propose an alternative, more organic representation. We argue that the trade regime seems to evolve as a complex adaptive system, at the edge of order and chaos. Drawing from a dataset of 280 different types of environmental provisions found in 680 trade agreements, we show how both the trade regime and the norms contained therein unfold by remaining stable (but not static) and dynamic (but not chaotic). Trade negotiators simultaneously explore new grounds by introducing legal innovations and exploiting known territories by adopting existing norms. Our analysis suggests that, even as the regime grows in the number and length of agreements, there are exploratory and exploitative processes at work. These twin processes can explain that the trade regime appears neither more fragmented/heterogeneous nor more centralized/homogenous than it was fifty years ago, despite its substantial expansion. This hypothesis is at the core of the research agenda that this paper lays out.


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              • Morin, JF and R. Gold (2016) "International Socialization at the State and Individual Levels: Mixed Evidence from Intellectual Property", Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol 29(4): 1375-1395.


                This article synthesizes the results of two analyses, one at a macro and the second at the micro level, to shed new light on the process of international socialization. More particularly, the first analysis examines the seeming adoption of intellectual property norms at the state-level while the second looks at the internalization of similar norms at the individual decision-maker level. Both pay special attention to foreign education and capacity building courses as carriers of US norms to developing countries. By triangulating the results of these analyses, we gain a more precise picture of international socialization processes than analyses centered at only one level. It becomes possible to distinguish between socialization types (acculturation or persuasion) and idea types (causal or normative beliefs).


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              • Morin, JF, S. Louafi, A. Orsini and M. Oubenal (2017) "Boundary Organizations in Regime Complexes: A Social Network Profil of IPBES", Journal of International Relations and Development, 20(3): 543-577. x


                Regime complexes are arrays of institutions with partially overlapping mandates and memberships. As tensions frequently arise among these institutions, there is a growing interest geared to finding strategies to reduce them. Insights from regime theory, science and technology studies, and social network analysis support the claim that “boundary organizations” – a type of organization until now overlooked in International Relations – can reduce tensions within regime complexes by generating credible, legitimate and salient knowledge, provided that their internal networks balance multiple knowledge dimensions. Building on this argument, this article offers an ex ante assessment of the recently created International Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Results from our network analysis of IPBES point to clear improvements compared with similar organizations, although major deficiencies remain. The contribution of this article is threefold. Methodologically, it introduces new conceptual and technical tools to assess the “social representativeness” of international organizations. Theoretically, it supports the claim that international organizations are penetrated by transnational networks and, consequently, that the proliferation of institutions tends to reproduce structural imbalances. Normatively, it argues that a revision of nomination processes could improve the ability of boundary organizations to generate salient, credible and legitimate knowledge.


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              • Morin, JF and R. Gold, “An Integrated Model for Legal Transplantation : The Diffusion of Intellectual Property Law in Developing Countries”, International Studies Quarterly, vol. 58(4), 2014, p. 781-792.


                Why do some countries adopt exogenous rules into their domestic law when those lawsdo not align with the country’s specific interests? This article draws on the policydiffusion literature to identify four causal mechanisms that are hypothesized to give riseto those transplants in the case of asymmetric interests. While the literature presents thesemechanisms independently, this article argues that each works in combination with theothers to facilitate legal transplantation. The empirical demonstration is based on aquantitative analysis of legal transplants in the field of intellectual property (IP), andincorporates an original index of IP protection in 121 developing countries over 14 years. Our results suggest that, while one mechanism – coercion – is instrumental in initiatingthe transplantation process, it fades over time and is largely supplanted by three others:contractualization, socialization and regulatory competition acting in a mutuallysupportive manner. This article concludes with a plea for theoretical eclecticism,acknowledging multi-causality and context-conditionality. Any comprehensiveexplanation of legal transplantation must include the identification of mutualreinforcement between causal mechanisms, rather than simply ranking their relative contributions.

                 

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              • Carta, C. and JF Morin, “Struggling over Meanings: Discourses on EU’s International Presence”, Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 49(3), 2014, p. 295-314.


                The first section of this introduction arranges the four theoretical approaches and methods presented in the special issues – namely interpretative constructivism, post-structuralism, discursive institutionalism (DI) and critical discourse analysis (CDA) – along two dimensions: a) the role of discourse in the constitution of the world, depending on whether approaches perceive social structure as being constitutive of or constituted by discourse; and b) interpretation of the weight of material and ideational elements in discourses. This model helps us make sense of the profound theoretical diversity that characterises analytical approaches to International Relations discourse. The second section tackles the question of ‘who does the speaking.’ It identifies the different voices that converge in the EU's international choir and problematises the discursive environment that forges international discourses through the theoretical lenses of selected approaches. In the last section, the contributions to this special issue are presented


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              • Morin, JF. “Paradigm Shift in the Global IP Regime: The Agency of Academics”, Review of International Political Economy, vol. 21(2), 2014, p. 275-309.


                The global intellectual property (IP) regime is in the midst of a paradigm shift in favor of greater access to protected work. Current explanations of this paradigm shift emphasize the agency of transnational advocacy networks, but ignore the role of academics. Scholars interested by global IP politics have failed to engage in reflexive thinking. Building on the results from a survey of 1,679 IP experts, this article argues that a community of academics successfully broke the policy monopoly of practitioners over IP expertise. They instilled some skepticism concerning the social and economic impacts of IP among their students as well as in the broader community of IP experts. They also provided expert knowledge that was widely amplified by NGOs and some intergovernmental organizations, acting as echo chambers to reach national decision makers. By making these claims, this article illustrates how epistemic communities actively collaborate with other transnational networks rather than competing with them, and how they can promote a paradigm change by generating rather than reducing uncertainty.


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              • Morin, JF. and C. Carta, "Overlapping and Evolving European Discourses on Market Liberalization", British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol. 16(1), 2014 p. 117- 132.


                This introduction to the special section on European liberal discourses discusses three themescovered by all contributions: (i) the co-existence of several market liberal discourses in the European public sphere; (ii) interactions among these various discourses; (iii) and discursive changes resulting from these interactions.


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              • Morin, JF and A. Orsini, “Policy Coherency and Regime Complexes: the Case of Genetic Resources”, Review of International Studies, vol. 40(2), 2014, p.303-324.


                This study argues that ‘regime complexes’ and ‘policy coherence’ are two faces of thesame integrative process. The development of regime complexes co-evolves with the pressureson decision makers to coordinate their policies in various issue-areas. Conceptually, we intro-duce a typology of policy coherency (erratic, strategic, functionalistic, and systemic) accordingto its procedural and substantive components. Empirically, by triangulating quantitative andqualitative data, we use this typology for the case of the genetic resources’ regime complex toillustrate the links between regime complexes and policy coherency. Our results suggest that acoherent policymaking process favours integrated regime complexes, while greater exposure toa regime complex increases the pressure to have a coherent policymaking. This study fills a gapin the literature on regime complexes by providing a micro-macro model linking structure toagency.


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              • Morin, JF and S. Oberthür, “The Scientist, the Diplomat and You”, International Studies Review, vol. 15(4), 2013, p. 577- 579.


                The study of GEG can contribute toward debunking a persistent – but rarely explicit – myth, sometimes called the “linear model”  or the “rational instrumental approach”. According to this myth, expert knowledge – that encompasses but is not limited to scientific knowledge – should precede politics. As such, GEG has significant theoretical and policy contributions to offer to other subfields of IR, such as international political economy. Constructivist scholarship so rarely claims policy-relevance that it would be unfortunate not to pay attention.


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              • Morin, JF and A.Orsini, “Insights from Global Environmental Governance”, International Studies Review, vol. 15(4), 2013, p. 562- 566.


                This forum presents innovative concepts and insights emanating from Global Environmental Governance (GEG) that could be enlightening for IR in general. It brings together scholars from various disciplines, based on three continents, with different theoretical and methodological orientation, but all active in the subfield of GEG. Together, they review recent conceptual innovations from GEG, hypothesize on the reasons why GEG played a pioneer role for them, and assess their external validity for other IR subfields. They successively discuss (1) law making techniques, (2) institutional interactions, (3) scaling and vertical linkages, (4 )private authority, (5) boundary organizations at the interface of science and politics, (6) openness and disclosure, (7) and regime effectiveness.


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              • Duchesne, E. and J-F Morin, 2013, “Revisiting Structural Variables of Trade Negotiations: The Case of the Canada EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement”, International Negotiation, vol. 18, p. 5-24


                This paper offers a conceptual analysis of the negotiation of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union. It argues that traditional accounts of the structure of trade negotiations must be tailored for their novel nature, especially their wider scope on various regulatory issues and the relative economic weight symmetry of trading partners. To build our argument, we revisit traditional structural factors such as economic interdependence, non-agreement alternatives (NAA), institutional constraints, outcome valuations, and domestic support. We conclude that current and future bilateral trade negotiations will likely last longer, deadlocks will likely become more frequent, and that variations in scope will likely increase.


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              • Morin, JF and A. Orsini, “Regime Complexity and Policy Coherency: Introducing a Coadjustments Model”, Global Governance, vol. 19, 2013, p. 41-51.


                This article looks at regime complexes from a state policymaking perspective. It develops a theoretical model in which regime complexes become denser over time while governmental policymaking becomes more coherent. Under this model, interactions between global regime complexes and national policymaking are twofold. On the one hand, greater policy coherence generates negotiated mandates asking for regime connections and complex density. On the other hand, regime-complex density creates more cohesive audiences, which increase incentives for national policy coherence. This coadjustments model brings states into the discussion of institutional interactions and critically questions the desirability and feasibility of recent calls for joined-up government and whole-of-government approaches. KEYWORDS: regime, complexity, policy coherency, substantive coherence, procedural coherence, political audience, life cycle.


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              • Orsini, A, JF Morin and O.R. Young, “Regime Complexes: A Buzz, A Boom or a Boost for Global Governance?” Global Governance, vol. 19, 2013, p. 27-39.


                Understanding the impact of regime complexes on global governance calls for creative policy thinking. This introduction provides a new and more precise definition of the concept of regime complex. It also suggests specific tools to characterize regime complexes and analyze their impacts on global governance. The articles in this issue deepen the analytical understanding of complexes by examining concrete examples in various domains of global governance such as piracy, taxation, energy, food security, emissions reduction, carbon sinks, biosafety, and refugee governance. In addition to providing an in-depth description of a variety of different regime complexes, this issue is innovative on three accounts: (1) it presents complexes as both barriers and opportunities for global governance and gives explanations for these diverse outcomes; (2) it shows how a broad spectrum of actors is necessary for understanding the creation and evolution of complexes; and (3) it qualifies former claims to the effect that only powerful actors can impact regime complexes. Keywords: regime complexes,networks, institutional centralization, institutional fragmentation, institutional density.


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              • Gold, R. and J-F  Morin, “Promising  Trends in Access to  Medicines”, Global  Policy, vol. 3(2),  2012, p. 231-237.


                It is a vast understatement to say that the problem of access to medicines in developing countries is complex. Access is limited by a range of factors including inability to pay, a lack of infrastructure, and corruption in some countries. Surrounding and exacerbating these structural and technological problems is the layer of legal rights created by patents and their licensing that complicate and render more expensive the preparation and delivery of needed medicines, particularly those that need to be adapted to the social, health and cultural environment of developing countries. This article provides a survey of innovative strategies that aim at maximizing the potential of patents to facilitate the development and delivery of medicines against diseases, the burden of which falls principally on developing country populations. To understand the context in which these strategies are being proposed and implemented, the article reviews the battles over access to medicines beginning in the late 1980s. It then surveys some of the principal suggestions put forward to better direct innovation systems in addressing the critical health needs of the world’s majority including advance market commitments, patent buy-outs, prize funds, public–private partnerships and patent pools.


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              • Morin, JF, R. Gold  and K. Daley,  “Having Faith in IP:  Empirical Evidence  of IP Conversion”,  WIPO Journal, vol.  3(2), 2011, p. 93- 102.


                Why some developing countries adopt US-style IP rules that go beyond those required by the TRIPs agreement.? With this paper, we contribute to the disentanglement of this puzzling situation in two manners. First, we explore one often neglected reason for the adoption of US-style rules, i.e. the socialization of decision-makers in the adopting country through interaction with experts in US IP law. Second, we rely on a more systematic conceptualization and measurement of variables than has been adopted in many previous studies. Overall, we bring forward strong quantitative evidence that socialization is a significant force in the export and import of IP rules.


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              • Morin, JF, “The Life-Cycle of an Issue: Lessons from the Access to Medicines Controversy”, Global Society, vol. 25(2), 2011, p. 227- 247.


                Why and how do issues expire? This paper applies the concept of path dependency to issuelife cycle and argues that the manner in which an issue dies is closely associated with how it comes to life. This paper argues that, on the access to medicines issue, the first actors (1) to have called attention to a legal problem, (2) to have capitalised on the HIV/AIDs crisis, and (3) to have used the example of Africa, were also the first to have felt constrained by their own frame in their attempt to (1) look for economical rather than legal solutions, (2) expand the list of medicines covered beyond anti-AIDs drugs, and (3) allow large emerging economies to benefit from a scheme designed by countries without manufacturing capacities. In order to escape an issue in which they felt entrapped, issue entrepreneurs worked strategically to close the debate in order to better reframe it in other forums.


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              • Gold, R., T. Bubela and JF Morin, “Wicked Issues at the Intersection of Intellectual Property and Public Health”, McGill Journal of Law and Health vol. 4(2), 2011, p. 3-41.


                This article focuses on the intersection of health and one of the main drivers of the global economy, intellectual property. It is widely recognized that IP is an inter-sectoral issue with linkages to many other important public policy areas, such as health, agriculture, the environment, and education. In inter-sectoral issues such as IP, there is discussion on the need for governments around the world to achieve policy coherence not only across their various departments, but also between their domestic and international positions in important fora. To appreciate better the complexity of achieving policy coherence, this article first gives a multidisciplinary view of policy coherence and then provides the Canadian context for the debate. Next, it describes three examples at the border of public health and intellectual property in Canada and internationally: (1) health innovation and access to medicines in developing countries; (2) traditional knowledge (medicinal); and (3) pandemic influenza preparedness. Finally, the article discuses international experiences with a variety of mechanisms for achieving policy coherence in IP and health, including the practice of advisory groups, multi-stakeholder dialogue, inter-departmental coordination mechanisms, broad delegations for international meetings, and white papers. From this review, a few observations can be made. First, effective coordination requires two main factors: leadership and a permanent institution that can build trust. While inter-ministerial coordination is a widely used process for policy coherence, it is not always successful. Indeed, the lack of leadership in inter-ministerial coordination has strongly constrained policy coherence.


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              • Morin, JF, “The Two-Level Game of Transnational Network: The Case of Access to Medicines Campaign”, International Interactions, vol. 36(4), 2010, p. 309-334.


                The rapid emergence of transnational networks in world politics calls for an analysis of their power dynamics. By combining the advocacy network literature and the two-level game theory in an innovative manner, this paper provides a theoretical conceptualization of the interplay between intra- and inter-network interactions. It argues that the strength of networks as agent springs from their force as a structure. A network win-set is determined by its internal games, thereby affecting both its bargaining power and its chance to reach a consensual agreement with other networks. The issue of access to medicines is used as a factual background to illustrate how the flow of influence within networks affects influence among networks.


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              • Morin, JF and R. Gold, “Consensus-Seeking, Distrust, and Rhetorical Entrapment: The WTO Decision on Access to Medicines”, European Journal of International Relations, vol. 16(4), 2010, p. 563-587.


                While the WTO secretariat, key delegations, several NGOs, and industry publicly present the 30 August 2003 WTO Decision as an attempt to reconcile intellectual property with access to medicines, our research shows otherwise. We draw on qualitative analyses of 54 interviews and a lexicometric analysis of press releases to show that their enthusiastic public statements contrast deeply with their internal, cynical beliefs. Most of these actors not only consider the WTO Decision to be fundamentally flawed but claim to have known this prior to its adoption. We argue that a procedural norm of consensus-seeking impeded traditional bargaining over this sensitive issue and that distrust among participants hindered truthseeking deliberation. Caught between strategic and communicative actions, state and non state actors found themselves trapped in their own rhetoric of reconciling intellectual property with access to medicines. They realized that the appearance of a solution, rather than a functional solution, provided the only realistic outcome to a fruitless and publicly damaging continuation of debate. From a theoretical perspective, this case study sheds a new light on the gray zone between rational choice theory and constructivism, where both discourse and strategies matter. From an empirical perspective, it illustrates the risk of seeking consensus within international regimes when the procedural norm of consensus coexists with a high level of distrust.


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              • Bubela, T and JF Morin, “Lost in Translation: The Canadian Access to Medicines Regime From Transnational Activism to Domestic Implementation”, Health Law Journal, vol. 19, 2010, p. 113-157.


                Canada was the first country to implement the WTO Decision of August 30, 2003, authorizing the export of generic drugs manufactured under a compulsory license to developing countries in response to a proposal brought forward by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that now claim dissatisfaction with the Canadian legislation. This empirical case study examines what success means for an NGO campaign. It contrasts interviews, documents, media coverage, and public statements of stakeholders, using quantitative and qualitative analyses. It concludes the NGO network experienced a shift from a mobilizer of public sentiment at the international level to a policy adviser at the domestic level. This shift crystallized a change in leadership toward local, rather than transnational NGOs, and a shift in strategy from being radical to more reformist. While this process of institutionalizing the outcomes of international campaigns is necessary for the implementation of international norms into domestic policy, it required NGOs to compromise their ideal positions, producing some objective successes in legislative reform but subjective dissatisfaction of the NGOs in the failure of Canada’s domestic regime to enhance access to medicines on the ground in developing countries.


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              • Morin, JF, “Multilateralising TRIPs-Plus Agreements: Is the US Strategy a Failure?', World Journal of World Intellectual Property, vol. 12(3), 2009, p. 175-197.


                This paper examines the current wave of US bilateral agreements with respect to their strategic and political value at the plurilateral level. The US government has explicitly recognized its objective of leveraging bilateral agreements in order to influence regional and multilateral negotiations. Although it may be too early to assess the full effectiveness of this US strategy, the paper argues that there are clear signs that the exploitation of bilateral agreements will not independently achieve the goal of strengthening plurilateral patent norms. This finding is supported by an assessment of six potential roads from bilateralism to plurilateralism: chain reaction, pressure for inclusion, coalition building, emulation, legal interpretation, and adherence. The assertion that bilateral trade deals have a great impact on international patent lawmaking, made both by proponents and critics of TRIPs-Plus agreements, is unsubstantiated. The author concludes that the US Government Accountability Office and Congress are justified in questioning whether the negotiation of these bilateral agreements, at least in the realm of IP law, is a wise investment of US Trade Representative’s resources.


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              • Morin, JF, “The Strategic Use of Ethical Arguments in International Patent Lawmaking”, Asian Journal of WTO and International Health Law and Policy, vol. 3(2) 2008, p. 505-537.


                Due to scientific uncertainties and political problems, policymakers rely on socially constructed norms when drafting what they hope to be an efficient patent system. At the international level, ethical discourse is often used by stakeholders to promote their favoured norms and thus causing a “rhetorical war” in the international patent regime. This article introduces the evolution of key discourses in the history of the international patent regime, especially in regard to the biodiversity and the access to medicines debates. It leads to concluding remarks on the effectiveness of some discourses over others in framing international patent debates.


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              • Morin, J-F. and G. Gagné, "What Can Best Explain the Prevalence of Bilateralism in the Investment Regime", International Journal of Political Economy, vol. 36(1), 2007, p. 53-74.


                Most efforts to negotiate a multilateral agreement on the liberalization and protection of investment have failed despite the fact that there are more than 2,400 bilateral investment treaties in existence. We have coined this phenomenon the “lateralism paradox.” Within this article, we consider five hypotheses that focus respectively on power asymmetries, incentives for defection, strategic linkages, domestic constraints, and ongoing adaptation. We found that the first four explanations are not supported by empirical evidence from the post-NAFTA period. We conclude that bilateralism appears to be the only feasible approach for negotiating investment rules, as well as the most sensible process to ensure continuous and dynamic adaptation.


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              • Morin, J-F., "Tripping up TRIPs Debate: IP and Health ", International Journal of Intellectual Property Management, vol. 1, no1/2, 2006, p. 37-53.


                Access to medicine is at the forefront of multilateral debates surrounding the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). This paper argues that bilateralism allows the United States to circumvent these debates and to set standards that serve and protect the pharmaceutical industry. In addition to the TRIPs requirements, recentlyconcluded US Free Trade Agreements (FTA) prescribe the patentability of new uses of known medicines, strengthen the protection of undisclosed data, extend the term of protection to compensate administrative procedures, prohibit some exceptions to the conferred rights, define circumstances for compulsory licensing, proscribe the doctrine of international exhaustion, and restrict the grounds for revocation. Although these “TRIPs-plus provisions” are not incompatible with the Doha Declaration on Public Health, they are additional barriers for the entry of generic medicines.


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              • Gagné, G. and Morin, J-F., "The Evolving American Policy on Investment Protection: Evidence from Recent FTAs and the 2004 Model BIT", Journal of International Economic Law, vol. 9(2), 2006, p. 357-382


                Twelve years after the inception of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the US policy on the protection of foreign investment is evolving. This article compares the provisions on investment in the recent US free trade agreements (FTAs) and the 2004 model bilateral investment treaty (BIT) with NAFTA’s. While most of the provisions are similar, some differences can be identified, both in substantive and procedural forms. We explain this evolution by a learning process of the US administration from the NAFTA experience. We argue that the new features of the FTAs and of the revised model BIT result from the US interest in reaching a better balance between the protection of investment and the protection of state sovereignty. This American concern stems from a reaction to the claims filed by foreign investors under NAFTA Chapter 11, at least some of which were perceived as ‘frivolous’ by the US government. However, the recent US FTAs and model BIT do not reveal a thorough policy reorientation but rather adjustments to the policy at the basis of NAFTA’s investment chapter.


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              • Morin, J-F., "Une réplique du Sud à l’extension du droit des brevets par les États-Unis ", Droit et société, vol. 58, 2004, p. 633-653.


                Le droit international de la propriété intellectuelle impose de plus en plus la brevetabilité du matériel génétique. Plusieurs organisations non gouvernemen-tales et pays en développement s’opposent à cette extension du droit des brevetsen réclamant de nouveaux droits de propriété sur les ressources génétiques etles connaissances traditionnelles. La dernière version du projet de Zone de li- bre-échange des Amériques reflète cette polarisation et contient, à côté des dis-positions sur la brevetabilité des végétaux, des propositions sur la protection dela diversité biologique. Cette opposition démontre que les pays latino-américains ont appris à jouer un rôle proactif dans le régime international des brevets et tentent d’orienter les débats vers leurs préoccupations.


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              • Morin, J-F., "La brevetabilité dans les récents traités de libre-échange américains", Revue internationale de droit économique, no 4, 2004,p. 483-501


                The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is no longer the «new frontier» of theinternational patent regime. Indeed, the United States and other developed countriesnegotiate bilateral «TRIPs-plus» treaties with developing countries. Arguably,bilateralism allows to bypass the dead-end debates at the TRIPs Council and to build alliances for upcoming multilateral negotiations at the World Intellectual PropertyOrganization. This article compares patentability provisions of the recently-concluded U.S. Free Trade Agreements with the TRIPs Agreement. Although most of the provisions of the TRIPs Agreement are integrated in bilateraltreaties, we identify five significant changes: 1) bilateral treaties provide a 12 months grace period to inventors; 2) the industrial application requirement isdefined has a «specific, substantial, and credible utility»; 3) a ceiling to thedisclosure requirement is introduced; 4) the plant protection regime is reinforced; 5) the non-discrimination rule is omitted.Our comparative analysis shows that bilateralism allows the US to consolidateexisting multilateral treaties, such as the TRIPs Agreement and the UPOV Conven-tion, and to fortify its negotiating position for future multilateral treaties, such as theWIPO Substantive Patent Law Treaty. The new features of bilateral treaties indicatethat the international patent regime is still oriented through the US patent law model.


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              • Morin, J-F., "Les accords de bioprospection répondent-ils aux objectifs de la Convention sur la biodiversité ", Revue de droit de l’Université de Sherbrooke, vol 34, no 1, 2003.


                La Convention sur la diversité biologique vise, entre autres, à favoriser le partage des avantages découlant de l’utilisation des ressources génétiques. L’application du principe de partage des avantages doit notamment contribuer à la conservation de la biodiversité. Toutefois, l’analyse de quelques contrats de bioprospection permet de croire que le partage des avantages, tel que mise en oeuvre jusqu’à présent, ne contribue généralement pas à l’atteinte de cet objectif. En effet, les avantages monétaires et technologiques qui sont partagés ne sont que rarement réinvestis dans la conservation de la biodiversité. Ils sont davantage utilisés pour le développement économique local, pour mousser les relations publiques des utilisateurs ou pour mieux intégrer les fournisseurs aux industries biotechnologiques. Afin d’améliorer la portée environnementale du partage des avantages, il faudrait influencer les modalités négociées entre les fournisseurs et les utilisateurs. Les Lignes Directrices de Bonn sur le partage des avantages représentent un premier pas en ce sens.


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              • Morin, J-F., "Le droit international des brevets : entre le multilatéralisme et le bilatéralisme américain", Études internationales, vol. 34(3), 2003, p. 537-562.


                Cet article présente 39 accords bilatéraux de propriété intellectuelle conclus entre les États-Unis et des pays importateurs de technologie. Ces accords permettent au gouvernement américain de contourner les négociations multilatérales de l’OMC. En utilisant une approche coercitive, le gouvernement américain est parvenu à tisser une toile d’accords bilatéraux qui va bien au-delà de l’Accord sur les ADPIC. D’abord, sur le plan géographique, plusieurs pays qui ont signé ces accords ne sont pas membres de l’OMC, ou alors ils profitent des périodes transitoires. Ensuite, sur le plan juridique, plusieurs normes prévues dans ces accords sont plus élevées que celles de l’Accord sur les ADPIC, particulièrement en ce qui concerne la brevetabilité des inventions. Par conséquent, les gains que peuvent faire les pays importateurs de technologie, lors du présent cycle de négociation à l’OMC, doivent être relativisés par un analyse des accords bilatéraux. 


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