Preference Changes in New Liberalism: The Impact of Changes of Government on US Trade Negotiations with South Korea and Colombia

Abstract

Abstract In classical two-level games, international cooperation is less likely when there is large programmatic distance and smaller domestic win-sets as a result of changing preferences. The US trade negotiations with South Korea and Colombia question this hypothesis and emphasize two empirical insights that can be integrated into the two-level game to improve its explanatory power. First, smaller win-sets due to preference changes can mitigate conflicts of distribution and make cooperation more likely if the negotiators are aware of the smaller win-sets. Second, when negotiators perceive the already achieved bargaining results as a new status quo, former positive sum games can transform into zero sum games, which makes cooperation more difficult, irrespective of the size of the win-sets. Negotiators who perceive conflicts as zero sum games will put more effort into avoiding losses and, as a result, domestic constraints cannot be used as bargaining levers vis-à-vis a foreign country.