Working Papers 

Linking Human Rights to Trade: 

Institutional Trust and Disguised Protectionism of the EU 

(under review)

The European Union is the most active trading entity in the world that includes human rights clauses (HRCs) into almost all its trade agreements.  However, HRCs vary substantially across agreements, which I demonstrate using novel data.  I argue that the stringency of human rights clauses-as well as the selection of countries into EU trade agreements--is conditioned by institutional politics between the legislative and the executive bodies of the EU. Specifically, when the European Parliament (EP) has more bargaining leverage relative to the European Commission, human rights will be a more prominent component of EU foreign policy, reflecting public interests in the European electorate.  I find that when the EP has strong protectionist incentives and institutional bargaining power-a decline in public trust in the Commission-- the EU becomes less likely to conclude trade agreements with human rights violators, and more likely to insert stringent HRCs in the agreements. I also find that these effects are magnified after the 2009 Lisbon Treaty, which institutionally empowered the EP. I find little evidence of human rights conditions in partner countries affecting HRCs. The implication is that institutional politics within the EU are at least as important as actual human rights conditions in shaping the substance of EU trade agreements, as well as negotiations.

Illiberal Human Rights Norms in Trade and the Effectiveness of Western Conditionalities (JMP)

Are international organizations still able to promote liberal norms through diffusion and interdependence? The European Union (EU) is a leading organization that promotes human rights norms abroad, particularly through conditionalities in preferential trade agreements, as the largest trading bloc in the world. In this paper, using novel data on all EU trading partners between 1990 and 2019, I argue that states are more likely to resist these normative conditionalities when they are deeply embedded in regional trade agreements (RTAs) with human rights-violating members. These RTAs reinforce countervailing illiberal human rights institutions—authoritarian laws and norms that adopt relativist approaches to human rights and sovereignty—loosely tied to economic integration as non-conditionalities. This nexus of trade and illiberal human rights norms undermines Western trade-human rights linkages as mirror images, lowering the cost of noncompliance by providing attractive economic alternatives and collective bargaining power while also diminishing domestic public pressure and reputational costs through the institutionalization of illiberal norms. My findings indicate that high levels of embeddedness reduce the effectiveness of EU human rights conditionalities and increase the likelihood of trade negotiation failures. However, this embeddedness does not negate their effectiveness during negotiations, and EU agreements improve human rights outcomes in countries with low embeddedness. This suggests that the EU’s normative influence through trade agreements is short-lived and marginal but existent. This study contributes to the literature on the declining liberal international order and offers new insights into the effectiveness of trade-human rights linkages.

Regionalism as Rhetoric:

How Non-Democracies Invoke International Organizations at the UN

(under review)

The United Nations General Debate offers a unique platform for states to articulate their foreign policy priorities and frame their commitments to international norms. While the UN promotes universal normative values and multilateral cooperation, other international organizations beyond the UN are frequently referenced in the debate. This paper examines how non-democracies, democratic backsliding, and human rights-eroding states strategically reference regional organizations in the context of discussing regional solidarity and liberal international norms such as human rights, the rule of law, and democracy during the debate. I argue that non-democracies use this rhetoric to shield themselves from Western pressure and present an appearance of compliance with liberal norms while simultaneously emphasizing sovereignty, self-determination, and regional approaches to addressing domestic issues. By framing these matters as regional concerns, these states strategically try to undermine the universality of liberal norms and a broader enforcement at a multilateral level. Employing AI-assisted text analysis on readily available corpus data, the study finds that autocracies and hybrid regimes are more likely to reference regional and illiberal international organizations (relative to the total number of IO references) and invoke liberal international norms when discussing these organizations in their statements. Democracies, however, do not necessarily reference more liberal or multilateral organizations. These findings shed light on the rhetorical strategies of backsliding states and contribute to our understanding of how international norms are referenced and contested in a multilateral context by regional actors.

Distinguishing Labor and Human Rights Issues in Trade: Partisanship and Interest Group Mobilization (dissertation chapter)

Threat Perception of China and a Human Rights-Oriented AI Regulation in Europe: Evidence from a Survey Experiment 

The Effectiveness of Trade Adjustment Assistance Programs on Political Trust in the US and EU (with Rachel Yu and Soeren Etzerodt) 

• Scheduled to present at EPSA, APSA pre-conference

Peer-reviewed Publication

"Linking the Death Penalty to Trade: Bureaucratic Politics among European Institutions." (2018) East and West Studies 30(3), 67-99 with Min Gyo Koo.