Path dependency in issue linkages and institutional choices: the liberalisation of agricultural trade in South Korea

This thesis aims at understanding how, following the Agreement on Agriculture in the GATT Uruguay Round, some countries refused to further liberalise agriculture in the WTO Doha Round, while at the same time reducing agricultural protections in bilateral trade agreements where they were able to exclude sensitive sectors. My main argument is that governments select institutions that will allow them to use a suitable issue linkage to liberalise agricultural trade with limited political costs. Due to bounded rationality, the initial issue linkage implemented in an institution may succeed or fail. Each outcome will create a critical juncture and positive/negative feedback effects that will promote/impede the use of the same linkage and institution in the future for similar purposes. My research contributes to the literature of the two-level game theory in trade cooperation, by demonstrating how a path dependent perspective can explain variations in the efficiency of issue linkages that could not be accounted for by the current approach. I also contribute to the new institutionalist literature by connecting the outcomes of issue linkages to the institutional strategy used by governments. I test the validity of my argument through a case study, selecting South Korea from the 1980s to the 2010s as my single case, and using process-tracing to analyse the causal mechanisms that are at the core of the path dependency. Within my case study I consider negative feedbacks that originated from the GATT Uruguay Round and hampered the WTO Doha Round, and positive feedbacks that reduced agricultural trade barriers in five bilateral trade agreements (Chile, US, EU, Australia and China).