Chapter 9. Issue Linkage

What are the potential benefits and costs of issue linkage in international cooperation? How can we interpret the patterns of issue linkage (or lack thereof) that we observe in the real world? I address these questions through a unifying framework that distinguishes between three types of linkage: enforcement linkage, negotiation linkage, and participation linkage. I argue that it is important to distinguish between these three notions, because the nature of the linkage and of the associated gains and losses are different in the three cases. I will pay particular attention to linkages between trade policy and noneconomic policies (such as security, human rights, and environmental policies). My framework aims at bringing together and organizing a number of insights from a very fragmented literature, as well as suggesting potential new insights and avenues for future research.