In the past, many WTO member states have liberalized their trade policies unilaterally. However, they were decreasingly prepared to guarantee these measures multilaterally, that is to "bind" them. This paper analyzes the background of this development by resorting to three political economy...

The paper discusses similarities and differences between past EU binding internal liberalization "across the board" in the industrial sector and present so-called voluntary sectoral liberalization of member states of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). While both approaches are...