Developing countries and regional trade agreements

Developing countries have joined the rapidly growing global system of regional trade agreements (RTAs) over the past years. The drive towards regional integration has advanced with the formation of new markets and groups in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Oceania with few developing countries remaining outside these regional schemes.

Focus of the volume

This volume looks at how getting governance right is a central element for successful RTA implementation, taking stock of the quality and effectiveness of the monitoring of development country RTAs around the world. Organized by the main world regions and primarily focusing on developing country RTAs, the book also includes two case studies focused on monitoring in developed country regional agreements by way of comparison.

Operationalization of governance

The contributors operationalize governance in the context of RTA implementation with a more narrow and technical term of monitoring and provide eight important lessons for assessing monitoring around the world.