Coalitions in international relations and coordination of agricultural trade policies

Purpose - The author attempts to examine the existence and pattern of coalitions in international relations across countries, and investigates whether international relations of coalition partners influence a country's enaction of agricultural non-tariff measures (NTMs). Design/methodology/approach - The author adopts a machine learning technique to identify international relation coalition partnerships and use network analysis to characterize the clustering pattern of coalitions with high-frequent records of global event data. The author then constructs a monthly dataset of agricultural NTMs against China and international relations with China of each importer and its coalition partners, and designs a panel structural vector autoregressive (PSVAR) model to estimate impulse response functions of agricultural NTMs with regard to international relation shocks. Findings - The author finds countries to establish coalition partnerships. Two major clusters of coalitions are noted, with one composed of coalitions primarily among “North” countries and the other of coalitions among “South” countries. The United States is found to play a pivotal role by connecting the two clusters. The PSVAR estimation reveals reductions of NTMs against China following improved international relations with China of both the importer and its coalition partners. NTM responses are more substantial for measures that are trade restrictive. These results confirm that coalitions in international relations lead to coordination of agricultural NTMs. Originality/value - The author provides international political insights into agricultural trade policymaking by showing interactions of NTM enaction across countries in the same coalition of international relations. These insights offer useful policy implications to predict and cope with hidden barriers to agricultural trade.