Domestic Veto Player And Foumulation Of Foreign Trade Policy

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the reasons of discrepancy in the agricultural trade liberalization process between South Korea and Japan through the comparative analysis of the political behavior of domestic actors in both countries.To do so,this paper adopted the research framework of two-level game theory which is commonly used in international political economy,and analyzed the process of trade negotiation via the concept of "Win-set",so as to verify three domestic political factors——namely "preference and power distribution of domestic actors","domestic political system and "strategy of chief negotiators" ——And the level of agricultural trade liberalization.The hypothesis of this paper is that the agricultural political and economic structure of South Korea and Japan shapes the domestic actors' preference structure and political system setting,and the preference structure of domestic actors and political system setting affect the possible strategies that negotiators of South Korea and Japan may adopt in the agricultural trade liberalization negotiations.This ultimately determines the content and result of the agreement reached by South Korea and Japan in the negotiations on agricultural trade liberalization.In order to test this hypothesis,this paper makes a comparative analysis of eight negotiations that South Korea and Japan have conducted.Specifically,this paper classified the agricultural trade liberalization process of South Korea and Japan into two stages,that is,the first stage under the framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT)from 1980 to 2000 and the second stage under the framework of the free trade agreement(FTA)since 2000.In the first stage,the agricultural trade liberalization process of South Korea and Japan was mainly triggered by the "foreign pressure" of the United States.The trade negotiations at this stage focused on the opening,namely "tariffication",of important agricultural product markets such as rice and beef.At this stage,the differences in domestic political factors between South Korea and Japan led to different results in the beef and rice market liberalization negotiations that South Korea and Japan engaged.Among them,"the preference of domestic actors" factor in the two countries for trade liberalization have played a vital role.In South Korea,all domestic actors such as the president,government departments and Congress have the same preference toward liberalization.They are firmly opposed to the opening of the domestic agricultural market.This preference structure maintained the Win-set size of South Korea very small,which not only strengthened the bargaining chip of the government to resist external pressure,but also makes South Korea finally obtain an almost ideal negotiation result.On the contrary,various actors in Japan have formed a fragmented preference structure for agricultural trade liberalization,that is,there have been some actors with different positions towards agricultural trade liberalization within the government and the ruling party,who openly support the trade liberalization policy,have expanded their Winset by persuading domestic hawks as "silent allies" of the United States;They promoted Japan's agricultural trade liberalization by expanding the winning pool and exerting pressure on their own government.In the second stage,South Korea and Japan promoted the trade liberalization process in the form of free trade agreement(FTA / EPA).However,due to the differences in domestic political factors between South Korea and Japan,the two countries showed a completely different face in agricultural trade liberalization from the first stage.At this stage,the domestic political factors of South Korea have changed greatly.In terms of the preference and power distribution of domestic actors,domestic actors have formed a fragmented preference structure for agricultural trade liberalization,and the authority of foreign trade negotiations is focused on the Office of the Minister for Trade,while the Ministry of Agriculture,Forestry and Fisheries,which advertises protectionism,has only played a limited role.In terms of domestic political system,under the state of "unified government" from 2008,the containment ability of opposition parties was put in a weak position.These changes in domestic political factors have led South Korea to sign high-level free trade agreements with agricultural powers such as the United States and the European Union,and greatly opening the domestic agricultural import market.On the contrary,Japan's three domestic political factors at this stage have little change compared with the first stage,which makes Japan show conservative characteristics compared with South Korea in the negotiation of agricultural trade liberalization.At this stage,although the Japanese government has concentrated its power in the political system of agricultural trade negotiations to a certain extent——for example,it established the "TPP Headquarters at the Cabinet Secretariat Office" and unified the government's foreign trade negotiation authority in 2013,and successfully promoted and signed the Trans-pacific Partnership Agreement(TPP)——the Ministry of Agriculture,Forestry and Fisheries still controlled the trade negotiation authority in the agricultural field under the "Four ministiry co-speaker system",and the norin zoku also play a strong influence in the domestic decision-making mechanism through the "iron triangle".This structure has restricted the further opening of the domestic agriculture market,so that Japan has successfully prevented the trade liberalization of the five "sacred" agricultural products in the TPP negotiations.To sum up,in the process of agricultural trade liberalization,South Korea shows the characteristics of being conservative first and then opening up,while Japan shows the characteristics of being open first and then relatively conservative compared with South Korea.The reason that South Korea and Japan have such different differences in the process of agricultural trade liberalization lies in the different performance of the three domestic political factors of the countries at different stages,that is,it is the differences in the domestic political factors of South Korea and Japan created the different results of South Korea and Japan in the process of agricultural trade liberalization,Thus,it is verified that there is a clear causal relationship between the three domestic political factors and the negotiation results of free trade policy.In particular,among the three domestic political factors,priority should be given to "the preference and power distribution of domestic actors",because it plays a basic guiding role in political choice;Secondly,we should consider the "domestic political system",such as whether the negotiation authority is centralized and whether there is a "divided government",because these two aspects restrict the institutional space for politicians and negotiators in the political choice;Thirdly,on the basis of the first two factors,"negotiator's strategy" should be addressed.Relatively speaking,the "negotiator's strategy" is restricted by the other two factors,that is,the "preference and power distribution of domestic actors" and "domestic political system" determine the "negotiator's strategy" whether it can be used as an important variable and its role in the negotiation.