The institutional design of joint bodies in trade agreements: monitoring commitments, facilitating negotiations, avoiding ratification

Nearly all preferential trade agreements (PTAs) establish ‘joint bodies’ (JBs), such as a Free Trade Commission or Joint Committee, to facilitate effective implementation. While all joint bodies foresee interactions between governments during implementation, they vary considerably in their degree of institutionalization: Some envisage frequent meetings at more senior levels once the agreement enters into force, and only some are empowered to take binding decisions. What accounts for this variation in institutionalization across joint bodies? We argue that greater institutionalization supports governments by enabling them to better monitor the faithful implementation of commitments, facilitate negotiations over outstanding issues, and reduce the need for renewed domestic ratification during implementation. We find robust support for this argument through a quantitative analysis of original data and a qualitative case study of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA). Our study contributes to the literature on the design of PTAs and international institutions.