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C H A P T E R S I X Rival Standards and Genetically Modified Organisms THE PREVIOUS TWO CHAPTERS demonstrated that even in issue areas where the structural forces of globalization have been thought to be at their strongest —global finance and the Internet—the great powers still dictate when and how global regulatory governance will be effective. When the United States and the European Union faced minimal adjustment costs and recognized the substantial benefits that came with coordination, the establishment of common regulatory and technical standards was swift. In the instances where the regulatory question intersected with broader societal concerns—censorship and privacy rights—the adjustment costs were much higher, and effective coordination did not take place. This chapter looks at a regulatory issue that generates high adjustment costs— the treatment of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This issue is an ideal one to examine the power of the revisionist framework in comparison to alternative explanations of how globalization affects regulatory coordination. Global civil society explanations, for example, emphasize the power and influence of nongovernmental organizations or epistemic communities. Because the disputes about GMOs are at their core scientific questions, this would potentially be an arena where epistemic communities would hold sway. Similarly, the genetic engineering of food is a topic that inspires environmental NGOs and consumer groups across the globe into political activism. This case is also an excellent one to compare the revisionist approach to other state-based theories of regulatory coordination. A realist approach that assumes American hegemony would predict the global regulatory outcome to mirror American preferences on genetically modified organisms. A California effect model would assume convergence toward the upper bound of the regulatory spectrum—that is, more stringent handling of GMOs. Scholars emphasizing the importance of regulatory networks would predict European preferences to trump the American position on GMOs. Neoliberal institutionalists would predict that the rewards from regulatory coordination should lead to an accommodation between the United States and the European Union. As this chapter will demonstrate, none of these models accurately predict the outcome of this regulatory case. Despite the visibility of nonstate actors in dealing with this issue, the GMO case also demonstrates the limits of their influence. Despite America’s hegemonic position in agriculture and Europe’s constant ratcheting up of its standards, neither great power has had a demon- 150 • Chapter Six strable effect on the other’s preference ordering. The health and safety regulations governing GMOs affect groups with extremely high barriers to exit— agricultural producers, biotechnology firms, and consumer groups. The initial divergence of preferences between Americans and Europeans on this issue, combined with the high adjustment costs of regulatory harmonization, ensured the absence of a bargaining core between the two governments. The result has been a rival standards outcome between the American preference for “substantial equivalence” and the European preference for the “precautionary principle.” The lack of a bargaining core has created an intense competition between the two great powers to bolster their position in friendly international fora, and to recruit as many allies from among the smaller states as possible. On the margins, nonstate actors have had an effect—particularly in hardening European public opinion—but because these actors also lack consensus, their influence on the rival standards outcome has been minimal. The rest of this chapter is divided into seven sections. The next section looks at the state of the science on GMO and the salient regulatory questions posed by the use of genetically modified products. The third section examines actor preferences on the GMO question, which left the European Union with a preference for very stringent regulatory standards. The fourth and fifth sections examine how both great powers have exploited friendly fora to advance their regulatory preferences at the global level. The sixth section examines how well alternative theories of regulatory coordination do at explaining the GMO case. The final section summarizes and concludes. A PRIMER ON GENETIC ENGINEERING The genetic modification of plant and animal life has been around for as long as organized agriculture—the simple decision to cultivate crops or raise livestock with desirable traits is the earliest and crudest example of genetic manipulation . However, in popular and political parlance the terms “genetically modified” or “transgenic” refers to newer and more sophisticated forms of genetic engineering—altering organisms at the cellular level via the introduction or elimination of specific gene sequences using recombinant DNA techniques . That is how...

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